Labour’s VAT raid will kill off cathedral schools, says Alexander Armstrong

Choir schools will be the next victim of Labour’s private school VAT raid, Alexander Armstrong has warned.

The presenter and singer said the “writing is on the wall” for choir schoolswhich do not have the financial capacity to absorb the 20 per cent levy.

Mr Armstrong, a presenter on Classic FM who was himself a chorister at St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh, said the “fragile fabric of a culture that has worked beautifully for a very long time” was at risk of unravelling.

It comes after Exeter Cathedral School, which was founded in the 12th century, announced it would close its preparatory school from September over “unavoidable financial pressures”.

Choristers have been educated at the cathedral school since 1179, its records show, and will now be moved to Exeter School, another local independent school.

Parents launched a fundraising campaign with the target of raising £650,000 by April in order to prevent its closure. However, at present, its donations total £40,000.

Mr Armstrong, who presents the BBC quiz show Pointless and has also released five classical albums, said other choir schools would probably meet the same fate as Exeter Cathedral’s school.

Writing in Country Life magazine, he said: “Chorister places are, on principle, open to children of any background, with selection based on musical potential rather than means. The schools themselves are jewels.

“In fact, it is because there is so much love for them that they have been (just about) able to limp on, supported by generous donations, ingenuity and hard graft. If they could just make it, they reason, to a time of stronger economic performance, perhaps they could yet adapt and thrive.

“[But] then came VAT on school fees. Since then, it’s hard not to feel that, barring a miracle, the writing is on the wall for all our choir schools. The less well-resourced cathedrals will be the first to close them down and the rest will eventually find themselves having to follow.”

Mr Armstrong praised Exeter Cathedral’s decision to partner with Exeter School from September as well as other choirs which adopt an open policy whereby choristers arrive from a number of different schools. But he added: “How sustainable will this model be? Excellence is the fuel of the whole enterprise.”

Mr Armstrong is one of the few celebrities to publicly criticise the Government’s tax on private school fees. His four sons all attend their local independent school.

In an interview with The Telegraph last year, he said: “I’m feeling really, really angry about that, and extremely poor.

“In our case, private school is the only place available for our children to learn music. Our 10-year-old has special educational needs, he couldn’t survive in the state system.

“We have chosen that not because we’re evil, and not because we want to buy a head-start for our children, but we want them to have as good an education as we can get.”

He added: “There’s a real anger towards private schools from some quarters and I find that so antithetical to everything I believe about society.

“There was something really vituperative about [Sir Keir Starmer] bringing it in in the middle of the school year. I loathe tribal politics. I’m allergic to it from the Right and scared of it from the Left. It felt really unpleasant and nasty.”

More than 100 private schools have closed their doors since the tax was imposed on Jan 1, 2025, according to the Independent Schools Council.

A survey of 1,150 schools by the industry body last September found almost 25,000 pupils had been forced out of private schools since Labour came into power – more than eight times the fall the Government had predicted by that point.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]