Experienced teachers are leaving state schools in droves to take advantage of greater freedom and smaller class sizes in the independent sector, a conference heard yesterday.

One academic told the Westminster Education Forum in Central London that a quarter of the 50,000 teachers at independent schools had been poached from the state sector. And a union leader gave warning that government policies were driving the best teachers into private education.

Francis Green, Professor of Economics at the University of Kent, said that there had been a huge rise in the proportion of teachers in the private sector. Independent schools gained 400 teachers from the state sector in 1993, but this rose to 1,500 last year.

Professor Green estimated that about 12,000 out of 46,000 independent school teachers had worked in state schools previously. He said many were “attracted by better conditions in the private sector, primarily to do with having committed children”.

John Bangs, assistant secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said that there was an “issue of poaching”.

He said that many teachers were attracted to “professional freedom and smaller class sizes” in the independent sector. “They want to escape from the heavy duty accountability culture in the state sector. There’s a massive lesson for the Government.”

Professor Green and Mr Bangs were speaking in a debate on the barriers to partnerships between independent and state schools and the charitable status of fee-charging schools.

Mr Bangs said that it was “not good enough for some independent schools to claim that, simply because they offered bursaries, they fulfilled the public benefit function”.

Independent schools will have to justify their charitable status under new Charity Commission regulations.

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