The Fall of the Public School?

I can’t help but think that when this government came up with the idea of revoking charitable status for fee-paying schools that they envisioned something similar to my expectations. I doubt they built a carefully modelled simulation which I would like to think I would have done in their position, though I admit I probably would have just gone with my assumptions. My assumption was that these schools turned a decent profit and that the tax burden would eat slightly into said profits and result in a small increase in cost to parents. I was wrong, and furthermore, I don’t believe that the closure of schools was the intention of the government in enacting this policy. I think they misjudged it too.

I read today about the closure of a Steiner School co-founded by Tilda Swinton.

Last week I heard that my sister’s old school was closing.

The saddest story I’ve heard so far is of one of my students who had a school unexpectedly close at the end of year ten, fins a suitable place at a new school for that one to announce closure as he sat his GCSEs!

The factors that have led to this situation are complex; they should have been predictable, but as they say, hindsight is 20:20. The schools faced the impending cost of tax and a choice as to wear that money would come from. Some parents were priced out of the market immediately. Some had scrimped and saved to provide their child with a place in a school that could accommodate the additional needs, only to find the goalposts had moved. The problem of course seems obvious now. With these families priced out of the market the schools have less income, and the problem becomes self-perpetuating.

And through it all I feel that the biggest problem is that the provision in most state schools is inadequate and overstretched and, as a result of fee-paying school closures, more and more children are to be packed into over subscribed schools unable to accommodate the additional support some of these students require.

I always feel myself tainted with hypocrisy in these conversations. I believe every child deserves the right to the best education. I like the Finnish model in which fee-paying schools are outlawed (I quite like the idea that in that model I would be an outlaw). I believe in an equal society. I would vote for a truly egalitarian system where every child gets an equally superb education… But I went to a fee-paying school, and I would send my children to a fee-paying school too. Hypocrisy, I know but I want the best for my kids and, at the moment, I don’t feel that the state system can provide that.

I’m not bashing the state system (any more than usual), I’m not saying that fee-paying schools should be tax exempt. I don’t have a solution, or even any particular agenda. I’m just frustrated as I am sure many of you are. I suppose I just wanted to share that frustration.

One of the Country's Oldest Schools to Close