Sir Cyril Taylor's speech on independent schools

Brighton Independent Schools Conference

Thursday 12 May, 2005

Thank you for coming to listen to me on what makes a great school. My talk is based on a book called ‘Excellence in Education: the Making of Great Schools’ published last November which I co-authored with Conor Ryan who has just been appointed the Prime Minister’s chief education adviser. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at a substantial discount upon conclusion of my remarks.

I will first define what is a great school, particularly a great independent school. I will then identify the ways we can identify whether or not a school deserves the accolade of being a good school.

I will then summarise the qualities of excellence which two recent pieces of research have identified as common characteristics of high performing schools.

Finally, I will share with you some thoughts on how the independent sector in the United Kingdom could contribute more to society as a whole besides educating to a high standard their own students.

I hope to leave about 15 minutes for questions at the end.

Before we can determine what makes a great school, we must first agree on our definition. Success in examination results is clearly one indicator, but is not the sole one. The Oxford Dictionary defines education as the giving of intellectual, moral and social instruction. Perhaps G K Chesterton put it more attractively when he wrote ‘Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another’. Or, we could put it more simply: good schools produce good citizens. Certainly, good schools should also teach good values. Schools cannot be value-free zones.

Sometimes, the debate about education creates false dichotomies. Some argue that education is about the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake. Certainly, there is much to be said for broadening the mind and awakening creative impulses. But it would be naive to suggest that education is not also an economic imperative. The needs of a highly competitive global economy require all our young people to be challenged to perform to the maximum of their potential. Sir Digby Jones, the Director General of the Confederation of British Industry recently said that 80% of the jobs in the UK economy will soon require five or more good GCSEs or their vocational equivalent. Yet, in 2004, almost half of young people finished compulsory education at age 16 without achieving this (though some will reach this standard by the age of 19 at further education colleges). There will soon be little work for those with too few skills.

If these are the purposes of education and schools, which institutions are most likely to provide this happy combination to their students? One way of looking at it would be to say that good schools are also happy schools, where a high proportion of dedicated teachers are committed to their success and remain in post for a considerable time. As a result, they enable every student, whatever their background, to achieve their full potential, and prepare them for the challenges they will face in later life.

There are perhaps seven ways in which we can identify a good school:
1. They perform well in exams, both on an absolute and a value-added basis;
2. A high proportion of students stay on in full time education or training at age 16;
3. For age 11-18 schools, a high proportion of their students go on to university or other post secondary education as well as achieving good A-level results;
4. They have few permanently excluded children, indicating high standards of order and discipline;
5. There is a low turnover of staff;
6. They have a large number of applications for places from parents;
7. They make substantial provision of extra curricular activities including sports, the arts, voluntary activities and other after-school activities.

For independent schools there are perhaps two other criteria:
8. The ability to balance income and expenditure;
9. Having good modern facilities equipped with up-to-date teaching equipment including ICT.

Having established these criteria, we are now in a better position to determine why good schools perform so well. Throughout our book, we draw extensively on individual case studies. To some extent, our account is influenced by two important pieces of research commissioned by the Specialist Schools Trust: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Schools by James Tooley and Andy Howes, and High Performing Specialist Schools: What Makes the Difference? written by a team of researchers led by Peter Rudd from the National Federation for Educational Research. Both studies indicate that successful schools share common characteristics. The success factors are not particularly surprising in themselves, but a key finding of both studies is the interconnectedness of these qualities of excellence. In other words, the studies conclude that all the essential factors for a successful school must be implemented together in a coherent and joined up way. Moreover, this in itself is one of the most important requirements for a school to be successful, and such joined-up thinking will produce an ethos of achievement and endeavour.

Qualities of excellence

From the two studies, we can identify a number of common characteristics in high-performing schools:

1. A good leadership team of the headteacher, heads of department and governing body;
2. Their ability to attract and retain good teachers;
3. A focus on the basics such as literacy and numeracy;
4. The setting of targets for each student and use of data to monitor progress;
5. Discipline and order;
6. Curriculum innovation, which may include vocational awards and/or the International Baccalaureate;
7. Extensive use of Information Communications Technology including wireless linked laptops and whiteboards;
8. A longer school day and non-traditional term dates;
9. A focus on individual learning to create an ethos of achievement for all;
10. Seeking the support of parents and using older students as mentors.

