What private schools can offer state schools
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David Cameron said this week that we should "tear down" the divide between private and state schools. I agree. Independent schools welcome co-operation with state schools.
Understandably, some state school heads are sceptical. They will rightly back away from any approach that seems patronising. I run a selective boys' boarding school - what can I possibly know about the challenges of running a non-selective, co-ed day school in a deprived area? A state school head would have good cause to be wary of someone like me.
Yet when independent schools play to their experience and expertise, they can offer a relationship that has real benefit. There is nothing new in this. There are well-established schemes around the country where minority or specialist-interest academic courses are made available to students from local state schools. Schools with traditional strengths in music or sport make their facilities and skills available to others.
Eton runs several residential summer programmes for state school pupils each year, one of which prepares sixth form students for the most competitive universities. This programme has run for the past 27 years and more than 3,000 students have gained significantly from it.
The prospects for deeper connections between schools are good. In recent years there has been a more open-minded approach. Governments have encouraged dialogue. The Independent State School Partnership initiative was a particularly good way to prompt clusters of schools to discover how they might work with each other.
Together with six state schools in the Slough area, Eton is part of a group which shares workshops, training and new ideas: this group happily continues beyond its allotted lifespan and the funding that went with it. This is a group of professionals who see virtue in recognising the qualities each school brings to the party.
One recent development illustrates how a partnership like this can work well. Twenty-five sixth-form volunteers from Eton were trained to become mentors to GCSE students at our nearest comprehensive school. Results in maths GCSE improved by more than 20 per cent. This scheme worked because it came at the request of the inspirational head of that school, who understood his students would respond well to mentors just a little older than they were. It was no surprise to me that this school, giving and sharing ideas, has moved from a low ebb to the success of academy status this year.
And this is the point. Independent schools offer most lasting value when they connect where they are wanted and needed. Boarding schools can help open up further state boarding places; leading academic schools can give powerful support to academically purposeful sixth form colleges; schools with a reputation for innovative approaches to pastoral and learning difficulties can be a national resource.
But, above all, the best results come where schools create open-hearted, mutually supportive relationships.
We miss a trick if we believe there is only one route that independent schools must follow in order to be of service to the wider community of schools. Independent schools of their nature are diverse, different, distinctive. For our national good, we need them to play to their strengths.
Anthony Little is Headmaster of Eton