TONY BLAIR is to meet the heads of leading independent schools to enlist their help in running the government’s flagship city academies.

The prime minister’s move, which risks further antagonising the independent sector, is intended to help achieve the government’s ambitious target of creating 200 academies, designed to revive standards in inner cities, by 2010.

The academies are meant to attract private-sector expertise and money. Each costs around £20m to build. Business backers typically contribute £2m.

It is thought independent schools may be asked for money, to share facilities, or to provide management and teaching help, but this could be seen by state teachers as a slight.

The seminar, which will take place at the end of this month, is being organised by Andrew Adonis, the prime minister’s adviser on education, who has sent invitations to 40 independent heads and governors.

The guests are understood to include Roger Dancey, chief master of King Edward’s school, Birmingham; Cynthia Hall, headmistress of St Helen’s, Abingdon, Oxfordshire; and Lady France, chairman of the governors at Francis Holland school near Regent’s Park, north London.

According to one of the headmasters invited: “They want our support. But putting in any money would be a bit dodgy. My charter says our funds have to be spent on this school.”

Other heads were sceptical about offering aid to the government in the wake of the publication of last month’s university benchmarks that put pressure on elite institutions to cut their intake of private school students. The sector has also been upset by a charities bill that will force schools to demonstrate “public benefit” to retain tax breaks worth about £82m.

Heads will want to know whether contributing to city academies will help their schools meet the public benefit requirement. Last week, Adonis was given a cool reception at a private meeting during the independent Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference. “No one was impressed. He kept saying he wasn’t responsible for anything,” said one observer.

So far at least six independent heads, including Graham Able, headmaster of Dulwich college in south London, have offered to provide advice and management skills for city academies. However, the experience of Bernice McCabe, head of North London Collegiate school in Edgware, may deter others. In her case, a scheme for a city academy in Hackney, east London, collapsed after the estimate for building costs soared to £40m. McCabe also faced hostility from parents who objected to the idea of “snob-school heroines in Hackney”.

Diane Abbott, the local Labour MP who sent her son to the independent City of London school, told one angry parent to accept the academy.

Her letter said: “It is very much Tony Blair’s position that communities like Hackney accept city academies or they do not get new secondary schools at all.”

Under the academy blueprint, schools set their own pay rates and do not have to follow the national curriculum required of all other state schools.

Blair’s meeting with independent heads will take place at half-term. The number of potential sponsors or supporters invited to meet Blair is seen as an indication that the government is desperate to find backers.

Tristram Jones-Parry, headmaster of Westminster school in central London, visited No 10 at Easter. “Tony Blair came in for 45 minutes. I have to say he was very impressive,” he said. Westminster is to provide advice for an academy backed by the Goldman Sachs investment bank.

However, there is criticism among state heads of the Blair plan. Sir Michael Wilshaw, principal of the Mossbourne city academy in Hackney, said: “It could give the wrong impression — that academies are elitist and for a minority, when they are comprehensives.”

Others believe the move will help Blair convince middle-class parents to send their children to local schools in cities.

SWING TO BACCALAUREATE

The head teachers of independent schools are predicting that growing numbers will leave the state exam system for the International Baccalaureate (IB) because of the overhaul of education for 14 to 19-year-olds that is expected to be recommended by Mike Tomlinson, the former chief inspector of schools, writes Geraldine Hackett.

The Tomlinson review proposes scrapping A-levels and GCSEs in favour of a three-tier diploma. But schools and employers’ organisations complain that the changes will not raise standards. About 70 state and independent schools already offer the IB, made up of a diploma studied by 16 to 19-year-olds and a separate qualification for younger students.

“It will accelerate the switch to the IB. We think the GCSE is good preparation for sixth-form studies, but we may switch to the IB for 14 to 16-year-olds if it goes,” said John Franklin, headmaster of the independent Ardingly College in Haywards Heath, West Sussex, which offers the IB alongside A-levels.

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