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Hunt offers only crumbs

Shadow education secretary's 'public-private school partnership' rubbish typical of his gimmickry

Tristram Hunt's speech about making tax relief for private education conditional on "partnership" with the public sector is typical of the gimmickry espoused by the shadow education secretary.

He insists that he will legislate to make private schools share teachers in specialist subjects and help "disadvantaged" pupils from the state sector to navigate the quicksands of university entrance.

As with his previous utterances on a Hippocratic-style oath for education and teacher licences, Hunt tries to sound radical but misses the real point.

Forcing private schools to engage with state schools in regular sports matches and debates as the price of receiving £700 million a year in business-rates relief will change nothing.

Hunt complains that only 3 per cent of private schools sponsor an academy, 5 per cent loan teaching staff to state schools and a third share some facilities.

He should drop his obsession with academies, which have been given short shrift in Labour Wales and are opposed by most education professionals and teaching unions.

The only reason for staff loans and sharing facilities is that state schools are under constant financial constraints that the cosseted private sector does not face.

Hunt's own rapid progress in politics exemplifies the benefit of an expensive private education that just 7 per cent of the population experience.

Going to a fee-paying school does not, contrary to some assertions, result in a superior level of education, but it does provide a network of links and contacts for life.

The 7 per cent elite dominates much of public life, with 71 per cent of senior judges, 62 per cent of the military top brass, 55 per cent of Whitehall permanent secretaries, 53 per cent of diplomats, 43 per cent of newspaper columnists and 34 per cent of public body chief executives having had a private education.

And the reasons for parliamentary failure to tackle this concentration of privilege may not be unconnected to the fact that 33 per cent of MPs and 50 per cent of the House of Lords share that same educational background.

These people own the bakery, but one of them thinks that the rest of us should be impressed by his wanting to dole out a few crumbs.

As Hunt himself makes clear, "that is not because I want to penalise private education but because I want to make sure we break down the barriers holding Britain back."

The barriers of wealth and privilege in Britain are too extensive to be dealt with effectively by the social sticking plaster proposed by Labour's shadow education secretary.

Independent Schools Council chairman Barnaby Lenon is way ahead of him, with his claim that 90 per cent of private schools "are involved in meaningful and effective partnerships with state schools and their local communities."

In other words, they know how to play the partnership game while entrenching the gap between haves and have-nots.

Private-sector agreement to take part in academy sponsorship, private summer schools, mentoring and enrichment programmes and all the rest of it is simply froth on the top of an unappetising and unjust brew.

Labour's wooing of the private education industry contrasts with its hostility to the teaching trade unions.

But it is the unions' principled support for state comprehensive schooling, led by democratically accountable local education authorities, that offers a more effective and just alternative to Hunt's wishing on a private star.

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