to want to abolish private schools' charitable status?

[minifingers]

Which costs the tax payer 100 million squids a year.

Schools justify having charitable status by saying they offer financial help to 'disadvantaged' children.

The 'disadvantaged' children they refer to are actually, almost to a boy/girl, highly intelligent, academically successful children who have outstandingly supportive parents (otherwise they wouldn't be researching bursaries/applying for schools/preparing their children for exams). In other words, not at all disadvantaged. These are the children who generally succeed very highly in the state sector too.

I personally think that tax-payers money should go towards supporting those children who are failing in education, not to those children who are already succeeding. Surely it's more beneficial for the children who are currently failing most severely in the state sector to have tax payers money spent on them, as these are the children who the tax payer ends up supporting through benefits/the prison system.

In addition, 'skimming off' this top layer of very clever children and sending them to be educated separately from other ordinary kids impacts on the learning of all the other children in the state sector - any of us who have done a degree/been in education know what a difference it makes to be in a class where there are a lot of clever/motivated people, how much more enjoyable and productive learning is.

Just to draw a mumsnet analogy - imagine if all the funniest and most interesting posters here were offered their own site - 'mumsnet gold', where they could be funny and interesting all day long and those of us who are not as funny and clever would be excluded. Imagine how much of a loss that would be to everyone here? we could rename the new non-gold site 'netmums2'

So, AIBU?

Take the £100000000 currently given to private schools and give it to state schools with the largest number of underachieving students to spend on supporting their education instead?

Yabu. Why are you so bitter? I don't have the money for private school, so I chose to live in an area with good state schools.

Instead of having a go at parents who do their best for their kids (as you do) why don't you gave a go at those who don't give a shit and bring the state system down?

I don't personally care whether fee-paying schools are treated as charities or not, but providing high quality education to the very bright is important, and not just for those children and their families. Hakluyt is saying that schools with charitable status should be offering something that the state sector can't to justify that. It is scandalous that the state sector doesn't cater adequately for all very bright children, but I'm afraid it doesn't.

I don't buy into this stuff about bright children doing well anywhere because family background makes up for deficiencies at school. Children spend huge amounts of time in school. I wanted that time to be valuable, not just free childcare. I wanted for them what I had, courtesy of my 100% scholarship under the direct grant scheme: peers of a similar level of ability so they didn't feel like freaks and so they could have a good level of debate in class (and out).

We got that (more or less) for both our children at their local community nursery and primary schools and for our daughter from our local comprehensive school. Unfortunately, it's a girls' school so our son couldn't go there too. The good comps in our area that take boys are so massively oversubscribed that he didn't get a place. So he went to a fee-paying school. I can't find it in myself to feel any guilt about the minuscule subsidy we got from the state through his school's charitable status.

yanbu

as for well some have made these choices for their children just implies that others do not quite care as much about their child's education or all these tax saving parents are actually helping other how fucking patronising. not everyone has been in a situation where they have been able to make such a choice and not everyone wants to

all children should get the same standard of education and they do not money can buy a better education and better facilities for children is just unfair

so really is your argument about what is in the scheme of things is a small amount of money or what is fair

Mimsy this thread is not about your personal guilt, or lack of it, but about the principle of private schools having preferential tax arrangements.

Mimsey your dd's went to state schools but your ds went to private? Seriously? Wow.

Ok fine

Add message | Report | Message poster TheWomanTheyCallJayne Fri 18-Jul-14 12:30:49
The amount received is less than a child would need to go to state school.

Why not consider that amount as the cost of paying for that child's basic English maths and science lessons. The fees paid on top cover the rest.

Echt - did I say it was about my personal guilt or lack of it? I've said, if you'd bothered to read what I wrote, that I personally don't care one way or the other about the charitable status, but I do think that independent schools are not as worthless as some of you are portraying.

FreudiansSlipper

all children should get the same standard of education and they do not money can buy a better education and better facilities for children is just unfair

How very true. Some children get a better education than others and not just because some parents pay school fees. Others move to the catchment of good state schools and/or pay out a small fortune to tutors. Should this be banned? It results in even more inequity than independent schools, surely?

If fewer children in the UK went to independent schools I'd be delighted, as long as that was because the state system had become so uniformly good that most parents no longer saw any point in paying (and I'd include in that paying for catchment and paying for private tuition).

itsbetterthanabox - yes. My daughter went to a very good girls' school. If it had been co-ed we'd have been delighted to send our son there too. If he'd got a place at any good state school we thought was right for him he'd have gone there. He didn't, though.

I know of quite a lot of families in our area who did the same, for very similar reasons.

Mimsy you were the one who mentioned guilt, not me.

No-pne has said that private schools are worthless. To their customers. A whole separate thread.

RTFH thread why don't you?

None of this is about your individual circumstances but the general point about why the tax payer should underwrite private buyers.

