Sir Cyril Taylor has again raised the issue of using the Academies programme as a way for children in care to attend quality boarding schools. As we reported last October, the DfES is to provide £10m between 2006-2020 as seed funding for new schools to be delivered either by PPP/PFI funding or as part of the Building Schools for the Future programme. What most people forget is that Sir Cyril’s comments are not particularly radical as there are already 35 state boarding schools, represented by the State Boarding Schools Association and the Boarding Schools Association.
The first Academy boarding school was expected to be built on the Uxbridge campus of Brunel University as a joint venture between the university, HSBC’s Education Trust and the West London Learning and Skills Council. Plans for the new school were at an advanced stage when Brunel’s new Chancellor, Professor Chris Jenks, barely a week into his new job, announced at the start of March that the deal was off. The reason given was that the land the school was to be built on was the only room available to expand the university, but this excuse has apparently not gone down well with those who had been working on the plans for some time.
So, Sir Cyril’s announcement that Kingshurst City Technology College in Birmingham is be the first Academy school with boarding facilities is interesting but hardly groundbreaking news. After the Brunel debacle, Sir Cyril’s statement is probably as much about reassuring potential sponsors as it is about changes in the provision of boarding school facilities via the state schools sector.
The most prescient element of Sir Cyril’s case is that the cost of a child in care is about £100,000 p.a. whereas the cost of the top private schools (whom the government has just fined for price fixing), are, even at the upper end (Eton, Harrow, etc) about 75% cheaper. Is it possible that the OFT was looking at price fixing in the wrong place?
