While the political world is having a mini-fuss about whether or not private schools should be able to operate tax-free it is left to a playwright to speak the simple truth. Private schools shouldn't be taxed. They shouldn't exist.

Speaking on the Today programme, Alan Bennett said abolishing private education would be unpopular, but it was worth it [1] because the schools cause "a fissure running through British society". He added: "Buying advantages for your children over and above their abilities is wrong."

He's slightly wrong, I think, in that the advantages parents are buying are not necessarily 'above' their children's abilities. Fee-charging private schools (laughably called 'public schools') can't make children achieve above their abilities. But they can make it much easier, and therefore more likely, to reach their potential. In a world where the state education system for "the rest of us" spectacularly fails to do this, it can look a lot like children in private schools are over-achieving. They're not. They're just giving us a glimpse of what all children could achieve if they had small classes, lots of research material, access to musical instruments and science equipment, and many, many more adults per child than any state school can offer.

It's not that private schools are idyllic. I'm well aware that they're not. They can be just as alienating as any state school. But that's not the point at issue.

Bennett described the abolition of private schools as "the elephant in the room" that no-one would talk about. If he thinks buying advantage for your children through private education is wrong, I wonder what he thinks about private hospitals.

The Independent Schools Council has launched an unsurprising defence of private schools, saying that "there is a huge and stable demand" for their services. I'm sure that's also true of crack dealers, but it hardly addresses any of Alan Bennett's criticisms. Their chief executive Jonathan Shephard went on to say, "It is a human right for parents to educate their children free of the control of the state and we are defending that right." I'm really not sure that it is a human right, fundamental or otherwise, or even possible, to educate any child free of the control of the state, and that's an issue which friends and relatives who are home educators might like to comment on. But if Mr Shephard really wants to convince us that his schools are "defending" a fundamental human right, he will have to start by explaining why they make people pay such exorbitant sums to exercise that fundamental human right. I'm pretty certain that if something costs upwards of £12,000 a year [2] and is enjoyed by only 7% of the population [3] it is probably a privilege, not a right.