EAST Lancashire's private schools may open up their facilities to pupils from the state sector if the Government accepts a new report.

And today the moves were welcomed by state education chiefs.

The report to Government ministers has urged them to increase public spending on partnerships between fee-paying and state schools to £100 million from the £4 million they have invested over the last five years.

Blackburn with Darwen Council's director of education Peter Morgan said: "While no formal partnerships exist between the independent sector and the borough's schools, opportunities for collaboration highlighted in the report may be of mutual benefit in supporting the education of young people in the borough."

He added: "The report makes some interesting recommendations which are worthy of further discussion and consideration.

"There are a number of independent schools in the borough contributing to the education network and the life of the borough as a whole."

The incoming Labour Government set up an independent/state school partnerships initiative in 1997 and 200 schools and 19,000 pupils in England have been involved since then.

But the £4 million the Government has spent during that period is less than one year's budget at a large comprehensive school.

The researchers argued that no other country allowed such a "gulf" to exist between two education systems. "The divide is deeply damaging in a variety of ways -- social, pastoral and academic," they concluded.

However, abolishing private schools would be legally and politically impossible as well as "morally highly questionable" and so partnership was the only way forward, they argued.

The average class size in state schools is 17, compared with 10 in public schools, and this was the key to why the "learning experience" in the two sectors was so different, the experts said.

While state sector spending per pupil was rising and was set to continue to do so, investment was growing at an even faster rate in fee-paying schools, which earlier this year passed the half-million pupil mark for the first time.

A recent Cabinet Office report said a private school's charitable status should depend on it opening up its facilities to state neighbours. But the think-tank experts said there were many difficulties involved in expanding links between the two sectors.

The proposals were put forward by the Institute for Public Policy Research. East Lancashire's independent schools include Queen Elizabeth's Grammar and Westholme schools in Blackburn and Stonyhurst College, near Clitheroe.