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Business Insight

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our LPC e business? he ed

Our law school means business Page 6

Investing in people gets results Page 4

Independent schools win high marks Pages 8-10

Brought to you in association with

Female front line at BPP Law School (from left): Helen Slater, BPTC programme leader; Jo PrestonTaylor, managing director; Tracey Banks, LPC programme leader; Clare Grant, senior academic; Claire Daniel, GDL/LLB programme leader

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Business Insight

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Welcome

Challenging change

Education is going through a period of unprecedented change – brought on by a combination of the hangover from the recession and the fact we are now coming out of it.

In this issue, we look at how economic turbulence has forced the education sector in the North of England to become more business-focused, while the skills shortage that needs to be solved to return us to prosperity has placed fresh demands on the academic supply lines.

It was, however, the increase in university fees which had arguably the most dramatic effect on the status quo, with our brightest students now questioning whether they can afford to follow the traditional degree route and instead looking for options.

Our next generation of lawyers, for one, is turning its back on the traditional university route which has cast many of their peer group into the unemployment limbo – and is heading instead for BPP Law School, better placed to provide a job route with its “work ready” approach.

Independent schools are also part of the change, no longer able to rely simply on their prestige as well-heeled parents are demanding a greater bang for their buck. So it is not business as usual for them – rather, it is them ensuring they are successful businesses.

Fortunately, there is help at hand in the form of Investors in People – transforming the way schools, colleges and universities function, and ensuring that through best practice Ofsted is no longer the elephant in the room.

Naturally, all of this needs money. And the good news is there is a new kid on the block in the form of Santander, which has set up a specialist education team as part of its business banking operation in the North. Not only are they there to lend a hand, but all decisions are taken in the region.

Education, then, will never be the same.

Inside

Investors in People A philosophy that delivers results Pages 4-5 Cover Story Law school with a vital difference Page 6 Independent Education Spotlight on outstanding examples Pages 8-10 The Times Business Insight reaches more senior business people in the North of England than any other quality newspaper.

Indeed, with 184,000 readers* and reaching almost 20 per cent of the all c-suite executives**, there is no better place to be seen. *Source NRS July 2011 - June 2012 **Source BBS 2011

To advertise in the next North of England edition of Business Insight: Freephone 0800 027 0403 or contact: stuart@timesnorth.co.uk

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Memories (and character) are made of this...

As the proud product of a boarding school, Mike Cowley is still pleased it taught him respect for tradition

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nterviewing headteachers for this educational supplement, I was transported back to the time when I was at school – so many years ago that I can’t count them (and mathematics was never my subject anyway).

As an Old Lancastrian – and there are a few of you out there, no doubt – I had to prevent myself from standing to attention and addressing Andrew Fleck, the Sedbergh School headmaster, as “Sir” when I spoke with him, even though it was only a phonecall. Such is the power of the gown and the mantle of authority.

It is something that took me years to throw off. When I arrived at my first job as a reporter on the then Stockport Express, I was wearing a suit – which made the rest of the editorial team look at me with suspicion. It appears they imagined I was a new editor, even though I was barely out of my teens.

What compounded the problem was that I couldn’t stop myself calling the editor “Sir” – which was unheard of and resulted in some of my colleagues giving me Nazi salutes until I got the hang of the informality of what was a smoke-filled, occasionally booze-influenced editorial department.

Tradition, of course, is very much part of the ethos of boarding schools in particular. And I, for one, am politically incorrect enough to revel in it. I fondly recall having to raise my cap to the statue outside the headmaster’s office – even, occasionally, when I was heading there for a beating.

Naturally, there are many people for whom the thought of sending their child away at such a tender age is beyond the pale, perhaps inhumane. They are entitled to their own opinions, but they are wrong.

Without the discipline which essentially goes hand-in-hand with tradition, there would be a lot more spoiled brats in senior positions out there today. Spare the rod and spoil the child may not be relevant any longer, but it was back in my day.

In fact, parents had to agree to hand over the discipline to the head as a precursor for their child to be allowed into the school in the first place. Our headmaster was in a world of his own, as excessively clever academics often are. A

Young school no-ties: Fashions change but the independents keep constant values brilliant classics scholar, he would pass his wife in the street without recognising her, presumably thinking of Ovid.

I have to admit I did have reservations on my first night away from home.

There I was in bed in the Junior House dorm, a little teary-eyed and clutching a copy of Dr Dolittle in the Moon as my own version of a shield and wondering what it was all about.

Slowly but surely the anxiety starts to ease as you begin to make friends – many of them for life. And the Junior House was designed as a family unit to make the transition from home so much easier.

