A thought-experiment on private schools - what should have happened.

[YireosDodeAver]

So, in this thought-experiment we start by travelling back in time 400 years. There are no state schools. Some, but not all, parishes have small schools to teach the children of the parish the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, snd those are funded generally via donations to the churches that run those schools. It's a bit hit-and-miss. Wealthy families educate their children by employing a live-in-tutor but obviously not many can afford this

As a wealthy benefactor, possibly of nobility or royalty, I decide to create a school. I endow it with sufficient funds that 30 pupils from poor families can attend free of charge, and provide that additional places can be made available at-cost (ie no profit made) to such families that can afford to pay something for the education of their offspring but whose wealth is insufficient to employ a tutor etc - so merchants, farmers, general yeomanry free people of the "middle classes" whose aspirations for their children are for more than a little bit of literacy and numeracy.

It seems to me that this setup is clearly charitable and legitimately so. Education is ultimately a good thing and I am making it freely available to as many as I can afford to support, and available at no-profit for as many additional people as possible.

So - where did it go wrong? Fast forward 300ish years and at my school there are still 30 pupils getting their education for free, and hundreds more getting their education for "no profit" but the people paying for their education at-cost aren't the original "target audience", it's a much more privileged bunch. Was this a failure in my original foundation of the charity that I didn't make enough specifications to make sure the educational opportunities were targeted well?

At that point the State decides to start offering universal education funded through general taxation. My school has no obligation to be involved in this as it has been endowed as an independent charity with its own founding principles and it is not for the state to over-rule that - but should the state at that point have created more mechanisms for the better integration of these pre-existing charitable schools with the new state-funded provision. Where did the State sector go wrong that lead to such a huge gulf between the pre-existing schools and the state-funded schools?

There used to be some such integration. Lots of the old schools indeed were integrated for a while in what was called "direct grant" status where each independent school participating took some state-funded pupils as well as those paying their own way. (My dad went to one as a state funded pupil)

But Fast forward the last hundred years and all those efforts were disbanded. No more direct grants and no assistanted places.

It seems clear that the original foundation of these schools was clearly charitable and they have been operating under their founding principles to provide education for hundreds of years. It's also clear that there's a serious skew in who benefits from that charitable foundation and although there are still, 400 years later, 30 pupils getting it all for free, the "at cost" people are getting the "rolls-royce" version which is orders of magnitude more luxurious than the original founding benefactor ever intended.

Can any of this be rewound without smashing the principles of charity law that allow charitable bequests to perform good works? Can a fair version of charitably-funded education exist independently of state control?

The huge gulf is from the difference in funding, I think. On a per-pupil basis the total funding allocated to schools for 5-16 year old pupils, in cash terms, in 2023-24 was £7,460 per year.

https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-funding-statistics

Day fee at St Paul's School (chosen at random but founded by the Mercers Company so kind of what you describe): £29,685 per year.

https://www.stpaulsschool.org.uk/admissions/fees/

I just don't know how you can write a charitable charter to get around the fact that some people who have more money choose to pay triple the state allocated funding for their kids' education to get the "rolls royce" version (as well as paying taxes towards the notional state place they are entitled to but not taking up). Property prices are more expensive in areas with better state school catchments for the same reason.

Fundamentally the goverment needs to fund state schools better and improve them. Some v good threads on here with suggestions from teachers that I've read in the last year as well. Private schools and charitable status are a distraction from that huge need.

OP, what makes you think ' the people paying for their education at-cost aren't the original "target audience'

My ds is at a small unfashionable but academic Independent school. I am a single mum, from a free school meals household. My ds is on a maths scholarship meaning I pay lower, but still substantial to me, fees.

All my disposable income and then some, go on fees. My ds has a 'maths head', and was desperate to attend. The state place we were offered was at a school that even Ofsted acknowledged was not safe.

