Editorial: Grammar school system lets Northern Ireland sidestep the VAT private school fees row in England

The controversy surrounds plans by the Labour Party to charge VAT on private school fees, increasing them by 20%. The prime minister Rishi Sunak, who was privately educated, has accused the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer of wanting to "punish" parents of private school pupils and stoking "class war" with the plan.

Labour says it is ending a tax break for such fees caused by the inappropriate designation of private schools as charities. The Tories say that by pushing fees up over £50,000 a year in some schools the families who can just about afford the present fees, by making major sacrifices, will no longer be able to do so.

There is a moral case to be made the charitable status is wrong. There is no doubt, however, that the people who will lose out from VAT will be the private school parents of most modest means, thus making the schools even more elitist.

Northern Ireland can largely sidestep this debate because it has grammar schools. The arguments for and against academic selection are many, but by far the most compelling is that it drives social mobility. In England, the abolition of grammar schools in the 1970s has been disastrous, and has led to the dominance of private schools. Parents in desperation have turned to private schools in a way they never needed to do in Northern Ireland.

Academic selection is under such relentless pressure that the future of grammar schools here is in grave doubt. The situation is not helped by the fact that there are too many grammars. But whatever its flaws, it is a better school system than the money-dominated one that exists in England – where the importance of wealth will become even more important if Labour gets its way.