In search of a level playing field

Britain's leading private schools are opening up their facilities to local people. Are class barriers being broken down? Nicholas Pyke talks to two fathers who have set up a project at St Paul's in London

Aside from the occasional seagull, there has been little to disturb the acres of smooth playing-field beside the Thames that belong to St Paul's School in London, during the holidays. The indoor swimming-pool has been empty, ditto the gym, sports hall and weights room. When the pupils of this top boys' independent school are on holiday, there has been no swordplay in the fencing salle, and the fives and rackets courts have been silent.

As it happens, the school is planning a facelift for its excellent sports block, along with the rest of its Sixties architecture, which is dominated by a brown concrete pebbledash owing more to a world of municipal construction than the educational vision of Dr John Colet, who founded the school in 1509. But looks aside, its facilities are way beyond what the average school has to offer, and a world away from the Castelnau estate, a sprawling mass of council housing that lies just beyond the school gates but is hidden by a row of smart £1m Victorian houses.

This Easter, however, things were different. Even though St Paul's was on holiday, the all-weather five-a-side courts, the gym and the swimming-pool were swarming with teenagers. Sixty of them, all from the Castelnau estate, spent four days taking part in coached sessions of swimming, dance and soccer, plus more unusual sports such as "road tennis", a playground version of the game that does without a net.

This is the Greenhouse Schools Project, the latest example of the independent sector opening up its facilities to the wider community. Come the summer holidays, it will be replicated at independent schools across London. King's College School, Wimbledon, Haberdashers' Aske's in Elstree, Highgate School, St Paul's Girls' School, Latymer Upper nearby, and one state school, Holland Park, the big west-London comprehensive, are all expected to take part. By the following year, the two businessmen behind the scheme, Justin Byam Shaw and Mike de Giorgio, hope to be covering 30 schools across the South-east.

Ever since Labour came to power in 1997, the independent sector has been under pressure to open itself up to more community involvement, and to establish links with state schools in particular. One of the Government's first actions was to set up independent-state school partnerships, backed with cash. So far, more than £4m has been spent promoting joint ventures, mostly academic. Loughborough Grammar School's maths department, for example, has been running master classes for primary pupils, while Newcastle Royal Grammar has held additional science classes for top-performing GCSE students from comprehensives in the city. The Government remains enthusiastic, and earlier this year, David Miliband, the schools minister, announced even more cash for the scheme, an extra £1.85m for 80 new "partnerships". He has even suggested that private schools might like to sponsor city academies, the freestanding state schools charged with revitalising inner-city education.

There have been sticks as well as carrots. In particular there have been persistent calls for the Government to remove the private sector's charitable status, thought to be worth some £80m a year. This threat has receded for the moment, although it seems that fee-paying schools will in future be required to demonstrate the public benefit that they offer in return for their charitable-status tax advantages. Certainly, joint ventures are now more common, and questions of access and community involvement are high up the headmasterly agenda.

Next month, Stonyhurst College in Lancashire will auction off treasures from its library at Sotheby's, hoping to raise £1m-£2m for more bursaries for the less advantaged. And leading players in the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC), representing the top independent schools, are pressing for a new protocol to take money away from scholarships for the academically bright and divert it into bursaries for the financially needy. Eton, Harrow and Dulwich College are all in favour (although a measure of unanimity is required before any one of them dares to go ahead).

The private sector is reluctant to admit that it has in any way been "got at" or pressured into greater involvement, and says that community ventures have long been a part of their operation. "This sort of thing has been going on for many years. It wasn't invented by New Labour," says Dick Davison from the Independent Schools Council (ISC), which represents more than 1,000 private schools, including the HMC giants. "A great deal of sharing of facilities happened long before Stephen Byers [the former schools minister] thought of it. Not that anybody in the independent sector really thinks that making your playing facilities available constitutes partnership in all its forms."

The City of London School, for example, has long had teachers working in inner-city secondary schools, he says. Three-quarters of ISC members were making their playing-fields and sports halls available to the community in 1997, although since then, the proportion has risen. A new ISC survey of state-private links is due out shortly.

