Should we abolish private schools?

Exploring the impact of private schools on UK education inequality and debating reform or abolition for a fairer system.

Key Takeaways

Private schools contribute significantly to social and educational inequality in the UK.
Reforms could include removing charitable status or taxing private schools more heavily.
Abolition, inspired by Finland, could create a more integrated and equal education system.
Current educational choices are largely determined by parental wealth, not student ability.
Meaningful change requires systemic reform beyond just addressing private schools.

What the video covers

Private schools distort the UK education system by perpetuating entrenched privilege and inequality.
Only 7% of UK students attend private schools, yet they dominate influential roles in media, law, and politics.
Private schools originated as charitable institutions but have become exclusive and costly over time.
Rising fees make private education accessible mainly to the wealthy, while state schools face funding cuts.
Private schools offer superior resources, networks, and direct routes to prestigious universities.
Reforming private schools includes revisiting charitable status, bursaries, business rates, and VAT exemptions.
Abolition of private schools, as done in Finland, aims to unify education and promote equality.
Finland’s system bans private schools, ensuring all children attend equal neighborhood schools.
Critics argue abolition limits parental choice, but current choices are heavily influenced by wealth.
Abolition is part of broader reforms needed, including proper funding and ending selection in schools.

Chapters

Why are private schools considered a problem in the UK education system?

Private schools are seen as perpetuating entrenched privilege and inequality by providing better resources, networks, and opportunities to a small wealthy minority, which distorts social mobility.

What reforms are suggested to address issues with private schools?

Suggested reforms include removing or limiting charitable status, charging VAT on fees, making private schools pay business rates, and increasing bursaries to improve access for disadvantaged students.

How does Finland’s education system differ from the UK’s regarding private schools?

Finland abolished private schools in the 1970s, making all education free and equal by law, which promotes social integration and reduces educational inequality.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

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The thing that is most distorting our education system is the existence of private schools. Say, at school, graduates are still likely to earn thousands of pounds less than those who are privately educated. What we're seeing is entrenched privilege. Why are the people at the top?

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Why are they ever going to want people like you or I taking the jobs that they want to go to? They're privately educated sons and daughters. We will have an apartheid education system in this country unless we do something drastic.

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I've learned a stream of evidence that private schools helped make our country unequal. Only 7% of the UK are privately educated, but a disproportionate number of PIs hold some of the most influential jobs, whether in media, law, or

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politics. I mean, take the new prime minister, XX, to be educated at one school, Eton. But now a number of people are asking if this is fair and if they should exist at all. As a state school teacher, why would I not want the

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absolute best for the young people in front of me? Why don't they deserve to have small class sizes, luxurious facilities, access to this incredible network of alumni? And I think that would make our society much better and much

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fairer, and abolishing private schools is key to that. But before gate abolition, we need to know what private schools are and how they work. Well, the origins of Britain's private schools date back into the medieval period, the late medieval period,

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with a series of charitable bequests to educate the children of poor and rising middle-class families. So they started out as charities but gradually they expanded in the Victorian era when they became increasingly for the middle classes and they cost money. This trend

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continued into the 20th century, and to avoid being labeled elitist in the 1960s, they've rebranded as independent schools. Fast-forward to now, and how inclusive are they? That's 6,000 pupils paying no fees at all out of the half million

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pupils in independent council schools. Turns out that means only 1% of people who go to private school are from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. But most people can't afford to go private. Rising school fees now amount to 50% of an

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average earner's wage, which is why intakes are dominated by the very wealthy. So while funding has been cut to the point that state schools are having to use crowdfunding and Amazon wishlists to pay for the basics, a tiny

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proportion of people get access to the excellent support and almost unlimited resources that the private sector offers. Plus, private schools act as a direct route to prestigious universities and networks to some of the world's most powerful people. But discussing what to

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do about private schools isn't about attacking the choices the parents make. It's about an elite system that fast-tracks certain children. So what can we do about this? Broadly, there's a few options. We could do nothing, which means there's no

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point watching this video. We could reform the system to try and make it fairer, or we could get rid of fee-paying schools altogether. Let's look at reform first, and the main point here is although they mostly educate the

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well-off, over half of all private schools still operate as charities today. Has there ever been a more deserving charity? Many private schools say they earn their charitable status by offering fee reductions or free places in the form of

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bursaries. So the simple measure could be to determine that they often law, but that would still only be a limited number of people, and these bursaries are often used to top up fees of people who are already pretty wealthy. We even found one

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school willing to offer financial help to families so long as they are less than 120,000 pounds. Also, as charities, private schools don't pay for business rates, so getting them to pay the full whack, which is something state schools already have to do, could

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bring an extra 105 million pounds per year. Another idea could be to charge VAT on private school fees since they're currently exempt. That could bring in an extra 1.5 billion to the Treasury, or you could just strip them of their

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charitable status entirely. But what about something even bigger, like abolition? Look, let's not get too dramatic here because the idea of abolition isn't about destruction. It's about unifying and integrating our education system. That's what they did in Finland. Their education system needs to

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be a mix of private, grammar, and state schools, not so different from ours. But in the 1970s, the government decided to abolish private schools. It was actually the Finnish political establishment who decided that their segregated system was actually causing too much division

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that they needed to establish a common school. We don't see education as an industry. We see education as a basic human right for everybody, and that's why all education is free in Finland. It's against the law to run a

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private school or private university. With one of the most equal education systems in the world, Finland is an example of what could be possible. The neighborhood school is the best school because all the schools in Finland, they are all equal, and what that means is that

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by making the rich kids go to school with everyone else, they grow up with those other kids as friends, and when they become wealthy adults, they have to think twice before they screw them over. Critics say abolition takes away a

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parent's right to choose, but does everyone get to make that choice? What we have now is is paratahcracy, which is where educational success depends on the wealth and wishes of parents rather than the ability and effort of actual

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children. Choices are underpinned by resources, and if you're poor or disadvantaged, you just don't have very many choices. None of this is going to happen overnight, and there's no magic bullet. Abolition is just one part of a much broader change

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that's needed, from funding our schools properly to getting rid of all forms of selection. But one thing is pretty clear: if private schools stay as they are, then nothing is going to change. Thank you for watching this video. We want to hear what

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you think about private schools, so leave us a comment below and take part in our poll, which should be somewhere above me over here. If you like these videos, then give us a thumbs up, and if you want to see

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more, then click subscribe.

Topics:private schoolseducation inequalityUK educationschool reformabolition of private schoolscharitable statuseducation fundingFinland education systemsocial privilegeeducation policy

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