The head of a group of 600 private schools has hit out at the “truly toxic portrayal”, in the wake of Labour endorsing a series of measures that would effectively abolish them.

Christopher King, the chief executive of the Independent Association of Prep Schools (IAPS), was due to tell his organisation’s annual conference on Thursday 26th September that private schools offered a “premium product” for pupils, without the rote learning and changes inflicted by the previous education secretary Michael Gove on state schools in England.

He also claims that private schools survive because they are better at providing a “holistic education” , and urges the government to issue education vouchers for parents to spend on school fees.

In his speech to prep school heads and governors, King attacked the “truly toxic portrayal” of private schools as being aloof from their community. He also accused critics of the sector of being hypocrites for allowing “selection by postcode and house price”, when parents buy expensive houses close to leading state schools.

“For me, that smacks of hypocrisy. How can these people attack parents for paying for their children’s education when they are doing exactly the same thing but via a different route?” King said.

“Social mobility, or the lack of it, is a major problem in this country. The easy cheap shot is to blame us who educate no more than 12% of the nation’s children. Really?

“Visit a typical independent school classroom with children of any age and you will see a more ethnically diverse group of faces looking back at you than is likely to be the case elsewhere.”

Read more at: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/sep/26/private-schools-chief-attacks-truly-toxic-portrayal-of-sector and https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/prep-schools-renew-appeal-with-promise-of-kindness-d976r83j3

See also: Prime minister accuses Jeremy Corbyn of 'unbelievable hypocrisy' over Labour's plans to integrate private schools into state system