Chair’s Opening Address by Dr Philip Britton MBE, Chair of HMC Head of Foundation, Bolton School

As delivered on Monday 29^th September

What a warmup Simon. The best in the business. Let’s give him another round of applause.

I can see already that Simon has you at fever pitch. I think it was the statistics about the association that tipped you over. But if nothing else, I can take comfort that you have now all had adequate time to check your emails. Just one chap at the back there not quite finished, get it sorted, so that you’re ready to hear my reflections on your association and the year that has been and the year that is to come.

Welcome to Wales and welcome to Celtic Manor, which is, as you know, for us to embrace our togetherness in deep isolation. There is absolutely nowhere for you to go if you get out of this building. Please don’t try. Don’t accept that as a challenge. This is a busy, full program. And I make no apology for that. Because we’re all out of school. We’ve left things behind. It’s time for us to gather. To share one another’s company. And to learn, as you will see in the program.

And it’s been a huge joy to be able to plan a program for you and I hope that you enjoy it. You’ll see in our program there is less on the main stage and rather more of us gathering together to talk to one another, so that we can do that, learning from one another.

It struck me that it is a huge shame that we leave conference saying that the best bits were when we weren’t here in the main hall. We were meeting people outside that main forum. So hopefully, I’ve designed something that will allow you those, opportunities. It’s important that I introduce myself. Simon’s already done a little bit of that, but just a little bit of my background.

I taught for 17 years at Leeds Grammar School, now The Grammar School at Leeds, and this summer it will be 17 years leading Bolton School. A few of you, I imagine, don’t know where Bolton School is. Picture the weather map on the evening news and it is the rain cloud north of Manchester. Bolton is right under there. We have wonderful sandstone buildings. There are 2400 people, from nursery through to sixth form. And that is, is my school.

Ladies and gentlemen, I need to tell you now, I’m a physicist. I practice that with my therapist often. It is something that you just have to get out early on in any conversation. And I share with you your pain, because this is the second year running, that you have had a physicist lead your association. Jaideep also has that problem. It is well said that physicists look intelligent before they speak. And that is because light travels faster than sound. An audience that understands a physics joke. I may yet give you an after-dinner speech tomorrow if that’s the crowd that we have in here.

As for my own education, I went to Blaydon Comprehensive School, which has now been bulldozed under the A1 if you make your way north. Physics at Oxford, a PGCE at Cambridge, which means since then I have never lost the boat race. Which is a tremendous thing. It is a privilege to be your Chair. And it would appear that from the Bolton School point of view, we do take the Chair of HMC at a moment of maximum perturbation.

My predecessor, Charles Baggley, was your chair in the late 1970s. The records at school show that he was facing the challenges of the removal of direct grant. He was facing the challenges of a particularly obtuse government. And in that respect, I share all of his problems, and we deal with them in our modern age.

What I want to do in my remarks this afternoon is to think just briefly about where we have been, where we are and where we’re going. The what and what next of our situation. You can appreciate in planning this conference getting that balance right has been really important to me. The last year has not been easy for any of us.

And we gather in that context, but we must also gather to look ahead, and to plan ahead, and to imagine a future. Because one thing is for sure, we will be part of that future in some fashion. And it is important that we plan and imagine that.

But what I wish to begin by doing was simply to thank you and what I want to thank you for your leadership of your schools, of your communities, over the last year, because I, like you, know how much that has taken out of us all. We have been called upon to provide reassurance and guidance to our colleagues. We’ve provided reassurance and guidance to our parents, and to our pupils, at a moment when they have felt very often that their school and their sector is under threat and at risk.

Everyone has looked to us to provide that steadiness, that reassurance, that sense of confidence, purpose and planning that you have all done. And I know that has not been easy, and that you have given much of yourself. And I do hope that this conference is a time when you can share those stories with one another.

And you can seek comfort with one another in that shared endeavour. But it is really important that we begin simply, by thanking ourselves. Not least because, as we know, one of the vicissitudes of the life of the Head is that literally no one else will. So thank you.

Simon has got you revved up, are you ready for another round of applause?

