The controversy over a teaching charity promoted by the Prince of Wales has intensified after his officials invited Scottish headteachers to a private meeting with him and the charity’s executives.
Documents released to the Guardian show Prince Charles met headteachers from East Ayrshire just after they were briefed by executives from Teach First, a charity he helped set up that has been heavily criticised by Scottish teaching organisations.
The meeting was held on 22 January behind closed doors at Dumfries House, a stately home in Ayrshire that the prince helped save for the nation in 2007 and which hosts rural skills education courses for schools.
The day after the event, participants were told by a Dumfries House director that it was vital “the conversations which took place [with Prince Charles] were completely confidential and HRH’s views are not to be freely shared nor quoted”.
Scotland’s largest teachers’ union, the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), and Labour said they were deeply alarmed by the meeting, as Teach First’s approach to fast-track teacher training had been nearly universally rejected in Scotland.
The Guardian disclosed last year that Prince Charles and his officials had repeatedly lobbied Scottish government ministers – including the then first minister, Alex Salmond, in 2013 – to study Teach First’s attempt to introduce its fast-track model to Scottish schools.
The charity, a social enterprise that places teachers in schools in England after only three months’ training, receives a fee for every teacher it provides.
The General Teaching Council of Scotland (GTCS), which regulates teacher training, refused to accredit Teach First’s model and no university that runs Scotland’s one-year postgraduate teacher training degrees would cooperate with Teach First.
Larry Flanagan, the general secretary of the EIS, said his union was “very clear that organisations such as Teach First have absolutely no role in Scottish education. The GTCS has also been resolute that the Teach First scheme is incompatible with Scotland’s professional teaching standards.”
Iain Gray, Scottish Labour’s education spokesman, said the country’s teacher recruitment crisis had led ministers to look at Teach First. “It is an approach rightly rejected by Scotland’s teachers and by Scottish teacher training institutions, but this meeting shows that Teach First and their royal patron are still refusing to give up,” Gray said.
He and the EIS said the documents released by East Ayrshire council under freedom of information rules raised significant questions about the timing and purpose of the event.
After several years of lobbying by Teach First, John Swinney, the Scottish education secretary, unexpectedly announced in October 2017 that he would allow providers such as Teach First to set up fast-track teacher training schemes in Scotland if they had a university as a partner.
In November Teach First pulled out, claiming it did not have enough time to prepare its proposals. By then every Scottish university involved in teacher training had refused to cooperate with Teach First.
Less than two weeks after Teach First withdrew, senior officials in East Ayrshire council were told by Peter Gilchrist, a headteacher at two schools in the area, that Dumfries House had approached him on Prince Charles’s behalf.
He told the council’s deputy chief executive, Alex McPhee, and its head of education, Alan Ward: “HRH Duke of Rothesay … would like to meet a group of headteachers and be involved in discussions on the local agenda.”
The Duke of Rothesay is one of Charle’s titles as heir to the throne.
On 6 December, Gilchrist told McPhee: “I am aware that HRH is particularly interested in how teacher shortages in the area are addressed and may wish us to consider Teach First.”
McPhee responded to Gilchrist by implying that East Ayrshire could be receptive to Teach First’s proposals. The council’s briefing for Prince Charles said East Ayrshire faced significant challenges recruiting English, science and home economics teachers for its secondary and primary schools.
The event on 22 January had three main parts to its programme: a tour of Dumfries House’s education facilities; a 75-minute “third-party input” session from Teach First and Keir Bloomer, an educationalist who sits on the board of the centre-right Reform Scotland thinktank; and a private audience with Prince Charles.
East Ayrshire council denied the event was arranged primarily to promote Teach First. It said the programme included sessions on Dumfries House’s education projects, the wider issue of recruiting and retaining teachers, and the Scottish schools curriculum in general.
“So far as the council is aware, Teach First have no particular aspiration or ambition to change the status quo in order to enable them to deliver their programme in Scotland,” a council spokeswoman said.
“Further, if they do have such plans then that is not something they have discussed with East Ayrshire council, and certainly not at the event at Dumfries House.”
Gray said this raised the question of why Teach First had taken part at all. Officials at Clarence House, Charles’s official residence, refused to comment.
A Dumfries House spokeswoman said the event was to promote the wider work of Dumfries House, including its textiles skills education courses for schoolchildren.
She added: “The Duke of Rothesay has a longstanding interest in the issues facing the education communities of East Ayrshire and his attendance allowed him to hear at first hand some of the challenges they are facing.”
