Labour's attack on schools is gesture politics for hard left

A MID fears some 220,000 fee-paying pupils will be forced into the state system, Labour's flagship policy to add VAT to private school fees by removing charitable status will also mean less money for leading schools to offer bursaries to poorer students.

- Tim Newark

How ironic, given that was the kind of bursary Sir Keir Starmer benefitted from during his own school days.

Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves claims the policy will raise £1.7billion to spend on state school improvements, but the cost of funding new places for pupils leaving the independent sector pushed out because many squeezed middle-class parents cannot afford higher fees that the loss of charitable status will incur could cost as much as £1.6billion, mostly wiping out tax gains.

With little to gain fiscally, it's clear the real reason behind Starmer's attack on private schools is to appease the hard left wing of his party.

Labour is a broad church and this is more about gesture politics, to keep class-war socialists on side, than social mobility.

But children's schooling is too valuable to sacrifice to ideology, as Starmer should know.

Coming from a relatively humble background, he passed the 11-plus to win a place at Reigate Grammar School in Surrey. After it became a feepaying school in 1976, the teenage Starmer received a bursary to fund his sixth-form study.