THE newly appointed head of one of Scotland's leading private schools has criticised the sector for charging parents excessive fees.
Peter Hogan, who took the helm at £24,000-a-year Loretto School, Musselburgh, this term, said the inflation-busting rises in fees of recent years threatened the charitable status of schools, which saves them thousands of pounds in tax every year.
He blames the hikes on what he called an "arms race" between competing institutions to build better sports, arts and boarding facilities, the price of which is being passed directly to parents.
Other headmasters, at some of the most expensive schools in Scotland, rejected the claims and have cited inflation and teachers' salaries as the main reasons for increasing fees. They added that new facilities are needed to give the pupils a top-quality education.
Hogan, whose school boasts old boys including Alistair Darling, Norman Lamont and Andrew Marr, said institutions must remember they are charities not businesses.
He said: "My feeling is that in a way we are losing our way from our charitable founding principles. There's an arms race going on in our schools in terms of our buildings, with people saying we must have one of these, and the world will beat a path to our doors and pay for it.
"I'm all for building, but there comes a point where how can you say that fees of £30,000 for a boarder are fair, when only 2% to 3% of the population can afford them and the average salary is less than a year's fees?"
He added that school fees were imposing a price hurdle preventing the majority of parents choosing private education.
He said: "More than half of all state school parents would rather send their children to independent schools according to research, but they can't afford it. We as a sector can't just say never mind, sorry.
"We have got an obligation to do our best for them as a charitable institution. We have got to stop the inflation-busting increases – they are becoming difficult to justify."
Hogan, a business expert who was previously head of Llandovery School in South Wales and educational adviser to the London Stock Exchange and the Royal Bank of Scotland, said private schools should aim to be "lean and efficient" in the way they were run.
He said: "When the economy starts to recover, fine, but if bonuses are less and self-employed people are having less profitable years, our parents are our stakeholders and we must help them out. We have to change the culture of assuming the parent must pay."
Gordonstoun in Moray, where Prince Charles was educated, is Scotland's most expensive school, charging £18,591 for an S5 day pupil and £24,900 for a boarder. Tony Blair's former school, Fettes College in Edinburgh, is the second-most expensive with charges of £17,838 a year for a day pupil and £23,499 for a boarder.
Loretto's boarding fees are among the most expensive in Scotland at £24,450, although its day fees are only £16,620 a year.
All three schools have invested in new facilities, such as new boarding houses, classroom extensions and a recording studio in the past two years.
Soaring fees, which stop many parents from choosing private education, have threatened schools' charitable status, as last year the Office of Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) started to review the status of 11 of Scotland's private schools, with the results to be announced next month.
But Andrew Hunter, the headmaster of Merchiston, one of the first schools to be reviewed by the OSCR, denied there was a problem.
He said: "If a school's fees are too high something has gone dramatically wrong with their calculations, but school utility bills started to increase by 40% a long time ago and food inflation is running at 15% at the moment. We are still going to keep to budget, but it's tight."
He added that staff pay and pensions at Merchiston, which is building a £6.8m boarding facility, were pushing fees up rather than building work, which is funded separately. He said: "Pension provision for teachers is incredibly generous and 60% of fee income goes on staff costs – it could be even higher in a boarding school."
The Rector of Glenalmond College in Perth, Gordon Woods, said: "Although down south there is a strong feeling that there is an arms race pushing fees along, I think being in Scotland all of the schools have been very aware of the schools market conditions. We are investing £5m in boarding accommodation, but this is being paid for with accumulated surplus from previous years that's ploughed back into the school."
The Scottish Council of Independent Schools (SCIS) added that schools are sensitive to fee increases.
Deputy director Sarah Randell said: "Schools have to work hard to keep their fees in line and be as affordable as possible, and nobody is complacent about the cost."
