11 Plus Exams Forum

The schools bring economic benefits and taxpayer savings totalling more than £20 billion a year by educating pupils who would otherwise need state places and by providing employment, community facilities and tax contributions, an analysis for the Independent Schools Council (ISC) has found.

Oxford Economics found that private schools saved the taxpayer £3.5 billion last year because children were not taking up state school places. In addition they and their suppliers paid £4.1 billion in tax.

Their gross domestic product, the value of the work they supported across the economy through their spending, was £13.7 billion. They also supported 302,000 jobs, more than the city of Liverpool, the analysis claimed.

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Pity that 'saving doesn't benefit state schools whose funding is consistently cut.

As you note, the report was commissioned by the Independent Schools Council.

He who pays the piper calls the tune?

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES.

Sir, The Independent Schools Council’s assertion that private schools bring economic benefits (“Fee-paying schools save billions for the taxpayer”, April 26) is correct — but these benefits are enjoyed only by the pupils, who go on to have privileged careers. The claimed wider benefits are just a puff of wind and would not be accepted as evidence by economists.

True, a child at a private school, while enjoying three times the resources of a state-school child, does not directly take up government spending. But to claim the moral high ground of “public benefit” just because their teachers and suppliers pay lots of taxes is nonsense: don’t state school teachers pay taxes? The independent schools also fail to point out that they poach nearly 2,000 state-trained teachers from the financially stressed state sector every year.

Reforms are possible that would allow the longstanding wealth of private schools to be more effectively used and more evenly shared among the wider population. It is time to start talking about these, rather than forever defending the status quo.
Francis Green and David Kynaston
Authors, Engines of Privilege: Britain’s Private School Problem