Tax breaks for country clubs: why?
Some private schools in England are protesting that in order to benefit from charity tax breaks they are being asked to prove that they offer the public something in return. This post isn’t principally about the ‘public benefit’ test in the Charities Act 2006 (see, I actually provide you with a link to it unlike the BBC 
). Instead, what I would like to ask is why private schools get any tax breaks at all. Yes, they educate children. They also drain teachers, trained at public expense, from the state school system and create significant social division. No matter how many bursariers they offer, private schools are detrimental rather than beneficial to education in the United Kingdom. They are essentially private members’ clubs seeking to offer advantage to the wealthy – and should pay the same rate of tax as any other private enterprise.
1 Private schools don’t “drain” teachers. If the schools didn’t exist, the teachers would still be needed by the state system because pupil numbers would be higher.
2 They don’t “create” social division, they merely reflect it.
3 Private schools save the state the cost of educating their pupils.
4 Private school parents contribute a disproportionate amount of tax, and then don’t use the educational system that they have paid for. That alone deserves recognition – such as charitable status for their schools.
5 Private schools set a high standard for the state system to follow.
6 So, contrary to your somewhat tendentious and misleading arguments (state educated, were you?), the private system makes a huge contribution to the education of children in this country, and well deserves charitable status.
7 There ARE some good arguments against private schools, but you haven’t mentioned them. The main one is that if the elite had to use state schools, they would make damn sure that standards were higher.
Except that given private schools’ lower teacher-to-pupil ratio, a given teacher in a private school is teaching fewer children than he or she would be in a state school
The fact that someone decides not to use a public service does not give them any moral claim over the money paid towards it. Should people who pay for private health care get tax breaks for not using the NHS? Should I get a refund on the tax I pay towards the Trident missiles because the government hasn’t threatened to nuke anyone on my behalf?
As a matter of fact I was, but I was lucky enough to go to one of the few state schools which competes with private schools in league tables.
I’m not suggesting that private schools don’t make a contribution to education. My point was that because of their negative effects on the public at large (drain on state schools, social divisiveness etc.), they should not be given charitable status. An organisation that only benefits its users while harming the wider public is a private members’ club, not a charity.
For a more immediate benefit, we could cancel the tax benefits on private schools and give that money to state schools. But I agree that if all children went to state schools there would be a greater priority given to them in terms of improving standards.