Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Prime Minister's oral contribution of 25 September 2019, Official Report, column 780, what the evidential basis is for the fiscal assessment that abolishing fee-paying schools would cost the public purse £7 billion.

This is not a fiscal assessment by the Government but is drawn from an independent report by Oxford Economics in 2018 that analyses a number of factors. Amongst its findings are that independent schools in the UK save the taxpayer £3.5 billion every year by providing places for pupils who could otherwise be expected to take up a place in the state-funded sector.

In addition, the report found that the schools belonging to the ISC’s member associations generated £3.5 billion in annual tax revenues. The report also found that, overall, the schools contributed £11.6 billion to the UK economy in 2017.

The full report from Oxford Economics is available here: https://www.isc.co.uk/research/independent-schools-economic-impact-report-2018/.