Labour 'is a threat' to private schools

New Labour poses the biggest threat to the future of independent schools in years, according to top private school headmaster Dr Antony Seldon.

Dr Seldon, the headmaster of Brighton College, warned they face a twin threat of discrimination against their pupils by universities and an increase in selective state schools as a result of Labour's specialist schools programme.

In an address to the Association of Teachers and Lecturers' independent schools conference, he accused Britain's leading independent schools of being "dull and complacent" and urged them to abandon their "defensive, parochial and elitist" culture.

Dr Seldon's wake-up call to the independent sector comes at a time when Labour is being accused by its own left-wingers of being "too cosy" with private schools. Mr Blair's government is the first Labour administration to enter office without a pledge either to abolish private schools or to end their charitable status.

In his speech Dr Seldon said that, while state schools were improving, the independent sector was pulling further ahead. "The gulf between both sectors has never been wider," he added. "Yet ironically, the independent sector is also under greater threat than at any point in recent history." He said increases in fees – coupled with the ending of subsidies to students from poorer homes – "threaten to place an independent school education beyond the pockets of all but the most affluent middle classes".

"The Government's policy of specialisation within the state sector is meaning an increase in 'desirable' (ie selective, thus safe for the middle classes) state schools on top of the remaining 164 grammar schools," he said.