Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner has promised that if Labour wins the next election it will use its first budget to ‘immediately close the tax loopholes used by elite private schools and use that money to improve the lives of all children.’ This slab of red meat went down well with the class warriors at the party’s conference in Brighton, where there were doubtless plenty of teachers in attendance, but it wasn’t enough. Labour conference not only voted to withdraw charitable status from private schools, but to abolish them altogether. This was described, rather euphemistically, as ‘integrating all private schools into the state sector’ by Holly Rigby of the not remotely euphemistic Abolish Eton campaign.
The objective of the first policy is plainly undermined by the second. There can be no redistribution from the tax-dodging toffs who are presumed to pay school fees if there are no fee-paying schools. Far from freeing up money to improve the state sector, Labour’s policy will put a further strain on the the education budget.
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