Ignorance is no defence – especially in education
The current investigation by the Office of Fair Trading into price fixing amongst private schools started when two students of Winchester College hacked into the school’s computer system.
According to a report in the Sunday Telegraph, the two students were bored and trying to break into the school’s system, seen simply as a game amongst their peers. One of the students, who was later expelled for hacking, passed an email about schools sharing pricing information to both the OFT and a number of journalists. In the Sunday Telegraph article, one of the students involved claimed their actions had been motivated by a sense of injustice and the illegal activities of the schools involved. Neither boy seemed repentant for breaking into Winchester’s computer system, clearly an illegal act.
Unfortunately, the schools involved and their representative body the Independent Schools Council seem to be pushing a defence that will elicit little sympathy with the judiciary, government, and anti-private education campaigners. In a press release the ISC says because private schools are charities they were exempt from competition law until 2000, when the government changed the law. According to Jonathan Shephard ISC General Secretary, ‘The law seems to have changed without Parliament realising. Schools are now being held liable for breaking a law which no-one knew applied to them.
Did schools and their councils really have no idea about the changes in competition law? Winchester College’s former warden of Governors was Sir Andrew Large formerly the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England. Surely private schools whose governors are as eminent as Sir Andrew should have either known about this or had advisors and connections that would have let them know how the legislation was likely to impact on the sector? It certainly looks like the ISC, as the private schools lobby, should have known. The fact that they did not shows the weakness of their political lobbying and an alarming failure to discharge their duties proactively to the schools (and parents) that fund their operations.