I must confess to a tinge of sadness on hearing about the abandonment of a project to give vulnerable children the prospect of a place at a boarding school.

Several leading independent as well as state boarding schools were ready to take on children from difficult home backgrounds.

Unfortunately. Buttle UK - the charity leading the project with financial aid from the Department for Education - says it is unable to proceed with the scheme because so few pupils have been recommended for the project by their local councils.

The main reason for this is that social workers are reluctant to recommend children for it.

I am not saying the scheme would be a panacea for all vulnerable children.  Far from it, there are many who need a loving and caring home environment with surrogate parents on hand for support day and night.,

I know from my own childhood that boarding can be a lonesome experience. I always knew on a Tuesday night when I was cooped up doing prep that my mates at home were enjoying themselves down at the youth club. (That’s a trivial example, I know, compared with the difficulties these vulnerable children face.)

However, some can and will benefit from the scheme. Take the example of Lord (Andrew) Adonis, the first minister to embrace and push for this scheme, who puts a lot of his success later on in life down to the place he gained at a boarding school when his father was struggling to look after him as a lone parent at home.

If social workers do have in the backs of their minds that image of cold showers and bullying associated with many film presentations at life at a boarding school (Tom Brown’s Schooldays), it is time to dispel that myth.

It could be that a place at boarding school may be enough to cement the relationships of parents struggling to look after  their children 24/7.  The break at boarding school may help them cope with their responsibilities during the rest of the year.

I hope we haven’t heard the last of this initiative but fear we have. Perhaps some kind of training course to bring social workers - who may not have seen the inside of a boarding school - up to date with what could be on offer to these children might help.

No cherry-picking please

Andreas Schleicher, the education director of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, is - we have it on the authority of no less a person than our former education secretary Michael Gove - the most influential person in world education.

So when he says something perhaps we ought to listen.

Last week he told that the TES that cuts in English education would harm school standards. Asked about the funding squeeze affecting schools in the country, he replied: “If you take the same system and you take money out of it, you lose and lack in quality. I think there’s no question about it.” He said that high-performing education systems such as China invested in the future.

His comments were echoed by Neil Carmichael, Conservative chairman of the Commons education select committee on, who said he had huge respect for the OECD boss and added: “Of course we need more resources in education. The debate is about how that can happen given the appalling public sector deficit problem.”

Those in the corridors of power should take heed of Mr Schleicher’s words. It seems to me you cannot grasp the OECD’s latest Pisa rankings, give them all of the respect accorded to the Bible by Christians, grant Mr Schleicher the ultimate in guru status and use Pisa’s findings as a stick to beat former administrations with and draw up your own policies, if you subsequently ignore its chief’s warning on the spending squeeze.

Richard Garner was education editor of The Independent for 12 years, and before that news editor of the TES. He has been writing about education for more than three decades. 

To read more columns by Richard, view his back-catalogue

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