@Indu Pendant

Thank you for taking my sneering comment with good grace.

I agree that private schools should be more open to people on lower incomes. To lay my hand down, I went to a private school on a very generous scholarship. This is actually a growing trend- Many top public schools are funding more and more free places. The state should keep their dead hand off of a good thing!

Having been to boarding school makes you instinctively a libertarian- not because you see how efficient the private sector is- but because there seem to be a lot of pointless rules...

@ Conor

I think that it's 7% of pupils in total, but 15% of A-level candidates.

Yes I think the 15% might be for A levels although did read it somewhere and will try to find the link.

Up until 7 years old there is not a lot of difference between state and private education where parents are pushing on with reading and learning.

But from 8 years the private/ public split appear growning to 18 months by the time of the 11+ entrance to secondary private.

Its why the proportion of kids in private school increases with age --it gets better value for money.

Only 25% of state school kids who try swap at 11+ get a place of choice in a private school. They are so far behind they cant compete. So state kids typically have to have extra-curricular tuition from 9 or 10 to stand a chance of even getting into the private system.

It shows there is missing state educational serivce at 11 years old for bright kids which can subsitute for them going to private school. If it existed then the issue around private schools would disappear.

Indu wrote,

"I dont (sic) accept the private school £100M exists. Its (sic) a spun figure..."

Well, I have a feeling you won't accept any figure other than the one in your head. But you could take a look at the Independent Schools Council's estimate of 12 July 2004:

"In the evidence from the Independent Schools Council sent on 2 June 2004 we quantified the annual fiscal benefits of charitable status as £88 million for ISC charitable schools."

Independent schools: fiscal benefits from charitable status: http://www.isc.co.uk/publication_7_0_0_10_197.htm

So seven years on, £100 million seems about right.

I don't suppose mere facts will change your opinion, however.

@dave C and @Colin

But I'm not disagreeing with the £88M which is the value to schools of charitable status.

I am disagreeing with it being a subsidy by the tax payer because it is not. The tax payer does not pay anything or nor is the tax payer out of pocket.

If charitable status was removed then any surplus made by schools would become taxable subject to corporation tax which how the £88M is calculated.

Hoewever, the chairty's surplus is not a profit and charities are required by law to apply the money to good causes including re-investing it in education.

As soon as schools lose charitable status then the surplus will be legally profit and will belong to the owners of the businesses (the schools would no longer have non profit earning trustees and equivalents who would be replaced by shareholders).

The surplus reinvested would be diminished - schools would put up fees to cover this so that an additional tax burden would be transferred to the parents. But the parents have already pay tax as school fees are paid out of out of post tax income - ie there would be double taxing. This is one of the reasons Labour has U turned.

I think you believe private schools make lots of profits tax free that are paid to the proprietors and shareholders. It is simply the case. That is the model Labour wanted to implement.

A lot of private schools use surpluses for bursaries and scholarships which provide opportunities for less well off kids. That is another reason for the U turn.

Perhaps you would be happier if the super rich sent their kids overseas to be educated whilst any chance that joe public might get to go private is taken away from them? We could lose the overseas income too from foreign kids (another reason for the U turn).

So what happened to the public benefit test?

Private schools face losing charitable status over lack of free places: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jul/14/charity-status-fees-priv...

Force the posh schools to take more from disadvantaged backgrounds, then they would be charities. Now they are not, unless charity means generosity and helpfulness especially toward the wealthy or priveleged.

OMG - Labour has come up with a sensible policy. I'm shocked - whats going on?

Please can we put the record straight.

There are a tiny less than 1% who can afford to send their kids to elite tier of posh schools like Eton, Harrow Rodeen. But most private schools are not anything like that.

But around 15% of people send their kids private.

Take out the posh schools and the average normal private school costs £9k per year per kid pre year 7 and 11k for senior schools. There are scholarship and support bright kids or kids with a talent like music.

Its within the means of millions of determined upper working class families who are not rich - I've seen it done many times.

The vast majority of the families who send their kids private are not rich and it is a complete and utter ball buster - it means years of sacrifices, sacrifices, sacrifices. It means having only 1 or 2 kids, 30 year mortgage, beans on toast, living cheap and not having fancy holidays or play stations. But hundreds of thousands of people are doing it.

Gordon hated with passion ordinary people breaking the chains and sending their kids private. He did not see us being free or having the right to make that choice for ourselves.

Gordon went on a savage crusade against the private sector like the power drunk greedy mindless biggoted bastard he was - at least as divisive as the Thatcher poll tax.

I know immigrant families who have come to the UK with nothing, grafted for a generation, done private school and the next generation have broken into the professions. What kind of corrupted cancerous political movement would try to put an end to that?

Well done EM for sticking up for the aspiring working class. You've won a bit of respect here.

Go the next step and be a proper socialist by helping the next layer down below the 15% rather than trying attack and level down the 15%.

@david
Correct about me. A really crap state school. Not not so of my kids.

The article is a bit ambiguous - I read it possibly meaning a £100M subsidy to the tax payer (a £100M saved through not state educating private school kids).

My argument is that it would be progressive to give the £100M to tax payers (who send kids private) as an allowance as it would extend the capacity of lower income people to send their kids private.

*legitimate charitable purpose

does this 'advantage' off 100 million include the saving to the state of not sending the kid to state school?
Also, it's alot of bang for the busk isn't it? and an export? I don't get why this is such a big deal-there's loads of stuff i diagree that my tax is spent on, much more than 100 million... Is this about envy? (groan). Asians are laughing their heads off on this one

I know many parents who play the tax credits system and use the money to send there kids to private schools, they get over 900 pounds a month in tax credits which covers the private school bills, all this is legitimate you just need to know how to play the system.

Indu,

You seem very worried about the deficit in many of your other postings.

One way of reducing it is to cut 'corporate welfare' such as tax breaks to businesses. In the case of private schools, this amounts to £100 million a year. Why should one type of business (a private school) get a tax break but not another?

They should only get charitable status if they can prove that they're principally undertaking charitable work. Some private schools will be, but most are just businesses.