The step into Big School was slightly more onerous, although by this time your pals had become your support system. And then of course there was sport – rugby, cricket, rowing – any of which, if you showed even modest ability, became your route to peer recognition and varying degrees of glory.

Being a somewhat large lad, I literally made an impact on the scrum and was given the nickname The Tank, along with some less savoury titles.

The dorms were not exactly full of home comforts, with around 20 beds to a large room – I did mention I was bad at maths, didn’t I? – with one bathroom (for cold baths, naturally), only one blanket per bed and the windows having to be left open every night – which, at the height of winter, made it somewhat parky, Then there was the food, which was memorable by its mediocrity rather than by its culinary delights. Horrendously lumpy porridge was one particular concern – and, when a group of us dared to complain, this resulted in a visit from the headmaster’s formidable wife who informed us that had we been Arabs we would have had to eat sheep’s eyeballs.

Of course, this was at a time before the banning of corporal punishment. And being a rebellious youth, I had more than my fair share of well-deserved canings, soon learning that when offered a sheath of canes from which to choose, you went for the thick one, not the thin.

And my parents were paying for all this. Looking back, though, I think it was money well spent. Things are very different now, I believe. Yes Sir, they are…

the times | Tuesday April 15 2014

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Business Insight

Education finance

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nice lolly to The newcomer Extra help icelolly.com that’s banking on tomorrow’s entrepreneurs Santander is reaping the rewards of having helped out the North’s independent schools when times were tough, writes Mike Cowley

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he year was 2009 and the UK was in the grip of the recession, with the North of England being among the hardest-hit areas. Every sector was struggling in the search for finance as the banks battled to cope with an unprecedented situation.

Even the independent schools in the North were suffering, with pupil numbers beginning to fall as parents were forced to review the cost of educating their offspring, so the issue of how to secure funding was forced up their agenda.

The arrival of a new business bank in the North, with a specialist education team well-versed in the sector, caused more than a ripple of interest. And the fact that the bank was Santander – which has a culture of working with education, through its Santander Universities Global Division – also went down well.

According to Chris Sharkey, the divisional head of education, healthcare and communities in the North for Santander – and the man tasked with building the Northern team – the timing worked in their favour. “The fact there was a liquidity gap in the banking industry at the time meant it was inevitable that any new entrant would have been welcomed,” he recalls.

“So the timing played well for us.

Yet, back then, it was hard for people to love our industry – but they knew we were new, so they were prepared to look at us objectively.”

What they saw, they evidently liked, particularly the message that here was a relationship-centric bank which is at the heart of everything that Santander does and which has enabled it to become a full-service bank in the UK. Though Santander is cautious about providing any figures to show how well it is doing as a busi-

Chris Sharkey: ‘Timing played well’ ness bank in the North, the word on the street is that it has had a sizeable impact, with an offering that is supportive while at the same time sensible.

With Santander Corporate and Commercial Banking bedded successfully in the North West, Chris Sharkey opted for a new role – head of education – while retaining his seat on the bank’s Northern board. This has allowed him to indulge in the second of his two passions (the first being commercial banking), namely imparting the knowledge picked up during his 36-year banking career.

Mr Sharkey has taken it on himself as part of the relationshipbuilding exercise to seize every opportunity to talk to those youngsters destined to be the next wave of business leaders and entrepreneurs in the region, talking not only about finance but also about the pitfalls of running a business.

He is well aware that, in general, offering banking services to

education carries fewer risks than does lending to business, with the chance of universities, colleges and schools going to the wall being almost unthinkable. There is also the bonus of connectivity, in that independent schools tend to sit at the heart of communities and so offer a direct link to local businesses.

Santander in the North has already made significant inroads into the regional education market, accounting for almost half of the monies lent by Santander UK to the sector, according to Suzy Verma, the bank’s UK head of education.

She says that Santander is planning to increase the size of its education book by selectively offering longer-term finance linked to the overall relationship with the institution – and this includes European Investment Bank (EIB) discounted funding as well as traditional loan finance. This is being done with the help of Chris Sharkey’s specialist education team based in the North, where all regional lending decisions are taken.

“We’ve lent a considerable amount of money to universities, colleges and schools in the North of England,” Mr Sharkey says, “most of which has been long-term finance to support projects.

“We now have an established presence to meet the need for the full range of banking services, from deposits to cash management, but on the lending front they are looking for long-term finance to support their development and expansion plans.”

It is a challenge that this seasoned banker relishes. “I saw education in this context as an opportunity to learn something new,” Mr Sharkey says. “The bonus for me is that it presented the opportunity to pass on the knowledge I have gained over a lengthy career.

