While state schools are at breaking point, Bristol’s private schools get millions in tax breaks as ‘charitable institutions’ – do they deserve it?
- The Cable reveals £95 million annual budget of Bristol’s private schools
- Private schools benefit from £2 million in business rate exemptions every year
- Private schools do not contribute proportionally to teacher training schemes
- Questions over how private schools benefit the public
It should come as no surprise that Bristol’s private schools have deep pockets. At Clifton College, where most students achieve As and A*s for their GCSEs, there’s a theatre, and playing fields so large they were used as an airfield in World War 2. Ninety-nine percent of school leavers from Clifton go on to university; not far away in Hartcliffe the proportion drops to 8.6%.
At Badminton School in Henleaze, sixth-formers are taught in groups of three or four, pupils have the opportunity to start learning Mandarin while still in primary school and many end up – after coaching for interviews – with places at Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Fees at the school are £16,425 per year for day students.
Along with the fees private schools like Badminton are paid, exclusive Cable research can reveal they are also enjoying additional multi-million pound benefits, while the council loses out.
6%
pupils who attend private schools
Yet privately educated individuals make up:
74% of judges
29% of MPs
50% of cabinet ministers
64% of peers
60% of surgeons
34% of University of Bristol undergraduates
Tax discounts and investment portfolios
Private schools in Bristol received more than £2 million in discounts on business rates in 2017/18 that would otherwise have been paid to Bristol City Council. Business rates – essentially a tax on commercial property – are a key source of revenue for the council to pay for essential public services. Private schools receive an 80% discount on rates because they are classed as charitable institutions. In the same year, state schools across the city paid over £5.4m in business rates, with 75 of those schools receiving no discount. There are also disparities within the state sector, with academy schools able to claim the discounts which are not available to local authority schools.
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WHY I WROTE THIS
Last year we were asked to attend a meeting at my son’s school about budget cuts. I was amazed to learn that our primary school was paying £47,000 a year in business rates. The scrimping and saving we were having to do, compared with the lavish facilities available in different parts of the city, seemed wrong to me. The fact that we had to pay 100% rates was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Tin Hinson
The council’s accounts show that seven independent schools in the city have a combined rateable value of £2.7m, but because these institutions are registered with the Charity Commission, they are entitled to statutory rate relief. This brings their rates bill down to just £537,000 – meaning a huge dent in the council’s revenue.
When faced with the growing hardships of cash-strapped state schools, tax subsidies for private schools are particularly hard to swallow. Wendy Exton, from the teachers’ union NASUWT, told the Cable: “The scale of it is absolutely shocking…this subsidy is not well known within the teaching profession.”
The School Cuts campaign reports that £19.3m will have been taken from the annual education budget of Bristol state schools between 2015 and 2020, even as the number of young people in the city has grown. This amounts to £453 of cuts for each for the 56,000 pupils in Bristol’s state schools.
“There is nothing approaching Britain’s enormous wealth chasm between [private] and state schools”
“Considering some of the cuts and sacrifices and stresses we’ve had to go through because we were told that there was no money, it’s really galling to learn that these privileged schools are getting this discount”, says Harriet Paige, a teacher from St Agnes.
A Bristol Cable analysis of accounts submitted to the Charity Commission suggests that the discount is just the tip of the iceberg. A whopping two pounds in every seven spent on education in Bristol is going to private schools, based on comparing the total budget for the city’s state schools with the income recorded by private schools in 2017/18. Yet independent schools teach less than 10% of pupils.
In Bristol, nearly £100m is spent on private education annually. On top of fees, the accounts show that private schools benefit from large and growing investment portfolios, which last year brought in additional income of over £6m collectively.
87
The number of newly qualified teachers that could be hired for the money the council would receive from private schools, if they had to pay the same business rates as state schools
Charity status
So private schools are benefiting from their status as charitable institutions – but how much charity do they actually do?
The question has been asked before. In 2006, the law was reformed so that, for the first time, independent schools had to demonstrate that they were providing a public benefit in return for their charitable status. Five years later, these independent schools won a judicial review, which critics argued weakened the criteria they had to meet to attain charitable status.
The stakes are high. In addition to the business rate subsidy, at present no VAT is charged on school fees. When this levy was proposed in the 2017 Labour manifesto, it was estimated it could raise enough money to provide a free meal for all primary school students.
“Private schools benefit just 7% of school aged children. It is these children who tend to go on to the best universities and secure the top jobs.”
So what do Bristol’s private schools do to demonstrate public benefit? According to the Independent Schools Council, the schools they represent nationally provide “over £400m in means tested bursaries”. However, most bursaries are a discount on fees, rather than full relief, suggesting they benefit relatively well-off families. An investigation by the Guardian discovered that fee paying schools in London were offering means-tested bursaries to families with a household income of up to £140,000.
