Private schools have been told to provide more free places to children from poor homes – even if they claim to be full – or effectively face closure.
We had a system which supplied free places at private schools to the financially disadvantaged. It was called the assisted places scheme and it was abolished by the incoming Labour Government. This is just reinstating that system but with one important difference.
Before, the government thought that it benefitted the taxpayers that some poor children recieved such an education: breaking the cycle of poverty and deprivation you might say. Because it did indeed benefit the taxpayer then the taxpayer paid for it.
Now the statement is that the taxpayer does benefit, that it is of benefit to society, but it should be the other users of the system that pay for it, not the taxpayers.
Put that way it doesn’t look quite right, does it?
16 responses so far ↓
1 John Miller // Dec 17, 2008 at 11:08 am
Isn’t that, err, theft? Or at least extortion? Socialism and the Cosa Nostra – compare and contrast. Answers on a postcard to…
2 Letters From A Tory // Dec 17, 2008 at 11:08 am
What a humiliating u-turn. Class warfare is well and truly back as Labour find every sneaky way possible to hit those on higher incomes.
3 Recusant // Dec 17, 2008 at 11:13 am
Dame Suzi Leather, the head of the Charity Commission and a more perfect exemplar of the New Establishment it would be hard to fine
4 KMcC // Dec 17, 2008 at 11:44 am
I benefited from the Assisted Places Scheme (and also a scholarship and a bursary). To say that it transformed my life would be an understatement. I was sorely disappointed when the scheme was abandoned, because its benefits to individual children were so obvious. But I guess socialists love the poor, which is why they’re determined no-one ever escape poverty
5 Doug // Dec 17, 2008 at 11:51 am
Seems reasonable to me. Private schools in uk are usually charities, I think – they are not privately owned like companies. They have been abusing their charitable status for ages I would guess.
From my memory of attending them, they got away with murder. There was one poor student I knew who was on an assisted places scheme and he was treated like dirt.
The school (a very well known one) taught elitism par excellence, and could well have done with being forced to interact with the outside world to justify its charitable status.
If they had the guts to give up their charitable status, then they could do what they wanted.
6 MarkS // Dec 17, 2008 at 12:20 pm
“If they had the guts to give up their charitable status, then they could do what they wanted.”
Doubtful. The government would simply regulate them out of existence. Thou shalt have no other education before mine!
7 dearieme // Dec 17, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Scrap state education.It flourished briefly but has long since wilted.
8 H // Dec 17, 2008 at 1:58 pm
It’s extremely difficult to give up charitable status. Assets accumulated by a charity cannot legally be passed to a non charity. Giving up charitable status would in practice mean shutting up shop. So it’s not really a question of guts. I’m sure a lot of the schools are utterly fed up with charitable status.
9 DBC Reed // Dec 17, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Scrap the Public Schools and be done with it.
Try web-sites like Boarding Concern and Boarding Survivors.Anything created and perpetuated by the Landed Gentry from the profits of Enclosure is bound to be deadly.Release the poor buggered masses now.
10 Serf // Dec 17, 2008 at 3:38 pm
This whole charitable status argument is a red herring.
If an organisation is run on a none profit basis, why should it have to prove that it is good for society in order to maintain charitable status?
Surely the logical (I don’t know about the legal) definition of a charity is an organisation whose activities are not designed to monetarily benefit the owners.
11 KMcC // Dec 17, 2008 at 3:59 pm
DBC: not all private schools have boarders, and not all boarders had a bad time.
But the rest of your comment makes me fear that you are being facetious and perhaps I am over-reacting. I hope so. Because the enclosures were a long long time ago, and not everyone that decides to pay for their children’s education rather than entrust them to the state’s socialisation pods necessarily benefitted in a direct way from enclosures….
12 David Gillies // Dec 17, 2008 at 5:34 pm
DBC Reed: did you go to an independent school?
13 DBC Reed // Dec 17, 2008 at 10:43 pm
No I was a grammar school oik. I did n’t enjoy that much either. Strange that web-sites like this that espouse the cause of the free-born Englishman insist that banging up children in awful “satanic mills” of mind-bending boredom ( I mean all that Maths, not Latin which has proved very useful) plus optional homosexuality , also somewhat looked down on, is the best of educations.All institutions connected with the landed gentry are awful: public schools (which own a lot of enclosed land); hunting with hounds;
the officer class ; the Royal Family (primus inter pares with the big landowners); the horse racing industry ,all need doing away with by means of a hefty dose of Land Value Tax graduated as Charles Bradlaugh suggested to bear down very heavily on big landed estates. I have never met a straight Etonian and not all of them had a saving charm; some of them seemed autistic. Nevertheless they remain part of the ruling-class.
14 Monty // Dec 18, 2008 at 12:33 am
DBC Reed,
I think it only fair to say perhaps you need to find some other website, where people like me aren’t lying in wait for you.
15 Monty // Dec 18, 2008 at 12:51 am
DBC Reed: Are we supposed to take you seriously?
I only ask because it seems so improbable.
16 Eva // Dec 18, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I can’t see there’s a *logical* reason to be against private schooling, but maybe that’s because I’m not English.
Children being privately educated are not a burden on the state – though their parents still pay the same tax that helps educate other children. Privately educated people tend not to need remedial schooling or state support, they usually have a work ethic, get good jobs, pay taxes, etc. Bright children who are educated with other bright children tend to do even better, and surely the idea of education is to make it possible for children to do as well as possible, no?
Why should any school that graduates productive members of society – and who thus benefit society – and is not-for-profit, be denied charitable status? They’re providing a service to society at no cost to the taxpayer.
The whole anti-private school debacle seems to have grown out of a Labour/Class attitude of ‘We can’t manage to make a go of educating children, but you can, and that makes us look bad, so we’ll make it as hard as possible for you to do what you do well.’
Why can’t government learn from the private sector instead?
N.B. If most Etonians & other boarding school survivors’ are homosexual, surely that would preclude a ruling class of Old Etonians etc. being built up?
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