Private schools 'need one state sector governor'

Richard Cairns said the move would promote closer co-operation between the state and private sectors.

Mr Cairns, head of fee-paying Brighton College, issued the plea as he announced the appointment of Joan Deslandes, a comprehensive school head from east London, to his school's board of governors.

It comes after the main organisation representing private schools, the Independent Schools Council, was thrown into turmoil following the sudden departure of its chief executive, Chris Parry, after just seven weeks in the job.

Mr Parry, a former Royal Navy rearadmiral, infuriated and embarrassed many private school heads by claiming there was a "cold war" between the state and fee-paying sectors in the wake of the Government's demand for more meanstested bursaries and that some pupils in comprehensives were unteachable.

Ms Deslandes is head of Kingsford Community School in Beckton and one of the education figures named on the Evening Standard's list of the 1,000 most influential people in London.

Last year, she had to lead her school through the trauma of having two teenage pupils fatally stabbed in the capital's continuing knife-crime crisis.

Paul Erhahon, 14, was killed in April 2007, a month after Adam Regis, the 15-year-old nephew of former athlete John Regis, was murdered.

Ms Deslandes was included on the Influentials list because she had decided to make Mandarin compulsory for pupils - Kingsford is the only comprehensive in the country to include it on the curriculum for all.

Together with Brighton College, it is also one of only two UK schools selected by the Chinese government to host Confucius Classroom centres for the study of the language.

Kingsford also co-operates with Brighton College on a ground-breaking sixth form scholarship scheme under which the East Sussex school takes two students from the state comprehensive each year. The students are awarded scholarships totalling £57,000 a year to do their A-levels.

Ms Deslandes said: "Richard Cairns's 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.

"If I thought that only one side had to learn from the other, I wouldn't have done it but the opposite is true. Our schools have far more in common than meets the eye and, as such, we have mutual respect and regard for one another that makes co-operation really meaningful."

Mr Cairns, who has been asked to become a governor at Kingsford, said: "We are citizens of the same country, engaged in one mission: to realise the potential of every child in our care. It is time to break down the walls of misunderstanding and learn from one another.

"The best way of doing that is by inviting the head of a school from the other sector to take a decision-making role in the workings of your own sector. It is wonderfully refreshing."