We contacted all the private schools in Bristol, and although many of them provided information about their total number of bursary places, most of them would not say how many fully-subsidised places they gave out per year. Redmaids’ School supplies two spaces each year, and Clifton College currently offers 21 free places out of 1,210. All schools consulted said their bursaries were awarded on the basis of performance in entrance exams as well as family income. But as Thea Kelly, a teacher from South Bristol, told us, “giving bursaries to high performers means that they are only helping people who would have done well in state school anyway, rather than helping those who most need it.”
The other ways that private schools say they provide a public benefit is by sharing their facilities with local schools and community groups. Cable research found some of the schools claim they are making their sports facilities available to the community. However some sports teams we contacted said that they were paying commercial rates to the schools.
Five Bristol schools also mentioned taking trainee teachers on placements as part of their submission to the charity commission. Private schools employ one in every seven teachers in the country, but when we contacted sources at UWE and Bristol University, both confirmed that the schools take nothing like that proportion of their trainee teachers. A source at UWE told us that private schools accounted for “about five or six” out of the 126 schools they used for placements. None of the primary school teachers currently on placement in Bristol are at private schools.
Most of the schools also host special lectures, science demonstrations, and other events, which students from local schools are able to attend. But given the scale of the resources that they can draw on, their charitable activity appears marginal.
2/7
Two pounds in every seven spent on education in Bristol is going to private schools, even though these schools teach less than 10% of pupils
Private schools as privilege machines
Professor Francis Green, co-author of Engines of Privilege: Britain’s Private School Problem, told the Cable: “Britain’s private schools provide a good education for their pupils but they are normally very exclusive. They take up three times the amount of educational resources per child compared to what is spent in state schools. In Bristol, the ratio is even higher.
“These resources help to propel private school pupils into scarce places at high-ranked universities, lessening the chances of others. Many other countries have private schools, but generally there is nothing approaching Britain’s enormous wealth chasm between them and state schools.”
Bristol South MP Karin Smyth said, “I have a longstanding opposition to private schools, which benefit just 7% of school aged children. It is these children who tend to go on to the best universities and secure the top jobs.”
Parents wanting the best for their kids is not controversial, and it is not surprising, in our highly competitive society, that those with the means are willing to pay to secure this. But giving private schools tax breaks seems unfair, given the crisis state most schools are in. The question of whether private schools have a place in modern Britain is as crucial as ever.
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Truly outrageous. More tax dodging for well rich people.
I suspect the issues around private schools go a lot deeper in terms of the effects on the other schools in the city. Where a city is oversupplied with private schools, ‘aspirational’ families don’t work with the state-maintained schools to improve them, but prefer to pay to give they kids ‘a better chance’.. and deepen the divide between educational ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ even further.
Then there are the schools which had been ‘independent’ (ie private) but had to come into the maintained sector because they were in financial difficulties (remember 2007-8?).. and which maintain a highly selective ethos – again deepening disparities in education and achievement across the city.
The culture around education in the city is extremely hierarchical – there are ‘top’, ‘middle’ and ‘rubbish’ schools according to the schoolgate telegraph – and the school pupils themselves!.
Council, led by the elected Mayor, has it in its power to redress matters to some extent, but doesn’t.
I’m so glad you’re talking about this – it creates the class divide in Britain especially England
Thank you Tim Hinson for a detailed and well-researched article, it gets to the heart of the class divide in Britain and why it seems to have got worse over time in spite of great efforts from educators etc to make education and society more fair – it’s a shocker, it really is!
Tin Hinson is the name of the author of this article not Tim. There was a miss print in the magazine.
Private schools,the monarchy,hereditary peers,three institutions designed exclusively to maintain the medieval status quo in Britain. So much for living in the 21st century.
This isn’t a well informed article. Private schools contribute around £10.6bn to the British economy in terms of employment, taxes and easing the burden on the state sector.
Getting rid of the private school system would frankly be Labour cutting off its nose to spite its face. It is jealousy, pure and simple.
Here’s a radical idea – why don’t we encourage wealth creation amongst business owners that would allow them to send their own children to private schools (should they so wish) rather than take the classic, silly socialist view that we should all be forced to be mediocre just so we could be equal.
And before you ask – no, I wasn’t educated at a private school.
…interesting you use the phrase “it is jealousy”. Jealously is saying you wanting something someone else has that you don’t have is bad. Quality schooling is supposed to be something we all have access to pure and simple. I don’t want mediocrity in schooling, I want all schools to be equally quality.