I agree with you Mimsy

Feeling the system in unfair is not about feeling guilty

ds goes to a fee paying school because the state school he got place in is not a great school and is struggling (though not according to the ofsted report but that his for another thread)

does it test my political beliefs absolutely I wish things were different but they are not

Gosh, that was rude. I actually have read the whole thread. I'm not saying this is about my individual circumstances. I'm saying that there are innumerable families making decisions about their children's education based on their individual circumstances. This may or may not lead to an advantage for that child but some of the advantage might actually also be beneficial to society as a whole, e.g. if the child gets a decent grounding in science at school and ends up qualifying as an engineer or becoming a doctor, which might not have happened if they'd gone to a school with poor science and maths teaching instead.

I'm on the fence about the charitable status issue because it isn't really logical that when the state provides free education independent schools providing it for a substantial fee should be treated as charities. But they do plug gaps in the system and it's not realistic to ignore that.

I know loads of families (including DHs') who sent one kid private and one not because those were the right schools for those children. Its a good indication that its not a case of "private better". It depends on the child and the schools available to them. We get a large fee rebate for any of our kids if they attend the school we teach at and the GP are all assuming we will do so, but it may not be the right place for them (v academic, high pressure). If not, we will send them where does suit them. I agree that private schools can provide an atmosphere that is more conducive to very very bright , sometimes "nerdy" or "geeky" ones being allowed to be themselves without being mocked. Their knowledge is respected by their peers and there are enough of them that they have a proper friendship group. I am NOT saying that state schools can't provide these things but it is inevitably the case that the ability range is wider and from personal experience I can say that many kids in my current school would be miserable in a more mixed ability setting. If charitable status rests on providing a service for the public good, you can add "providing a setting for the very bright to flourish without fear of ridicule". It is also true that private schools often have teachers with Oxbridge degrees or postgrad qualifications which allow them to stretch the very brightest at A level. (many of whom would not cope in a state school - they are not better teachers, just differently skilled). Again, not saying that state schools can't and don't stretch very bright kids but it is true that we have kids transfer out of good state schools to our 6th Form because they want that extra "edge" that they feel we can provide that will get them onto the next level of their education / career - lots of aspiring medics for instance.

"I don't personally care whether fee-paying schools are treated as charities or not, but providing high quality education to the very bright is important, and not just for those children and their families. Hakluyt is saying that schools with charitable status should be offering something that the state sector can't to justify that. It is scandalous that the state sector doesn't cater adequately for all very bright children, but I'm afraid it doesn't."

I am prowled to accept that there are a tiny minority of children so bright that they can't be accommodated in a normal comprehensive school- but they are on a par with the super talented musicians at the school morethan is talking about. The "my child is too bright for state" is usually a red herring.

That's not what I was saying, actually. I was quite specific. If a school doesn't offer more than one modern foreign language or if it doesn't have science or maths taught by graduates in those subjects, then in my view it's not the right place for a child of above average academic ability who could do well in those areas. I'm not saying that some children are too bright for comprehensive school because I know perfectly well that many comprehensive schools (my daughter's included) can offer what I'm looking for. But they don't all manage it.

I think the bottom line is this. Even if you assume that:

1. Every single child of the 7% who are educated privately are educated at charitable status schools which is not the case);
2. Every single penny of the claimed £200 reduced cost per private school pupil were to be allocated to the state education budget (hardly a guaranteed thing);
3. Every private school pupil continued to be educated privately and the parents sucked up the additional £200 annual cost;
4. Any services provided by charitable status schools to state schools were maintained at no additional cost; and
5. Every penny of the additional tax revenue were spent only on the 93%,

then the effect of removing the £200 p.a. benefit per privately-educated child would be the princely sum of £15 per child.

Not exactly a life-changing sum of money.

I think the bottom line is this:

Charities are charities for a reason.

I personally do not care if people with privately educated children have to cough up a bit extra per annum, how much or little that might be, how fantastically more intelligent their DCs are than everyone else (we're getting quite a few "but what about all the children like mine who really have special gifts" arguments) or anything else.

Charities are not a tax avoidance scheme for the rich. They shouldn't be a way of getting free playing fields for the povvos to glance at once a year. There is actually a moral question here.

You are absolutely correct. Organisations with charitable status need to operate as charities. This means providing something for the public good. There is a fair and reasonable debate to be had as to what would satisfy that test. In the event that private schools can demonstrate to the Charities Commission that they do provide a public good, then I see no reason why charitable status should not be granted.

No individual, rich or poor, receives a "tax break" as you claim. The institution to whom the individual pays the fees receives tax benefits. In return, it is required to demonstrate that it is carrying out a public good, whether by scholarships and bursaries, funding academies, providing assistance to local state schools or its general involvement in its local community.

Well, after the five year, hugely expensive tribunal battle over how private schools demonstrate their charitable purpose, the role of the Commission is almost non-existent. The 2013 guidance sets out that it's pretty much up to the trustees to decide how (and whether) they fulfil their charitable purpose.

