Abolish Eton: Labour groups aim to strip elite schools of privileges.

Abolish Eton: Labour groups aim to strip elite schools of privileges

Labour Against Private Schools is launching motion ahead of September party conference

Richard Adams Education editor

Tue 9 Jul 2019 06.05 BST Last modified on Tue 9 Jul 2019 12.33 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/jul/09/abolish-eton-labour-groups-aim-to-strip-elite-private-schools-of-privileges?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR3fRPWV5TKDUEnut2mApmVB9pPoyv_YxBScdo0-isyh9F6THIE0CRpaNhg#Echobox=1562659541

If Boris Johnson becomes prime minister, he would be the second Old Etonian to hold the position within four years, the promoters of the campaign say. Photograph: Grant Rooney/Alamy

Labour activists are aiming to capitalise on Boris Johnson’s likely election as Conservative leader with an aggressive campaign against his old school, Eton, and other elite private schools in England.

The group, Labour Against Private Schools, is circulating a motion for the party’s conference in September that would commit a Labour government to stripping fee-paying schools of their privileges and integrating them into the state system.

The campaign is to be publicly launched on Tuesday using the @AbolishEton Twitter handle, and is backed by a number of Labour MPs including the former party leader Ed Miliband.

Those behind the campaign say Johnson’s elevation means he will be the second Old Etonian to be prime minister within four years, while Jeremy Hunt was educated at Charterhouse and the Brexit party leader, Nigel Farage, went to Dulwich College – proof that private schools remain a powerful force in British politics.

Holly Rigby, a state school teacher and coordinator of the campaign, said: “There is no justification for the fact that young people’s opportunity to flourish and fulfil their potential is still determined by the size of their parents’ bank balance.”

A research by the Sutton Trust and the social mobility commission found that more than half of Britain’s senior judges, top civil servants and Foreign Office diplomats were privately educated, as well as substantial numbers in the media, arts and sports.

Rigby said previous Labour governments had squandered their opportunities to tackle the class divisions in the education system. “It’s about time we finished the job,” she said.

The campaign against private schools claims support from MPs across the parliamentary Labour party, including the shadow Treasury minister, Clive Lewis, and the former teachers Thelma Walker and Laura Smith.

“Private schools are anachronistic engines of privilege that simply have no place in the 21st century,” said Lewis. “We cannot claim to have an education system that is socially just when children in private schools continue to have 300% more spent on their education than children in state schools.”

Annual fees to attend Eton, a boarding school, are £40,000, while fees for day pupils at Westminster school are close to £29,000 a year.

The group plans to circulate its motion to local constituency Labour parties and win their backing for it to be adopted at the national conference in Brighton later this year. If adopted, the motion’s proposals would be included in Labour’s next general election manifesto.

While Labour’s current policies include adding VAT to school fees, the motion urges Labour to “go further to challenge the elite privilege of private schools and break up the establishment network that dominates the top professions”.

The motion calls for an election commitment to “integrate all private schools into the state sector”, including the withdrawal of charitable status.

It also breaks new ground by wanting to limit university admissions to “the same proportion of private school students as in the wider population (currently 7%)”. Most radically. it also calls for the “endowments, investments and properties held by private schools to be redistributed democratically across the country’s educational institutions”.

Such a programme would face significant legal obstacles, and the proposals make no mention of the hundreds of private schools catering to pupils with special needs or alternative provision, or small faith schools, with none of the resources enjoyed by prestigious schools such as Westminster.

Mike Buchanan, executive director of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference representing public schools, said independent schools played “a vital role” in the nation’s education system, and would cost taxpayers billions of pounds to replace.

“These excellent schools are creating life-changing free places for children from disadvantaged backgrounds and expanding daily their mutually beneficial partnerships with state schools.

“I invite politicians of any party to talk with me about how we can do even more together to extend such opportunities across the country and, in particular, to the most disadvantaged,” Buchanan said.

