Private schools are warped institutions. I know this because I went to one – and let’s just say I haven’t stopped beating myself up over it since I was 16 years old.
Even though only 6 per cent of the country’s kids attend such schools, they still continue to occupy the elite tier of hundreds of professions. We know it’s morally wrong, and occasionally governments try to rectify this with taxes. But to dissuade future generations, I think it’s more worthwhile pointing out to parents just how it may affect their precious kids.
It didn’t shock anyone that the Prince of Wales announced he’s sending his son George to Eton College, because the royals are a bit of a lost cause. But the sheer scale of liberal-minded, left-leaning, woke-adjacent friends making the same mistake shocks me. The hypocrisy is the least of my worries – I just want my pals’ kids to turn out more sane than I did.
There’s nuance to the private schools debate. For example, given the woeful state of SEND provision in too many parts of the country, I am completely supportive of a parent’s moral decision to opt into the fee-paying system when special educational needs are a factor.
But when that is not part of the equation, it’s worth considering, for starters, the basics of cost – both financial and emotional. The average fee for attending a private school in the UK today is around £15-£20,000 a year. It’s understandable to imagine they’re just the preserve of the super wealthy, but that’s not the real story.
A lot of families genuinely make huge sacrifices to send their kids to a private school. Research conducted before Labour imposed VAT on private school fees in January 2025 suggested that one-third of families struggled to make payments.
This was the case in my family and at my school, which had a noticeably high intake of second-generation immigrant kids from hard-working newsagent and pharmacist parents. My parents – one from Iran, one from Essex – wanted to boot me up several social strata, and made an insane series of compromises to get their kid into the university-attending, office-job classes.
But I need to stress how toxic this is. It will not always play out well. Knowing that so many financial resources were put into you is a sure-fire way to make a kid choke and freak out later in life. No pressure or anything, yeah? Many kids I know who went to private schools were – like me – only children; meaning you become the proverbial basket that your parents put all their eggs into.
The stereotype of a privately-educated person is someone both a bit thick, but also thickly clad in a bulletproof veneer of entitlement. Aloof to the real world, uncaring and unashamed to wear their privilege loudly. You can mood board it in a single picture: the Bullingdon Club in 1987, the one featuring Boris Johnson and a slightly mulleted David Cameron.
Don’t get me wrong, this person exists. But a more nuanced, modern reality is of a generation that is deeply aware how uncool it is to be privately educated, and so hides it at all costs. This has been perhaps the overriding story of my lifetime in London especially – people in the left-leaning arts, creative industries and culture all craftily using clothes, language, behaviours that emanate from street culture or marginalised communities to mask their background. I’ve been guilty of it too – and have spent years self-flagellating about my epic privilege. But being a parent has at least given me some perspective over it all. I don’t mind being seen as lucky, privileged, entitled, anachronistic swine. But in my defence, I didn’t make the decision. My parents did.
I think about this a lot as I cycle twice a day past a thriving private primary school in my area. Some good friends in the neighbourhood send their kids there. The kids look so blithe and carefree, yet being the pedalling doom-monger that I am, I worry that soon they’ll experience intense awkwardness, shame and a sense of lonely disconnection that I did.
Private schools are frequently amazing places: safe, well-provisioned, full of great resources and inspiring teachers. But there’s a paradox.
Because no matter how much they achieve as an adult, once you acknowledge the umbilical link between career success and the fact that your parents paid for you to get a leg up, it’s hard to know what genuine pride actually looks like. I’ve been stuck in a state of arrested development; constantly anchored to my childhood in a way that is unhealthy. I will be forever unsure of my own success and where the line between “I did this” and “mum and dad paid for this” starts and ends.
While opposing the imposition of VAT on private school fees, veteran Tory MP David Davis called the legislation: “A vindictive piece of class warfare, that hurts parents who scrimp and save for the best for their children.” I would say that sending your kids to private school has the potential to be just as hurtful.
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