I'd say we are exactly the original target audience

It seems to me that said school is doing today exactly what it did 300 years ago - providing a small number of free places partially subsidised by the endowment but enabled by the fees paid by merchants and bankers to educate their children. It was always a pretty rarified group.

i disagree that education can ever be construed as a ‘luxury’ item - as a society we always benefit from more high quality education, even if the very best education is only available to a few. Education will also never be ‘fair’ in that through genetics, personality, health and wealth some children will have better access to their ideal educational environment. I don’t think we build a stronger society by redistributing the educational resources available today, but by seeking investment (publicly AND privately) in expanding education but up and out.

Is this a VAT on private school fees thread?

Different schools were founded at different times with different intentions. If you are talking about King Henry VI, who founded his school to educate 60 poor boys then it is worth remembering 2 thing. Firstly, their education was intended so that they could become clergy and would pray for his soul, so that he might reduce his years in purgatory (it was before the Reformation). Secondly, the medieval meaning of poor was not what we call poor today. It didn't mean people who are destitute. It meant people who were not landed gentry, so didn't have tutors at home, but who were from wholesome church-going families. The world has changed so much since then. By 1800 it had fee-paying landed gentry attending alongside scholars. It now has over 1,000 students and all of them, including the 60 scholars, pay fees (unless they have been awarded a means-tested bursary - so there are students there who pay nothing - probably more than 60). I suspect Etonians no longer pray for his soul on a daily basis though and very few become members of the clergy. The Medieval mind was very different from our own and I doubt that Henry VI would share 21st century concerns.

Regarding charity status: Both education and healthcare have traditionally been seen as inherently charitable (regardless of the beneficiary) since ancient times. In 1601 this was put into law in England under the Charitable Uses Act, sometimes known as the Statue of Queen Elizabeth. Culturally, we have moved a long way from a world in which education was seen as inherently good and all people as inherently worthy of being recipients of charity, to a world in which charity has a much narrower definition and a world in which education is seen as a luxury worthy of punitive taxes.

That said, you can see why it has happened. Our very old and well-endowed independent schools have become inordinately expensive. Many professions that enabled families to afford to send three children to private schools on a single income forty years ago have been price out. Today, those same professions might afford one set of school fees in a two income household in which one income is dedicated entirely to paying school fees. Schools are probably partly to blame for this. There has been an arms race in providing expensive new facilities. However, school fees have risen alongside house price increases, mortgage rate increases, utility bill increases and frozen income tax bands, so a lot of people have much less disposable income than they used to.

@ColleenDonaghy I don't think so. I interpreted as a 'what the hell went wrong?' post. The starting point is arguable different for different institutions and a lot of smaller proprietor-owned schools were encouraged to apply for charitable status in the 60s and 70s, having previously been private businesses. All schools back then provided an extremely spartan experience, so there wasn't such an obvious state vs private gap as there is now. Arguable spartan isn't necessarily a good thing, but the massive gap and the resentment that it causes is a huge problem that needs addressing. It depends on what the goal is, but it probably could be addressed more productively and creatively than through taxation.

I don’t think so. The OP talks about charitable status, not VAT.

Sorry I haven't been online while responses came in.

This isn't to do with VAT. I was hoping to attract some people to the thread who believe (as they regularly state on other threads) that it's abhorent for private schools to be charities. I would like to discuss with people holding that view what a private sector school that did warrant and qualify for charitable status might look like.

I don't agree with that position but I do think something has gone wrong with the charitable foundations which were set up to provide education as a charity and have ended up only benefitting the extremely wealthy.

There's a difference between private schools that are charities and private schools that are profit-making.

There's clearly a market for "rolls royce" education with state-of-the-art facilities and nothing but the best for all resources and equipment. However it feels to me that such a market should be served by the profit-making type of school (and I don't have a problem with those profits being taxed).

But it seems to me that the charitable schools should have kept their offering to an excellent but less gold-plated version, and should have done more to keep it aimed at ordinary people rather than the wealthy elite.

