Labour’s tax raid on private school fees is a clumsy and blunt intervention that will create serious injustices on the pretext of promoting a fairer educational system. The proposed tax regime will impact not only the well-to-do but also many middle-income families, as well as a surprising number of lower-income families. Educational blogger Diarmid Mackenzie reports that 15% of children attending private schools are from homes with below-average incomes. That amounts to 90,000 children from lower-income families, whose lives will be severely disrupted by a policy which is ostensibly aimed at increasing Government revenues by further taxing those who can afford it.
There are hundreds of small schools in England whose school fees are relatively low. Mackenzie reports that there are a couple of hundred schools across the country whose annual fees are in the £4,000 – £10,000 range. Labour’s policy takes no account of the financial diversity of independent schools. Contrast Eton College, with its annual income of over £91,000,000, with Emmaus School in Wiltshire, with an annual income of less that £400,000. And yet, under the new tax on school fees both schools are treated as if they were the same sort of institution.
Emmaus School is a tiny school with a Christian Ethos. The fees are about £5,000 a year and the teachers are paid very modest salaries. The school caters for parents who want a Christian education for their children. There are many independent schools like this in the UK. The Spectator reports that there are 700 independent Christian schools in the UK, of which 30% have 200 or fewer pupils. There are 50 independent Muslim schools where the median fees are £3,000-£3,500. There are between 60 and 70 independent Jewish schools in the country where average fees are £5,000 a year.
Parents choose these schools for a range of reasons, not limited to their religious beliefs. They might deliberately seek a small class for their child who has special educational needs but doesn’t have an Education Health Care Plan. They might find a more nurturing environment in a small school for their child who has struggled in larger-scale institutions. Many parents of modest means make painful sacrifices to scrape together the necessary £5,000 or similar per year to provide their children with an education which aligns with their values. The situation of such parents is worlds away from that of the top 10% of earners who can afford to shell out more than many people’s incomes for world-class facilities and beautiful grounds.
Whatever the rhetoric from left-wing politicians about fairness, the wealthy schools attended by children from wealthy families will manage just fine — however, the threat against the independent schools attended by children from lower-income families is existential. For many parents with religious convictions, desperate to protect their children from the aggressive secularism and harmful ideologies pervading most other schools, small independent schools are real beacons of hope. With a great many of these schools now at risk of closing permanently, many parents may be justified in wondering whether the imminent collapse of small schools is simply collateral damage of the left’s pursuit of the wealthy; or whether Labour’s policy represents — if not a calculated attempt to ensure independent, faith-based education is beyond the means of virtually all parents — then certainly a callous disregard of that possibility.
ParentPower Team
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