Labour has voted to effectively abolish private schools in a major shake-up of the education system.
On Sunday, activists at the party’s conference in Brighton backed a motion calling for a pledge to scrap public schools like Eton to be included in Labour’s next election manifesto.
Instead, private schools would be integrated into the state sector and stripped of their charitable status and tax privileges, the motion said.
Endowments, investments and properties held by private schools must be “redistributed democratically and fairly across the country’s educational institutions”, it added.
Meanwhile, the motion called for Labour to limit the number of university places available for public school students to 7% – their proportion in the wider population.
The vote comes just hours after shadow education secretary Angela Rayner promised that a Labour government would task a revamped Social Mobility Commission with “making the whole education system fairer through the integration of private schools”.
Meanwhile, Labour would use its first budget to “immediately close the tax loopholes used by elite private schools”, she said, adding that the money would be used “to improve the lives of all our children”.
The motion to scrap public schools was also backed by Labour grassroots group Momentum.
Its national coordinator Laura Parker called the move “a huge step forward in dismantling the privilege of a tiny, Eton educated elite who are running our country into the ground”.
“Every child deserves a world class education, not only those who are able pay for it, and I’ll be proud to campaign on this manifesto pledge at the next election,” she added.