From Mr Matthew Burgess.

Sir, You report (“Tribunal opens class-actions to schools”, July 7) that Alison McKenna, the first president of the Charity Tribunal, provides welcome reassurance to independent schools that they can band together to fight the Charity Commission in class action-style claims. At issue is the Charity Commission's guidance on fee-charging which, unfortunately, places insufficient weight on the fact that providing full-time education is an expensive endeavour. Charitable independent schools are not-for-profit organisations reliant on recovering their costs from fee-paying parents. To stereotype them as exclusive clubs and demand free places and shared facilities as pre-conditions to charitable status is to miss the point. Schools have bills to pay like the rest of us. In fact, independent schools already assist pupils and their parents to the tune of £350m each year.