school were to have an intake of students which was exceptionally poor then they would be able to take money from this fund in the short term to cover their variation in income generated. Schools, who refused to follow this progressive fees model would immediately have their charitable status removed from them. With charitable status allowing schools to have an 80% cut in their business rates and being worth over £700 million p.a. to the private school sector, there would be a huge loss to schools that did not follow this policy. Consequently, I believe that the progressive fees model would be practically viable for a number of reasons. Firstly, there is no direct cost attached to the policy, either for the government and the private schools themselves. This is because there would be cross subsidisation as the richer parents who could easily be able to pay double the fees that they already pay would be able to subsidise the cost of the poorer students who were unable to pay anything. Furthermore, I believe that the price elasticity demand of an English private school education is extremely low as there is no substitute for it, for many parents as their main priority in life is to provide the best opportunities for their children and so I believe that the wealthier parents would still be willing to pay the increased fees. In addition to this, many wealthy international parents already say that they are willing to pay a price premium so that their children are able to have the prestige of an English education. Secondly, there would be a financial incentive for the schools themselves to operate this fee system as they would keep their charitable status and as they would lose out on no overall income due to the cross subsidisation of the proposal, I believe they would be happy to adopt this model. Finally, I believe that this model would not dilute the quality of the private school institutions but instead increase the quality as there would be a higher calibre of student attending due to the enlarging of the pool of applicants. Therefore, the British economy would not only still keep the high quality valuable institutions which produce our most skilled workers but also see an increase in the number and quality of future skilled workers, as the riches of the working and lower middle classes were finally unlocked. In conclusion, it is clear that British society is suffering from both inequitably and inefficiently low levels of social mobility within our country and so a solution to this inequality should be a necessity to the government. Private schools in their current form, due to their great attributes of networking, student preparation and high quality teaching, are overall a barrier to social mobility and thus need reform. The solution of progressive fees would see the problem of inequality caused by private schools severely reduced whilst at the same time being an attractive proposition to all members of the British economy.
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