“As a banker, though, I am more than well aware that dealing with independent schools in particular enhances our opportunities to get through to the entrepreneurs of the future.”

Welcome: Icelolly’s senior data analyst Rob Lancashire with intern Jenny Wong

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ike many graduates – even those with degrees in mathematics – Jenny Wong found she was faced with an increasingly difficult job market when she left the University of Leeds in 2013.

One of the key factors which Ms Wong soon discovered to be holding her back was a lack of relevant work experience. Then she found the answer lay in icelolly.com, a fastgrowing holiday price comparison service that just happened to be looking for data analysts. Naturally, icelolly.com – having recently gone through a management buyout – was concerned about the cost of employing someone, linked to the ever-present risk of the company not working out.

The answer came in the form of the Santander Universities SME (small and medium-sized enterprises) internship programme, which offers to pay 50 per cent of the wages during the time allocated for employer and employee to size each other up.

Jenny Wong was one of 185 internships placed via partner universities in the North last year, and so far this year a further 296 have gone the same route. The success of the scheme can be judged by the fact that, in 2013, some 44 per cent of the students/graduates in the North of England were offered further employment by the company. This included permanent and part-time positions, extensions to contracts and freelance work.

In the case of Jenny Wong, it took the form of an extension to her three-month contract with icelolly.com. “I am very pleased I am able to continue gaining crucial work experience,” she says, “and cannot recommend the Santander Universities SME internship programme enough.”

The Universities SME programme was launched by the Santander Universities Global Division. Set up in Spain in 1997, this now embraces more than 1,100 universities in 20 countries, with the objective of supporting higher education. In that time, it has donated 1 billion euros in scholarships, travel grants, support to entrepreneurs, funding of special projects, and academic and nonacademic awards, emphasising that education is an integral part of the Santander culture.

Santander Universities UK has been up and running since 2007, and last year committed £32 million to UK universities between the period 2013 and 2015. North of England universities – including Newcastle, York, Leeds, Lancaster, Salford and Sheffield – figure strongly on the list of collaborative agreements.

Companies can become involved with the internship scheme by registering at www.santandergrants.com. Once this has been done, all the Santander UK partner universities will be able to view the company information and job description and will then be able to contact the company directly.

Tuesday April 15 2014 | the times

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Business Insight

Best practice

Investing in people with visions and expectation Everyone has a vital part to play in going for top school marks, learns Mike Cowley

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t an time when education seems to be in a constant state of flux, where demands on schools to perform have never been greater and where the threat of regular Ofsted inspection looms menacingly large, proven professional help is at hand.

You will find the name of the provider on a plaque in the foyer of every wellestablished company throughout the UK, and increasingly in the entrance halls of

Paul Devoy, Head of Investors in People good schools which have recognised it as the answer to their current issues. It is Investors in People.

While Investors in People has been around for more than two decades and involved in education from the beginning, the service available today is as far removed from its original offering as the average modern independent school is from Tom Brown’s School Days.

Investors in People is no longer process-driven and involving a mountain of paperwork – in fact, there is no paper at all required from the client – but it has become transformational. If you don’t believe that, ask the people at Ofsted, where their annual report for 2012-13 reads as follows: “The most successful leaders took steps to improve the culture in their schools, creating a climate that fostered open and constructive challenge. [...] Leaders also sought views on their own performance, modelling the behaviour they wanted to see.”

This could have been an advertisement for Investors in People today, being almost what it says on their tin, with the official website describing it as “a proven framework that will inform your leadership about the capacity to succeed, motivate your people and challenge you to evolve”. Currently, more than 3,000 organisations within the educational sector – including schools, colleges and academies – have heard this message and have come on board to improve outcomes.

There has been significant interest from the independent school sector, which has its own unique set of problems – with their “customers”, the parents, having become increasingly demanding as fees appear even higher than usual during a recession, and having the option to walk away if they are not satisfied.

While independents still have the advantage of being able to set their own curriculum, even this will not stop them from being marked down should they not come up to scratch in the performance stakes. They may not have been as affected as state schools in terms of the cutbacks which have seen local authority support virtually dry up, but they are not immune from tighter resources and increased levels of accountability. These in turn present fresh challenges for governance and leadership to ensure everyone is focused on performance.

So schools in the independent sector cannot be anything less than excellent –

and to appear to be so – if they want to flourish in the highly competitive environment in which they find themselves.

Naturally, just as with state schools, the elephant in the room remains Ofsted.

And the growing appeal of Investors in People in the fee-paying sector is in part because they not only know how to tame the beast, but also how to add value at the same time.

