Reigate headteacher’s funding plan to get disadvantaged children into independent schools

Credit: This story was first seen on the Surrey Mirror

The headteacher at Reigate Grammar School has pitched a new way to get more children into independent schools in a bid to improve social mobility, the Surrey Mirror reports.

Shaun Fenton, who has worked in state schools for 20 years, is proposing the government-funded pupil premium could be used to gain some students places at independent establishments, with the school itself fundraising to ‘top up’ bursaries so the places are free.

Pupil premium is additional funding for state schools, aiming to close the gap between attainment of disadvantaged children and their peers.

Mr Fenton, who has been headteacher at two state schools during his career, published his proposal named The Education Green Paper in the Times Educational Supplement.

He wrote: “The Education Green Paper seeks to increase ‘good school places’. My proposal would be a more authentic partnership than shotgun weddings around academy sponsorship; we can play a particularly valuable role in supporting our country’s most disadvantaged families.”

“Opening new grammar schools as Theresa May proposes, will be expensive, will fail to target those most in need and will have a negative impact on other local state schools. Even if the number of children qualifying for free school meals (FSM) at state grammars doubles, these schools will still, on average, educate only five percent of those children qualifying for FSMs.

“Establishing new grammar schools will, of course, cost the taxpayer millions in school-building programmes (and invariably overrun on cost and time).”

Reigate Grammar School is the first coeducation school to be rated ‘exceptional’ for achievement and learning and has double the proportion of free school meal children as the average state grammar.

The school’s Changing Lives Foundation has raised more than £1m to fund bursaries for disadvantaged students and more than 150 children are on means-tested fee support.

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Mr Fenton said his proposal would be a new, properly planned and transparently accountable partnership-based approach that would change the lives of thousands of young people.”