Sep 24, 2019, 4:30 PM
(from the Washington Post) With Britain’s impending exit from the European Union just weeks away, the opposition Labour Party gathered for its annual conference this past weekend, where members overwhelmingly supported a motion to ban private education. This would mean that the British government would end tax privileges for private schools, force universities to limit their acceptance of private school students, and allow private school assets to be “redistributed democratically and fairly.” The practicalities of Labour’s plan, if implemented, would be immense, involving the absorption of 2,500 independent schools into the state sector.
The left-wing party has long taken aim at the inequalities of education, but it has never supported a pledge on private education as all-encompassing as this. Private schools have long been a flash point in the debate in Britain over social mobility. Even though only 7% of the British population are educated at Britain’s fee-paying private schools, those who do attend are disproportionately represented in the upper echelons of British society. Matthew Adshead, vice chair of the Independent Schools Association, which represents about 470 private schools in Britain, said the pledge was “worrying” and “hard to fathom.”
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