What Investors in People is all about is best practice, and they have a knowledge of this skill stretching back not only two decades but also involving tens of thousands of organisations in the UK. Best practice is what every business and school now strives for.

It is only through best practice and a little help from Investors in People that schools will be able to meet the challenges of today. Challenges like a revised Ofsted framework which is more demanding of governance, leadership and management, requiring a clear strategy to develop capacity. Or changes in the appraisal requirements for teachers and how decisions are made about pay reward.

So how can Investors in People help to improve school performance? It achieves this through its network of independent specialists who connect strategy to delivery by implementing world-class people practices. The Investors in People framework is set up to meet a series of criteria in schools, and to ensure that:

Strategies for school improvement are brought in and understood by every-one, from the headteacher to the groundsman.

Visions and values are embedded and maintain an ethos where there are high expectations of everyone.

Performance data is understood by everyone in a way they can use to focus their energies on achieving targets.

Leaders at every level understand their role and are effective in promoting, monitoring and managing performance.

The development of MMU’s workforce... ‘is at the forefront of our activities’

We want to get the whole school performing

Senior leadership inspires others to perform.

Staff are rewarded and recognised for their contribution.

Appraisal and professional development activities are appropriate and aligned to school improvement.

Bob Morrison, an Investors in People specialist who works regularly with independent schools, sums up the approach. “The more you get people to understand how they can help achieve the performance goals,” he says, “like the guy who sweeps the floor at NASA has helped put a man on the moon, then the better the output is likely to be.

“The lunchtime supervisor also has a role to contribute. The caretaker needs to know that weeding the garden is maintaining a nice place to work, so creating a positive environment. We want to get whole school performing, they all have their part to play.”

Mr Morrison believes this is particularly important at independent schools, where parents are likely to be much more demanding – “and rightly so”. It is all about managing expectations. He feels that some independents are still suffering in part from their past: “They have previously been very much driven by the headmaster, but fortunately that has changed. Yet even today some of them are not very keen on understanding performance data – which is surprising, because they need to excel and be driven by that.”

And some implement change when it is not needed – like the school that stopped staff meetings because they

the times | Tuesday April 15 2014

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Business Insight

‘It’s about showing total commitment’

‘The lunchtime supervisor also has a role to play...’ says the all-in-this-together IiP philosophy

M were boring, only for their Investors in People specialist to get them to restart after demonstrating how best practice could transform them.

Or the headteacher who wasn’t quite sure what to do with teaching assistants, not wanting to “put on them”. The same assistants now have a new role and have each been given one student to mentor and to monitor his or her progress. Consequently are much happier and more productive.

Investors in People, then, is more important to independent schools than it has ever been – and one man who obviously welcomes this is Paul Devoy, the Head of Investors in People, whose links to Investors in People go back to when he was head of organisational development at the Scottish Prison Service in his late twenties. That was in the 1990s, when Lord Heseltine had just set a target that all of the public sector should have Investors in People recognition come the Millennium.

So it was Mr Devoy’s job to get the service accredited. “At that time,” he recalls, “it was quite process-oriented, it was more about personnel and training. You had to provide a training plan, a business plan. You had to show the right paperwork. You had processes and policies for all these things. That period built trust in Investors in People’s rigour and is why recognition became so prized.

“The workplace has changed immensely over the last 20 years and Investors in People has evolved to ensure it remains a mark of best practice. This evolution has reached the point where there is almost no paperwork required

to work with Investors in People. We have kept the rigour and removed the bureaucracy.”

What now happens has been described as the “undercover boss” approach. This sees the Investors in People specialist interview a representative sample of all the school staff, from the headmaster to the receptionist, all on a confidential and anonymous basis to ensure that people talk freely. Interviews focus on current practices, on whether people can describe them, and on whether they can describe the impact they are having on performance.

“We then determine whether they meet the standard or not,” Paul Devoy says, “informing the leadership team where things are going really well, where there are some gaps and where there are opportunities to move the organisation forward.

“All this is strictly confidential and the way we gather information is anonymous. The level of interviewing we do will give a robust presentation of views in any organisation, and we have a methodology which allows us to be very confident we deliver that. This goes from top to bottom and we take a diagonal slice to cover all the bases.”

One of the issues Mr Devoy is particularly concerned to address is that the perception of Investors in People, often found with older management, remains stuck in the 1990s. “That was the impression I had of it when I was working for the prison service,” he says.

“But today Investors in People reflects the latest management practices – it’s a clear structure for high performance.”

anchester Metropolitan University (MMU) is the largest campusbased undergraduate university in the UK, with a total student population of more than 37,000 and a staff population of around 4,000. MMU’s Investors in People journey started over 10 years ago when, through a “building block” approach, a number of separate departments achieved accreditation.