This article fails to address the real issue, which is- start improving the state schools and invest in them instead of spending billions on the defence sector to allow people to kill people (bottom line) from one who knows. It would not be realistic to give a bursary to an average performing child from a state school. By age 12-13 in a privately educated school, children are already at GCSE level and could sit one and pass it and achieve and A. If you put a child who was not at that level in that kind of environment they would be far behind and end up stressed. There is quite a large percentage of parents who send their children to private schools who are on modest incomes up to £30k-40k per family with both parents working. There is not a lot left after paying whatever their contribution is to the schools. Certainly not enough to enjoy annual holidays, and extras with many scarcely paying bills in quite a few cases that receive bursaries. They have usually sacrificed quite a lot of life’s extras like outside clubs for kids, basics of clothes etc to give what they view their children a better start in life. You simply cannot have equality in schools, and this is not just down to the schools and teachers. It is also dependant on parents and children and what difficulties or challenges they face, morally publically socially, mentally. Some children are just no longer interested in school because they have come from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. The argument should not be about attacking well-performing private education schools, but about being positive and raising the standards of all schools to give all children a chance. Working with families who face difficulties. Everyone has a role to play in achieving this. We pay our taxes, we work, we do not “mess up” our children because we are decent law-abiding citizens… (how realistic is that?), teachers get on board too and do their best to raise their own standards of training, etc etc..These are ideals but you can appreciate how difficult that would be to achieve. Hence equality in schools will never happen but you can improve all schools. I personally know of 5 families who have received bursaries. They are not wealthy and if it was not for the generosity of the full fee-paying parents and the schools they would not be able to attend at all. Incidentally, a private fee education is available to anyone regardless of status if the parent is willing enough to work hard to make that sacrifice. The truth is, not many are willing to make that sacrifice for their children. The less well off of these parents are those who have often borrowed saved scrimped and walked with holes in their shoes to get their kids there. These schools do offer generous bursaries in charity, but yes you do have to contribute and no it will not be easy. Please stop banging on about private school’s advantages and start thinking of other ways to improve schools. Its definitely not about taking from one school and giving to another. It’s about a collective commitment to raising the standards of all schools. Let us see government investment. Let us see more parent teacher-child involvement. Let us see less catchment bias, so parents do not buy their way into best-performing state schools.
Let us see the beginning of a real dialogue instead of the ‘same ol same ol’ bashing on the privately educated school doors. Its time to grow up and take responsibility for our own children’s education and taking it from well-performing schools that contribute to society in so many ways is not the answer. And no- I didn’t go to a private educated school either. I was in one of the worst-performing state schools of my city, from a socially deprived background, a teenage drunk, involved in petty crime, and an addict with no qualifications but by own boot-straps pulled myself upwards to change my life go to college, then university and get a degree. It’s really down to the individual of what they make of themselves.
Class divide in Bristol has been a problem for a long time, and any sane person with a heart wants to do something to solve that. Bristol has its own problems. Back in the day my mum sent me to private secondary school, she didn’t do this so I could join an elite cabal. She did it because the local school in Henbury at the time was bottom of the national league tables. Maybe she should have engaged with the school, however life experience suggests that cmin extreme caes culture changes you rather than you change culture. If it were a more of a marginal case of course I would have been sent to the local school. This decision was painful, she essentially paid for schooling twice, she was funding an unused place in the state school system and the used place in the private school system (the article suggests to people like my mum that paying twice isn’t enough). All the spare money went into that, I grew up wearing hand me down clothes, like most kids. Add to this, although I have lived in Bristol all my life I now have a profound rootlessness as I have never been part of a local community.
The article talks about Clifton College having a playing field that was used for aircraft to land on. It doesn’t bring up that it was also over-supplied with paeophile teachers. Two of my teachers from the 1990s are convicted and jailed paedophiles, both high profile cases that no doubt the author of the article would have been aware of as initial research into this article, one of the cases has its own section on the school’s wikipedia page, no real investigative journalism required, this stuff still comes up on the first page of results if you google “Clifton Colllege”.
These experiences of have turned me into a life refuser. I could afford to send one child to a private school, but I don’t want to drop a child down one side of this divide. Instead I have never had children, I would not want to raise a child in Bristol. Bristol is a place for established professionals to come put their feet up, for trust funders and wealthy university students, not a place to bring up children. I remember a Romanian author saying he wished Romania was as populous as China with a destiny like France’s (quoting from memory). That’s the same sentiment I have for Bristol, I’m just not sure how we get there by breaking the private schools, it should be about levelling up not levelling down.
Wider than schools, I’d like to go anywhere in the city and chat to anyone, look them in the face and shake their hand, and we’re all working together, in it together and respect one another. I’d pay double my current tax load to just take some steps towards this, to a city where people approached each other with empathy and trust rather than privilege accountancy and distrust. Where’s the plan to level up Bristol’s schools? It doesn’t exist, sure they need more cash but also a plan.