Tuesday 18 September 2012

Charitable Status

This blog is about private schools in the UK, which confusingly are called public schools, when they are by definition the opposite of being available to the public. Regents Park, though a high class green space, does not require to you to remortgage your house to avail yourself of its amenities, unlike the fees charged at 'public schools'.

I must declare a vested interest in this matter, as your humble blog scribe is a product of such an education system, a well-known London private school whose old boys run all the bits of Britain the Etonians didn't want. In my defence, I would like to stress that I have never owned a polo pony, attended a school-chum's birthday where there were waiting staff in black tie or tried to snog the daughter of an Earl. For the prosecution, I did know someone at school who had an actual Picasso in their London home and another boy who had a lift inside his house. Yes, inside, it's that bit which elevates you (pun-intended) from council tower block to extreme privilege.

Okay, it was a posh school, but my parents were ridiculous lefties if that makes any difference. Our Nicaraguan coffee was served in Nelson Mandela mugs; the bookshelves were filled with worthy Fabian writings. Of course my paternal and maternal comrades were not such ideological zealots that they would inflict genuine public education on their children. We grew up in the People's Republic of Islington in the 1980s, where state schools blended Dave Spart with a dash of Assault on Precinct 13.

 Between us my brother and I had seen all of Shakespeare's history plays before the age of thirteen (yes even Henry VI) and that doesn't earn you kudos in the playground. It's a season ticket on the Train of Pain all the way to Hurt Station. Anyway, stepping off the Digression Express at Get to the F**king Point Junction, I did not go to the comprehensive down the road.

Therefore I think it does give me a perspective on an important issue: do private schools deserve their current charitable status? And the answer these days is without a doubt...no. Perhaps when I was young, when you could still buy comics in the newsagent and the internet was just a glint in a spotty computer geek's palm, it was just about possible to claim they performed some kind of charitable function. There were assisted places, where those children unlucky enough to be born into poverty might fully understand the extent of their misfortune. At my more tolerant school, they were only made to sit at the poor table for lunch while the whole school chanted 'Eat povos eat'. In other more traditional institutions, they worked as domestic staff and catamites for the governors. But conservative or progressive, private school fees twenty years ago, though high, were in the realm of the plausible for those without Swiss bank accounts.

Whilst I can't plead true hardship, both my brother and I were scholarship boys and that made all the difference between being able to serve ciabatta as opposed Safeway's value loaf. Believe or not, for two years in a row, we took a summer holiday in Britain. This was well before the concept of staycation, so going on holiday in August in the UK was neither retro cool or environmentally aware, it was just cheap(er) and rubbish. People who watched ITV took holidays in Britain, there I said it.

But, class envy aside, there was a social mix of sorts in private schools back then. As a student, I gained  an excellent education in the arts, let no one let you that a knowledge of the gerund is useless, that information having been drummed into my head, I have not forgot (present prefect). My love of drama was such that every year I volunteered for the school play. Strictly speaking this was only for the cast parties, which were heavy-petting orgies. One of my fondest memories is the tongue fest that was the cast bash after the performing The Caucasian Chalk Circle. One of my least favourite memories second only to a nasty motorbike crash, is the actual play The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Berlolt Brecht should haven been tried for crimes against theatre, The Resistable Rise of Artuo Ui doesn't negate the awfulness of the rest of his writing.

So I spent time learning about Suetonius, debating the meaning of Measure for Measure (it was just a bad play, even Shakespeare had his off days - discussion over), when all I really wanted to do was undress certain girls from a nearby school. Hardy on a par with Medicin Sans Frontiers, I admit even then. These days private school's status is indefensible and you don't have to take it from me, ask anyone who works in the sector what has happened in the last twenty years. Only financiers, the landed gentry and the children of foreign oligarchs or petro princes can now afford the fees; their doors are closed to all save the parasite elite. Gone is the mixture of arts and sciences, they focus primarily on science and maths, so that the likes of Abramovich's children can dream of even more elaborate ways not to pay tax in their chosen host nation. Here the word 'host' has nothing to do with concepts of hospitality or manners, it is the larger mass on which the parasite class attaches itself.

Like everything in Britain these days, everything is for sale and if all private schools really offer is forcing houses for the children of the vampire super-rich then let's not give them the cloak of respectability of charitable status. If you want to segregate your child with the super-rich, do so, but pay  in full for the privilege.

It's not about the politics of envy, who would envy the international elite?They are the most miserable, petulant breed on the planet, forever in a huff that their heli-skiing holiday didn't give them the perfect powder snow, their third guest house bath fittings are not exactly as instructed or their yacht is slightly smaller than the Sultan of Brunei's. They belong in a secure, walled community like Monaco, where they they can mix exclusively with other toxic individuals, like a giant open prison or mental institution with decent food.

Charities are a force for good, if anyone working in private education now can explain their positive benefits today, fee free to leave a comment below. Sadly their primary contribution in recent years seems to be a  flow of Osborne types, steeped in Hayek and Rand, who having floated up on a wave of money and privilege, then lecture the rest of us about 'merit', 'free enterprise' and 'welfare dependency'. In keeping with their own nihilist philosophy, private schools don't deserve a tax break from the state nor should they want one.