By 2007, MMU had decided it should work towards accreditation for the organisation as a

Megan Smith, Manchester Metropolitan University whole, thus helping to bring greater consistency, achieving a greater understanding of corporate objectives and increasing understanding and engagement with the university’s Change Agenda “For us, Investors in People is about demonstrating our total commitment to all employees and improving our services,”

says Deborah Snell, organisation development and training officer at MMU. “Excellent services can only be achieved by a motivated team, who understand what the university is trying to do.”

MMU believes that the flexibility of the framework and the opportunity to use a range of assessment approaches has meant that extremely rich and useful feedback has been gathered to help take the university forward.

“When we began working towards corporate accreditation,” Deborah Snell says, “we were hoping that it would bring a number of largely independent departments together into a coherent whole with a common purpose. Additionally, we wanted to ensure that good practice was harnessed and shared across the whole university.

“Utilising Investors in People, we have been able to meet these objectives and also to identify what aspects of our people management practices need further improvement in order for us to achieve the greatest impact.”

Describing Investors in People as “constructive, engaging and evolving”, working with the framework and going on to achieve the Investors in People Gold Award has had a hugely positive effect on morale at MMU – especially in an increasingly challenging environment for the higher education sector.

MMU is also looking to Investors in People to help continue the focus on performance improvement and communication – particularly to ensure a sense of ownership and respon-

sibility and to further create an environment where people aim for continuous improvement.

“We would strongly recommend Investors in People to others,” Ms Snell says, “as it is a simple yet effective approach to measuring organisational performance, helping to bring areas for improvement into sharp focus. Your specialist can take an objective view of where things are going well and also where they can be improved.

This is incredibly valuable in terms of planning for continuous improvement.”

In terms of impact, working with Investors in People has helped MMU to increase its engagement levels in their Performance and Development Review process, increasing staff participation from 69.2 per cent in 2009 to 86.6 per cent in 2012.

Recent assessments have also identified an increased understanding from MMU team members of the need for change and continuous improvement compared with views from previous surveys – a key benefit in the current environment.

Significant savings in relation to sickness absence have also been achieved by the university as a result of improved leadership and management, with managers and team leaders better equipped to manage absence.

“Investors in People has been and continues to be a great investment for MMU,” Deborah Snell says, “and has placed the development of our workforce at the forefront of our activities.”

Tuesday April 15 2014 | the times

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Business Insight

Law learning

Where new lawyers learn how to hit the high street running BPP Law School offers commercially minded students a a refreshingly direct route into business

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ew sectors have had to embrace change as widely and as quickly as the legal profession since the banking crisis in 2008. When the recession hit, the legal profession’s landscape changed dramatically, with a sudden fall in transactional work hitting law firms hard.

Furthermore, challenging economic times forced businesses across the board to alter the way they managed all their legal advice and affairs, with pressure to reduce the amount spent on legal matters leading to a reduction of work and a surplus of qualified lawyers.

While waiting for the economic tide to turn, the world has changed. Although

BPP Leeds frontline team, from left (see also cover): Clare Grant, Claire Daniel, Jo Preston-Taylor, Tracey Banks and Helen Slater BPP chief executive Peter Crisp many law firms are now reporting an increase in profitability, the legal landscape has moved on and law firms – and the lawyers who drive them – have had to adapt, becoming more commercial and client-focused in order to ensure their long-term stability.

At the same time, rising tuition fees and a greatly reduced graduate jobs market mean that the professionals of the future have also had to adopt a more coldheaded, commercial mindset, choosing their higher education on the basis of what will give them the best chance of a good job, and not just a prestigious degree. For many, if that qualification can be delivered closer to home, so much the better.

The students believe we can provide them with the practical skills needed for life in a City law firm

“The changing legal landscape has meant that many businesses have had to alter the way they practice,” said Peter Crisp, chief executive of BPP Law School, “leading to a change in the desired skills that they look for in potential employees.

At BPP, we have recognised this change – and, rather than creating programmes which concentrate solely on technical or ‘black-letter’ law, we focus on providing students with the practical skills needed to be practising lawyers from day one.

“As a result, we are seeing the very best candidates turning down places at prestigious Russell Group universities in order to sign up for BPP Law School’s professional law programmes, as they believe that we can provide them with the more relevant practical skills needed for life in a City law firm.”

Cost pressures have forced many law firms to offer more efficient and more creative, client-focused services, such as fixed fees. Meanwhile, the introduction of Alternative Business Structures, allowing companies and businesses which have a non-legal background to offer legal services, means that legal firms have had to

alter their working practices to compete with companies with different skills.

