Sir Peter Lampl makes the case for Open Access to independent day schools in The Times.

We need all schools to provide an education which matches the best in the independent sector.” This seemingly uncontroversial statement, buried in the Government’s social mobility strategy, went unnoticed in the reports last week.

Sympathetic as I am to the Deputy Prime Minister’s crusade to open up the closed-shop world of internships, for me these few words deserved far more attention. Education is the battleground where social mobility will be won or lost. The educational apartheid between state and private schools remains one of the biggest obstacles to creating a more mobile and fair society in Britain where talent, not family background, is the primary factor determining success in life.

The coalition is not the first government to make such a hopeful promise. Nor will it be the last. And yet as the Government’s plan for improving social mobility acknowledges, this education divide remains as stark as ever. The latest comparisons show that the attainment gap between independent and state schools is bigger in the UK than in any comparable country in the world, conferring enormous advantages to wealth. As a Canadian banker friend, who has children at top private schools in London, said: “We are not moving back to Canada. We can’t buy this sort of advantage for our children there.”

Independent school pupils are six times more likely than their state school peers to enter one of the country’s most selective universities. As Sutton Trust studies show, more than 70 per cent of high court judges, more than half of leading news journalists, and a third of our MPs were educated at independent schools, which make up just 7 per cent of all schools.

I recognise that improving social mobility is not just about opening up the professional elites to bright children from all backgrounds. The UK is characterised by a long tail of underachievement that sees hundreds of thousands of children leaving school still unable to read and write and count to basic levels. I think that is totally unacceptable. And that is why I was so delighted that the Sutton Trust was selected as the lead charity in partnership with the Impetus Trust to manage a £125 million education fund to boost the attainment of the country’s poorest children.

But I also believe that social mobility at the top end is important. Imminent research for the trust suggests that “stickiness at the top” is a big issue for the UK: family background affects the outcomes for high-achieving children more here than in other comparable countries.

It wasn’t always this way. I was lucky enough to benefit from a private school where 100 per cent of places were free, funded by government. It is now 100 per cent fee-paying, so most of my classmates, myself included, many of whom have gone on to great things, would today be excluded on financial grounds. The 180 direct grant schools — the majority of private day schools where two thirds of the places were free, paid by the State — have been banished to the past. Almost all are now off-limits to all but the rich.

There is, however, a proven and cost-effective way to offer similar life-changing opportunities to children in the 21st century. Imagine a scheme where all places at leading private day schools were awarded on merit alone. Parents would pay a sliding scale of fees according to their means; admissions would become “needs blind”, the phrase so closely associated with Harvard, the world’s top-ranked university. Bright children from all backgrounds would have access to the educational riches offered by such schools, from the best qualified teachers and facilities to the social skills and networks so important for future life prospects. The schools would become powerful engines of social mobility.

That scheme is “open access”. And it has already been trialled successfully. In partnership with the Girls’ Day School Trust, the Sutton Trust piloted the approach at the Belvedere School in Liverpool. And we know it works, academically and socially. The first cohort of pupils admitted under open access achieved the school’s best GCSE results and its social make-up reflected the local Merseyside area, with 70 per cent of students receiving financial help, including a third on free places.

Interviews with parents, teachers and pupils showed that the Belvedere (which is now an academy) was a happy place, with pupils of diverse backgrounds getting on well together. And the average subsidy per pupil was £3,200 per year, less than the £4,300 cost of a state-school place. We proposed that open access should be taken up by the Government and expanded, initially to 12, but ultimately to 100 or more, independent day schools — the majority.

Open access has attracted support from across the political spectrumand many independent school heads have said they would jump at the chance to make their schools open to bright children from all backgrounds. Yet so far it has just proved a step too radical for any government to contemplate.

That is social mobility’s loss. The relatively small numbers of pupils involved would have little impact on the state sector as a whole. And this would not be increasing selection; it would be democratising it.

At a stroke we would have destroyed the independent-state school divide. Instead of either paying full private school fees or nothing at all, there would be a range of fees for parents from all backgrounds paying according to means. And most importantly of all, our future professional elites — judges, news editors and politicians — would come from all social backgrounds, not just the lucky few with parents able to afford school fees.

Read the original article here.