Last week Steve Patriarca, headmaster of William Hulme’s grammar school, announced that his could become the second private school to join the state sector — ending a century of fee-paying tradition. From next September the school — set in 16 acres and with extensive resources for pupils to indulge in music, drama and sport — wants to re-invent itself as one of the government’s city academies. If the deal goes through, no parent of a child at the school will have to pay a bean.
You’d think there would be cheers of jubilation all round and a quick foray down to the travel agents to book that long sacrificed holiday in Barbados. But education is rarely that simple. Some parents who have scrimped and saved to pay the fees at William Hulme’s will be terrified at the prospect of falling exam standards — and worse — if the school opens to all-comers in what was until recently one of Manchester’s toughest areas.
“Ten years ago they were rioting down the road,” admits Patriarca, who is only too aware that his dramatic move may cost him existing pupils. But he is buoyed up by the fact that since last Monday his office phone has been ringing off the hook with wannabe Hulmeians, ecstatic at the thought of free places in a school where 90% of pupils get five good GCSEs, treble the exam record of at least one of the state schools nearby.
“One or two of our parents have anxieties . . . there will be parents who will feel we cannot sustain our ethos,” says Patriarca.
“I believe we can. But if there are parents who feel their child is best served by transferring to another school that is their prerogative. I will not stand in their way: there are 10 children queuing up to take their place.”
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His now bulging database of candidates means that the school should grow from its current 500 pupils to the planned 800 by 2012 — reversing a decline in numbers in recent years. But how can the head, who has never worked in a state school, be so confident that the school’s “ethos” won’t change? After all, city academies were dreamt up by Tony Blair’s government in a desperate bid to raise education standards in inner cities. Many of the academies that have opened, usually on the sites of already failing schools, are still battling with tearaways, truancy and shockingly low exam results — even those housed in swanky glass buildings by famous architects.
Obviously William Hulme’s is starting with a very different set of pupils, but if it becomes an academy it will have to scrap the entrance exam which, together with its fees, brings in bright, hard-working students. While academies are allowed to select up to 10% of pupils, they have to admit the rest from the local community.
Patriarca, however, who sees his new academy as being “the international school in Manchester” is determined to enrol children from across the city — not just those who live near the school — pitching himself into the heart of the row over school admissions currently ripping the Labour party apart.
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His strongest card is that two-thirds of current pupils are from ethnic minorities — and he wants to retain that social mix. The cultural belief in education is “stronger among ethnic minority parents than in indigenous families”, he says.
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So he’s suggesting holding a city-wide lottery for school places, backed up by “benchmarking to make sure we are getting the right balance”. How would that work? Would it mean taking in each year, say, 25% of children who live in £500,000 houses and 25% from the council estates, for example? Or 50% of British Asians?
“A good social mix would be a representative cross section from Manchester in terms of class and race,” says Patriarca, who adds that discussions with the government’s education officials are still ongoing.
“People criticise this as social engineering but all education is social engineering, Eton college is social engineering.”
He describes getting the right balance as “Utopia” and maybe he’s right, maybe all state schools with too many candidates should hold a lottery to decide who gets in — although monitoring the intake for race and social class sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare. But a simple lottery might be the solution to the row over school admissions that is threatening to scupper the government’s controversial bill on school reform, due to be published on Wednesday.
Ministers have steadily watered down the bill in the face of protests from backbench rebels, who oppose its plans to allow schools to set themselves up as independent trusts, owning their own land and buildings and free from local authority control. The rebels have focused on stopping such schools being able to cherrypick the brightest children.
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Barry Sheerman, chairman of the education select committee, confirmed that this week’s bill will not allow schools to select children on ability. But the new independent trust schools proposed in the bill will be allowed to “band” children, taking groups of children from different family backgrounds. And an admissions lottery might be the fairest way of all, he agrees.
Will other private schools follow the lead set by William Hulme’s, and, earlier, by Belvedere school in Liverpool, the first private school to opt for a switch to the state sector? Patriarca thinks it would be a good idea. “The Berlin wall between the independent and state sectors is coming down. Thank goodness for that,” he says. But there’s a lot to play for first.