Is Labour closing RHS? – Esme Peters
Time to panic everybody, RHS will be shutting down, you’re all being kicked out, and all our land is going to be sold to a strange man with a fetish for large clocks.
No, not really.
However, if you ask the Labour Party they may tell you that is exactly what they want to do. The Labour party’s annual conference is currently going on, and has now agreed a part of their next manifesto is the move to abolish all private schools. This decision follows on from the party’s decision to overhaul school inspections in England by abolishing Ofsted.
The policy would involve stripping private schools of their charitable status and tax privileges, and ensuring that universities admit only a number of private school students that is proportional to their prevalence in the wider population (7%). The motion also included redistributing their endowments, investments and properties to the state sector. The campaign #abolishEton has been building momentum for a couple of months now (note the political pun) but has now become official Labour policy after passing with overwhelming floor support at the Labour conference.
Commenting on the victory, Momentum national coordinator Laura Parker said, “This is a huge step forward in dismantling the privilege of a tiny, Eton-educated elite who are running our country into the ground. Every child deserves a world class education, not only those who are able to pay for it”. A main argument for the radical move is that many believe that private school sits at the core of, and perpetuates, social inequality.
However, the obvious flaw in this is, I would suggest, clear from the hashtag. If Labour and the campaigners behind this move genuinely believe Eton is representative of private schools all around the country, then they do not understand what they are campaigning against. Eton college is £14,167 per term plus a £2,100 joining fee. This is obviously a lot of money, therefore it is no wonder campaigners believe private school is only for the wealthy elite. However on the flip side Eton currently has 73 pupils paying absolutely nothing for their education. In fact in 2016-17, the total amount spent on fee remission at Eton College will have totalled approximately £6,400,000. This kind of free education in an establishment such as Eton is only possible due to its charitable status, something Labour wishes to remove.
To me this kind of policy reveals the very worst in left wing thinking. In seeking a more equal society Labour is bringing society down rather than seeking to boost everybody upwards. I understand the desire for a meritocracy and, I understand that privileged children have an unfair foot up in life. Everybody deserves the best start possible, and being in a position of privilege should not be the only way to do well. However, what if Labour were to spend the time and money they plan to spend on closing and redistributing private schools into improving state schools.
The UK independent sector as a whole educates around 630,000 children in around 2,500 schools. I would argue that removing children from these schools and putting them into the state sector doesn’t achieve equality at all, it merely exasperates the already overworked state sector. I say all this realising I am in a position of privilege, as I go to a private school and am therefore in a position to get the benefits from that.
Those who choose to send their children to private school are not sending them there based on some magic money tree they grow in their back gardens (note yet another political pun); the majority of parents have made sacrifices and work very hard to send their children into private education. Labour are choosing to call this the ‘parentocracy’ – ‘a system in which a child’s education must conform to the wealth and wishes of parents rather than the abilities and efforts of the pupil’. However, as my parents learnt early on, parents can push you to do things and they can make you join clubs; but unless you as an individual are willing to put your all into it, these experiences can be entirely fruitless.
There is also the fact that good schools raise house prices, there are currently 164 grammar schools in the UK, the house prices in these areas rise because of parents desire to send their children to these places. For example the Henrietta Barnett School (which is ranked as the top grammar school in the UK) is located in the Hampstead Garden Suburb in London. I did some house price searching (which was weirdly exciting, I’m officially ‘adulting’) and the overall average price is £1,414,333. Now just in case of any doubt, that’s a lot of money.
What is more unequal – parents sending their children to private school (averaging £17,000 a year as of 2018) or parents paying millions to live in a house close to a top grammar school then paying even more money to receive the amount of needed tutoring as to secure a place?
I do see this is an issue very much open to personal opinion, for example I’m sure Jezza Corbyn would disagree with me. However, to me, no matter what the maths and ideological reasoning behind the decision to add such policy to the Labour party’s manifesto, my main point would be that children (and all children) deserve the very best life has to offer. Governments would be well advised to spend money seeking to give everyone the very best, not taking it away from a few as to achieve minimal benefit for anyone.
I believe that all private and state school children should all be offered transformative and eye opening opportunities. A Government, or a party aspiring towards Government, should be seeking to create, not take away these opportunities.
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