On Monday, having investigated five private schools in the North West to discover what benefits they were giving to the public in return for charitable status, the commission “failed” two of them. Two small prep schools were told they would lose their status in a year’s time unless they gave out more bursaries. The viciousness and hypocrisy of this are breathtaking. The people who run these schools are, I am sure, not getting fat and rich on their tax breaks. I know many in the world of private education, and none fits that description. If they are giving few bursaries it is because they lack the means to do so. They can attempt to give more only by putting up their fees, which would probably put them out of business. And as for the hypocrisy: why should leftists want more children to attend private schools, when they hate these institutions so much?