DCH 45 Socialist Educational Association
Charitable status 2
8/6/04
A Submission by
THE SOCIALIST EDUCATIONAL ASSOCIATION
To the Joint Committee on the Draft
Charities Bill
REFORM OF CHARITY LAW
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 % 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.
13/6/04
Malcolm Horne
General Secretary
Socialist Educational Association
43 Orchard Grove
Chalfont St Peter
Bucks SL9 9 ET
01753 883739
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