To deliver these more commercially minded services, law firms are increasingly looking for more commercially minded employees – those who have business skills as well as the traditional legal qualifications – in order to ensure they are offering the best possible service to their clients.

Simultaneously, the rising cost of higher education means that future students are placing more and more value on a qualification’s ability to prepare them for, and help them to secure, a top job.

According to data from the Central Applications Board, the number of students applying to undertake a full-time legal practice course shrunk by 8.4 per cent in 2013, partly due to a reduction in training contracts on offer from legal firms.

Students are aware of the challenges they face in finding work after university and are acting accordingly.

It is no surprise, therefore, that many students who do want to pursue a legal career are looking for programmes that not only offer the traditional qualifica-

tions needed to gain a training contract, but also help them to gain the practical skills and knowledge of industry issues needed to stand out to potential employers.

Peter Crisp’s BPP Law School is benefiting from this more career-focused mindset. Working closely with Magic Circle law firms such as Allen & Overy, BPP has developed a unique postgraduate degree, the MA LPC with Business, which provides students with a Masters in Business as well as a traditional LPC (Legal Practice Course) qualification at no extra cost The specially tailored programme helps students stand out to City firms by developing their knowledge of commercial issues affecting the industry and financial markets, providing them with the business knowledge needed to address their roles as lawyers through the clients’ eyes, and framing their advice with a clear understanding of commercial context and relevant business issues.

Although developed, in part at least, in the City, the qualification is also being delivered across the North, in BPP centres such as its 10-year-old facility at the heart of the legal sector in Leeds city centre. This specially designed centre primarily offers professional legal programmes and degrees – such as the MA LPC, the Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) or the Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC) – and contains a range of specialist facilities and resources. These include a mock courtroom, allowing law students to engage in realistic roleplay and to hone their developing skills through mock trials.

Students work with some of the best candidates in the country, while BPP has worked closely with leading law firms for more than a decade. This means that students get the chance to build relationships with industry professionals during their studies. Additionally, students can put what they have learned into practice in “live” situations, through offering legal advice via BPP’s Pro Bono Centre.

This exposure to the world of work, together with access to BPP’s dedicated careers service, ensures that candidates can develop the skills and build the vital relationships needed to help them make the best possible start to their legal careers.

For BPP Law School student Shaun Hulme, this was a major factor in choosing where to study. “I chose BPP Law School in Leeds,” he said, “partly due to the Law School’s outstanding reputation and its location. The tutors are supportive and clearly enthusiastic about their subject areas, and provide the Law School with a wealth of experience due to their varying legal backgrounds.

“The dedicated careers team go above and beyond their duties to afford students opportunities to enhance their CVs and target the firms they want to work for. One specific reason why I chose to study at BPP Law School was the High Street Extra programme it offers, which affords students an opportunity of tailoring the Legal Practice Course towards high street practice. Without that programme, I very much doubt that I would have been able to secure my training contract so soon after finishing the LPC.” Due to the reputation that BPP has developed over the past decade, BPP Law School offers its LPC and BPTC students a guarantee that if they don’t secure a training contract or pupillage within six months of completing their programme, they can study another qualification at BPP – worth up to £16,000 – for free.

the times | Tuesday April 15 2014

What makes our LPC the best in the business?

The best in the business helped us design it.

Our MA LPC with Business was developed at the request of leading law firms that are looking for employees with both legal and commercial acumen. BPP is the only law school able to offer an MA LPC with Business at no extra cost.

Grace Roddie, LPC Student

Celebrating 10 years of putting lawyers into practice in the North

Get in to practice Call 03303 332 263 or visit us at bpp.com/law

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Tuesday April 15 2014 | theU Ctimes ATION

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Business Insight

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Independent education

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Top of the business class I

By Mike Cowley

ndependent schools in the North of England have long been tainted by their better-known peers in the South – establishments such as Eton – being seen as elitist, if not anachronistic. It was a view reinforced by the chief inspector of Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw, when he claimed that such schools were “marooned on an island of privilege”.

This has been further compounded by the media, which frequently uses photographs of boaterwearing Etonians, if not of the Bullingdon Club toffs, to illustrate coverage of the sector regardless of geography.

Now, however, the Northern independents are fighting back, eager to point out that there really is a North-South divide when it comes to their sector, thanks to their no-nonsense Northern roots and their links to business rather than simply to the City.

Eager to dispel what he sees as a myth – and to promote the view that there is a real difference in the North – is Andrew Fleck, headmaster of Sedbergh School and chairman of the North East regional group of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC).

