It is “the greed of those who see a market and people willing to pay more and more for their child’s education without asking too many questions”, he said.
Dr Stephen said that the loss of charitable status would not do particular damage to private schools since it only “confers a relatively small financial advantage”.
The “real killer blow” to private education, he argues, would be if the discourse on access to higher education led to universities introducing quotas to restrict the number of public-school pupils.
Yet another threat to fee-paying schools is the improvement of state education, and the growth of grammar schools, Dr Stephen said.
“Public schools survive because people who can afford it will do anything rather than send their children to a bad school, and too many state schools do not pass muster,” he wrote.
Dr Stephen is a former chair of the Headmasters and headmistresses’ Conference (HMC), a group representing the country’s leading public schools.
He taught for ten years at Haileybury College, a £32,000-a-year boarding school in Hertfordshire, and later became headmaster of The Perse School in Cambridge.
He went on to be appointed as headmaster of Manchester Grammar School, a £12,000-a-year day school, before taking up the post of High Master at St Pauls’ Boys’ School in London whose alumni include George Osborne, the director Jonathan Miller and the veteran broadcaster John Simpson.
Source: The telegraph