News and views {NEWS REPORT}
Why the pandemic is a turning point in the private school debate The gulf in provision for private and state pupils has never been more stark. Who can doubt now that private schools entrench privilege? FRANCES RYAN explores
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eir Starmer’s pledge to end the lucrative tax breaks given to private schools has, predictably, brought out the usual critics. The chief executive of the Independent Schools Council, Julie Robinson, told the Times it was wrong to “put politics before the interests of young people”. Presumably Robinson did not mean the interests of most young people – just the ones whose families can afford tens of thousands of pounds of school fees. The ‘charitable status’ of private schools
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December 2021
is an oxymoron of longstanding. These institutions hoard advantage for the wealthy – and are then rewarded for their ‘good work’ - and yet, the debate about that status rarely progresses. We have been stuck listening to the same old myths for years, from the idea that private schools deserve tax breaks because they provide bursaries to poorer children (in fact ‘financial assistance’ is considerably more likely to go to affluent middle-class families), to the claim that tax breaks let ordinary families buy an elite education (the average annual fee for independent schools is £15,191, by some
