Features

A hard lesson is coming

Private schools have undermined their charitable status by dashing so shamelessly upmarket

1 April 2017

9:00 AM

1 April 2017

9:00 AM

It is one of the great mysteries of modern British politics: how public schools managed to survive three periods of Labour government with their tax breaks intact. How was it that an education secretary, Anthony Crosland, could say: ‘If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to destroy every fucking grammar school in England, and Wales and Northern Ireland’, and yet do nothing to make life difficult for independent schools? Suzi Leather, Tony Blair’s appointment as head of the Charity Commission, demanded private schools do more to justify their charitable status.

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