I do think the current pupils at the most expensive schools aren't really the "target audience" as I understand it - the families spending £40k pa on school fees now are the ones who would have been having full-time live-in private tutors originally. The charitable schools were supposed to be for those who couldn't afford that, but instead they have increased the cost of what they offer until it's just as unaffordable.

DS is starting private school in August. Trust me, I'm not the wealthy elite. And it will cost £12k a year. And he will get the bus to school. Some of your assumptions on what a private school is seem very Eton-based. There are private schools out there who do charitable work, don't cost £40k a year and aren't full of Rolls Royces pulling up at the school gates.

Private schools vary a lot, but few make much in the way of profits, even those who aren't charitable are not lucrative. The trust based schools charge fees that cover costs, it's very expensive to run a school with such high expectations of parents.

Remember state per pupil fees are not the only money a state school gets, they will get extra for big building projects, for children with additional needs, for training mandated, and crucially have back up from the system where needed. Private schools are on their own, have smaller classes, parents expect better equipment and often things are included that state school kids parents are billed for. My local good private school charges £15k for the top age group (under £10k for juniors) and is forever begging for money off parents

I don’t think your assumption as to the school 300 years ago is correct for all schools. Our village had a 300 year old endowed school but it was for “richer” people like professionals and merchants, and taught Latin, Greek and Religion free of charge.

They also taught more basic stuff like reading and writing etc but parents had to pay for that as it was regarded as parent’s job to teach their kids the basics!

@Heatherbell1978 you mistake my position. I am not anti private school and I have a child at private school myself (not a big expensive famous one, and one where a fifth of pupils get some kind of fee reduction and about a third have some level of SEN that isn't adequately resourced in the state sector). But that's not the kind of school this thread is about.

I am trying to start a conversation with people who don't think private sxhools should have charitable status because I can see that specifically the likes of Eton amd other major well-known boarding schoold aren't perceived as charitable. I am trying to develop ideas for how the private school sector could be developed/regulated to identify what schools need to do to be a genuinely charitable endeavour, and leave space for schools that don't want to operate that way to still do so to meet market demand on a for-profit basis.

I am trying to drill down and identify what aspects of a non-state-run school are charitable and what aren't, and starting from the foundation principles of the charities that some people are onjecting to so vehemently to try to find out at what point things diverged.

What aspects of a private education do you think shouldn’t be considered charitable? In your posts you refer to these schools as ‘luxurious’ and ‘rolls - Royce’ versions of education, but it isn’t clear to me what makes them so other than grand facilities and a wealthier student population. You contrast the £40k fees, but these include boarding, so not really comparable to a £12k per annum day school.

i think it is easy to pick on Eton due to the reputation of its alumni and historical social capital, but I am not sure it is providing anything fundamentally different? I am not intimately familiar with the schools you have in mind, so maybe I am overlooking something? People who self fund education via private school (or topping up around state school or home school) do so because they want (and can afford) something other than the standard vanilla option of state school- whether that is more time with a teacher, better access to subject specialists, a faster pace of study, broader curriculum, different curriculum, more pastoral support, etc. fundamentally education is a societal good, and I think it is dangerous to determine better education as a luxury.

there may be some aspects of school provision that are not education and should theoretically be taxed in line with how those services are normally taxed(meals? Room and board? Transport?) but practically I suspect that would be more trouble than it is worth

The press have attacked Eton College for years because it makes a good story and the uniform is unique and the buildings look beautiful. It is used as a symbol.

However, Eton College is actually the one school that is charitable because 20 per cent of boys receive bursaries AND they do a ton of proper educational outreach and partnerships.

Because one generation of Royals went there and some Conservative politicians, the school has wrongly become fair game for journalistic attacks that people then naively believe across society.

Surely it is a good thing that the very very privileged have to mix with 1:10 boys who are much poorer. I mean at least at that school the very elite is mixing with a different background too.

Most people do not understand charity law and that is that. It is just stupidity.