Great independent schools also teach their students, many of whom come from privileged backgrounds, to care for others who are less advantaged.

It would be interesting to learn how many of the schools represented in the audience would rate their own schools as achieving all of the above.

Let us consider some of these factors in greater detail.

The need for competent, inspirational leadership

A good school’s most important requirement is to have an inspiring, highly respected leader. But it is also vital that he or she is backed up by a strong team of deputies and department heads, and that they are in turn supported by a good governing body. Mythology has grown up around the notion of the ‘hero head’ who battles to succeed against everybody else in the school, but those who are most likely to succeed will have the backing of others in the school’s leadership team, as well as the school governors. Good leadership can be driven by an inspiring individual. But that alone is not enough: it also requires teamwork.

Governors have a crucial role in supporting the headteacher and ensuring targets are met

You have the Association of Governing Bodies of Independent Schools and I do not need to go over the importance of good governors. Suffice it to say, they will bring experience of worlds other than education, in particular the business world, and they will give the head both support and leeway to carry out his role.
Schools must be able to attract and retain good teachers

If good leadership is essential, the ability to attract and retain good teachers, especially in key shortage subjects such as mathematics, science and modern languages, is no less important. An unacceptable proportion of teaching, especially in many state schools facing challenging circumstances, is done by teachers without specialist degrees. Moreover, because of vacancies, supply or substitute teachers teach a significant amount of lessons. One way of solving the problem, which was pioneered by some of the country’s most successful specialist schools, is by employing teaching assistants and other administrative staff to relieve qualified teachers of administrative burdens. Another way is to reduce the turnover of teachers.

Training your own teachers is an excellent way to ensure good teaching and more schemes should be developed like the South London Teacher Training scheme, a genuine partnership between ten very varied schools, independent and state, with the Open University as the validator of the PGCE. This equips potential secondary school teachers to survive and thrive in any school within the age range 11-19, providing them with the necessary confidence, understanding and competence.

There is a strong focus on literacy and numeracy

Many of you are academically selective, and literacy and numeracy are already on a strong footing. Others of you have a niche market in focusing on special needs, and have extra skills in teaching reading and basic maths.

The extent to which children have been taught in the basics is a key issue, as you know. The Specialist Schools Trust has entered into a partnership with Renaissance Learning in the United States which has developed, through its Accredited Reading programme, very popular online comprehension tests for 80,000 books which does much to encourage children to read more books.

Use of targets and monitoring progress through databases

Targets have been criticised in recent years, partly because there were too many. But the evidence from specialist schools is that appropriate targets do make a difference, and that they can translate the vision of a good head and the dedication of good teachers into tangible results. Personalising learning such that each child has a realistic goal for every year in the key subject areas is possible. Sophisticated computer systems allow teachers to access the school database from anywhere in the school. Every child, whatever his or her starting point, can be challenged to the maximum of their potential. The Trust, through the work of Professor David Jesson has pioneered the use of value added analysis. This is an extremely valuable tool, and even if you are selective independent with a high ability intake it is still possible to determine value added by predicting from intake grades what your proportion of A and A starred grades at GCSE and A-levels should be and comparing with the actual results achieved.

Maintaining good discipline and order

A child can only learn properly in a disciplined and orderly school environment. I think many of your parents are paying their fees exactly for this reason.

Being innovative with the curriculum

One of the early successes of the early City Technology Colleges was to introduce cross-curricular dimensions to learning. In other words, they recognised that it is possible to learn aspects of one subject through another subject; and that doing so strengthens the teaching of both.

The use of ICT, wireless technology and the wonderful world of the internet

The last ten years have seen the transformation of education through the use of computer-based learning, interactive whiteboards, laps tops and the Internet. Specialist schools have also incorporated into their curriculum Oracle and Cisco Academies which offer year 14 students industry-standard diplomas in IT skills.

