Independent shcools and tax relief

janerowena If you take that argument to its logical conclusion, then those who have private health insurance should not pay as much tax because they're not using the NHS, or compensation should be available to people who don't commute by train, who don't have children, etc., etc. There are things that I would prefer not to pay for through my taxes - the monarchy, defence spending, etc., but we can't just pick out the bits we want to pay for.

Private education reinforces the divisions in society and makes it less cohesive. For that reason I believe, it should not be encouraged by the state by being given charitable status.

Since there seems to be general agreement that there are just as many good teachers to be found in state schools as in private schools, I think it might be more constructive to campaign for facilities in state schools to be improved to the standard of the best private ones.
Perhaps if so many of the state school playing fields hadn't been sold off, the comparison wouldn't be being made.

I consider myself very fortunate to have had a place at a school which was founded as a charity for the orphaned children of Warehousemen and Clerks in Manchester. When I was there in the sixties, it was a direct grant school and 60% of the places were funded by local authorities. Most of the pupils. like me. were from very ordinary backgrounds, but the ethos of the school was such that no one cared what your background was. There was a liberal atmosphere, we were expected to aspire to the values of the Manchester Guardian and one of the highlights of my sixth form years was Brian Redhead coming to speak to us.
Direct grant schools and the later assisted places scheme were abolished and the school now provides bursaries, but most pupils are fee-paying.
Recently I went to the annual dinner for old pupils, and the headteacher in her after dinner speech said that the aim of the school was to provide a values-based education.
I would like to think that state schools do the same, but wonder whether this is possible given the target-based culture which seems to prevail now.

jane I think perhaps we are talking at cross purposes. The school that you attended was, as you say, set up for children who had experienced the death of a parent. In the past, schools set up by certain trade associations were, I believe, quite common, as were housing "villages" for retired people.

I don't believe mega-rich people are sending their children to the sort of school to which you refer. They are going to the very expensive schools which have fantastic facilities and where the vast majority of pupils come from very privileged backgrounds.

Despite the fact that these schools are in effect very successful businesses, they are still treated as charities. Many of them do not fulfil their obligation to form meaningful relationships with state schools. My view is that it is impossible to properly monitor this and it would make more sense to just abolish charitable status.

As another poster said, some small private schools are actually substantially inferior to state schools. These ineffective schools benefit neither their pupils nor the country. In such cases, the only people to benefit from the tax relief is the owners.

I went to a secondary modern school in Romford, a fairly "working class" area. Even though the general feeling at that time was that nothing much could be expected of 11+ failures, it was a happy, well managed school and we too were taught to show consideration to other people and to contribute to our own community as well as support overseas charities. I can't see why targets in state schools should prevent such values being promoted - though I agree the excessive concentration on targets is depressing.

There's such an atmosphere of it not being cool to work hard and do well at so many state schools, though. By taking children out of that environment they just get on with it, because they got told off far more by their parents if they don't do well. All that wasted money. There's also far less going off sick and virtually no truancy.

We nearly bankrupted ourselves to keep DS (short-term memory loss but brilliant) at his schools. If his fees had been any higher at any point I suspect we would have had to give up. We had to borrow money quite a few times. We were by no means the only ones. State schools are just too big and ungainly now, DS would have fallen by the wayside and been dismissed as lazy - at one state school they refused to believe he had a memory problem and accused him of lying. They hadn't bothered to read his assessment sheet and he kept ending up in detention, being punished for having a bad memory. That's the sort of thing that forces people like us on only a teacher's salary to do their best in any way possible. Yes, we were lucky in that we were able to borrow on our mortgage and from family, but we still have to pay it back.