The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Britain’s opposition party wants to ban private schools, citing ‘grotesque’ inequality

September 23, 2019 at 11:47 a.m. EDT
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell delivers his keynote speech on the third day of the Labour Party conference in Brighton, England, on Sept. 23. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

With Britain’s impending exit from the European Union just weeks away, supporters of the opposition Labour Party gathered in Brighton for their annual conference over the weekend.

But even as the divisive issue of Brexit dominated the discourse in the seaside town, Labour members found common ground on another idea as big, bold and, in some minds, bad: a proposal to ban private education

Members were asked to consider a motion supported by groups on the left that would see the party pledge to “integrate all private schools into the state sector.” 

This would mean, the motion argued, that the British government should end tax privileges for private schools, force universities to limit their acceptance of private school students, and allow private school assets to be “redistributed democratically and fairly.”

The decision was near unanimous. Offered to the floor Sunday, hundreds of hands shot up across the room to show they were in favor of the idea. Only a handful of party members appeared to be against it.

“That’s carried,” said member of Parliament Shabana Mahmood, approving the proposal.

Despite the matter-of-fact reception, the plan is a radical departure for Labour, Britain’s main opposition party. The left-wing party has long taken aim at the inequalities of education, but it has never supported a pledge on private education as all-encompassing as this.

Since 2015, Labour has been led by Jeremy Corbyn, a former grass-roots activist who is beloved among the party leadership but controversial among the broader public. Senior members of Corbyn’s team have come out in support of the plan.

“Let’s have one education service for everyone, let’s end this grotesque level of inequality in our education system and let’s integrate those schools,” member of Parliament John McDonnell told Sky News Monday.

There may be some down-to-earth political strategy beneath the proposal’s lofty rhetoric. Many in Britain expect a general election within the year, but before then, the country is likely to leave the E.U. on Oct. 31.

Labour has struggled to find a Brexit policy that satisfies its supporters. At the party conference in Brighton, there was sometimes a sense that they wanted to talk about anything but Brexit. There was talk not only of education reform, but also of new environmental policies and even a potential four-day working week.

Abolish Eton, a campaign that promotes a ban on private schooling, noted that for once, Britain’s newspapers weren’t focused on Britain leaving the E.U.

“Brexit? What’s Brexit?” the campaign wrote Monday on Twitter.

But like so much else in Britain, the issue of private schools can hardly escape Brexit.

Britain’s referendum on leaving the European bloc was called by David Cameron, the prime minister who went to one elite private school — Eton College — where annual fees top $50,000 per year, in response to political pressure from political activist Nigel Farage, who attended another with similar fees — Dulwich College.

Britain’s current prime minister, Boris Johnson, himself a pro-Brexit campaigner, also attended Eton; he was a contemporary of Cameron both there and at Oxford University.

Laura Parker, national coordinator of the Corbyn-supporting campaign group Momentum, said in a statement that a move to abolish private schools would be a “huge step forward in dismantling the privilege of a tiny, Eton-educated elite who are running our country into the ground.”

Critics of Labour pointed out that Corbyn himself was educated privately for part of his schooling. However, his feelings about education may be deeply held: British papers reported in 1999 that his second marriage broke down because he insisted on sending his son to a local state school.

Private schools have long been a flash point in the debate in Britain over social mobility. Even though only 7 percent of the British population are educated at Britain’s fee-paying private schools, those who do attend are disproportionately represented in the upper echelons of British society.

In the Guardian, historian David Kynaston and economist Francis Green wrote that the “proportion of prominent people in every area who have been educated privately is striking, in some cases grotesque. From judges (74 percent privately educated) through to MPs (32 percent), the numbers tell us of a society where bought educational privilege also buys lifetime privilege and influence.”

The authors argued that although many other countries have private schools, Britain’s sector is unique among affluent countries as it’s “especially exclusive to the rich.” Many of the oldest and most prestigious private schools, including Eton and Dulwich, are also all male.

Policy and practice about private schools differs widely from country to country. There are some states where the use of private schools is more common than in Britain: In Japan, for example, 30 percent of students attend private schools independent of government funding, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

But there are others where private schools barely exist. In Ireland, private schools are rare, as all teachers’ salaries are paid by the state, and in Finland, restrictions on what fees a school can charge limit the reach of private schools.

But the practicalities of Labour’s plan, if implemented, would be immense. McDonnell said that the absorption of 2,500 independent schools into the state sector would happen “over time.”

Matthew Adshead, vice chair of the Independent Schools Association, which represents about 470 private schools in Britain, said the pledge was “worrying” and “hard to fathom.”

Speaking Monday on BBC Radio 4, he added that “it seems quite incredulous that in 2019 I’m discussing whether my private land will be seized and redistributed. It doesn’t feel like I’m living in the U.K. anymore.”

Adam reported from London.

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