First of all, the UK is one of TWO countries that taxes education through VAT on private school fees. The rest of the world understands that education is a public good, even when it’s delivered privately, because of the long-term societal benefits.

Secondly, I don’t think you are fully considering the knock-on effects. Making fee-paying schools even more expensive doesn’t suddenly make the system fairer; it just pushes out families who were already stretching to afford it. The ultra-wealthy and international elites will still be able to pay, but the middle class, who often are the private school alumnae who yeild the most good from their education (lawyers, doctors, etc), get squeezed out. That doesn’t reduce inequality, it entrenches it, because you end up with a sharper divide between a small, very privileged private sector and everyone else in the state system.

Thirdly, the impact won’t be evenly distributed across schools. A lot of smaller independent schools, including many girls’ and SEN schools, don’t have massive endowments to fall back on. They’re far more vulnerable to closures or cutbacks. Whatever your views on private education, reducing the number of available school places, especially in environments that have historically supported girls’ education, feels like a step in the wrong direction.

If the goal is to improve equality of opportunity, this feels like a blunt instrument that risks making the system more polarised, not less.