As part of Keir Starmer’s new financial plan he's set his sights on the private education sector, with a view to taxing them less like a charity, and more like a business. This would bring the rest of the UK more in line with the Scottish education system, which stripped private schools of some charitable exemptions from business rates, with exceptions being made for schools solely educating disabled students and those with additional support needs.

The proposed tax increase has caused an outcry from both politicians and many parents paying for private education, but a survey of the Scottish public by Savanta found 16% opposed the proposed taxation, 24% had no opinions about it, and 52% said they would be in favour.

Within the manifesto put forward by Labour, they made a commitment that the additional revenue generated by enforcing business rates and VAT would be put directly into the public school system, helping to redress the discrepancy between the average fee spent on a student in private education (£15,200 per year) and the yearly amount afforded to each state-educated student (£8,000).

Labour have predicted raising £1.7billion from the scheme, adding that £150million of this money would be invested specifically in the Scottish public school system, money which is sorely needed right now, however the revenue ends up being generated.

On paper, the reasons parents give for choosing private schools for their children make perfect sense, and reflect a natural desire to give their kids the very best start in life: children with support needs that public schools haven't been able to meet, smaller class sizes and higher contact time, more resources and better opportunities. These are the same concerns raised by thousands of teachers operating within the state school system, which have continually gone unheard.

Surveys done by the EIS, the Educational Institute of Scotland, are a damning indictment of the way the teachers in our state schools are being treated; 98% said they work above their contracted hours, with 1% reporting they were “very satisfied” with the workload they were given.

Teachers are making their needs very clear: more classroom assistants who provide vital intervention, particularly for disabled students and those with additional support needs, smaller class sizes, a more manageable workload, and more funding for classroom resources, as 69% reported using their own money to subsidise equipment, clothing, food, excursions and meet the basic needs of children in their care.

One of the most common arguments in favour of private schooling is that when it comes to education, if you can afford to give your children more opportunities, why wouldn't you? The statistics don’t lie – students who attended private schools were more than twice as likely to get a place at a top university, with the graduate salaries of those establishments often far exceeding that of other universities. Sadly, only seven percent of British kids are fortunate enough to be bought this potential lifelong advantage over their peers.

Read more

Lennie Pennie: Old and young can work together to beat the bigots

Lennie Pennie: Baby Reindeer and the painful truth about making art out of trauma

Former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is quoted as having said parents who privately educate their children “work hard to aspire for a better life for them and their family”, saying that the proposed tax was a “class war” and was being used to “punish aspirational parents”. That will hopefully come as a consolation to the 70% of children currently living in poverty in Scotland from working families – all their parents need to do is work harder and aspire more.

Perhaps it is not parents who need harder work and higher aspirations, but the government, who have the power not only to level the playing field educationally so no child is disadvantaged by their familial income, but also by ensuring wages are sufficient so that their parents have the luxury of a future filled not with trepidation, but aspiration.

Perhaps it’s important to note that for any parents wishing to send their child to the same school that educated Rishi Sunak, an establishment proud to have “produced no fewer than six chancellors of the Exchequer”, it will set you back almost 50 grand per year (before any increase in taxes), which, just for fun is nearly 20 grand more than the yearly wages of the average worker in Scotland.

It is not love, aspiration, or hard work that separates parents who can send their children to private school from those who cannot, it is money, it is opportunity, and it is luck. For every family forgoing holidays abroad and car upgrades in order to pay for their child to attend private school, there are thousands more for whom these luxuries were never an option in the first place.

What incentive is there to tax private schools in order to improve state education, when those who have traditionally been occupying the highest offices in the country, making the decisions, have been privately educated? Of the 58 Prime Ministers of the UK to date, 20 of them were educated at Eton, which now charges up to £50,000 per year.

Many people rebut the notion that financial barriers are insurmountable when it comes to private education, citing scholarships and bursaries helping to level the playing fields of Eton, allowing “gifted” students the chance to earn a place at prestigious educational establishments. Keir Starmer himself attended a fee-paying school on one such bursary.

Affording scholarships only to students who demonstrate academic promise might seem like a great way to help redress the balance, but it ensures that only the learners who thrive in their current academic environment are able to access these additional opportunities, support and resources which could prove useful and even essential to learners who do not immediately demonstrate the requisite academic prowess to be deemed “gifted”.

(Image: Eton)

If parents can pay to give their children a better quality of education than the state can provide, to offer more opportunities, better predicted outcomes, and a higher quality of life, this represents a failing of the state education system. Not by teachers, staff and those working tirelessly to ensure students’ needs are met, to stretch limited budgets and to make the best of the situation in which they find themselves, but the government.

If we are to say, as a society, that the best possible education that we could give to a child costs £15,000 per year, then that is exactly the quality of education every child should receive from the state. Families who can afford it should not have to pay in order to achieve this quality, and families who cannot should not miss out.

In an ideal world education would not be run like a business, but in this world, perhaps it should be taxed like one.