How Abolishing Private Education Builds Homes

Scrap private education. 

Cue the tweed jacket revolution. 

The justification of private education in Britain is inherently selfish and ultimately flawed. The notion that a child could earn up to 35% more than their state-schooled peers because their parents could afford to send them to private school is indefensible in a nation that preaches equality of opportunity for all. 

Only 6.4% of the UK has attended private school, yet 23% of MPs in the Commons and 51% of Peers in the Lords were educated in the private sector. 62% of senior judges were privately educated, and no blood relative to the monarch has ever been state educated. Therefore, it can be argued that the creators, upholders and ratifiers of the laws we live under do not understand the nation they govern. 

According to a 2024 Guardian investigation, the top 250 private schools in the UK own a combined over 38,000 acres of land nationwide. Meanwhile, the average value of one acre of land in the UK is £18,572, meaning free-paying schools hold land assets reaching a combined value of £706million. This fails to consider the fact that roughly 18% of private schools are in London, where average land prices reach nearly £700,000 per acre, meaning the value of land assets held by private schools will be far higher than this valuation. Similarly, this is a total for the land held by the largest 250 schools, and when the remaining 2,300 schools’ land total is included the value of land held by private schools will comfortably exceed over £1billion. 

The UK’s average population density per acre is 1.16, and as the demand for housing continues to grow yet land becomes increasingly scarce, this total will only continue to rise, as more people are squeezed into existing urban areas and depleted housing stock. In Labour’s 2024 manifesto, Starmer pledged over 1.5million new homes by 2029, to be achieved through cutting red tape and building on former greenbelt land. Prime Minister Andy Burnham has maintained this promise, and allocated £10bn to fund the project after succeeding Starmer in July. 

There are 3 things obstructing this policy: space, support and services. Whilst private firms are responsible for the construction of homes, the public services that are required to sustain the society that move into these new homes must be funded by the state. For example, the Department for Education grants up to £22million to developers to fund the construction of primary and secondary schools in new-build estates, and established the £18million Playground Fund to incentivise house-building firms to make space for playparks, green spaces and community centres. The construction of health centres are bills either footed or subsidised by government, and once construction is complete local councils will need to fund increased bin collection, road maintenance and nature management. 

This makes Labour’s house-building scheme expensive in the short and long-term. 
However, there is a way to reduce the short-term cost and fund the long-term cost simultaneously, which is the compulsory purchase powers held by Homes England and local healthcare bodies. 

My solution is for Homes England, the branch of the Ministry of Housing responsible for supporting developers constructing homes, to utilise its compulsory purchasing powers to seize the in-excess of 38,000 acres owned by private schools, and sell this land to housing developers. Not only would this provide the government with over £1bn if sold at the market rate, but also solve the question of space, because all of this new land would be unlocked. This would reduce population density and provide more room for housing developments in attractive south-east locations. 

All three of the problems causing Labour’s housing crisis can be solved – compulsory purchase generates the financial support that can be spent on public services for these new homes, space is unlocked on which they can be built, and the fact that local health boards also have compulsory purchase order powers means land can be put aside for healthcare infrastructure. 

The abolition of private schools would be the closing move of the offensive, because the buildings could be preserved and would be turned over into public ownership when the compulsory purchase order was finalised. Staff, resources and infrastructure from the existing school could be maintained, but funded by the state using the money generated by selling off the surrounding land. This would also create an avenue for renovation and expansion of the existing school, bringing it up to standard to educate the increased number of pupils that the new-build homes would provide. 

The abolition of private education would not only increase equality, but also fund an expansion and improvement of the state education system, provide an avenue to fulfil manifesto promises, and construct more social housing in regions that need it most.