LONDON, May 3, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – Britain’s Eton College has announced a £100 million ($125 million, 113-million-euro) drive to improve educational opportunity after growing evidence the coronavirus outbreak is hitting rich and poor differently.
Headmaster Simon Henderson said there was “no doubt” the global pandemic was widening existing inequality, and public and private bodies with means needed to help tackle it.
Britain’s Office for National Statistics on Friday said people in more deprived areas of England were twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as in more affluent locations.
The Sutton Trust, which promotes social mobility through education, has said private school pupils were twice as likely to take part in online lessons every day during the lockdown as their state school counterparts.
Eton, near Windsor, west of London, has become a byword for elitism and the class divide, with fees costing more than o42,000 per year. Old boys include Prime minister Boris Johnson, and princes William and Harry.
Britain’s main opposition Labour party last year proposed radical plans to abolish private schools and their charitable status, redistributing their endowments, investments and properties to the under-funded state sector.
Henderson defended the private school model at the time and in a video message this week said history would judge who acted for the common good during and after the global pandemic.
He said the crisis, which has led to more than 27,000 deaths in Britain, would be a “trigger for profound change” similar to that after the last two world wars.
“A national crisis shines an unforgiving light on the unfairness of its impact on different people,” he noted, particularly low-paid key workers.
“It’s much, much harder if you’re poor,” he said.
Eton’s contribution to tackling the imbalance, he said, would be to spend “at least o100 million” on narrowing the gap between state and private education.
The money, half of which would come from fund-raising, would go towards attracting at least 140 pupils from vulnerable and disadvantaged backgrounds on full scholarships by 2025.
It will also include developing and extending its online education platform to the state sector, investing in new courses and making them permanently available for free online.
The school, whose charitable status has raised questions about its tax arrangements after years of government education cuts, would seek new state school sector partners, particularly in inner-city areas, he added.
Henderson described the programme as “a fundamental change of gear by Eton”, which was founded by king Henry VI in 1440, and the “right thing” to do.
“It is a right example to set our boys. It is right ambition to set our staff. It is a right development of our charitable goals and it is a right contribution to our national need,” he added.