Nonprofit Newswire | Green Party Would Take Charitable Status Away from Private Schools

April 15, 2010; Third Sector Online | It’s not only Labour and the Tories that have nonprofit policy positions teed up for the upcoming parliamentary elections next month. The UK’s Green Party just issued its party platform, the manifesto Fair is Worth Fighting For, calling for £2.5b to be invested in what we would call community development financial institutions such as community banks and credit unions. The Greens would create a non-compulsory program for volunteering by young people. Most intriguingly, they would “strip private schools of their charitable status.” The manifesto would gradually assimilate private schools into public (as we know them) school systems, and those that refuse to migrate to the state sector would be taxed like for-profit businesses.—Rick Cohen