Today, the HMC is the major partner within the Independent Schools Council, and its membership is regarded as reflecting the crème de la crème of independent schools, with many of its members being headteachers of public schools.

Andrew Fleck: Head of Sedbergh School “One of my priorities in representing the North,” Mr Fleck says, “is to go down to London and let people know the North is different and that they need to sit up and pay attention.” He makes the case that Northern independents are without exception strong in STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Engineering is a common university destination for many students, probably the product of the region’s history.

Mr Fleck cites numerous examples of independents in the North having strong links with the business community, including the Grammar School at Leeds being among this year’s finalists in the Bank of England and The Times Interest Rate Challenge (having won it in 2013), and also Bradford Grammar, which has forged strong links with local industry.

“We know that all businesses need entrepreneurial and interpersonal skills,” Mr Fleck says, “which is where our schools perform particularly strongly.

Our pupils are bright, literate and numerate, with good exam results. They also have a wide range of skills which will enable them to contribute in the business world. All our schools run work placement schemes, sometimes using a network of alumni.”

Nor does he overlook the point that pupils at independents may be the sons and daughters of successful businesspeople, meaning it is often ingrained in their DNA. Andrew Fleck himself comes from a commercial background, in that his father ran Spiller’s Homepride and Spiller’s Pet Foods in the 1970s.

So what is the key difference between independent school students in the North and South? “Our pupils are very grounded,” Mr Fleck says. “They are well aware of the need to go out and make a living, and well prepared to do so.

“Another important element of our work is to inculcate the importance of contributing to their community. They have a wide network of friends from all over the North, but they don’t have the veneer of Southern sophistication which you find in some of the great Southern schools.”

Andrew Fleck’s position as headmaster of one of the major schools in Cumbria places him in a unique position to take a stand for the North – and his school was described in Tatler magazine as “the Eton of the North”. Indeed Sedbergh – one of only

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two full boarding schools in the North, the other being Ampleforth – has connections with Eton going back to 1525, when it was founded by the Provost of Eton.

Tradition runs through ancient schools such as Sedbergh, something that Andrew Fleck knows well. He is far from being a traditionalist himself, however, having started a career as an expedition canoeist, a role that took him around the world.

“I was inspired by people like Pete Boardman who made his living in the mountains,” Mr Fleck says, “and hoped I would do the same on the water.

I canoed around Newfoundland, along the whole coast of Arctic Norway and around Japan. But it became evident that I was doing something which was becoming increasingly dangerous – friends had died. So after four years, I went to teach canoeing at an outdoor centre. I found that working with young people was worthwhile and important, so I became a teacher.”

Now, when not focusing on Sedbergh, he has even found time to enter the business world himself – running Fibre GarDen, a community-owned broadband delivery company which is building a fibre-optic network to connect remote rural communities near Sedbergh.

Meanwhile, Mr Fleck’s wife, Anne, runs her own technology business. Eggbase provides business software for the British egg industry and is growing new markets in Ireland and Europe.

David Allen Global entrepreneur.

Businessman.

Waconian. “ The opportunities the School provided really broadened my horizons and gave me so many more choices in life.

But more than that it gave me belief in myself and the confidence to mix with people at all levels and from all backgrounds, which has stood me in good stead throughout my life.”

Intrigued? Find out more at

whatisawaconian.co.uk

the times | Tuesday April 15 2014

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flexible and able to develop new skills at various stages of their lives.

“We want to develop young people who are not only good at passing exams, but also able to take the initiative and learn for themselves. We can do this by encouraging good learning habits alongside the usual lesson content, by planning activities that will develop their individual learning habits such as resilience, independence, collaboration, resourcefulness and the ability to plan effectively.”

This new “thinking curriculum” means that King’s pupils will become good at learning, rather than just good learners, developing skills that will stand them in good stead as they move on to university and then to the wider world.

While Charles Dickens might still be on the King’s curriculum, the school is keen for its pupils to be the opposite of those described in Hard Times as “vessels ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until full to the brim”. Unlike those passive pupils, King’s has set a course to create pupils with lively, enquiring minds, not content simply to sit and let lessons wash over them.

Business Insight

Flexible friends: Head enjoys group respect The end results, hopes the school, will be students who are curious and who think carefully about the world around them, and who go on to challenge concepts throughout the rest of their lives.

The new curriculum will be taught from September this year – and, in terms of the subjects

offered, will not initially seem dissimilar to the current model. But a curriculum is more than just the subjects pupils study. “It is also the way that they study them,” Simon Hyde explains, “and one of the key aspects of our new curriculum is the emphasis on developing pupils as critical thinkers.

