My Lords, I will follow the line of argument raised by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, which is that although we see islands of good practice within the charitable public schools community, we want consistency. Many public schools, as we all know, have origins as charitable institutions set up to provide facilities and education to their local communities. To some extent in recent years, links with their local communities have weakened; their facilities, however, have been transformed.
I fell out of state education by going to a choir school when my father’s employers very generously provided me with a scholarship to go to a school in north Oxford set up to educate the sons of the clergy. I remember practising my violin in what was then the school’s music wing, which was a bunch of wooden huts set up during the Second World War for some other purpose. St Edward’s School in Oxford now has a magnificent music wing, and a drama wing, funded by rising fees and contributions from grateful alumni over the years; so have, as we all know, a great many other private—or public, as we call them—schools across Britain. The facilities are there. However, facilities in many state schools have weakened. Specialised coaches and music and drama teachers are very often no longer on the staff. Sometimes the playing fields are not there; the specialised music and drama institutions are certainly not.
I declare an interest as the trustee of two musical education charities and the chair of Voces Cantabiles Music and the Gresham Centre. We have developed over the last 11 years partly through partnerships with a number of public schools: first, with Bedford School and the five schools of the Grey Coat foundation and, secondly, with Bradford College, Ardingly College and Rugby School. In all instances it has been a matter of providing access to the excellent facilities that these public schools have to primary schools and some secondary schools in the region—to bring people together, give them a different quality of experience and so expand their horizons and build their self-confidence. I place on the record our gratitude as a
charity to the partnerships we have had with these public schools. However, as the noble Lord said, this is an island of good practice when what we want to see is consistency.
There are other areas of public benefit that some public schools provide very well but which others neglect. My son went to a state school and was a good enough mathematician to be entered in the maths olympiad. When he got into the last 20 of the British Mathematical Olympiad, he was one of only three state school pupils, because the quality of the teaching you get in public schools is so much better than in state schools. When they got down to the final six to go on to the International Mathematical Olympiad, all the pupils were from public schools rather than the state sector. That tells you something. He was then offered a place to study maths at the University of Cambridge, conditional on taking a further set of advanced papers that his state school was incapable of providing him with the coaching for. Happily, Westminster School provided a teacher from its excellent maths department who provided him with weekly tuition in the evenings for a full term, which got him through. That is anecdotal evidence of a partnership of this sort. Public schools that have a better-paid and better-staffed maths department should be thinking about key areas where they could be providing additional coaching for people from state schools at crucial periods in their careers. We are well aware that some public schools now sponsor academies: Wellington College has gone in that direction.
All that the amendment says is that public benefit is important and needs to be demonstrated. Where there are these excellent facilities, which have improved so enormously in recent years, they should be provided for these purposes wherever possible. We would like to see much more consistent advice given, and much more consistent expectation, that the privilege of charitable status should be reflected in the public benefit provided.
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