Sir Keir Starmer has been warned he is "fudging the facts" after being accused of "pretending" he went to state school.
Peter Lampl, a former Blair adviser and founder of the education charity Sutton Trust, slammed the Prime Minister over his VAT tax raid on private schools, arguing that the policy has denied less well-off students the same opportunities afforded to Starmer when he was younger.
During their school days, Starmer and Lampl both attended Reigate Grammar, a self-acclaimed leading independent school for boys and girls aged between 11 and 18.
When Starmer first joined, the school was funded by the council but became an independent school just two years later. The local authority agreed to cover the fees for students who had joined before the switch and, soon after, Starmer received a bursary when he started sixth form.
Starmer attended Reigate Grammar, a self-acclaimed leading independent school for boys and girls aged between 11 and 18
PA
Starmer's fellow alumnus Lampl, whose charity aims to transforms thousands of young lives, wrote: "I don’t pretend the school we went to was a state school, Starmer does. But he is fudging the facts.
"I am helping young people to benefit from an education that made all the difference to me, Starmer is destroying the opportunities to have the same chances he had."
Addressing previous questions about his schooling, the Prime Minister said: "As far as I was concerned, I started school as a 'state boy' and I finished as one too."
However, Lampl added that Labour's "regressive" tax policy would end up "vandalising" independent schools, leaving thousands of children without the same opportunities that Starmer was able to enjoy as a teenager.
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He claimed: "It’s not as if the Prime Minister doesn’t intimately understand the impact of these schools – an impact which is not purely about academic scores and exam passes."
"In his speech at conference last year, Sir Keir devoted a sizeable passage to how learning the flute while at Reigate Grammar not only gave him a passion for classical music but also helped him develop 'skills for life'.
"Skills for life, indeed. Those frequently intangible but vital accomplishments beyond mere exam passes are exactly what is in the educational DNA of our independent schools, and what they specialise in."
Lampl mentioned that while he and Starmer attended Reigate Grammar, the school offered "huge number of co-curricular activities" - from music, drama and art to the Duke of Edinburgh award, CCF, public speaking and debating - "many, many more than local state schools could manage".
Starmer and his education secretary Bridget Phillipson has assured Britain that his VAT policy on private schools will rake in £1.8billion every year within the decade
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Starmer and his Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson have assured Britain that Labour's VAT policy on private schools will rake in £1.8billion each year by 2030.
Last year, Phillipson insisted that "very few families" would take their children out of the school as a result.
Schools across the UK have started to see a "very noticeable drop" in enrolments, which was noted by the headteacher of Edinburgh largest private school.
Headteacher at the 2,700-pupil Erskine Stewart Melville School (ESMS) Anthony Simpson warned that bursary funding could soon be axed as the next step in response to the Government's tax raid on private schools.
The Tories blasted the "vindictive policy" that would "worsen the education of every single child, regardless of the school they are educated in".
