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?

Couldn't agree more; system is certainly abused.

YABU just for saying that motivated children cannot be disadvantaged, whatever their circumstances.

I was one of those disadvantaged children. We were homeless for 5 years during my teens, starting shortly before I won a full scholarship to a private school.

Yes, I had a brilliant education (which I worked hard, both to gain and to keep). But it was definitely disadvantaged. We had nothing, not even a roof over our heads some of the time. The rest was spent in grotty temp accommodation with mould on all the walls, broken windows and more leak than roof. We regularly went without food - I temper one particularly awful half term when I was about 15 when all I had to eat for the week was half a jar of peanut butter. No amount of a good education makes up for that, I can tell you, and it can in no way be classed as 'not disadvantaged' because I managed to read a few books and be calm in exams and interviews.

I am in an area where 25% of children are privately educated, so this is discussed from time to time. If the schools lose their charitable status the charity would have to be wound up, they would have to close, it's not a matter of the fees simply going up. This would cripple the local state schools, which are already over stretched. If it were a matter of simply increasing the fees to compensate for the £200 per child per year extra I would expect some of that might well be offset by a reduction in bursaries, since the need to demonstrate charitable activity would no longer be there. In Scotland the charities commission has been testing the charitable status of independent schools, some have had to make changes to continue to qualify.

Most of the public schools i have come across are charities but also operate on a strictly non profit making basis. Ie - if you were to read the p&l, they spend all of their income on the school's fabric, on salaries and on upkeep. They dont make a profit. The charitable status will help with things like busoiness rates etc.

So i am not sure of your figures or your source - or even if you have a source, its veracity to the extent of the 100's of millions. Setting the tenuous assumption of loss to the exchequer aside (is it lost if it was never owed??) your thread just merely smacks of bitterness and resentment. My neighbour gets to drive a lexus - why cant he take the bus like me. Perhaps we should take it away and make him take the bus? Yeah that will make him improve public transport.

Faint whiff of vinegar about the op.

"I work as a social worker and am very aware of the gap between what my DD's have and what other children have. I hope i redress that balance by doing my very best for the children and families i work with."

And good I suppose, for you to know that your dd's are unlikely to come into contact with the sort of families and children you may meet through your work.

The very best all of us could do is to try to make this a more equal and a more mixed society. When the well off and the privileged go out of their way to educate their children separately from the children of the poor and disadvantaged you end up with social, economic and intellectual ghettoes - which are very, very bad for poor people and for poor children.

I'm still wondering why it would be terrible if my ds2 ends up working at poundland when he is an adult.

My DBro went to a private school which has been a charitable institution since it's inception in 1552. The vast majority of the pupils pay very little and my DM paid nothing.

He worked incredibly hard to get in to the school, incredibly hard while at the school and continues to work hard. He has done well for himself and he wouldn't have done that if he had gone to the local school, which was awful.

He, like a lot of the alumni who have done well, gives back in the form of sponsoring another child like him to have the same opportunity.

I won a full scholarship to a private school which, I believe, also has charitable status. I wasn't allowed to go, because girls apparently don't need an education.

My DM couldn't have given a shiny shit about my education, I just worked hard and was blessed with brains, no money though, sadly. Or food some weeks. DBro was much luckier, despite having no money, because he was a boarder, he at least got fed.

Yes, all me me me.

Some schools do take the piss, a lot don't. I don't that it's something to get all class warrior about.

Apols for not RTFT, am writing this while trying to stop myself driving to Malaysia to drag DS back, kicking and screaming.

I get it OP.

The way to break the intellectual ghettoes is to close public schools.

Right.

Take away free choice, and allowing people to spend their money on what they want will improve the lot of the "people".

This is what it boils down to isnt it? The state is the best decision maker in how you spend your money and how you educate your children? By your logic, the state should make all decisions about your children. What they eat, where they associate, what jobs they will get. And so the tentacles of the state go everywhere. But who is to say the state is right? The man from the ministry has been shown time and time again to be the very poorest arbiter of what suits the individual. The more centrally planned a society in the interests of "fairness" the less freedom and greater overall misery there becomes

I live in an ex-council house on an estate in SE London. I am trying to pull together enough money to send my child private when he turns four. He had lots of problems with glue ear and waited over a year on a waiting list for a consultant appointment dispute hearing tests confirming the diagnosis. We think that with my overtime, wife going back to work and us doing additional mystery shopping, surveys and cutting back, we can find a private place. It isn't Eton, but the class sizes are small and I hope the additional ratio will help him catch up a bit.
The image that is being portrayed in this thread is elite bashing, but the elites will not be affected by a change in status. It will be those if us who are making significant lifestyle choices to do what we hope is the best for our children.
Increasing the cost of running a private school and removing the obligations that come with charitable status will make them more elite and more inaccessible to us mere mortals.

So dd went to a Specialist independent school for dyslexic children. About half the kids were state funded. They did nothing for their charitable status.

Should they lose their charitable status?

Sorry Trapper and andmyunpopularpionis - the OP knows best. It is for the greater good. Do as you are told. You cannot be allowed anything other than what has been decreed.

Absolutely.

Trapper. The bitter nature of the anti - private school brigade do not understand that by doing this they simply widen the gap between rich and poor. The truly rich would not be impacted. It is the man in the street desperate to give their child the opportunity they themselves never had who would be the losers. The ones bridging the gap. They would prefer to have no middle class. Just the super rich and the serfs.

Ha ha! What utter tosh the man in the street can't afford the equivalent of a salary per child on school fees,only the rich can.

And Trapper you are seriously deluded if you think a bit of overtime will cover school fees.They go up every year and sooooooo many people on very nice wages struggle.

To be able to pay school fees you are rich. I think you have a skewed idea of what most people live on..
It would bring in a huge amount of tax which could then benefit all children in the state school system. That can only be a good thing

And I have to say a mediocre private school is a complete waste of money for the tax payer and parents shelling out £££££££.

minifingers My DD's were unlikely to come in contact with the people i work with even at their state schools. However both are very aware of effects of poverty and disadvantage in education and are very grateful for the education they have received. I hope they both go on to give back something to society as they move into adulthood.

Thing is, whatever one thinks about private schools, they aren't charities. They just aren't, and I can't see how anyone could argue they are. So they shouldn't have charitable status.

Define rich? You mean the middle classes? Not the Eton kids because this won't impact them at all. Is it okay if they exist and have more opportunities? It's just the rest of us that must be prevented from giving our kids help.

That creates a bigger divide and makes it harder to close the gap. Is that truly that difficult a concept to grasp?

And it's not about saying the medium rich as opposed to the very rich should be denied access: it's about saying that, whoever finds the fees or doesn't and for whatever reason, those places are not charities.

People have to be quite comfortably off to afford full private school fees, especially at senior level, but lots of families do get some bursary help. An estimated £300m is given in bursaries each year which is more than the tax saving due to charitable status.

And errr no not the middle classes,the rich.Not many m/ c parents I know who can afford 14 years of 10-15k per year per child.

AS ever on MN, rich = "more money than me"

andmy - it is a difficult concept to grasp for those for whom rational thought is an alien concept as opposed to a short sight rant about "the rich"

Of course they are set up with charitable status - many of them were set up that way a long time ago. The tax advantages are long gone for most parents and the schools themselves.

They are almost all non profit making organisations.

As for charities - most think tanks are charities. Most charities spend more time lobbying government than helping people - should they be stripped of their status too?

Anyway - without them where would labour politicians send their children?

I would love for someone to define "rich". I would really like to know if i am not just comfortable but actually rich. It would make my day!