Ban private schools, demand activists

SNP activists yesterday made a renewed attack on private schools, demanding they be scrapped.

Ruby Zajac told the party’s conference that banning fee-paying schools would be fairer on children.

Outlining the radical plan during a debate over children’s rights, she called for an overhaul of the education system north of the Border which would see all schools become ‘fully comprehensive’. Ms Zajac said: ‘The action required to make children’s rights real is radical.

‘To protect and defend the human rights of every child in Scotland means redistributing wealth through fiscal reform, means direct routes to citizenship for refugees and migrants, means integrating fee-paying schools into a fully comprehensive education system, means rent controls and planning reform, means real, play-based engagement with children about what they think.’

Her attack on independent schools is the latest made by the SNP.

Earlier this year, Finance Secretary Kate Forbes put forward a motion which would see private schools lose their charitable status.

Changes to business rates will see schools paying the 20 per cent tax rate from which they had previously been exempt.

Ms Zajac slammed the UK Supreme Court’s decision to block the full integration of the Scottish Government’s proposed children’s rights Bill into law. She said the Bill ‘seeks to put children’s human rights at the heart of our political system’ and commits to ‘educate more children and adults across Scotland about how to realise these rights’.