The Labour Party conference passed a motion on Sunday endorsing plans to end the charitable status and tax-breaks enjoyed by fee-charging private schools in the UK. The new group within the party that proposed the motion, calling itself Labour Against Private Schools, is also advocating for the independent sector to be fully integrated with the much larger, publicly funded education system.

The right-wing press is predictably up in arms, but even former Conservative education secretary Michael Gove has described private schools as “welfare junkies”, expressing surprise that educating the “children of plutocrats and oligarchs” is still regarded as “a charitable activity”. In a nation long divided along the lines of the old school tie, this debate goes to the heart of what kind of country Britain wants to be.

The idea of integrating the two systems is not a new one. The 1945 Labour government briefly toyed with co-opting private schools into wider education reforms but shelved the idea. The fact that Clement Atlee and many of his cabinet colleagues had been privately educated is often assumed to have played some part in their decision.

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