Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
£65m of our cash is given to their schools
Call to end tax breaks for the elite
Keir Starmer wants to end the charitable status of private schools. The opposition calculates this would raise an extra £1.7billion for the Treasury which they would invest in state education via Labour’s National Excellence Programme for state schools.
Who else backs Labour’s policy?
A surprising number of Tories. They include former Education Secretary Michael Gove, who said the tax break could not be justified and branded private schools “welfare junkies”.
Fellow Tory Robert Halfon, now an Education Minister, is also in favour of scrapping the tax relief.
Labour’s policy is popular with the public. A recent poll by Yougov found only 10% favoured private schools retaining charitable status.
What are opponents saying?
Tory MPS have accused Mr Starmer of waging “class war”. They cite research that claims 90,000 children would be forced to leave the private sector over the next five years due to rising fees.
But this research was commissioned by the Independent Schools Council, the lobby group for private schools. Their fees have risen by 15.3% a year on average since 2000 without any decline in the number of pupils.
Why do private schools receive charitable status?
BY Deputy Online Political Editor &
TOP private schools attended by members of the Cabinet avoided charging £65million in VAT on their fees last year due to their charitable status.
Labour analysis of accounts submitted to the Charity Commission found gross fee income received by elite schools amounted to more then £329m in 2021.
This left more than £65m in uncollected VAT.
Rishi Sunak’s former school, Winchester College, and Charterhouse, where Chancellor Jeremy Hunt went, both avoided charging nearly £6m in VAT savings.
And Millfield, attended by the Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, avoided charging more than £8m.
Keir Starmer told the PM to “end the Tory scandal” of massive tax breaks for private schools in a
Many of them were set up as charitable endeavours. For example, Eton was set up in 1440 by King Henry VI to provide free education for up to 70 boys.
Around 1,300 private schools in the UK now claim charitable status. To qualify they have to provide some form of “community work” such as opening their sports facilities to the public, offering bursaries or allowing state school pupils to attend certain lessons.
But only 1% of private school pupils receive full bursaries.
What benefits do they get?
Private schools do not have to pay 20% VAT, are able to reclaim Gift Aid on donations and are exempt from corporation tax on any surplus they may make. This saves fierce PMQS clash yesterday. He told Mr Sunak: “Trickle down education is nonsense”.
The Labour leader taunted him by quoting a 2017 article by the Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove in which he said removing the “egregious” tax breaks was one of the best ways of ending injustice.
ASPIRATION
Mr Sunak insisted the Government was “improving school standards for every pupil in this country” and claimed the VAT exemption was “about supporting aspiration”.
But Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson told the Mirror: “There is a very simple way he can invest in our state schools: adopt Labour’s policy and end tax breaks for private schools so every child gets a brilliant state education.”
Eton an estimated £4million a year. Tax relief on business rates is estimated to be worth £144m a year. By contrast state schools must pay the full rate.
How do private schools compare with state schools?
Few if any state schools can compete with independent ones when it comes to class sizes and facilities. The pupil-teacher ratio in the top private schools is 8.5 to one, compared with 17.9 to one in state schools in England.
In 2019-20, state spending per pupil in England was £6,900 compared to average private day school fees of £15,192.
Why are engines of inequality helped by the state?
What’s wrong with public schools?
The privately educated dominate senior positions, squeezing out the opportunities for those from less well off backgrounds.
A report by the Sutton Trust in 2019 found just 7% of people went to independent schools but they make up 65% of senior judges and 57% of the House of Lords.
In Rishi Sunak’s Cabinet 61% were educated at public schools.
The Social Market Foundation think-tank found that someone aged between 26 and 42 who went to a fee-paying school will earn £193,700 more in those years than someone at a state school.