Private schools are spending millions more on giving affluent middle-class families fee discounts than on children from disadvantaged backgrounds, new figures reveal.
The independent school sector frequently points out that a third of its pupils receive financial assistance. However, school census data shows that most of those pupils do not come from poor households.
Instead, the lion’s share of financial assistance – £420m – goes on non-means-tested academic scholarships, and discounts for staff, siblings, and offspring of senior armed forces personnel and clergy. The figures in the school census will renew concerns that independent schools are not doing enough to justify their privileged charitable tax status.
Means-tested bursaries and scholarships, which are contingent on family income, account for a total of £398m, according to the census, which is carried out in January. But even this pot includes help for families on incomes as high as £140,000.
In recent years, a number of schools have increased the earnings threshold under which families qualify for help. The Godolphin & Latymer School, in Hammersmith, west London, offers means-tested sliding-scale bursaries to pupils from homes with gross income of up to £140,000 a year.
St Paul’s School, a boys’ school in Barnes, south-west London, whose alumni include former chancellor George Osborne, has also introduced a bursary scheme to offer “more generous support to families with a household income less than £120k”. At St Paul’s Girls’ School, also in Hammersmith, the household income threshold for financial assistance is £110,000. And at King Edward’s School in Birmingham, parents earning up to £72,000 can qualify for some financial assistance .
Almost 43,000 children in 1,326 schools benefit from means-tested help, according to the census published by the Independent School Council. But nearly three times that number – 123,591 – were in receipt of “eligible family” discounts or non-means-tested scholarships. The census also reveals that the amount spent on means-tested scholarships dropped by 9% (£22m to £20m) from 2017 to 2018, while non-means-tested scholarships rose by 7% (£174m to £186m).
Many schools offer fee reductions of up to 20% for the children of military personnel. At Roedean, in East Sussex, fees are reduced by a fifth for daughters of armed forces officers or Foreign Office employees.
A high proportion of these families already benefit from a government-funded scheme that pays school fees. Taxpayers spent £246m in the past three years subsidising the private education of forces children at elite schools such as Eton, Harrow and Gordonstoun. Roughly 60% of the children benefiting from the scheme have a parent who holds senior officer rank.
Through their charitable status, private schools enjoy significant tax breaks, including concessions with VAT and business rates, and relief from corporation tax if they make a surplus. One analysis of local authority business rates records published last year estimated that private schools would receive tax rebates totalling £522m over the next five years as a result of their status.
To qualify as charities, schools must demonstrate that they are of public benefit. The high court ruled in 2011 that this means “in all cases, there must be more than minimal or token benefit for the poor”.
Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, said the financial aid figures provided the latest evidence “that the Tories should have stuck to their own manifesto pledge to look again at tax giveaways for private schools. Instead, they are pushing ahead with an education policy for the few at the expense of the many. There will be no meaningful action to get value for the subsidies that benefit private schools. This is a recipe to worsen inequality rather than help social mobility.
“The next Labour government will invest in all our schools and end the VAT exemption for private school fees to fund free school meals for every primary school child.”
Julie Robinson, general secretary of the Independent School Council, said: “The total value of means-tested bursaries and scholarships provided by schools has increased by nearly £140m since 2011 and currently stands at £400m. Schools also offer fee assistance to the ‘squeezed middle’ because having a broad social mix which reflects our society is incredibly important.”