St Paul's School points to the fact that it hosts Saturday schools for local 10-year- olds, and that its older boys regularly go out to help in primary schools. The music department runs an annual strings course for all-comers, and stages concerts featuring state-school pupils.

Manchester Grammar School offers Oxbridge tuition to students from disadvantaged comprehensives nearby, its students take part in a mentoring programme in Moss Side, while its maths department offers master classes to local schools. None of these projects has government backing, says the High Master, Dr Martin Stephen.

If they have not been pushed around exactly, the private schools admit that the context is changing. "There's an atmosphere in which the two sectors are more likely to get together," says Davison. There is, for example, an ISC committee in the Local Government Association representing local authorities, an almost unheard of departure. What was once a "dialogue of the deaf", he says, is becoming a conversation.

But, worryingly for the Government, the independent sector's patience with the official version of public-private partnership in schools may be wearing thin, in some quarters at least. According to Dr Stephen, chairman elect of the HMC, the private sector would prefer to be paid for its expertise, whether in Latin, Russian or rugby coaching, on a long term basis, instead of taking part in endless short-term projects.

"There was a lot of good will when New Labour was first elected, as there was with everything," he says. "Since then, there has been a degree of cynicism creeping in with the concern that the independent sector might be asked to give something and not get anything back. There's always the danger of it being a one-way process.

"Does the Government go for schemes which are photogenic and useful, but in a low grade way? Or does it see the independent sector as a resource within the education system? It would be infinitely preferable if these relationships could be put on a commercial basis."

Back in Hammersmith, Justin Byam Shaw is far from convinced that the private sector is really being exploited. Practical experience has led the two founders of the Greenhouse Schools Project to a different viewpoint. "The reality is that most schools are paying lip-service," says Byam Shaw. "There is a split. On the one side, there are a few fantastic examples, such as King's College School, Wimbledon. The concept of community service is deeply felt there, and runs throughout the school. There are other schools that, I'm sorry to say, will only do the minimum. There is one well-established London school, which shall remain nameless, that takes the attitude that parents pay fees to give their children a different set of opportunities, and asks why should they subsidise opportunities for kids who can't afford it. It is an argument that I find rather repugnant."

Both Byam Shaw and de Giorgio have sold their businesses and have been able to put £70,000 of their own money into setting the project up. But this level of private backing is unsustainable in the long term. Now they are seeking other long-term funding. The benefits to the children from the Castelnau estate are clear. As David, a shaggy-haired 11-year-old with a stud in each ear, admitted, the alternative is hanging around bikes or watching TV. There is nowhere to play football on the estate. There are holiday schemes run by community groups, often taking place at local state schools, but these are expensive and, at £15 a day, are more than most families can afford. The £1 a day charged by the Greenhouse Project is a bargain in comparison.

"The kind of kids we're dealing with can't afford to go on any schemes. They're not going anywhere," says Mike de Giorgio. "If they're not coming on our scheme, they're doing nothing."

This is not strictly true, because some of them spend their free time causing trouble. Part of the point of the Greenhouse Project has been to work with the police, who, through their community liaison officers, have identified teenagers at risk of offending and persuaded them to come along for free soccer coaching at St Paul's. When the Project ran a pilot last summer, crime levels on the Castelnau estate dropped sharply. The work continues even at the weekend. Since January, Byam Shaw and de Giorgio have been turning out every Sunday for full matches with the same lads.

There are potential benefits for the boys and girls on the other side of the private-state divide, says Byam Shaw. He is more than aware that life in wealthy west London can mean existing inside a social bubble. He had never met state-educated pupils until he left the protective confines of Westminster School and went away to university. He hopes that the same will not be true of his own children, who are at the Dragon School in Oxford, as does de Giorgio, who has a son at St Paul's.

The funny thing, says Byam Shaw, is that whether they come from private- or state-school backgrounds, they all dress the same. Walking across the playing-fields of St Paul's, with their hoodies up and trousers drooping, they might have flown in from South Central Los Angeles. "But when you hear them talking, you realise that the public-school boys just don't have a clue."

education@independent.co.uk