Memorandum from the Socialist Educational
Association (DCH 45)
CHARITABLE STATUS
AND PRIVATE,
FEE-CHARGING
SCHOOLS
SEA welcomes the redirection of charity towards
the notion of "Public Benefit". We feel, however, that
at this stage this is far too loosely defined, and that this must
be addressed, particularly with regard to the claims of private,
fee-charging schools, with which we are, not unsurprisingly, particularly
concerned.
For example, what is meant by "public"?
In our view this means that a service or provision is available
to all members of the public on an equal basis, a general good,
not restricted by inordinate cost beyond the reach of most people
or by means of test/interview which confines availability to a
small group or segment within the community, identifiable on the
grounds of ability or social class. In a recent poll, a very large
percent said they would send their child to a private school IF
THEY COULD AFFORD IT.
How is "benefit" defined and to what
extent has it to be conferred to earn charitable status? The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights says that "everyone is entitled
to all the freedoms . . . without distinctions of any kind".
We feel that to be meaningful in the context of charitable status
the service or provision should comprise the main activity of
the charitable organisation, not a few peripheral activities at
minimal cost separate from its raison d'etre, which is more akin
to "image" creation, or "crumbs from the rich man's
table". Thus the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals spends its whole time doing just that; many private
schools, on the other hand, cater only for the children of some
of the most privileged in our society, not benefiting the public
at all. Most of those activities they outline in "Good Neighbours"
to justify their claim to offer public benefit are extra-mural
activities that most maintained schools do as a matter of course
and do not include what the private schools actually do, a tacit
acceptance of this argument. Instead they list a number of peripheral
activities which, if ceased, would make no difference to the operation
of the schools, and a large number do not even do that. 417 of
the 861 private schools do nothing if not funded by Government;
only 96 out of 189 applications for Government aid have been successful
since 1997. Furthermore, this "public benefit" must
be applied on a regular basis to qualify for what is currently
£120 million per annum of public funding. It cannot be incidental
or sporadic. This raises questions about how far it can be "voluntary"
and whether norms must be established, to be achieved consistently.
Having said that, we can envisage the possibility
of an organisation's work being partially charitable, earning
tax relief on those parts of its work which comply. Thus the four
private schools in Bedford run by the Harpur Trust would be entitled
to tax relief on £450k of current expenditure (1.3% of turnover),
which they devote to running some almshouses and providing a few
grants to local organisations including some maintained schools.
This undoubted public benefit should not be used to provide a
blanket exemption from taxes, currently worth £1 million
pa, for the rest of their expenditure.
The best solution would be for these schools
to abandon selection by cost and/or examination, making their
provision equally available to the whole public—and thus
often honouring the intentions of the original benefactor. We
would then have less objection to charitable status.
But until this happens, because of the wide
variety of private schools, each case must be examined on its
merits, with very careful estimation of what constitutes public
benefit and what does not, especially as 227 out of 861 private
schools seem to manage without charitable status.
There must be no blanket rejection or acceptance
for the sector as a whole. It is very important that we get this
right; it is possible that some private schools provide genuine
benefit to the public, because what they do as their main business
is equally available to all members of the public. They deserve
charitable status. On the other hand, there are undoubtedly many
private schools such as Eton, Harrow et al which do no more than
provide a luxury education for a very restricted and carefully
delineated segment of our society by means of policies which specifically
exclude the majority of the public. To regard these as worthy
of charitable status on the basis of "public benefit"
because they make some token contributions to outside organisations
or groups brings the whole concept into disrepute. The bursaries
they offer do not change this; they are minimal in number and
only available to those who satisfy entry tests, not to the public
as a whole. There may be schools which fit neither of these categories.
That is why it is necessary to be very clear on what basis charitable
status is to be awarded, to ensure that justice is done and fraud
avoided.
It is not just the restriction of benefit to
a privileged minority, however, nor the attempt to justify the
claim of public benefit on a few peripheral activities that many
maintained schools and even businesses perform as a matter of
course to which we object. It is also that many such schools work
actively AGAINST the public interest. Because of their selective
policies they are used to preserve grammar-type schools in an
officially "comprehensive" system, while avoiding any
responsibility for all those children in the public arena who
also need to be educated. The fact that their GCSE results merely
mirror those of selective schools in the maintained sector demonstrates
that it is the reliance only on able children and the exclusion
of the rest that does the trick. It is little to do with school
quality. They have become havens for those children whose parents
do not wish them to be educated in public facilities and can afford
such separate provision, creating a form of educational apartheid,
harmfully dividing society educationally and socially. The emphasis
on their partnership activities, their bursaries and those private
special schools which seem to offer a genuine public service appears
as a smokescreen to hide this. They not only seek advantage for
their children through hugely better facilities, class sizes and
numbers of teachers, they actively seek to gain substantial advantages
after school, in access to higher education and careers, "by
connecting them into a network that will serve them in their professional
and personal lives", according to one Head of her girls.
This must be at the expense of other children's life chances;
there is nothing remotely charitable about it.
Many "academic" private schools have
a pressing need to corral as many of the ablest children as they
can and exclude the rest, because this enables them more easily
to get the sort of results which suggest they are "good"
schools, very important in the highly competitive private school
market-place, to attract more fee-payers, especially from abroad.
This is not a "public service", not least because it
reduces the number of able children in the maintained sector,
and thus the ability of those schools to best serve the whole
range of the children they are responsible for. As the Chief Inspector
of Ofsted has said, comprehensive schools perform at their best
when they have a normal distribution of pupils; one piece of research
indicates that in one area the private schools take at least 30%
of the top ability pool of children. That "pool" is
based on those expected to obtain 5 A-C grades in the GCSE. If
you assess it on those likely to gain a university place it could
be as high as 50%, putting the usual figure cited of 7-8% of ALL
children into perspective.
In conclusion, "public benefit" can
only be justified if it can be applied unequivocally to the central
purposes of a charity, which each applicant must be obliged to
demonstrate and maintain. There can be no blanket awards based
on few inessential additions to their main activities. If private
schools are not prepared to open the opportunity to attend them
to all children equally, irrespective of parental income or deemed
ability (which would be a true public benefit) they should not
be regarded as a charity. The private sector's role in the provision
of education in this country is significant for many reasons.
Few of them currently have much to do with charity. Until all
of them face up to the true nature of the role they have chosen
to play, and stop trying to safeguard privilege for the already
privileged as well as £100+ million per annum in public subsidy,
those that do not provide genuine "public benefit" should
be denied charitable status and thus an outstanding hypocrisy
in our society will have been addressed.
June 2004
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