The UK Labour party has been discussing the abolition of private schools, claiming that they do more harm than good for society. In the UK, 93 percent of school children attend publically-owned schools which are funded by taxpayers’ money. However, the small percentage of children whose families pay for a private education go on to hold the most power in society. In the UK, 74 percent of judges were privately educated, as were 71 percent of high ranking military officers, while almost half of the Conservative Party’s MPs also attended private school. Indeed, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is the twentieth PM to have attended the prestigious Eton private school. The basis of the Labour Party argument is that the private school system allows the wealthy to buy power. In their opinion, the problem is not so much that it affords financially privileged children a better standard of education, but that it fosters a network, or a “club”, of powerful people with strong connections to other people in power. The result is that it becomes more difficult for children from working class backgrounds to reach their full potential in life, regardless of their academic ability. If “who you know” is as important as “what you know”, then private education may be partly to blame for the UK’s growing wealth inequality, which is now double what it was in the 1970s. The UK Labour Party is not alone in this movement. Indeed, Finland is already slowly merging public and private schools, hoping to allow for greater equality of opportunity later in life.
