Private schools must be abolished – and the sooner the better

Social mobility in the UK has ground to a standstill. Money still buys a better education and more opportunities

Tails you win: Eton schoolboys in their traditional uniform (Bell/Shutterstock)

Sexual, religious and racial equality has been fought for and enshrined in law, but somewhere along the way to a caring, considerate modern society we forgot the single most important right – the unassailable entitlement to equality in education.

Social mobility in the UK has ground to a standstill. The number of working class kids going to top universities might have risen fractionally, but the real scandal is that money still buys a better education and more opportunities.

Private schools must be abolished and the sooner the better. If that’s too radical to contemplate, we could go down the route chosen by Finland, and phase them out over a decade, but they can’t be allowed to continue to promote social inequality, to give the lucky few an inbuilt advantage in life. Call it class war if you like, but there can be no justification in 2019 for allowing children from better-off homes to dominate every aspect of British society.

The Sutton Trust looked at 5,000 leading figures in public life and found that 59 per cent of senior civil servants, 65 per cent of senior judges, and 43 per cent of news editors and broadcasters went to public school.

At a time when the public say politicians aren’t to be trusted, we desperately need parties to stand for causes we can relate to, that will bring about positive change and create a better Britain. One simple way to create a fairer society is to offer the same standard of education, properly resourced, to all.

When it comes to our top universities, the inequality in the current system is laid bare – between 2015 and 2017, eight schools in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (mostly private) sent more pupils (1,300) to Oxford and Cambridge than all the others (2,900 schools) put together.

Three fee-paying schools dominated Oxbridge admissions – Eton sends between 60 and 100 pupils every year, Westminster 70 to 80 and St Paul’s School in London roughly one in four pupils. Contrast that with the 5,000 students who obtained the requisite grades (A* and A) from lower-income families, where only 220 gained a place.

Education and social mobility is a hot subject – next week a new think tank, the Private School Policy Reform Group will be launched in Manchester with a website and an evening of debate. Academics and thinkers from all sides of the spectrum are offering six possible routes for reform of the education system, ranging from the radical to the gradual. Labour activists have already launched Laps (Labour Against Private Schools), supported by Ed Miliband and John McDonnell. In 2017, the Labour party manifesto promised to tax private schools and use the money raised to offer free school meals to all primary students.

This week, a leaked document from the shadow treasury team shows a more radical approach being contemplated – the removal of discounted business rates for private schools, and the imposition of VAT on school fees. The average amount paid in fees is around £15,000 a year, so parents would be paying at least £3,000 to the treasury. It’s estimated that this could raise £1.64bn a year to fund the school meals.

Don’t expect the Tories to be too bothered about the basic injustice resulting from the fact that just 7 per cent of all children are lucky enough to be privately educated, when the beneficiaries make up two thirds of the cabinet and over half of the House of Lords. To the smug-ocracy, any attempt to reform private schools is a spiteful declaration of war, a petty infringement of the right of anyone who has “done well in life” to choose to pay for a privileged education for their children, to give them what is, undeniably, a “better” start in life.

To children of working class parents (as I was), a further education might be more accessible than in previous decades, but to reach the very top, and then to achieve a good job in a respected profession, they will have to scale Everest. Anyone with a shred of humanity can surely see that granting private schools charitable status and allowing them discounted rates cannot continue. In 2017, Michael Gove referred to them as “welfare junkies”. That year, the social mobility commissioners resigned en masse, disgusted by a Tory government’s lack of commitment. A new commissioner (Dame Martina Milburn) was appointed, with increased funding.

But her State of the Nation report, published in April this year, simply confirmed the depressing state of affairs. Social mobility has stalled since 2014. Only 34 per cent of children from working class backgrounds have jobs in the professions. If you come from a middle class home, you’re 80 per cent more likely to get a good job.

The most shocking statistic of all – over half of all disadvantaged children leave school with no basic qualifications at all. While 25 per cent of low-income students go on to university, the figure rises to 43 per cent amongst the better off.

The government can tinker around the edges, offer more funding for adult education, more teacher assistants and resources for schools, but this isn’t tackling the root of the problem. Middle class parents continue to have the option of opting out, and so social divisions are ingrained before a child is ten. The only way to fund a better education for all is to create one which specialises, and caters to a wide range of needs. Which recognises that all children learn at different rates and have different aspirations and goals – and who said that a state education should mean a one-size-fits-all approach?

School is where children learn to socialise, to engage with others outside their immediate family group. It’s fundamental to shaping an inclusive society. If you want to believe in something, fight for equal rights to education.