The question was asked by my mother as we concluded our family breakfast debating the Labour Party’s policy on VAT on school fees.
I take it as guests took the arrival of the cold shoulder of mutton. Though it met with a cheer from those around the table, who were aligned to a different take on the issue than mine (eg everybody).
There is nothing amongst the Telegraph reading classes, that so enrages as a middle class liberal such as myself. I have a tetchy relationship with Edmund Truell who I suspect would get on rather better with my mother than he does with me (on politics).
We had been reading an open letter to Keir Starmer from the Head of Clayesmore School. She is the lady in the picture at the top of this blog, taken from Clayesmore’s website advertising its links to the local community.
I am sitting but five miles from the school which is halfway between Blandford and Shaftesbury. The projection of Clayesmore in the letter seems a long way from its projection on its website.
We learn from the letter that Clayesmore that Jo Thomson is keen that Starmer knows the hard facts of life of rural North Dorset
I want to draw your attention to the damage to communities that the addition of VAT on school fees will inflict; an important issue that I feel has not yet been fully understood or acknowledged.
I know Clayesmore school as I went to Bryanston School which is next door and like Clayesmore a posh private school. When I was at Bryanston in the late 1970s , I railed against the school playing no matches against local state schools, preventing the children from mixing with local kids , going to local shops. Infact I coined a phrase “the Stour gap” which referred to the physical and societal divide between Bryanston on one side of the river Stour and Blandford on the other. It made me as popular as a fart in the lift but the phrase is still in use.
Having launched myself as a public school punk forty five years ago, I wasn’t in any mood to listen to my family’s whinging about the threat to private objection.
And on reading Jo Thomson’s letter I sputtered into my granola as I read this…
The school is central to the village community which has a high proportion of retirees; many of whom love attending our music concerts, art exhibitions and seasonal celebrations and our pupils enjoy their daily interactions. The locals enjoy visiting our cafe and in return our staff and pupils make good use of the village shop. It’s a complex, mutually supportive and happy ecosystem of which, I think, you would approve.
I spend a lot of time in Eton who own most of the town, they have strong links with the local community – the schools have the money and the community has the labour.
It is the same at Sherborne, Canford, Milton Abbey and all the rural Dorset schools, they enjoy rural settings but have little or nothing to do with their local communities (in my opinion).
And the extra money demanded by the Government on private schools from 2025 is a long overdue tax on privilege (in my opinion)
I was making these points in my pompous self-righteous London way to my mother when she issued her fateful question. I then re-read the open letter.
Clayesmore educates 530 pupils in a small rural community in the village of Iwerne Minster. Some are military children and 162 receive some support with their learning. Like most independent schools in the UK, we do not educate the Jacob Rees Moggs or the Boris Johnsons of this world. 95 pupils receive bursaries and a further 159 receive scholarships. We are privileged to have 12 Ukrainian pupils in our midst; all fully funded within our very tight operating budget. None of these families could ordinarily afford private school fees. All our pupils are down to earth, respectful, humble young people who are being educated to recognise the value of their education and to understand that they have a duty in the future to give back. Having not been educated privately myself, believe me when I say that it has always been my mission to ensure that the pupils in our school are not arrogant, selfish or entitled.
Not only did I not go to state school but my son went to a posh London school, my brother teaches at a prep school and my mother was a governor of a feeder school to Bryanston and Clayesmore.
In other words, I am not just entitled but ungrateful and hypocritical in my support of the imposition of VAT on private school fees – in their opinion.
And if I happen to go to Iwerne Minster as I hope to do this afternoon, I will slope to the other side of the A350 as I pass the gates of Clayesmore.
