‘Them and us’ attitude is harmful to all of our schools

I sat in bed yesterday morning counting the number of families I know who have moved children from state schools into the private sector and I almost ran out of fingers. In each case there was a good reason for the switch I think most parents would understand. Wanting the best chance of happiness for your children is an powerful instinct, and there are many different but equally valid ways of fulfilling that goal. Most commented 1 Kemi Badenoch woos Middle England back to the ‘no-nonsense’ centre ground Politics 326 comments 2 ‘Without violence, no one pays attention’: France returns to barricades Europe 106 comments 3 Alex Cole-Hamilton defends ‘faked interviews with journalist’ Scotland 21 comments 4 Deadly strike on Ukraine homes ‘was birthday gift for Putin’ Russia-Ukraine war 68 comments 5 Christmas cards become ‘winter cards’ at primary school Scotland 62 comments I cheered when one of my daughters wrote a persuasive essay arguing that private schools perpetuate wealth inequality, for her state secondary homework, but it doesn’t mean I would abolish fee-paying schools. Their doors are shut to my kids for financial reasons, but I am glad they have opened for others. Top stories 1 How American billionaires are shaping the future of warfare Technology 2 George Clooney, newly French, plans Italian restaurant in Provence Europe My social life, workplace and wider family criss-cross fee-paying and council education so I know that the two worlds do not forever divide. Yet there is a chasm as pupils flow from the two sectors into universities. My state school friends who attended what became known as Russell Group universities remarked on it in the early 1990s. Tales continue from undergraduates at institutions such as Edinburgh University along the lines of “the students asked where I went to school and turned their back when I answered”. Advertisement Last month Sophie Rose Jenkins, posted on social media that she had left St Andrews University after her second year due to “anti- Scottish classism”. Top stories 1 The remarkable Test recall of Australia batsman who beat cancer Cricket In response, both the student union and staff — to the credit of St Andrews — spoke about recognising the problem. “While it’s perhaps something some students arrive with, it’s not something they leave with,” said one insider. This pernicious divide does not reflect well on state or private schools. Snobbish behaviour, and inverse snobbery, persist despite initiatives that bring state and private school pupils together. St George’s School in Edinburgh, for example, has an annual event about women pursuing careers in technology, which is attended by hundreds of pupils from both sectors. The High School of Glasgow runs a programme on entrepreneurship which involved partnership with three local authority schools from inception. The Scottish Council for Independent Schools (SCIS) estimates that 120,000 state pupils benefited from private sector resources in 2023-24. However, such experiences do not guarantee that cultural boundaries will fall away along with feelings of superiority or inferiority. I have seen first hand, for example, how intimidated a teenager can feel to be matched against a private school in basketball, knowing their opponents will have been trained by experienced staff while their own side was coached by older pupils. Advertisement Sadly, efforts at collaboration are undermined by some of the rhetoric from private schools around the imposition of VAT. References to parents making huge sacrifices to send their children to private schools, I find particularly uncomfortable. SCIS says it never uses this phrase, understanding it falsely portrays parents using the state sector as failing to prioritise their children. Scotland newsletter Your weekend briefing from the Scotland edition of The Times and The Sunday Times. Sign up with one click You’ve successfully signed up to the Scotland newsletter Explore our newsletters An error occurred. Please use the link below. Scotland newsletter Explore our newsletters However, it was repeated to me by a high-ranking private school teacher in Scotland a couple of weeks ago. The Independent Schools Council, which represents 1,500 schools in the UK and overseas, has described its customers as “parents who prioritise education over everything else”. No wonder some private school pupils have a false picture of the kind of homes state school pupils live in, given the insinuation they may be households that undervalue learning. Suggestions that it would be difficult for Scottish state schools to absorb the number of pupils leaving the private sector because of VAT-related price increases also seem to have been misleading. Figures from Edinburgh city council show that between August 2025 and June 2026, 48 pupils switched from independent to council schools and 225 moved in the opposite direction. SCIS disputes the council figures. While there may be situations where state schools are at capacity, I largely speak to teachers and head teachers who are enthusiastic about new pupils. Additional children means additional money to potentially fund additional teachers, expanding the expertise and support on offer to an entire school community. I am yet to meet a state school teacher complaining that they are overwhelmed because of the newcomers suddenly priced out of private classrooms. Advertisement Of course there are issues in Scottish state schools and I have written about them often. Could they learn from their private sector colleagues? Absolutely. In the first 2020 lockdown I compared provision between private and state schools, the former demonstrating an obligation to offer the best quality service they could, the latter too often showing scant interest in their pupils’ learning. Last month, when the international schools comparison study Pisa showed Scotland behind England in science, reading and maths, the reaction from the Scottish government was worrying. Michael Gove , who led education reform in England, wrote in The Times about how he had worked with people from other political parties and offered to share thoughts and contacts with Màiri McAllan, the Scottish education secretary. The response, from her Scottish government spokesman, was that Gove would “not be at the top” of the list of people McAllan would be keen to discuss education policy with. She did not have to accept his offer, but this arrogant and rude reaction, presumably because of political differences between Gove and the SNP, was an example of political rhetoric being put above the interests of Scottish children. It suggested this country is not interested in learning from English success. Private schools stand to benefit if this is the message from the leader of Scottish education. Staff in schools of all varieties invest huge amounts of time and energy encouraging future generations to be polite, kind and open minded. Those who seek to represent the sectors should do the same, whatever their short-term objectives.