Donated by Cambridge Literary Festival - Spring Festival 2025


The New Statesman Debate | This house believes private schools should be abolished
Sat 26 Apr 2025 | 4:00pm – 5:30pm

Seven per cent of British children attend private school – a tiny minority – and yet they retain a grip on our elite institutions. The latest figures show that 65% of judges, 44% of newspaper columnists and 23% of MPs were independently educated. It’s a divided, divisive system that perpetuates inequality, and charging VAT on fees, as Labour have done, won’t fix it. Fee-paying schools, however, do not merely cater for the privileged few, but hard-working aspirational parents who want the best for their children. They also allow for a quality that is essential in all aspects of raising children: choice. Is this two-tier system an archaic injustice that needs total reform? Or is it the route to a better education for all?