Roy Hattersley shows his socialist colours here.
Christopher Price –
ex-MP, sometime vice-chancellor and perpetual educationist – is leading
a one-man campaign to improve the charities bill. His anxieties,
naturally enough, concern its application to "independent schools", for
which "charitable status" provides a tax exemption that amounts to a
government subsidy.
….
But there is no reason in
law or logic why fee-paying education cannot be reduced – with the
removal of charity status as a first step – to a level at which its
products are no longer influential in society.
…
So the hope of equity
lies with elected MPs. They have to decide whether or not they want
their constituents to subsidise public schools – with the schools doing
nothing in return.
Of course, he proclaims himself a socialist so there’s nothing wrong in his seeking socialist goals. I do worry a little about the equation of "tax break" with "subsidy". Not taking money from people is not quite the same thing as giving money to them.
My own, slightly odd, I agree, argument for the existence of private schools is that they do serve a huge public purpose, provide quite massive benefits to society in general. The show us quite how crap the State system is. Current costs for private day schools are within spitting distance of the costs of State day schools. The results from the private sector are vastly better. The embarassment this engenders in those who have to defend the State system is worth, to me, every penny of whatever taxes the private schools are not paying.
One might also ask what the hell he means by the private schools offering nothing in return. You mean education is nothing these days?
There’s also the elephant in the room, the thing determinedly ignored. Those parents who send their children to private schools have already paid the tax to fund the State system. They also then pay extra to educate their children. Currently the budget for education and skills is around 30 billion a year. Some 10% are privately educated. So the State saves 3 billion odd a year by not educating those who are so privately.
Yes, sure, those numbers are very sketchy, but does anyone think that the "tax break" of charitable status is worth more than that? Even a significant fraction of that? The Government makes a huge profit out of the existence of private schools….and Roy ignores that, stating that they provide nothing to the wider society.
Bollocks, to put it kindly.
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