|
Under previous Charity Law independent schools had a virtually automatic entitlement to charitable status but the new Charities Act, which became law in the Autumn of 2006, obliges an independent school to show that its activities meet the test of "public benefit". Exactly what constitutes public benefit is, of course, a debatable question but the term has been left deliberately loose in the Act to allow the Charity Commissioners plenty of flexibility in judging the merits of individual cases. Independent schools believe that they will be able to meet the test in two chief ways: (i) by making facilities and/or expertise available to the wider public, including the pupils of state schools, and (ii) by offering scholarships and bursaries to children whose parents could not otherwise afford the fees.
CASE does not believe that either of these approaches justifies the award of charitable status. CASE believes that independent schools which do make facilities available to the wider public should receive tax relief specifically in respect of those activities, rather than charitable status, which confers tax relief on the whole of the school's activities.
CASE does not believe that the award of scholarships and bursaries to a few academically able children can be shown to be of public benefit. Rather, this kind of financial assistance benefits independent schools at the expense of state schools, whose results are adversely affected by being "creamed" of able and well motivated children. To grant charitable status to a school on these grounds would, in effect, reintroduce the "assisted places" scheme which this government rightly abolished.
More details of our response can be found here.
|
