Independent thinking: private schools need reinvention, not abolition

It is one of those ancient mysteries: why has no Labour government been able to abolish private schools? Harold Wilson didn’t spare grammar schools (and nor did Edward Heath’s government, which followed). New Labour, too, for all its reforming zeal, never dared disembowel the independent sector. When the party did promise to do so – in 1983 and 2019 – it lost heavily.

But are private schools about to run out of luck? For once we have a Labour opposition which is threatening to end their charitable status – and which also looks as if it will cruise to victory at the next general election. Labour’s pre-manifesto has promised to end tax breaks in order to ‘fund our vision for the education system’. It has suggested that it hopes to raise £1.7 billion in this way – mostly by charging VAT on school fees and by ending exemptions from business rates.