Having worked as a teacher for 10 years in a grammar, an independent and now a community comprehensive school, the calls to tax independent schools, as echoed by Fiona Millar, ring with the ideological purity of those who are prepared to place motives above outcomes (Reform grammar schools and ditch the GCSE treadmill – here’s how Labour can fix education in England, 13 August).
I wholeheartedly believe in her summative closing paragraph, calling for an educational experience that supports and ensures success according to each child’s needs and ambitions. She is also correct in recognising that this is what parents are paying for through independent education. And yet, where many parents opt to ensure this for their children, with no guarantee that their local underfunded and oversubscribed comprehensive school can, the position of many on the Labour left is to penalise these children and their families. Motive and means, it seems, trump outcomes in an educational retelling of Margaret Thatcher’s “so long as the gap is smaller”.
