Editorial: Commission was slow off the mark over conflict of interest on schools

By Stephen Cook, Third Sector, 12 September 2007

Senior staff at the Charity Commission think they should be congratulated for taking and acting on legal advice that its chair, Dame Suzi Leather, should withdraw from decisions about what should be in its forthcoming guidance on public benefit in relation to private schools and, in due course, about whether individual schools do or do not provide such benefit.

The advice was sought because Dame Suzi has a child at a fee-paying school. It's not necessarily the case that people who send their children to private schools think private education is entirely a good thing and in no need of reform, but such fine distinctions rarely count for much...