This article appears as part of the Lessons to Learn newsletter.

This week, we’ve been reporting that two of Scotland’s private schools are closing down for good.

First up was Cedars School in Greenock, which we’d started hearing rumours about at the end of the last week. It’s a very small Christian school that was first established in 1999 by Struthers Memorial Church, but will now formally close on Friday 27th September.

On the same day that this news was breaking, Kilgraston School in Perthshire – the country’s only Catholic boarding school, and one which catered exclusively to girls in the senior phase – announced that its doors are now permanently closed.

Opponents of Labour’s plans to introduce VAT on private school fees have been quick to jump on both closures as an example of the terrible damage that is going to be done in the pursuit of what they like to call ‘the politics of envy’. The truth is a bit different.

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Cedars School has been struggling to attract pupils for some time, and last year had just 76 of them. Even when full, however, it only had a capacity for 120 pupils across primary 1 to S6. It had to increase fees by 10 percent recently following a review of its financial position, and even had to make some staff redundant.

As for Kilgraston School, it almost closed a year ago due to financial problems, and was only saved at the last minute by the fact that parents were able to raise more than £1m in 48 hours. The real rescue plan, however, involved the sale of the school to a Chinese-owned business – and that has now collapsed. As a result, it has been decided that the school has “no choice but to close”.

Even without Labour’s VAT plans, it is not at all clear that Kilgraston or Cedars would have survived for much longer.

But whatever the reasons behind them, it is undeniably the case that Scotland has seen two private schools announce closure in the same week.

The question, however, is whether or not this is a particular problem.


The most obvious issue with private schools closing is that the pupils need to go somewhere, and this raises potential logistical issues. People sometimes assume that every pupil leaving a private school will end up in the state sector, but that's unlikely to be even close to true, and many will find themselves enrolled in another private institution instead.

Obviously if every single private school closed down at once it would cause problems, because even if state schools do have room for nearly 30,000 more children and young people, the demand would not be evenly spread across the country.

There are parts of Scotland that probably wouldn’t even notice if every private school disappeared overnight, but other councils – most obviously Edinburgh – would probably find themselves in a more difficult position. But that’s only in the ultra-extreme circumstances of all schools closing, or at least a very large proportion of them doing so, and that just isn’t going to happen.

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And of course even if it were going to happen, you’d still need to balance out the immediate negatives with the long-term positives.

For example, what do we think would happen to the quality of Scottish education overall if every single parent, including all the wealthiest, most powerful, and best-connected people in the country, who until now decided that state provision wasn’t good enough for their children, suddenly had a direct stake in the public school system?

Aside from big-picture concerns like this, some people are worried about the impact on individuals – especially pupils.

It would be difficult not to have sympathy for young people having to cope with their school closing and, quite possibly, being separated from their friends on a day-to-day basis.

This is especially true because it’s unlikely to be the pupils who chose to take a risk by paying for a private school – which is, let's not forget, a business that could fail – instead of using the state system, but they'll be the ones bearing the brunt of the consequences. Whether those children are going to another private school, or transferring into the state sector, they deserve lots of support and understanding.

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But that impact still isn’t a particularly good argument against Labour’s decision that VAT will apply to private school fees.

At the end of the day, paying thousands and thousands of pounds a year for private schooling – whether you do so with barely a dent in your bank balance or after lots of saving and budgeting – is by definition a luxury expense, and it doesn’t really make any sense to apply a lucrative tax break on such spending. That money would be better spent elsewhere.

Will there be consequences to the decision? Of course.

Will some of them be negative for individuals affected? Without a doubt.

But that’s the case when you tackle pretty much any injustice, so sometimes you just need to get on with it.