Private school privilege is not in long-term interests of the country

I NOTE that your new columnist, Pinstripe, seeks to establish himself with your readership for “telling it straight” (“Yesterday’s failed dogma not an answer for today”, The Herald, July 13). In his advocacy for the continuance of private schools and their charitable status, however, he forebears to mention a number of salient points.

It is generally accepted that something like seven per cent of pupils who attend or have attended school have been to a private school. Having said that, it should be borne in mind that those who have had that privilege, occasioned in the main by the disposable wealth of their relatives, fill the large majority of the senior positions in the civil service, the judicial system, and the armed forces. How can that long-standing situation be in the long-term interests of the country in which we live? We have not been a land of equal opportunity, we are not a land of equal opportunity, and, for as long as we continue with our existing system of education, we will never be a land of equal opportunity.

Moreover, how can it be equitable that the taxpayers continue to fund the training of most of the teachers, who work eventually in private schools? Why should these schools continue to have such a free ride?

Perhaps there is a trend already in existence, which is leading to the substantial reduction in the number of such schools. Late last year, the Head of King’s College School London (fees for a day pupil in excess of £20,000 a year), expressed concerns that a number of them have become so expensive today that many professionals, such as teachers, lawyers, and doctors, are no longer able to pay the fees, and some have become what he described as “finishing schools for the children of oligarchs”. A major result of that development is that the taxpayer subsidy, provided through charitable status, is being enjoyed by many non-UK parents, who don’t merit it, and certainly don’t need it. Ian W Thomson, 38 Kirkintilloch Road, Lenzie. THE contribution from your new columnist, Pinstripe, exemplifies why “toff bashing” is popular with the thinking Left who enjoy deriding such snide and supercilious writing: “unthinking” Left; “many state schools are staffed by caring, capable and dedicated people”. All state schools have the same range of qualified teachers as charitable schools, save they do not teach their pupils to be supercilious toffs.

Pinstripe’s toffee-nosed arguments give me a feeling of deja vu; more than that, since they were put forward when comprehensive schools were being established and (to be snide) I am surprised a senior member of Scotland’s financial services community puts them forward .

Parents of private charity schools do not subsidise the taxpayer. Nor have they paid for their state education, to which they are entitled as citizens. They have paid the taxes they are due as everyone else. The Government chooses what to spend them on. If paying their taxes and fees entitles them to enjoy a charitable subsidy, shouldn’t every bachelor, spinster and childless couple receive the same subsidy? Furthermore, as an opponent of war and Trident in particular, should I reclaim that part of my taxes devoted to war, Trident in particular?

Pinstripe’s calculation of the fees benefit to the taxpayer as 40 times the benefit of the rates reduction is not just rough, it’s unbelievable.

A better outcome for the state sector would be if all pupils in Scotland were in Scottish public schools with all actively interested parents pushing for their enhancement instead of escaping into the toffs’ ghetto. Bill Wood, 25 Chesterfield Avenue, Glasgow.