Peter Inson: This is not the way to help state schools

I'm not sure whether Alan Johnson, the Secretary of State for Education, thought the week before half-term would be a good time to dump daft news on teachers in state schools, or whether he thought they would appreciate a good joke before taking a break. They work hard at a difficult and demanding task, and he will find that he has antagonised many of them. That cannot be good for state schools and their pupils.

Unlike the Secretary of State, I have run a state school, and taught in private schools for seven years, and I find his proposal makes me want both to laugh and cry. The notion that teachers from private schools can somehow be parachuted into troubled state schools is both patronising and woefully misguided. Although there is much in common in the teaching in the two sectors, there are crucial differences of which the Secretary of State clearly has no idea.

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No private school would dare to tolerate the presence of pupils who were known to bully, cheat, lie, steal, disrupt classes or behave in any way that prevented other pupils from working. Parents who pay for school places do so in the belief that their children, and their teachers, will be spared such distractions. This was abundantly clear to me that very first day I taught in a private school; every pupil accepted that adults, not just teachers, were there to help, guide, encourage, correct and, if necessary, admonish them. Teaching and learning were the order of the day.

This is what enables teachers in private schools to succeed. They are not equipped by training, temperament or experience to cope with the sort of thing I encountered when supply teaching in state schools two years ago.

Too often I found the business depressing - children without books, pens and anything else they could think of that meant that I could not expect them to do any work. They would pretend not to understand instructions and displayed a lack of manners or basic consideration for other people, even their classmates, that would make them unemployable outside schools.

As long as state schools are obliged to accept pupils without any kind of agreement or understanding with parents, and cannot readily dismiss any pupil who threatens the education of other pupils, parents will see private or independent schools as safer places and such schools will be regarded as better places to work by many teachers, the very teachers whom Alan Johnson wants to send on his rescue mission.

Like other state schools, the one that I was running in the mid-1990s was suddenly obliged to teach modern languages to all pupils. Within a year, two members of my modern language department had left to teach in private schools, where they could make good use of their considerable talents and where they were welcomed with open arms. Now, whenever I encounter "refugees" from the state sector, the one thing they tell me is that they will not be returning to it. Compelled to do so by a Secretary of State, I am sure that they would rather leave teaching altogether.

It's not as if there have never been schemes of co-operation between the sectors; for example, those involving Dartington in Devon with Northcliffe Comprehensive in Conisborough, and Dauntsey's with St John's in Wiltshire. Where there is mutual benefit and appreciation, this can and should happen. But if schemes such as Mr Johnson's are insisted upon, parents of children in private schools will be wary.

As will private school teachers, who will be concerned at their standing, legal and professional, while working away from their employer's premises. State schools may not oblige staff to take responsibility for pupils off the premises where the school's writ does not run, so why should the independents? Assuming the Government does insist that independent schools make their staff available to state-maintained neighbours, private school teachers, who might be willing to undertake exchanges and mutual assistance, but resent coercion, will be looking at their contracts of employment. It is one thing to visit other schools on one's own terms, another to do so under duress. Private teachers will keep their distance and will see this scheme as another government initiative for state schools that will follow countless others into oblivion, like David Willetts's proposal today on racial quotas for schools, another chore for state schools where, we should remind ourselves, children only spend a quarter of their waking hours.

Alan Johnson has a vague idea that private schools and their teachers are better regarded than their state equivalents, a view he seems to share with the current prime minister, who has called for greater independence for state schools. Neither of them understand the words "private" and "independent", for as soon as they direct private schools , they will become more akin to state schools,and less of an attraction as sources of support and help.

It is state school teachers who should spend some time in independent schools, for they would return demanding that politicians address the minority of children whose presence is encouraging increasing number of parents to seek places in the private sector.

www.peterinson.net

Andreas Whittam Smith's column will appear tomorrow