Brexit will “impoverish” pupils’ education by driving away staff, removing opportunities to study abroad and diminishing language teaching, independent schools are warning.

John Edward, director of the Scottish Council of Independent Schools (SCIS), told TESS that teachers of modern languages and IT were leaving the UK “and not coming back”.

Although the government says it’s not pulling up the drawbridge, it feels like it is

Mr Edward predicted that the departures would mount steadily in the next three to four years and have a “big impact” on Scottish schools.

He said: “[Teachers] are taking the same attitude that anyone else would to any element of risk: ‘On the balance of probabilities, do I feel this is going to end up better for me or not? No, I don’t actually.’”

A “brilliant software engineer” in one school had left as a result of feeling uncertain about his post-Brexit future, he added.

Mr Edward, who was chief spokesman for last year’s Scotland Stronger in Europe campaign, predicted that opportunities for school-leavers to study at European universities would “dry up”, and trips to destinations, such as the Flanders battlefield, would become more difficult to organise.

Growing insularity

In addition, the “global reach” of Scotland’s boarding schools would shrink, he said, adding: “If you’re doing anything that makes that market slightly harder to access, people will go somewhere else.”

Mr Edward, who spoke to TESS after addressing a MacKay Hannah conference in Edinburgh on how Brexit would affect Scottish services and businesses, also feared that a growing “insularity” and greater difficulty in recruiting native speakers would affect language teaching.

Melvyn Roffe, principal of George Watson’s College in Edinburgh, said that he had already noticed a “change in attitude” in border and visa staff, which was making it harder to bring in workers from abroad. “Although the government says it’s not pulling up the drawbridge, it feels like it is,” he said. “Therefore, the resources and the education that we can provide are going to be impoverished.”

Exchanges become impractical

Alister Minnis, a depute head at Lomond School in Helensburgh, was concerned about the practicalities of school trips and cultural exchanges. For example, the school will be sending a group of pupils, who play traditional Scottish music, on a trip to Leipzig in Germany in June - but the school might think twice about such trips in future, he said.

Lomond encourages leavers interested in competitive university courses, such as medicine, to consider studying in cities such as Prague, Maastricht and Bologna, but is unclear whether such options would remain.

Mr Minnis also noted “anxiety” in pupils’ families who have businesses that operate in Europe. Similarly, SCIS evidence to a Brexit inquiry (see box, below left) suggests that the risk of financial and investment institutions leaving Edinburgh could “impact severely on the customer base” of schools.

Scottish government Brexit minister and former education secretary Michael Russell told TESS last week that higher education was the education sector most at risk from Brexit - if “the interchange of ideas and staff” is restricted - but that this would be offset if the UK retained access to the single market.

@Henry_Hepburn