Best Schools - Ministers hope that 1,000 private schools will sign up to an initiative that would see local authori

Nadhim Zahawi, the minister for children, said he wants private schools “to play a greater role in helping raise outcomes for these vulnerable children”.

The launch of the project follows a the publication of a Government-backed report last year which showed that placing vulnerable youngsters at boarding schools can be “significantly more cost-effective” than keeping them in local authority care.

After being sent to either a boarding school, almost two thirds of the children (63 per cent) came off the risk altogether while close to three quarters (71 per cent) showed a reduced level of risk.

A greater proportion of the 52 boarding-school educated youngsters achieved grade A* to C for Maths and English GCSE than other children in care, both in Norfolk and nationally.

Barnaby Lenon, chair of the Independent Schools Council, said that private schools are “committed to playing [their] part in our diverse national education system to help give more children the best start, regardless of background”.

He said that fee-paying schools also provide bursaries for children, but added that “there is a limit to what we can do”.

Ampleforth head Deirdre Rowe to leave after child safety failures

The acting head of a leading Roman Catholic boarding school is to stand down after ten months following an inspection that identified serious child protection failings.

Deirdre Rowe, who was appointed in August, will hand over to an interim head at Ampleforth College this summer. Her experience in child protection was cited as the reason she got the job — the first woman to run the school.

In August, an independent inquiry concluded that the school had “prioritised monks and their own reputations over the protection of children”.

The school pledged to reverse its “historical culture of secrecy” as a result but an Independent Schools Inspectorate report said that the school still did not implement its safeguarding policy effectively.

Ampleforth said it recognised “that a small number of incidents, where our robust policies have not been followed, have led to the judgment from the inspectors that we have not yet met all of the required standards”. It said that each incident had been or was being addressed with the authorities and the students and parents.

It said the new head would “bring considerable change management and safeguarding expertise to the role”.