Head calls for governor exchanges

The head of a leading independent school has called on private sector schools to invite comprehensive head teachers on to their governing bodies.

Richard Cairns of Brighton College in East Sussex also wants private school heads to be governors of state schools. Last year he invited the head of Kingsford Community School in Newham, London, to join his college's council.

Now he has been asked to be a governor at Kingsford, four of whose pupils have been murdered in four years.

Head teacher Joan Deslandes has sought to raise education standards at Kingsford in Newham, an area which has experienced trouble with knife crime.

Form-filling

Mr Cairns, who has been head of the co-educational college for just over two years, was this week invited by Kingsford's governors to join its governing body.

He said: "When I suggested to my governors that we should have Joan on the College Council, they were very supportive though perhaps a little intrigued as to how it would work.

"Other public school heads have served as governors but never a state school head.

"From the outset, she was a success with her fellow governors, taking a refreshingly frank but nevertheless optimistic view of the state education sector.

"She quickly convinced us that some of our views of state education were out-dated while at the same time she regularly expressed her own surprise at the freedoms that independence can give a private school."

Ms Deslandes added: "The work at Brighton College showed me that a dynamic and visionary head could do so much more if unburdened by the endless form-filling and red-tape that can bedevil the state education sector."