William should send George to state school not Eton, says Labour MP

‘He would rub shoulders with a much broader cross-section of his future subjects’: Labour MP says Prince William should break with tradition and send Prince George to a state school, instead of £46,000-a-year Eton

• Labour MP Clive Lewis said Prince William should send George to a state 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 a state school, a Labour MP has said.

The call by Norwich MP Clive Lewis comes as Labour sources have discussed the ‘optics’ of George following his father to Eton at a time when the party expects to be in Government after next year’s election – and whether the Prince of Wales could be ‘nudged’ into taking 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 such as her alma mater, Marlborough College, where fees are £42,500.

Eton, where fees are £46,296 a year, is facing questions over whether it would admit girls for the first time since it was founded in 1440.

Sir Keir Starmer has said that a Labour Government would add VAT to school fees, which would hike Eton’s fees to over £55,000 at current values.

TRADITION: Prince William should break with royal family tradition by sending Prince George to a state school, a Labour MP has said. Pictured: Prince George (left) with siblings Princess Charlotte (right) and Prince Louis (centre) accompanied by their parents the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge as they arrive for a settling in afternoon at Lambrook School, near Ascot in Berkshire in September last year

Labour MP Clive Lewis (pictured) said that while the decision about whether George went to Eton was ‘a matter for his parents’, he added: ‘There’s an argument to be made for him to go to a state school’

Mr Lewis said that while the decision about whether George went to Eton was ‘a matter for his parents’, he added: ‘There’s an argument to be made for him to go to a state school’.

He said: ‘He is a future king and I would suggest that at a state school he would rub shoulders with a much broader cross-section of his future subjects than he would at Eton.’

George, along with Princess Charlotte, 7, and Prince Louis, 4, currently attend £12,000-a-year Lambrook School in Windsor, a feeder school for Eton.

Lambrook’s 52-acre grounds are home to several peacocks, with extra-curricular activities including feeding chickens and lambs as well as polo and bee keeping. There is also a cricket pavilion and a nine-hole golf course.

Prince William was enrolled in Wetherby Prep School, going on to Ludgrove School in Berkshire, before attending Eton from 1995 to 2000.

King Charles’s schooldays at Gordonstoun in Scotland – the remote, austere public school attended by his father, Prince Philip – were famously unhappy. He labelled his time at the school as ‘a prison sentence’, calling the school ‘Colditz in kilts’.

A Labour source says: ‘The last thing Keir wants is a row with the royals, but voices around him are muttering that it would be a ‘good look’ if William decided against sending George to the most famously elitist school in the world at a time when we are adding to the already eye-watering costs.’

Labour sources have discussed the ‘optics’ of George following his father to Eton College (pictured) at a time when the party expects to be in Government after next year’s election

George, along with Princess Charlotte, 7, and Prince Louis, 4, currently attend £12,000-a-year Lambrook School (pictured) in Windsor, a feeder school for Eton

Winchester-educated Rishi Sunak has accused Sir Keir of ‘attacking the aspiration of millions of hard-working people’ by pledging to remove the charitable status of private schools, which would mean they would lose their VAT exemptions and would face paying business rates.

If they lose the status, it is estimated that more than 90,000 children would have to switch from private to state schools because their parents would be priced out.

The move has been called a ‘class-war’ tax, which would restrict access for all but the children of the super-rich.

But Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves says that private school fees should be taxed in the same way as eating in a restaurant, insisting that ‘every penny’ of the proceeds of Labour’s plan to levy VAT on independent school fees would be spent on state education.

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