Carole Cardwalladr (Observer writer) highlighted Sutton Trust data debating Charlotte Vere (Independent Schools Council) on charitable status for independent schools in The Observer.

CC: I know this slot is called “the debate” but in this instance, it could be retitled “the no brainer”. Of course, we shouldn’t be subsidising Britain’s public schools to the tune of £700m a year. We might as well subsidise five-star hotels. They’re both the preserve of a small, privileged elite, the difference being that five-star hotels don’t shore up a centuries-old system of institutionalised inequality. Because public schools underpin everything that is most wrong, most iniquitous, most stiflingly, claustrophobically unjust and undemocratic and unmodern about Britain today.

…….

CV: Of course it is a “debate” and so it should be – it is right that we ask these questions every once in a while and that we talk rationally about the realities. Tarnishing reasoned debate with the term “no-brainer” is what I would expect from a Year 9 debater. So what does the reality look like? Most fee-paying independent schools with charitable status were set up for the public good before tax benefits were even a twinkle in the Treasury’s eye. They existed and still exist each with a clear vision, purpose and ethos. Essentially they behave like you or I would expect a charity to behave.

………

CC It is a shame, yes. But then, by rights I shouldn’t be here at all. Journalism, like politics, like law, like the cabinet, like the shadow cabinet, like the City, is dominated by Oxbridge graduates. Even the Guardian/Observer is. And Oxbridge is dominated by private schools. You are 55 times more likely to get in to Oxford and Cambridge as a pupil at an independent school than as a state-school student from a disadvantaged background, the Sutton Trust’s research shows. You are 22 times likelier to go to a Russell Group university.

Read the full debate here.

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