Anti-competitive ruling on private school fees

OFT investigation claims exchanges of information resulted in parents paying more

News, 10 November 2005

A Scottish private school is one of 50 across the UK accused of being part of an illegal fee-fixing cartel.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has named Strathallan School in Perthshire as one of those it has investigated regarding claims that the establishments kept their fees too high. The other schools include Eton College, Harrow and Winchester.

The OFT claims the schools exchanged information about their planned fee increases for 2001-02, 2002-03 and 2003-04, in contravention of the Competition Act 1998. In a statement, OFT said that the regular exchange of information about fee increases resulted in parents paying higher fees than otherwise would have been the case.

All the schools must respond to the ruling by March of next year. If OFT's findings are upheld, they face heavy fines.

Strathallan has around 450 pupils. Boarders are charged nearly £7,000 a term. Anthony Glasgow, the school's bursar, said the matter was now in the hands of the school's lawyers.

The Independent Schools Council denounced the investigation as a scandalous waste of public money, claiming that the schools involved had not knowingly broken the rules. It added that the schools believed that as charitable organisations they were exempt from competition rules. The exemption was removed in 2000 without the schools having been consulted, and they had stopped the practice when made aware of the change.