“All pupils in Year 7 and Year 8 will study a subject called Critical Thinking, which has nothing to do with ‘critical’ in the negative sense of the word, but instead in the sense of ‘reasoning’ and ‘weighing up alternatives.’ Critical Thinking as a subject is rather like a mental gym: a way of training the thinking muscles. There is no subject content in the same way as there is for a subject such as History or Mathematics.

“Instead, pupils will carry out a range of tasks which will develop their higher-order thinking skills such as analysis and evaluation. Pupils will learn how to analyse arguments, reason and spot flaws in other people’s reasoning. These are highly transferable skills which will benefit them in other subjects, will help improve attainment and be an excellent preparation for life.”

The new curriculum will also emphasise careful thinking in other subject areas. Both Drama and Religion & Philosophy have embraced a style of teaching called “Philosophy for Children”, which involves the pupils thinking carefully about moral and philosophical issues in the work that they cover, and then being able to articulate their ideas and opinions.

In General Science, some lessons in Years 7 and 8 will be spent on CASE – Cognitive Acceleration through Science Education – which requires pupils to develop their thinking and reasoning skills through analysis of scientific issues. Evidence suggests that this kind of cognitive acceleration in the earlier senior school years greatly improves pupils’ attainment at GCSE and beyond.

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A ‘lifelong’ curriculum A t The King’s School in Macclesfield, staff have taken bold steps to introduce a new curriculum that will not only lead to success in the public examinations – an important measure of a good school – but also lead to students with the right approach to learning and the right skill set being successful long after they have left the school.

“All good independent schools can show good academic attainment and alumni who have gone on to be hugely successful,” says headmaster Simon Hyde, himself a former pupil of King’s, “and King’s is no exception. We have 12 students holding Oxbridge offers this year and former pupils at the top of the banking, creative, sporting and scientific industries.

“All of them would say that, to be successful, you need to be able to adapt to a changing environment and to continue to learn long after you leave school. Our new curriculum is based on the premise that we must create ‘Lifelong Learners’, and prepare our pupils for a changing workplace where it is increasingly important that they are

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Lucy Pearson: Head of Cheadle Hulme School

have qualifications in thinking skills. I want them to understand the world in which they are living and apply a certain degree of nous.”

The school has carefully selected the 11 to 13 age group to trial the new curriculum, as the head believes that any earlier would be too young, while any later and the pupils are already too heavily into exam mode.

Lucy Pearson believes the new constantly questioning approach will help counteract the impact of the internet, in particular Wikipedia. “The danger is they believe what they read,” she says, “and what we need to create are far more discerning young people, rather than those that simply accept what they are told or read.

“We need to solve problems together, need to ask the right questions. They need to understand what it means to evaluate something. To analyse – as adults, we do it all the time – is a skill base. That is what Thinking Skills is all about – thinking for themselves.”

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he independent school sector saves UK taxpayers almost £4 billion per year, the equivalent cost of establishing hundreds of new free schools, a major new report claims. According to the analysis, the Government saves an estimated £3.9bn per year from parents who choose to pay for their children to be educated – enough to build 590 free schools at an average cost of £6.6 million each.

The research – compiled by consultants Oxford Economics and using Sedbergh School as one source – estimates that UK private schools contribute a total of £11.7bn to the UK economy and provide 275,000 jobs. The 1,205 schools in the Independent Schools Council (ISC), which educate 470,000 pupils, generate £9.5bn – more than the City of Liverpool or the BBC, according to the report.

It is the first time that the ISC has commissioned research of this kind, which also looks at the financial, cultural and educational impact of its schools on the wellbeing of their local communities.

According to the ISC Annual Census for 2013, there are 165 independent schools in the North. These have a total of 72,677 pupils, comprising 5,788 boarders and 66,889 day pupils. The overall average termly fee is £3,632.

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ucy Pearson, head of Cheadle Hulme School, is leading a revolutionary approach to revamp the curriculum for 11- to 13-year-old pupils at the leading co-educational independent. She is getting them to think.

At first glance, it may seem as if this star of England women’s cricket from 1996 to 2005 – she was twice named player of the year – has bowled the educational equivalent of a no ball. When she explains the new Thinking Skills curriculum, however, it turns out to be more of a clever googly designed to allow pupils to manage “the extraordinary volume of content that is now available to them” – particularly on the internet – and to make sense and make best use of it.

“The CBI says the real area of weakness in education is the personal skills,” Lucy Pearson says. “That’s not the kids’ fault, that’s because the exam system doesn’t encourage intellectual engagement. They know their subjects well, they are very good at passing exams – but can they apply it? I don’t mean we need to

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the times | Tuesday April 15 2014

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