Labour leadership hopeful David Miliband has called for charitable status to be withdrawn from private schools.
Miliband (pictured) made the call in his blog, in which he mapped out his thoughts on this week’s emergency Budget.
He said it was wrong to consider scrapping the child trust fund while continuing to ‘subsidise’ private schools:
“Everyone agrees tough decisions have to be made on public spending over the coming years. But I am absolutely clear that the poorest in our society should not be forced to pay the price of the recklessness of the richest. That’s why we should look for savings at the top, not the bottom,” he said.
“For instance, taking money from the poorest children – by scrapping the child trust fund, even from kids in care – while continuing to subsidise private schools to the tune of £100m a year is just wrong. That’s half a billion pounds over the lifetime of a parliament. We should be looking at savings like that rather than cutting jobs and hospitals.”
Fee-paying schools used to get automatic charitable status. However under Labour and the passing of the Charities Act 2006, private schools now have to demonstrate public benefit to the wider public, such as giving bursaries to children from poorer families, to qualify for charitable status.
The Charity Commission, which is implementing the Charities Act 2006, has been criticised by the independent school sector and some politicians for its take on assessing public benefit.
The education secretary Michael Gove last year claimed he would enter “immediate talks” with the Commission to ask them to “soften its line on reviewing independent schools' charitable status” after two private schools were rejected charitable status applications on account of providing insufficient bursaries for poorer students.
The Sunday Times also reported this month that Gove asked Department for Education officials to talk to the Commission about placing less emphasis on bursaries when assessing the public benefit of fee-paying schools and give more credit to non-financial benefits such as sharing teachers and facilities with state schools.
The Department for Education told Civil Society that the story was just speculation.
