FROM TRADITION TO PROPOSITION: Can UK schools stand out from the crowd?

UK independent schools can no longer rely on reputation alone. Yet most still struggle to answer the question every parent is really asking: why you, and not the school down the road?

What do independent schools offer and what do they say they can actually offer? It's no longer about the league tables.

Whether you're a parent weighing a significant financial commitment, or a school leader wondering why you're not converting - this one's for you.

A conversation with Paul Dunstan.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:27

We have Paul Dunstan from the United Kingdom. And Paul Dunstan is an educationist. And for our Australians listening to the show today, you'd likely be familiar with ACARA, which is our organization who does essentially what they refer to as League Tables. It's not a term we tend to use so much. It's more so in the United States that the term League Tables is used. But Paul's also been involved with an organization that does similar work, and now he's very heavily involved in wanting to get independent schools in the UK commercially viable. Paul, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Hello, and thank you for having me with you.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Paul, I've got Peter Richardson with me on the show as well today. He'll be part of the conversations. Paul, tell us a little bit about the major issues regarding the commercialisation of UK schools and why it's not working.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

Sure. So there's a couple of things. The first thing I just want to quickly add in there, just before I start on the main commercialisation sort of a question, is that you mentioned about lead tables. League tables in the UK have been a thing probably for about 20 years or so, maybe even 30 years. I forget exactly when they started. And this kind of ties into the commercialization, which is why I'm going back to this point. One of the things that has happened is that education, which should of course include something about the output in terms of examinations and public examination take you to your next stage. That's one part of education. But there's a greater part that goes beyond the exam results in terms of everything else that people pick up, the soft skills that they pick up, the wider areas that are harder to examine. And just general kind of readiness for adult life when children leave school. But what happened is that the kind newspaper began it really and started publishing in the UK examination league tables of individual schools. And this became effectively a cheapening of the whole of what schools were intended to do, and it just narrowed it right down to one small kind of element, which was the league table. And that was it happened for maintained schools. It also started to publish what was happening for independent schools at the private sector, so both the state sector and the private sector here in the UK. Educationalists all over the country were up in arms and really have always been up in arms with this sort of narrowing down of education to one tiny examination focus. The organization that I'm involved with, actually, a company called My Top Schools, for a long time published these examination league tables. I'm working with now that we've recently acquired the company, and we are still including some of that, but we're rebranding and we're moving to include a lot more about other things that schools will do and will have strength in to help parents as much as anything discover that when you're thinking about your children and you're wanting to get the best for them, there is, of course, the examination output, but there's got to be much more than that involved. Schools are about more than simply an examination result at the end. So now to bring this back to your point about commercialization, with the lease tables in particular, when people were choosing between schools and were trying to decide, shall I go to my local kind of state school? And then they would look and see the examination results, and it may or may not be exactly where they felt they should be. And then they would start to consider, for example, whether they should put their money in towards a private school instead, and they would be able to compare the private school examination results, and quite often, significantly, these results would be better. That might be because the school itself was genuinely performing better in a particular way, or it might be just because it was able to take a highly selective intake that would perform better in examinations, and therefore the output would naturally be better. And for a while, what started to happen is that these schools would begin to boom and were doing particularly well as becoming highly competitive to get into some of these schools. Not all, I hasten to add, functioned in that manner, but some became highly selective and highly competitive with big waiting to get into them, all based around the sort of league table results. And they were booming and they were doing particularly well financially. Since then, and certainly in the last couple of years, the UK private sector has faced a couple of storms that have come its way on the commercial side of things in terms of how they can maintain their viability. And obviously, there are fixed costs, salaries which have been going up, either buildings costs, the cost of energy, all of these things are fixed, and yet the only way to cover those costs really is by increasing the fees that the parents have to pay. I think it's fair to say that in a number of cases that fee has reached a sort of ceiling where people are now beginning to say, I'm just not really sure I can justify paying this amount of money for my child to go into that school when the state sector alternative, which has over the years been improving, is still free. So one of the storms is that simply the fee ceiling seems to be being reached, and that is and yet the costs are still rising, so that schools are struggling to find a way to square that circle. A second problem is that the current government in the UK, and I know you you had a guest speak about this in recent weeks, the current government in the UK has placed value-added tags, VAT, onto the fees of private schools. It's the only kind of charitable educational organization that has had this tax placed on it, but that has essentially added 20% to the cost of what were already high fees. And some parents simply have not been able to afford this and have had to extract or remove their children from the schools. And yet the schools have still got the same staffing, the same costs, their model no longer functions in that way. And the other thing is that the UK is not alone in this, but the UK is undergoing a significant birth rate decline.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

There's also all manner of issues, aren't there, that you're talking about, and where you're giving this a big long list, which is fantastic, I suppose.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Paul. So Brett. Yeah, just checking. Over here you've got a situation where with the private schools there is some government funding for those private schools, and is that the case there? And also what I wanted to just confirm, putting it simply, that one of the reasons that people are not sending their kids to private schools is because of the league tables, they're not being convinced that there's value to doing that. You're saying obviously there's other reasons to send people to kids to to private schools, but basically the media that comes out, etc., saying that the standards are just as high in the public schools, meaning that parents aren't prepared to spend that extra money. Is that what you're saying?

