by One private school has already announced it will close permanently at the end of July, blaming “adverse economic and political factors” for its decline. In other words: Labour’s VAT plan is done for us. Other private schools have given scared parents the chance to pay school fees early; get that money into the purser’s office before 20 percent is deducted on top of it. Meanwhile, state schools are warning they have no room for an influx of confused pupils, wondering why they don’t have to put a straw boater on a boat every morning.
What drama there will be in the coming months if Sir Keir’s main policy is launched. Even The Guardian He managed to say last week that the policy was a mistake, as the average child who skips private school to avoid £3,000 in VAT will cost taxpayers £8,000 a year in state education. Posh schools abroad will increasingly look to foreign students to fill the gap. And hark! Can you hear that crazy sound? That’s the noise from a thousand middle-class angles being sharpened further, preparing themselves for a battle for the best places in the state school.
If you are someone who is horrified by this situation, worried about what to say to little Hawkeye, feeling a touch Eeyore-ish about the fact that he will now be the 11th generation of Garibaldi-Talbots not to go to school in Dorset. you had to break the iced water this morning to wash your face before a quick 10 mile round the grounds (the last one back is a rotten egg!), please don’t be too sensitive. Maybe this is not a bad thing. Times are changing, it is no longer compulsory to go to private school even for families as intelligent as the Garibaldi-Talbots, and in fact the Little Hawk might be much better off at the local company. Here’s why:
1. He might be able to play a normal sport like football, instead of an old fashioned one like Fives (Radley) or the Wall Game (Eton), which nobody has heard of for a long time less understand the rules. Some schools also offer beagling, which is all well and good but imagine the scene in the pub, any pub, when someone asks Peregrine what team he supports and he reveals that he likes the Stowe Beagles. Kinder, if anything, he never knew such a pack existed.
If Peregrine has a sister, let’s call her Persephone, she’s more likely to be able to play volleyball than lacrosse, which is also good. Every Saturday evening at my school, at least one girl had to be taken to the local hospital because her nose was broken in a string. In some cases, this improved the nose. Still, it was a vicious and bloody game.
2. Parents, you will no longer have to drive three hours (and back) on Saturday mornings to watch the inexplicable games.
3. You may also be able to give a holiday.
4. And/or a new car.
5. It’s not just the straw boaters. Among my kit list for school was a special uniform for Sunday church; a thick woolen cloak which was so large, so heavy and so indestructible that it could be used as a collective bucket in the trenches; an oversized sports kit, and each piece required even larger name tapes in individual house colors so the staff could tell who was far away. “Money-Coutts! Get that stick out of his face!” At Christ’s Hospital, pupils still wear knee-length mustard socks; Scotland’s private schools are still keen on suits. A simple sweatshirt will come as a blessing.
6. Hawk and Persephone could have a healthier relationship with the opposite sex.
7. They may also develop a healthier relationship with you.
8. Gordonstoun, the King’s alma mater, employs a chef who was once a finalist on MasterChef. His name is Ross Burgess, and he makes breakfasts that include shakshuka and cinnamon toast. Lunch could be steak with French onions and garlic butter, or chorizo and prawn risotto.
No, no. This is completely wrong. Private school students have the right to learn important life skills, such as how to get through a horrible dinner party, as well as intolerance and rudeness, by swallowing lumpy rice pudding and hiding unfamiliar pieces of meat in a paper napkin. The food they are being fed now will make them extremely soft and spoiled. Out they go.
9. If they graduate from the state system, they won’t have to remove their funny private school from their CV. A handful of Old Etonian friends have done this in recent years, lest potential employers judge them otherwise. Their accents and extended rings still give it away a bit, but they feel safer, less inclined to be mocked as an arrogant berk without their school explicitly mentioned. Unless you’re applying to the Tory Party, that is, in that case leave it firmly.
10. Likewise, if your child becomes an Oscar-winning actor in due course, it will be much easier to give interviews to the press if you went to state school so you don’t have to spend half the time apologizing and hand-wringing for being privileged.
11. Hawk and Persephone may enter Munster Bridge. I have heard rumors, in recent years, of parents turning their children out of private school for the sixth year, so that they can apply to university from a state school and try to meet the quotas set by the various Oxbridge colleges for intake. avoid private students. Send them from the start and you can avoid such skulduggery (although they might want to rethink their first names).
12. I do once (very briefly) dated a privately educated man who declared that he would like his children to go to his old school, “less for the educational benefits and more for the social side of things”. We broke up soon after. Maybe not long after he finished that sentence. So look on the bright side: if you have to send little Hawk or Persephone to a state school, chances are they’ll be far more accurate than he is.
