Don’t bash private schools for educating oligarch kids

Bashing fee-paying schools is a popular sport – and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is as good an excuse as any to engage in it. Labour MP Ian Mearns has called for schools to lose their charitable status if they take fees from oligarchs linked to the Putin regime. Meanwhile, Tory MP Nickie Aiken has said oligarch kids should be sent back to Russia. Yet these claims risk painting a misleading picture of Russian children at British schools. The reality is that many Russian children educated at our top private schools have nothing to do with Putin, so it’s wrong to punish them for his war.

There are around 2,300 Russian children at Britain’s fee paying schools, according to the Independent Schools Council’s 2021 census. But if my experience is anything to go by, taking that figure and extrapolating that these schools are rammed full of the offspring of oligarchs is nonsense. 

I have two boys, aged nine and 13.