unknown 7:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

There's two elements to that. The first one that you asked about is does the government put any funding towards the private schools in the UK? And the answer is no. So they are totally separate, and the only funding that they get is either from other commercial activities that they do with lettings or with investment pots that they've built up over time, or fee income that comes in. So there's nothing state funded in the private educational sector here at all. The second question, and am I saying that the parents are now thinking based on the league tables that it's not worth going? I think in some cases that is what parents are deciding. They're thinking that at the fee level, they can no longer justify this when the only measure that they've got is a kind of examination league table. I would argue there are other reasons that people might want to choose to go to a private school, but those things, and certainly in the media, are not highlighted as differentiators. And I also think that this is back to your commercialisation question. I think a lot of the schools are not doing the greatest job at explaining where their strengths lie and how they are different, not only from each other, but from their local state competitors.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

The commercialisation component there. You are correct that schools aren't just about that one exam and those league tables that get reported. That said, there are other organizations and bodies and clubs and businesses that offer education to school-aged children. So is this a bit of a case potentially of the monopoly that independent schools have and government schools have had on families for so long that it's a bit of, if I dare say, payback in that they're just failing to embrace the services of other people so that all elements of education that you talked about, not just the league tables, are shared more widely. Surely that would be an opportunity for the independent schools in particular to lease their properties to other organisations who could do a very fine job educating children.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

I think in some of those cases the independent schools are doing that. They do lease their properties to other organizations that work with people that either attend the school or don't. So they do they they're shared much more widely amongst the the wider kind of population. But that is both with schools that are truly private and for profit, and also what we have in the UK are the charitable schools that don't make a profit that can be extracted to shareholders. Instead, it was all it all goes straight back into the education of the children. But in all in both those cases, they often do let their facilities to other organisations who serve the wider community and in many cases children to provide other services and groups. But I think there is a sense that some are have been missing some of those opportunities, not just in terms of the wider opportunity, but they're missing the sometimes the ability to actually reach out and differentiate themselves. And I think that is where you're seeing some schools that are beginning to struggle at the moment. There's a whole mix of reasons why some of the schools are failing at the moment, but that is one of them for sure. They haven't quite kept up, perhaps, with some of the market demand and some of the changes in the market. Others, I have to say, are very much ahead of that game and are doing spectacularly well. But you are seeing some beginning to struggle right now.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Yeah, Paul, in Australia, as I said, we uh the government or the taxpayer contributes to private schools. With private schools there where they don't, does the is the curriculum a bit freer? Is it a bit more independent from the uh from the public school system? And if so, do you think that there's some sort of policy, government policy that is uh heading people away from from the private schools so that there can be more control over the curriculum?

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Uh in answer to your question, they are free in terms of the fact that they don't have to follow the national curriculum. So if they're an independent school, they are separate and they don't have to follow everything that is taught in the national curriculum. That is by default, which enables parents to choose effectively either a very kind of niche school that teaches a very different curriculum, or one that's broadly and in the main the same as the kind of government-funded schools, but has some differences, perhaps offers some subjects that aren't available in the local state schools, or takes or doesn't teach some others. So they are freer in that regard, but they are still all aiming towards national public exams like GCSEs and A-levels or the International Baccalaureate or something like that. And therefore, what tends to happen is that broadly they teach the same sorts of subjects, even if they teach them in slightly different ways. And that again comes back down to what I was saying about differentiation. You you will find that there are some very good independent schools and some very good state schools, that it would be quite hard to tell them apart. It's just that one was free and one wasn't. However, some others are very different. Your question about government control is an interesting one. There is still regulation, there is still control, and they do still inspect, they do want to make sure that these schools are caring for and educating children appropriately. So there is a sense where I think probably the some of the independent schools, and I'm not sure I disagree with this actually, they are careful, they don't want to severe away so much that they're not actually preparing children for adult life. So you do find in that regard there is a, I guess, a shadow which keeps some of these schools a little bit safer and in the middle, and that is where I feel there is a bit of a concern. I think some of these schools need to be a bit braver about focusing on where they are strong and really drilling down into those areas. I think that gives gives a decent sort of parental choice as well. If they want to go into a slightly different direction, they can do that.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

And that comes down to the relationships, doesn't it, between the service provider and the families. So are you finding in the United Kingdom that families are quite willing to choose a school and then back away, or is there stronger engagement now because particularly of the rising costs of independent schools and fewer choices, if you will, than what were around a decade or so ago?

SPEAKER_01 14:25

I think you see both, Cheryl. I think you see some families that believe for sure that having paid for what they believe to be a different product, they're able to hand over more control and expect the independent school to do to do more work. They've paid for a service they expect to get service back. And the same parents, if they had put their children into a state school, may not expect that they're going to get the same level of service and therefore might be slightly more engaged. Personally, I believe that the parents should be engaged wherever they've put their children in school, and it's the parents' responsibility to bring up the children and to stay engaged and work very carefully with the school and hold the school accountable. That's your children, it's not the school's children. So I that I believe is important. But I do think that some of the parents are choosing carefully the school that they believe will will suit their own kind of outlook and their way that they want their children to focus and where the strengths are. Others are, I believe, sadly misled by something as simple as a league table. And they think they're getting the best school because that's what the league table said, rather than actually paying more attention and really drilling down and asking the school and expecting to see what's going on and staying more engaged. And I would advise them all to ask more challenging questions.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

Indeed. And I think that's where we're going to leave this conversation, but certainly open up that conversation next time I get you on air because that is really critical, isn't it, that we know what we're investing in and likewise schools able to openly discuss what it is that they offer. It's great to have you on the show, Paul. Looking forward to having you back again to discuss that family-school relationship.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thanks, Paul.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

Thank you. Paul Dunstan from the United Kingdom talking about independent schools and the commercial viability of those schools, as I said, in the UK.