By focusing on individual learning, schools can create an ethos of achievement for all

A focus on achievement for every pupil is probably the most valuable attribute of a high performing school. This general focus on achievement creates an ethos of high expectation for every pupil and huge pride in achievement.

The support of parents and the use of older students as mentors 

Older students, and mentoring in general, can give valuable support.

Even though most independent schools already teach to a very high standard, we hope you will find many new ways to improve your performance from reading our book.

Finally, may I address what is perhaps the most important part of my remarks:

How the independent sector can help raise standards in all schools, both state funded and independent.

Since the Statute of Elizabeth in 1601, it has always been assumed that the advancement of education itself confers a public benefit on independent schools and this justifies their charitable status. However, recently much consideration was given to passing a new Charity Act which would have required independent schools to demonstrate clearly that they satisfied statutory tests of public benefit. As you know, the Bill was a casualty of the election and we will wait and see whether it will be revived.

If the Bill proceeds, there are many ways through which independent schools can show that they satisfy their public benefit requirements. The Specialist Schools Trust, itself a public educational charity, is prepared to offer advice and help to affiliated independent schools to achieve this.

Independent schools might choose to safeguard their charitable status (and perhaps make unnecessary any new Charity Act) by:

1. Providing bursaries for children whose parents might not be able to pay their fees.

2. Engaging with the local community. This can take various forms, from allowing local people or state school children to make use of the school’s facilities such as swimming pools or to providing help to local voluntary organisations.

3. Arranging sporting links with state schools.

4. Providing gifted and talented summer schools for state children as is being done by Eton College.

5. Engaging in partnerships with state schools to widen educational opportunities and share best practice. As you know, the DfES has encouraged independent/state school partnerships as part of their Building Bridges programme. This provides structures and funding for cooperation between the sectors and grants have ranged from £5,000 to £35,000 a year over 3 years. We hope many more schools will become involved. There are now 300 such partnerships.

6. Nominating people to serve as governors of specialist schools.

7. Entering into joint post-16 provision in partnership with state schools. In certain circumstances they can receive state funding for this provision.

8. Offering a limited number of boarding places on a scholarship basis to bright students from socially disadvantaged families. Several boarding schools have expressed willingness to do this.

9. Joint School Centred Initial Teaching Training programmes such as the South London Teaching Training Partners in Learning scheme.

10. Sponsoring either an academy or a specialist school. This can be done by providing educational support as well as giving cash. We accept that private schools cannot use the tuition fees paid by parents for this purpose but possibly endowment income can be used or independent schools can provide the educational expertise to support sponsorship by a philanthropist or a major company.

Already the Magdalen College School in Oxford is sponsoring, in cooperation with the Sutton Trust, the specialist school bid of the Oxford Community School. The King’s School, Wimbledon and the Wakefield Grammar School Foundation have sponsored a number of specialist schools, as has the John Lyon’s Charity which is linked to the Harrow School. Sponsorship of a specialist school only requires cash support of £50,000 in return for which the Government provides £600,000 of matched funding over a four-year period.

A number of other independent school bodies are sponsoring academy bids, including the United Learning Trust, formerly the Church Schools Company; King’s School Canterbury; Thomas Telford CTC and the Mercers and Haberdashers companies.

Britain’s 2,500 independent schools are providing excellent education to some 620,000 children, saving the taxpayer some £2.1 billion of state expenditure. Most independent schools provide a high standard of education as shown by their performance in public examinations. For example, last year although private schools only enrolled 7% of all school children, their students obtained a 37% share of the 18 year olds who obtained 3 As at A-level.

But in order to justify their charitable status, they can and should help all our children to receive a decent education.

If you wish for help and advice on how to do this, I invite you to affiliate to the Specialist Schools Trust and join 2500 like-minded, ‘can do’ schools, half of whom are independent charitable foundations, not including the 200 academies that will eventually join our ranks. We have Affiliation Packs available at the end of the session for those who are interested, or the website to visit is:

www.schoolsnetwork.org.uk 

I also have a brief handout setting out useful websites and listing the qualities of excellence.

Thank you for your attention.