Progressive Tory education policy: subsidise private schools with taxpayers’ money

By Mike Ion / @MikeIon

Tory controlled Bromley council is considering using taxpayers’ money to subsidise private school pupils whose parents may be struggling to pay the average £12,000 annual fee. Extending support from the taxpayer to all parents who send their children to private schools is obviously part of the new ‘progressive’ Tory agenda.

In fairness it is not unreasonable that any parent should want their child to do as well at school and in life as they have done themselves; often they want them to do better. In a free society if some parents choose to secure advantage and privilege by paying to send their children to elite schools there is little the state can do about it.

Whether the state should financially subsidise some parents to enable them to send their children to such schools is a completely different matter. One must surely question how, in a period of severe economic restraint such a policy could ever be a priority for a Tory council or indeed a future Tory government.

It was Milton Freedman, in his book Capitalism and Freedom, who defended the rights of wealthy people who wanted to put their children into private schooling, to withdraw their contributed taxes or at least the slice of them that fitted the purpose of funding state education, and use it to pay their children’s private school fees. If someone does not want their child to go to their local school and mix with children from the local area, but prefers them to be in company of the better off because it’s their choice (and it is) then shouldn’t it also be at their own expense? Is this unfair?

If parents abandon the state sector and are prepared to pay £12,000 per annum why should he be given any government money at all, whether it is fees subsidies or school subsidies?

It will be interesting to see how the Tory frontbench reacts to this proposal – if Michael Gove has any sense he will distance himself and his party from this silly, ill-conceived nonsense. Labour is likely to go on the attack over this issue – such loopy proposals play into the hands of the ‘many not the few’ headline writers and help to more clearly define Gordon Brown’s famous dividing lines.