- Labor MP Clive Lewis said Prince William should send George to public school
- Party sources have discussed the ‘optics’ of George following his father to Eton
Prince William should break with royal family tradition by sending Prince George to public school, a Labor MP has said.
The call from Norwich MP Clive Lewis comes as Labor sources have discussed the “optics” of George following his father to Eton at a time when the party hopes to be in government after next year’s election. year, and whether the Prince of Wales could be “pushed”. ‘ to make a different decision for nine-year-old George.
It is understood that the Princess of Wales would prefer her eldest son to attend a co-educational school like his alma mater, Marlborough College, where fees are £42,500.
Eton, where fees are £46,296 a year, is facing doubts over whether it will admit girls for the first time since it was founded in 1440.
Sir Keir Starmer has said that a Labor government would add VAT to school fees, raising Eton’s fees to more than £55,000 in today’s values.
TRADITION: Prince William should break with royal family tradition by sending Prince George to a public school, a Labor MP has said. Pictured: Prince George (left) with his siblings Princess Charlotte (right) and Prince Louis (centre), accompanied by their parents the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, as they arrive to settle in for the afternoon Lambrook School, near Ascot, Berkshire, in September last year.
Labor MP Clive Lewis (pictured) said that while the decision about whether George would go to Eton was “a matter for his parents”, he added: “There is a case for him going to a state school.”
Lewis said that while the decision about whether George would go to Eton was “a matter for his parents”, he added: “There is a case for him going to a state school.”
He said: “He is a future king and I would suggest that at a public school he would rub shoulders with a much wider cross-section of his future subjects than at Eton.”
George, along with Princess Charlotte, 7, and Prince Louis, 4, currently attend Lambrook School in Windsor, a £12,000-a-year Eton secondary school.
Lambrook’s 52-acre grounds are home to several peacocks, with extracurricular activities including feeding chickens and lambs, as well as polo and beekeeping. There is also a cricket pavilion and a nine-hole golf course.
Prince William enrolled at Wetherby Prep School and then Ludgrove School in Berkshire, before attending Eton from 1995 to 2000.
King Charles’s school days at Gordonstoun, Scotland (the remote and austere public school attended by his father, Prince Philip), were notoriously unhappy. He called his stay at the school “a prison sentence,” and called the school “Colditz in kilts.”
A Labor source says: “The last thing Keir wants is a fight with the royals, but voices around him are murmuring that it would be ‘nice’ if William decided not to send George to the world’s most famous elite school at a time when that we are increasing costs, which are already exorbitant.’
Labor sources have discussed the “optics” of George following his father to Eton College (pictured) at a time when the party hopes to be in government after next year’s election.
George, along with Princess Charlotte, 7, and Prince Louis, 4, currently attend Lambrook School (pictured) in Windsor, a £12,000-a-year Eton secondary school.
Winchester-educated Rishi Sunak accused Sir Keir of “attacking the aspirations of millions of working people” by promising to remove the charitable status of private schools, which would mean they would lose their VAT exemptions and have to pay business rates.
If they lose status, it is estimated that more than 90,000 children would have to change from private schools to public schools because their parents would be excluded.
The measure has been called a “class warfare” tax, which would restrict access for everyone except the children of the super-rich.
But shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves says private school fees should be taxed in the same way as eating in a restaurant, insisting “every penny” of the revenue from Labour’s plan to impose VAT on fees of independent schools would be spent on state education.