charity begins at home
But with more than one thousand independent schools in the UK enjoying charitable status is obviously extends much further in society. Or does it?
When looking at the touchy and contentious subject of exactly why independent schools are considered charities it’s necessary to go back to school for a history lesson. A 1601 statute from Elizabeth I, no less, established that one of the essential purposes of charity was the “advancement of education”, a definition that has remained fundamentally unchanged for over 400 years. During the more recent 20th century, a further crucial qualification has been introduced – the idea of “public benefit”. So, the question of how exactly independent schools benefit the public is now raised and, though ‘public benefit’ was not precisely defined, it concentrated primarily on direct access to such schools ie free and/or subsidised places for both the poor and the not-so-well off.
In June 2013, the Select Committee ticked off the Charity Commission declaring they were far from happy with the level of public benefit from the independent school sector, noting it was down to the governors and trustees of the schools themselves how they deemed to help the poor. Such help apparently can extend to preparing state-educated pupils for entry to leading universities, sponsoring a government academy, supplying teachers in specialist subjects to state schools, and opening up their own educational & sporting facilities. All theoretically worthy and commendable but not enough of this appears to be happening in reality.
So is Eton still a charity? Of course it is and it remains one of the 100 largest charities in the UK, clearly providing considerable public benefit in the form of an endless stream of the great & the good – prime ministers, cabinet ministers, MPs, CEOs of FTSE companies, media moguls, public sector czars, and most obviously, executives of charity commissions!