The last Labour government lost a legal challenge over the charitable status of fee-paying private schools, but the issue was reignited by Theresa May’s government in a 2016 education green paper, although that attempt was later abandoned.

The motion’s proposals would only apply to schools in England. In Scotland, the SNP government has already removed the entitlement for private schools to pay reduced business rates.

Eton and Westminster among eight schools dominating Oxbridge

This article is more than 6 months old

Research shows pupils from state sector less likely to apply than privately educated peers

Sally Weale Education correspondent

Fri 7 Dec 2018 00.01 GMT Last modified on Fri 7 Dec 2018 12.16 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/dec/07/eton-and-westminster-among-eight-schools-dominating-oxbridge

Eton sends 60 to 100 students to Oxbridge each year.

Eight top schools in the UK get as many pupils into the universities of Oxford and Cambridge as three-quarters of all schools and colleges together, according to new research.

Over a three-year period the eight leading schools – which are mainly in the independent sector – sent 1,310 of their students to Oxbridge, while 2,900 schools, each with two or fewer acceptances, sent 1,220 pupils in total.

The research showed that high-flying pupils from state schools were far less likely to apply to Oxbridge than their peers in the private sector, and were less likely to be successful when they did apply.

Of the top fifth highest achieving schools almost a quarter (23%) of students in the independent sector applied to Oxbridge, compared with 11% of comprehensive students in the same group. Of those who applied 35% from independent schools were successful and 28% from comprehensives.

 Oxbridge needs to guarantee places for the best state school pupils

Owen Jones

Overall, just over one in five (21%) university applications from pupils at private schools are for Oxbridge, compared to 5% at comprehensives and 4% at sixth-form colleges. There are also far higher rates of Oxbridge application at selective schools – 16% of all grammar school applications are to either Oxford or Cambridge.

Researchers, using data gathered by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas), found that students who attended a private school were seven times more likely to win a place at Oxford or Cambridge than those in non-selective state schools.

They were also more than twice as likely to go to a Russell Group university. Six of 10 private school students who were in higher education were at a Russell Group university, compared with just under a quarter of pupils from comprehensives and sixth-form colleges.

The Access to Advantage study by the Sutton Trust, a charity promoting social mobility through education, analysed university applications and acceptance rates for three years starting in 2015, looking at the type of school pupils attended and the regions where they lived.

The results revealed disparities between regions, with about 6% of those applying to university in the south of England winning a place at Oxbridge, compared with 3-4% of those from the north or the Midlands. In some areas, including Rochdale, Rutland, Salford, Lincolnshire and Southampton, two or fewer comprehensive pupils got into Oxbridge over the three-year period.

According to the report, one of the reasons a tiny number of schools continue to dominate Oxbridge admissions is the high level of additional, specialist, support for pupils, which cannot be matched in the state sector.

At Westminster school, which sends 70 to 80 students to Oxbridge each year, pupils are given personalised mentoring and university preparation classes.

At Eton, which sends 60 to 100 students to Oxbridge each year, a dedicated universities officer is “available at any time during the A-level years for interviews with boys or parents”. St Paul’s boys’ school employs 11 specialist UK university advisers – in 2016, 53 of the school’s 189 students who went to university got into either Oxford or Cambridge.

The Sutton Trust is calling for universities to make greater use of contextual data in their admissions process, including reduced grade offers, to recognise the different circumstances of applicants. It also says all pupils should receive professional careers advice to help them make the best informed choices

Chris Millward, director for fair access and participation at the universities regulator, the Office for Students, said the Sutton Trust research highlighted a “‘clear and unacceptable gap in equality of opportunity” for young people from different school backgrounds and regions.

Matt Waddup, head of policy and campaigns at the University and College Union, said: “This report demonstrates that many talented youngsters will never get into some universities simply because nobody is pushing them to consider applying to them. Universities need to help students from backgrounds and schools that don’t traditionally apply to some universities by looking at contextual data.”