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Roedean head slams Brown for 'hostility' to fee-paying
Tim Ross, Education Correspondent08.09.08
The head of a leading independent school today attacked Gordon Brown's "hostility" to private education.
Frances King, of £15,750-a-year Roedean girls' school in Brighton, defended parents' right to buy a better education for their children. Gifted children are bullied because they work hard in state comprehensives, she said.
Her comments come as private schools face pressure to help educate state school pupils.
Mrs King said: "I sense that he [Gordon Brown] has got a very clear political agenda within which independent schools do not really feature ... He is coming from a clear Left approach that is about redistribution of wealth." The logical conclusion of his position would be to ban private schools, she added.
She also cited concern that pupils at independents may be disadvantaged when applying to university, after claims that some universities were under pressure to give places to stateeducated candidates to meet government targets.
New charity laws now require private schools to prove they operate for the wider "public benefit" to justify their £ 100 million- per- year tax breaks.
Mrs King said she hoped the Charity Commission would not adopt a bureaucratic approach to the laws. At a local state school, she said, "the child might have been bullied - at my school people are proud to achieve".
Reader views (3)
The pubilc schools of this country make this country what it is, most of our key figures have been through these schools, if they go down the drain, so too will the principals that make infrasructure of Britian. Unless we want to turn into souless american blobs.
- T***, chepstow uk
I'm unclear why Mrs.King believes independent school pupils are disadvantaged when applying to university. When I used to recruit graduates I always had a preference for state school applicants if the qualifications were comprable. Maybe school of the hard-knocks beats school of the soft-toffs. I suppose if you can't pay for privilege what's the point of a private school - that's hardly the same as disadvantage Mrs King.
- Paul, Kent
Independent schools throughout the United Kingdom are one of the country's greatest assets, the envy of the world. If there is a problem with publicly financed education, the answer is not to destroy what is working, but to learn from it and build on it. And it is not simply a question of money. The amount of money spent per pupil at publicly financed schools is not inconsiderable. Nor are elitism and social caste the defining issues.
- Blackstone, London
