The change would, we were warned, spark an immediate exodus of private school pupils into the state sector. This would be so severe, private school leaders insisted, that 20 per cent of all pupils in private education would likely be forced to move into an already struggling state system.
Almost a year on, how has this catastrophe unfolded? Of course, it hasn’t. In fact, all the dire predictions seem to have been wrong.
So why, we might well ask, were these fictitious threats awarded so much weight? Why were people told, repeatedly and without any real evidence, that Labour’s VAT policy would be a disaster for the nation’s schoolchildren? Why were exaggerated warnings from private schools treated as fact rather than what it now seems they were: highly inflated, alarmist claims designed to protect their own financial interests?
It is no coincidence that many of the country’s editors, commentators and media executives have children at private schools. Those with power and influence care more about issues affecting independent schools than most people do. If the governing classes were sending their children to their local comprehensives then maybe Britain’s state system might get more attention instead. But mostly they aren’t, and so it doesn’t.
It is class stereotypes that explain why Britain’s elitist private schools are still treated as bastions of our cultural heritage and beacons of academic excellence, even though many are neither. And it is why representatives of independent schools are heeded as trusted and valued experts on Britain’s education system, while education union leaders who represent half a million school teachers are dismissed as troublesome and ill-informed vested interests.
Were this not the case, perhaps the crisis in Britain’s state schools would have been deemed worthy of as much attention as Labour’s tax hike on private schools. Sadly, it wasn’t and still isn’t.
State schools did get one short moment in the spotlight in 2023, when it was found that 232 of them contained dangerous concrete that was prone to collapse. But even then, it has barely been reported that, as of this January, 202 of those 232 schools – 87 per cent of those affected – had still not had the dangerous materials removed.
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But the starkest and most shameful evidence of how private schools are deemed more worthy of attention than their state counterparts lies in the conversation about children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Labour’s announcement about applying VAT to private schools triggered a cascade of warnings about the devastating impact on their SEND pupils if they were forced to move into the state sector. The concern is a valid one: in general, independent schools are far better equipped to support pupils with special needs, who may not get the attention they need in the state system.
Talk to parents of SEND children, as I regularly do on my LBC show, and the stories are crushing. Countless children having their education stunted because schools cannot give them the support they need. Desperate parents left feeling helpless and alone as they watch their children get more and more isolated and dejected. Councils that seem to be automatically rejecting any request for SEND support, knowing that most parents won’t have the resources to fight the decision in the courts. How must those long-suffering parents feel, knowing that much of the British establishment only seems to care about the crisis in SEND support now that a small number of private school pupils’ might now be exposed to it?
The British establishment’s obsession with private schools runs deep. Let us hope that one day the crisis in Britain’s state schools – this one real, rather than imagined – will be treated with the same seriousness.
Ben Kentish presents his LBC show from Monday to Friday at 10pm, and is a former Westminster editor
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