Memorandum from Councillor Frank Garrick,
Bedford Borough Council (DCH 66)
It has long been a mystery to the people of
this community that the Harpur Trust can maintain its charitable
(and non-tax paying) status while its major function is to educate
the children of the well to do from around the country (and other
parts of the world). It is able to do this in the most well-equipped
and generous facilities both for its academic role and for its
sporting and cultural activities.
The four secondary private schools also distort
the provision of state education by creaming off many of the most
able students from the most supportive homes. So that the local
comprehensive schools are deprived to some extent of their most
motivated and gifted pupils.
It seems to me that the whole arrangement here
in Bedford is a complete distortion of what Sir William Harpur
intended. At the very least they should pay the community through
the taxation system.
June 2004
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