But I’m really proud of our sector as well at this time, because the way we have tackled the last 12 months, has been deeply honourable. It is we who have taken the wider view. It is our sector that has sought to remain inclusive. It is our sector who has been focusing the discussion back to real young people, rather than politics and principles and posturing.

We have been the ones to understand what education is about, and to drive the arguments, back to that education. And it is a huge point of pride for me that we have collectively done that. This is a moment when we could easily, have drawn up our drawbridges, filled the moats, and stood aside.

And yet we have not done that. We’ve had care and concern for our own communities. And we have care and concern for our part in the educational landscape that we find ourselves in and wish to help craft. So a few words now about that year, or the VAT year, and the court case and where we are. It is important that we take stock of what happened there.

Again, I was really pleased that the mandate from members was so clear, that HMC should support the ISC court case. And it is unequivocally true that from the court case we have identified important principles that will be useful to us in the future. I don’t know why you voted in that way, but why I wished to take action is simply an appeal to history.

I wanted to be able to give an answer to the question, “What did you do when first, the Government put a tax on education?” And I personally needed an answer to that question. And the answer was, to support a challenge in the courts. And I think we perhaps all, will look back and feel that that was an important moment, for our sector.

What did we learn? We learned, through that court judgment, a number of things. First of all, and importantly, for the first time ever in that context, it was stated that the Government cannot close independent education. It may strike you as peculiar that that has not been stated in that way before, but it was an important aspect of the judgment and that may well be useful to us in the years ahead.

The court judgment unequivocally stated that there was detriment to the input impacts of VAT on school fees. People were affected and things had happened. In that regard, the judgement is a public document in a public forum that unequivocally asserts a different direction to the spin and hype that may be more political in its nature. There was detriment, you know there is detriment. You know there will be detriment in the future. The court case captured that thought. It captured that the imposition of VAT has been hurried, that it hadn’t been assessed and it hadn’t been thought through. All of those are important principles for us to be able to refer back to.

The most joyous point of all the judgment, and they were really clear about this, was this. They made clear that the imposition of VAT was unequivocally not the removal of a tax break. There never was a tax break. It was the imposition of a new tax.

I took particular pleasure in that part of the judgment where effectively, the lawyers were saying enough of the spin. Here is the truth. The court judged that because this was a manifesto commitment, a government is entirely at liberty to apply a new tax to a new commodity in a new way. But if nothing else, the judgment made clear that this what was happening. Not the closing of a loophole, not something that needed to be done to bring our sector into line, but a new thing.  Implemented afresh. I think that is really important, because we know the imposition of VAT on fees was wrong. We know that it does have detriment. We know it is not right for the educational landscape in the UK. We know that because we live in that world, we know very well it will not raise the funds that it is alleged the policy will raise.

We know with a degree of disquiet and disappointment for our state school colleagues that there will never be 6500 more teachers recruited. There is a great deal of pain for some pupils and there is very little gain. And it’s important that this afternoon we just capture that thought in our mind.

But I think there’s something else important for us to be mindful of as we converse with one another, over the coming days, which is this. I think, because we are who we are, we have often tried to capture this as a rational argument. We have tried to understand this because we are intelligent human beings. Let me tell you this. This is not a rational argument. It is an argument linked to a proxy for privilege. It is a proxy for an assault on a particular part of the UK community. And it is not thought through. I know this because the 18 year old Philip Britton shared a great deal of common ground with Bridget Phillipson.

We had come from state schools to Oxford. There we met pupils who were not like us. They behaved differently. They were different. There was a degree of confidence. There was arguably a degree of arrogance. It took me nearly two weeks to work out they were actually quite stupid. Some of them possibly your pupils. And I was just as clever as they were.

That was an important moment. And you know what happened to me, where Bridget and I parted company, when perhaps we were once twins at 18? I went to apply to one of our schools, Leeds Grammar School, because I wished to teach Physics. I did not wish to teach science. Science was what was taught in state schools. I went to Leeds Grammar School, probably with a bit of a strop on. I wasn’t all that happy with this independent school thing. I asked some difficult questions at interview. Obviously I was going to be appointed. I was a physicist with a degree. I have literally never applied for a job that anyone else wanted. Including this one.