Totally agree with you OP. It is wrong for any private school to have charitable status. Does anybody actually know of any, so called, disadvantaged child that has been offered a place at such a school?

Do they have to be 'disadvantaged' to a severe extreme?

My Dh had a bursary at a private school. His (state) primary school teacher put him forward. His parents would never have considered it. They lived in a rough area and no one in the family had done a levels before (in fact, still haven't). He has a PhD. I think that act of unlocking potential is 'charitable'. I think it highly unlikely he would have had the same outcome at the local school. His brother left there with no gcses.

Roughly the same happened to my dad 20 years before! He doesn't gave a phd but owns a very successful business.

The plural of anecdote is not data, just to state the obvious, but I have a similar story. The family concerned were not desperately poor but their income would have been below the national average, they were local authority tenants and their children went to the nearest community primary school. This happened to have a very proactive head at the time the eldest boy was coming up to secondary transfer age. She suggested to them that they should apply for an assisted place at a local independent school. He got it and I think his place was either free or nearly. He is now a consultant heart surgeon in the NHS. For those who know SE London, the school he would have gone to otherwise was Warwick Park in Peckham (now an academy and doing much better, although the starting point was so low that almost anything would be better). I don't think he would have got the grades or even the right subjects at GCSE to proceed to medical school from there.

A good comprehensive could certainly have done that for this boy. However, at that time (we're going back maybe 25 years) there wasn't one within their reach.

I had a colleague who went to Warwick Park in the 80s. She was one of most capable people I ever worked with. She talked with remarkable restraint about how poor her education was. Her sister benefited indirectly because when it was her turn to move on to secondary school the family pushed hard and got her into a much better state school a bit further away (City Technology College at the time). She went to university. My colleague left at 16. She could have done much better academically.

I certainly wouldn't claim that there are more than a handful of poor kids at most independent schools but there are some.

I agree with Pomm. That's the point I was trying to make earlier.

I think "being disadvantaged to an extreme" would be a start, yes. Or you start getting into excuses again :) In some people's minds, being disadvantaged is "Daddy earns 100k, but Mummy only 30, and sometimes we have to cut back on a couple of things to pay the nanny."

How my two examples lived was light years away from that but they could have been saved so easily. As I have said Jayden's father, we did not talk about. Tanique's father was disinterested, that's a kind word. That was one child who had serious intellectual ability and one with serious artistic ability. In an ideal world, Jayden would have gone to university instead of gone to the jail. Tanique would have been in art college.

If your "charity" hasn't space for kids like that how are they a charity then? A charity for middle class people who can't quite afford the fees isn't a charity.

Eton does provide charity.
A boy in the same year as my cousin is there free. He was in a string of care home, foster homes, he was behind in education, getting into trouble.
He got a free place at Eton. He has now got all As at GCSE and is predicted high marks for a level. He wants
To study medicine along with my cousin.
This is purely because he was given time, attention, structure, and understanding 24/7. Something a lot of state schools cannot do.
If he'd not got that place I think he'd be in prison by now.

As the provision of education is in itself a charitable aim under law, then unless the alleviation of poverty is also written into the charitable aims, then considering levels of disadvantage doesn't come in to it.

The tribunal found there were many ways in which the provision of education as a charitable activity can happen, and no single one is either necessary or sufficient. The Commission still has the power to investigate charities (not just educational ones) and to warn or eventually close (by removing charitable status) those which are not fulfilling their aims.

I have a personal theory on some of all this. The Blair administration abolished the assisted place scheme, but found later on that this was an unpopular policy (and that less social mobility was occuring under their watch). So they tried to resurrect the scheme, but not by u-turn on policy, but by attempting to force the schools themselves to do it (against threat of closure by loss of charitable status). That administration had an approach of 'just do it and someone will sort it out later if the courts don't like it' (like terrorist Control Orders). So whipped up the discourse, expecting their intended result in the short term. But then it didn't go to plan. The whole initiative was found to be essentially, unjustifiable under current law before it gained real momentum.

Plus of course, the figures started coming out. The headline £100m "savings" looks a bit more 'smoke and mirrors' when it's pointed out that that is theoretical tax take on a hypothetical activity (not actual money going out of tax coffers). As the hypothetical situation will not come about (for under current law - and no one has ever come up with an alternative one - it means closure), you still don't get that money in. Plus you get increased spending to accommodate the expansion of the state sector (anywhere from £3k - £9k per pupil per year, plus possible cost of opening new schools).

Personally, I think the key to reducing differences is to improve state schools. On MN, there is a split of types of private school thread - on one it's all 'fantastic facilities, outcome etc, unfair' and on the other it's "but they're not like that, problems are much the same, outcomes not guaranteed, and (numerous examples) got just as good grades from state schools". Unfortunately, that's up against the 'just get the politicians to butt out' school of thought - for 'independence' within the state sector (ie loosening both central and local government control) has only really been tried with academies, and they are not universally welcome either.