Labour’s general election gambit of declaring a so-called “class war” on Britain’s private schools is partly intended to distract from its own internecine struggles and Brexit woes.
Delegates at the party’s annual conference in Brighton on Sunday voted to abolish fee-paying schools and redistribute their assets “democratically and fairly” for the benefit of all children.
The follow-up media coverage, a weighty mix of mostly outrage and exasperation, shows how effective it has been in diverting attention.
Driven by a grassroots campaign headed by Labour Against Private Schools (Laps), using the hashtag #abolisheton, the question now is whether Labour would be able, or even want, to deliver on such a radical policy.
Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, has thrown just about everything she can at the independent school sector, apart from the kitchen sink. She is promising the abolition of charitable status, public subsidies and tax privileges, a 7% cap on university admissions from private schools, and the redistribution of their endowments, properties or investments.
But such a jumbled cocktail of measures may mean Laps finds itself the victim of its own success. By visiting a nuclear winter of reforms on the schools, the policy has become unfocused. It is also contradictory. How can you impose a tax on a sector that has been abolished? And what is the point of quotas on private schools admissions to university if the schools from where these graduates have been educated have already been dismantled?
Of course there may well be more clarity within this onslaught of proposals before the motion was passed, Rayner had already said that she would task the Social Mobility Commission – which the party would rename the Social Justice Commission – with “integrating private schools”. And John McDonnell later promised every part of the policy would be carried out on a “consultation basis”, and that he could not see the use of “draconian measures” to enforce it.
But we have been here before. In 1965 Anthony Crosland, education secretary under Harold Wilson, also announced the establishment of an integration commission to tackle Britain’s private school problem a few weeks before the country went to the polls. Many of the schools thought the game was up and there were even reports of Eton considering becoming a comprehensive or relocating to Ireland. But the commission, which was packed with private school heads, took too long to deliver its proposals, by which time Labour had lost its enthusiasm for the reform. The party, just like today, was also crippled by conflicts of interest. Wilson and Jim Callaghan were just two members of the senior Labour leadership who sent their children to private schools.
It meant the private schools could carry on educating the rich and powerful largely unaffected. Having suffered such a serious scare, you might have thought they would have spent the ensuing years trying to protect themselves from future attacks by ensuring they were more relevant to their communities by opening up their classrooms to local disadvantaged children. Instead, they have entrenched their privilege. When the Charity Commission in 2008 intervened to make these schools fulfil their charitable obligations through the provision of more bursaries, the schools’ response was to instruct expensive counsel to take the commission to court.
Today just 6,000, or 1%, of pupils attending private schools receive a totally free education. Yet that hasn’t stopped the independent school sector crowing about their mythical social mobility credentials. Nor have they shown any interest in a real debate. When I was researching my book Posh Boys (although at that point I didn’t know that was going to be its title), neither Jeremy Hunt (my MP and former head boy at Charterhouse) nor Jacob Rees-Mogg (one of Eton’s finest) wanted to discuss private schools with me. The same was true of Eton and Winchester College themselves, the latter being the alma mater to two of Jeremy Corbyn’s close advisers.
Yet there are some schools, such as Manchester Grammar and Christ’s Hospital in Sussex, which strive to honour the philanthropic principles of their founding fathers. And there are one or two enlightened headmasters who recognise the dangers of a widening gap between the wealth and privilege enjoyed by the vast majority of their schools and the rest. But it is too little, too late, and the existential crisis the sector now faces is entirely of its own making.
So history is set to repeat itself as the schools dig in for a battle royal in the courts. Already the private schools’ representative body, the Independent Schools Council, is threatening legal action and invoking the Human Rights Act to protect their parents’ right to choose a fee-paying education. And no doubt Eton, with endowments and investments worth more than £400m, is lining up expensive QCs to defend its assets from the grasping claw of the state.
Yet this legal unpleasantness could be largely avoided by introducing a package of more modest measures which would simply neuter the huge advantage that private schools confer on their pupils – three times more money is spent on a child attending a fee-paying school than one educated by the state.
First, remove the £200m paid in government subsidies, which we know from figures released by the Ministry of Defence, Foreign Office and the Independent Schools Council.
Second, abolish the schools’ charitable tax status, make them pay full business rates and impose VAT on fees.
Finally, restrict the number of privately educated entrants to university and top public sector jobs, including parliament and Whitehall.
In this way, the only advantage a private school will have over a state one will be snob value or social networking opportunities. For some parents, this will be enough. But by properly investing in a comprehensive system which provides good quality schools, in all parts of the country, the rest of us can enjoy the fruits of a fairer education for all.
• Robert Verkaik is the author of Posh Boys, How English Public Schools Ruin Britain, and co-founder of the thinktank Private School Policy Reform