What happened to me is I met Peter Jolly, the Deputy Head at Leeds Grammar School. He explained to me what a direct grant school was. It was obviously a post-direct grant school at that time. He described to me the inclusive nature of the pupil body. He described to me the ethos and purpose of that school, and I was sold. And here I still am, because Bolton School has that same ethos and purpose.

If I have a wish, if I have a request from this conference speech to our political leaders, it is simply this. Please just get to know us because you really don’t know us. And you really must. Because it is unacceptable not to understand the schools where 7% of the people you are responsible for are educated. It is really not good enough to turn away. Let us do all we can to make that happen.

So I got that off my chest, and I hope, on behalf of many of us.

So what next? What are we practically going to do about the situation in which we find ourselves? I have a few suggestions. I think we can hold the Government to account for the policy that it has enacted. We can do that in an apolitical way, because we must.

What we can do is side and be allies with our state school colleagues, because the obverse of this policy of VAT is that there should be more investment in education. There should be more teachers emerging. In each of our local areas money has left the economy, and you know how much that is. You’ve literally got it on your balance sheet.

We can hold our local representatives to account for bringing that money back to their local area in some fashion, in some way. Otherwise, there has been financial detriment rather than financial gain from this policy. I think we can continue to do what we’ve done already. We can make all of this discussion personal and always bring it back to people and children, because that is vital.

So whenever you have the opportunity to speak, to write, to put a point of view, make it personal. Not the principled argument which is clearly not what it’s all about. It is about children. Schools are for children, and where have they been in the narrative of the last 12 months?

For our association, we have invested in membership support officers. I think the context that I’ve just been outlining has absolutely required that. I know that many of you have valued their help and support and our association should continue to invest in that. Clearly, as you’ve seen in your packet for the divisional meetings, we will begin the process of discernment, about what the right thing to do next is, in terms of our approach to political strategy and public affairs, because we have things to say. We need to say them, and we will work out how best to do that.

But what I want to touch on now, briefly, is how we tell our story, because all that I have said so far, it is reactive. It is reacting to the circumstance we find ourselves in. But that’s not how we go about our daily business. In our daily business we know our schools well and we articulate well what they are for, what their purpose is, and why parents should send their pupils to our schools. Can we capture the narrative of what our independent sector is? It is imperative in the next few years, we choose 3 or 4 or 5 things we would actually wish to happen that would be positive for us, where there is enough collective sense of purpose. That would be a good outcome for our sector in the current world.

Obviously, we are part of the solution, not the problem, and we will continue to use that language because it is an unequivocal truth. We really are not the reason that Britain is apparently elitist. And to imagine that we are, to use us a proxy for privilege is potentially to ignore the reasons why that is so, and that is not good for the UK.

We keep hearing that UK education is an international leader, and that simply is preposterous for us not to be educational leaders in the UK. How can it be that anywhere beyond these shores, the value of the sort of education your schools give to pupils is acknowledged as world leading, but in our country it is not. It is time for us to have the plaudits for doing what we do, rather than to be placed on the naughty step for somehow being characterized as the root cause of difficulties in society.

So if I might just suggest a little of how we frame the next few days. It would be good in all of our discussions if we try to return to “what is our story? What is the narrative? What do we wish to say that is new and compelling and might have cut through about why our schools are an important part of the educational landscape of this country, for the good of this country, the financial health of this country, and for the moral bedrock of this country?” Because we know that there are some stories that might cut through.

So in all of your conversations, try to find those words that we might wish to amplify, about our sector, how we showcase what we are good at. A lot of our conference will be picking up those themes where we know we are excellent. We know we have something to say about teaching young people. We know that through partnership work, we can help other schools in educating young people more widely. For the 100%, not for the 7%. We hopefully can find areas of collective endeavour where the cut through of our sector is significant. What you do in your school, may be relatively small, because that’s all that can be done in the fierce headwinds that we have. But collectively, that is an enormous impact on the UK society.

It is really important to me that we find our voice, we find our stories, we choose those areas of narrative, we say them often, we say them confidently and we say them loudly. Over time, we can perhaps reshape the narrative that we have.

