It’s like magic. According to head of education Neil Snellgrove, that’s what the parents say about the education provided by Ochil Tower School in Auchterarder.

Thirty miles up the road at the New School in Butterstone, headteacher Chris Holmes has visited a class listening to Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. The pupils were rapt. Until recently they would have been “bouncing off the walls of a state-school classroom”.

Both these independent schools cater for children with complex additional support needs who have been unable to thrive in the state sector.

Both have charitable status and face the prospect of paying business rates in full if the recommendation from the Barclay report on business rates is accepted by the government.

There are around a dozen schools like this among the 70 or so private schools that the Scottish Council of Independent Schools represents, says SCIS director, John Edward.

These schools are a last resort and it is generally councils that pick up the tab for their fees when all else fails.

Snellgrove says most pupils who arrive at Ochil Tower School are autistic and have severe emotional difficulties. “The majority find verbal communication difficult and for some it’s non-existent,” he adds.

Schools under threat

Paying business rates could put Ochil Tower’s future under threat, says Snellgrove.Holmes agrees that the additional expense could sound the death knell for his school - and the other small independent schools like it - because it would mean a rise in fees. Rolls have fallen at both schools since local authority budgets started to be squeezed.

However, it would appear public opinion - or at least the opinion of the Twitterati - is strongly in favour of the additional charges being levied. We asked via a Twitter poll if private schools should have to pay business rates in full: 74 per cent of 222 voters said yes. But it seems unlikely it was schools such as Ochil Tower and the New School participants had in mind when they cast their votes, More likely, they were picturing the imposing turrets and spires of some of Scotland’s more famous mainstream independent schools.

Responding to the survey, one tweeter suggested that the question be changed to whether or not private schools should have charitable status. Crucially, however, that is not up for debate.

The Barclay report acknowledges that even if the Scottish government accepts its recommendation and independent schools have to pay business rates in full, they will continue to be classed as charities and other benefits will “continue to flow to them from that status”.

The question of whether or not independent schools should be considered charities was settled (in theory, at least) back in 2014, when the charity watchdog OSCR reported on its review of the charitable status of independent schools.

Of the 52 schools examined, 10 were directed to “widen access to the public benefit” they provided. They did.

What the Barclay report takes issue with is that independent schools only pay 20 per cent of business rates because they are charities, while state schools pay business rates in full. That is “unfair”, it says, and it calls for this “inequality” to end.

There is, of course, another solution, point out the Scottish Council of Independent Schools, the EIS teaching union and School Leaders Scotland: remove the obligation for state schools to pay business rates.

Perhaps that’s something we could all get behind?

@Emma_Seith