The reality is that the middle classes who are the most aspirational cannot afford to send their own DCs anymore and they dictate the academic and journalistic narrative. So they end up dictating and manipulating popular opinion. It is as simple as that. However, it is unfair because many of them live in London where the Blair years did make a huge difference to state schools and generally, in London state schools are far better than in the regions. So in the regions the more average private school parents are being unfairly attacked by champagne socialists from London who pretend to send their children to “state” schools, but are in reality sending their children to super successful academies with high attainment or grammar schools.

The addition of the fee paying pupils enabled the school to grow and provide a better and more varied education. A school providing for only 30 free pupils would not be very sustainable. It might only have one teacher.

Presumably once everyone was entitled to a free education, the charitable schools had to increase the quality of their offer so that it was better than the free alternative. If they hadn't done, they would have lost fee-paying pupils whose parents no longer saw any need to pay for their children's education.

A school with only 30 pupils wouldn't be sustainable. There would probably be only one teacher. The quality of its provision would probably be worse than the quality of education in a free school, in which case the 30 free pupils might also decide to go to there.

The only way the charitable school can continue to exist is to compete on quality. In time, the schools also have to compete with other charitable schools - and the quality and diversity of the offer continues to improve. Those who cannot compete fail.

Since I moved to this area, three independent schools within 20 miles have closed and three others have changed their offer by becoming co-ed rather than single sex or by extending their age range.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn05222/

I think this briefing summarises it quite well.

Here is the link to the 2011 case class="underline">ut.decisions.tribunals.gov.uk/Documents/decisions/1_TheISC_v_TheCharityCommission_forEnglandWales.pdf taxandchanceryut.decisions.tribunals.gov.uk/Documents/decisions/1_TheISC_v_TheCharityCommission_forEnglandWales.pdf

I think the courts are right to state that the Charity Commission should not be too prescriptive. Let’s say a small independent in the Midlands somewhere would struggle to provide 10 per cent full bursaries, whereas a richer school may not. I think it would be counterproductive to be too prescriptive.

Universities constituted as charities are regulated differently, for example.

OP do you think private schools should have their own type of regulation separate from the Charity Commission? I think if they were getting public funding as well as raising private school fees there would be an argument for that. I don’t really understand why that is not the case here when they do that in Finland, Germany etc. Each child is entitled to the funding that would be normal for their area and then parents supplement the rest. That would make more sense to me. Regulate them better and give them funding and maybe make them accept that funding for poorer students so there is more of a social mix.
I think it would be a shame to have more and more of them close, if some of them are doing a good job and adding to a community. I don’t think there is as much resentment towards private schools in eg France and I wonder why it is so extreme here.

Fascinating question OP, and a brilliant way of posing it.

EVERY child deserves the “Rolls Royce” “gold plated” education. Every single one.

But.

I can’t see how any government can ever provide that out of taxation alone (although Finland seems to be doing something right). I think that’s where things have gone “wrong”, in answer to the OP’s original question. Setting up a charity school to fund the education of 30 local children in the 17th century is very different from educating millions in today’s world. That charity school wasn’t trying to educate millions of children in the 21st century; it was teaching a few of them to read, write, do maths and some Latin. Those children weren’t ever going to be global bankers or digital marketers or whatever, they were going to work as a clerk or run a (small) farm or a shop in a market town.

Our state education system hasn’t kept up with the demands and challenges of modern society (I take a previous poster’s point about London schools too, and about the narrative in the media from middle class parents who can’t afford London private schools which I find very interesting - I’m from the Shires and schooling down ‘ere isn’t anything like what I read on MN about London schools).

I work in education but am not a teacher.

@Araminta1003 I totally agree with your perspective.

I think you first have to look at what passes as a charity.

Locally there is a business which collects and resells second hand furniture. They have a collection point at the recycling centre and they do house clearances. They sell the furniture on, and not cheaply. The owner takes a healthy 6 figure salary.

They are a charity because they are “keeping things out of landfill”. People donate to them “because they are a charity”.

Im pretty sure 20 years ago they would just have been defined as a business.