In the educational landscape let us never forget we were first. That is something often missing from this current debate. That is to say, there was not a state education system where suddenly, one day, someone decided to open an independent school. We know that’s not how the narrative works. We know that very often we are the mirror to education. We are the stimulus of improvement in education for all. And that is just one of the stories we might tell.

And it is working. You know that we have asked you over and over again to tell your story locally, to shift the dial on what people think of our schools. In polling between July 2022 and now, there has been a 14% increase in the national positive response to our sector, and that is important because that gets us to 56%. Which is more than half. More than half the people in this country think that independent schools are a force for good, rather than the opposite.

Better still, the figure for those who think that we are an impediment has shifted down from 14% to 11%. That just happened because of your work, not because of the communications team at HQ. Excellent as is their work. It is because of your work, what you do every day in your school, being noticed and that little step extra to take a moment to explain more widely what it is that you do in your school.

We innovate, we have impact, and also our schools are enlightened. We are not stuffy. Very often we are at the forefront of development, counterintuitively, even though we have ancient heritage.

I am turning now to what we’re doing in this conference, how that fits, how that theme fits with what we’re going to be doing over the next few days because I’m very conscious that soon it will be time for breakfast. There will be strands in this conference where we are showcasing what we are good at. In fact, we’re going to spend the rest of the afternoon doing some of that and we will return to those themes often.

You know what your school does well, it looks after the young people in it. But through partnership work and through being inclusive, we represent a much wider piece of UK society than people imagine we do. And that will be one of the themes that we will pick up during tomorrow morning. The workshops, CPD sessions and roundtables, as I’ve said, are designed for you to learn from one another, and indeed for you to find your voice and tell us about what is good about your school.

One of the exercises that we engage with over the next few months is to ask you that very question, what is your USP? What is your school especially good at? Because as you hear from others on this stage, throughout this conference, you will be thinking, “That could have been me.” And yes, it could have been you. And isn’t that nice that we have such a depth of talent in our schools that we all have that story to tell.

But also during our conference, we will be looking after ourselves as well. And so there will be a moments, for wellbeing. Some of you, inexplicably, enjoy running around, there are extensive grounds for you to jog or run, if that’s what you do. There is a sunrise yoga session. I will not be there. But I included it in the program because people said that others might wish to be. And you know what, you have signed up. It’s nearly full. But I forgive you for that, each to their own, and we are all different. There are other moments for you to find the space, find the time just to look after yourselves and to do those things that bring you joy.

We are leaders of our schools. One of the ways our conference will finish is with Sabrina telling us a little bit about leadership, and how decisions are made in difficult times. That will surely resonate with us as well.

As I come to an end of these remarks, let me just recap what I think will be important to us over the next little while. And I speak here as chair of HMC and my first point is deliberately a first point. HMC is a member organisation designed and for the purpose of looking after its members.

Its members are facing severe headwinds, at present, and need that support and nurturing from one another through our structures, through membership support officers. And so there will continue to be a relentless focus on looking after ourselves, because if we don’t look after ourselves we can’t, obviously, look after others. And I began with that thanks that is exactly what we are doing.

The second point that we will return to again and again, and I’ve touched on this afternoon, is that we will make any discussion about education policy relentlessly focused on children. It is not acceptable that the national narrative involves discussion of education that is disconnected from young people. We are connected with young people. We run schools. We should have a voice. We should be part of the discussions of what is right for our future. We will move ahead with the 2030 strategy, which Simon touched on, because collectively, we know that is the right direction, for our association and its future health in such hugely changing times. I know that we’ve been doing all of this, already. It is what we will continue to do.

Because for me, what is supremely important this year and into the future is that we do find our voice. Our schools, the young people and parents associated with them will be the worse for us not finding that strong narrative collectively, that then can play out locally. And much more significantly, the future health of the UK, its economy, the future citizens that will be part of our society, will be the worse for our schools being excluded from the national debate of what the right next steps are for education in the UK.

So during this year and future years, I will be very prominent in asking the question continuously “Why are you not talking to us? Why are you not engaging us publicly?” Because we have things to say and they are of value to 100% to pupils, and they are of value to the UK. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I asked one of the alumni of Bolton School to say a few words to us before we continue.

Video message from Sir Ian McKellan.

ENDS