Labour reviewing school admission criteria

I hope they are lurking !

If they really cared about closing the gap between the poor and the well off they’d scrap the 2 child UC limit , invest heavily in improving ALL schools and scrap VAT on private school fees

This is exactly right.

That’s not what Angelas modus operandi is all about tbh

( As an aside - Agree developers like to make money but then don't all businesses and councils have to acknowledge a % profit when determining a planning application )

The point however is her dictatorship approach to Governing this area

The thing is, so a poor child is admitted to a better secondary. They do well, go to university, become, say, a chartered accountant. They have a family, move to a good area, then BOOM ! No, you middle-class twerp - think again! No nearest school for you. Improving your lot is a bad thing .

I agree. It’s probably dawned on them that those switching from private schools are now taking up places at the better state schools and are now thinking of ways to address that. It was always going to happen. Those parents who were previously in the private sector were never going to settle for the worst state schools. This is a problem at year 7 especially. The Labour Party only have themselves to blame.

So they want to screw middle classes to force them back to private schools.

Many families simply don’t have the money for private education any more, because of the hike in fees this year caused by VAT and other taxes. They can’t afford the fees even if they wanted to.

Proverbial 6500 extra teachers - any signs anywhere??

Of course there isn’t. Not only have they revised the teacher recruitment target down, they’ve cut funding to many areas of education (STEM, music, Latin, languages etc), as well as announcing unfunded pay rises which has effectively cut schools’ budgets. In any case, Labour have now said that the money raised from VAT (not that there’ll be any) is going towards building affordable housing.

They are already voting with their feet, haven't you heard?

Tens of thousands of high earners, perhaps hundreds of thousands have already left.

Have you checked out Angela Rayners housing policy

The complete opposite of listening. More dictatorship

I think it's even more sinister than this.
With VAT on private schools there is an exodus and higher income families are moving to the better state ones and of course this impacts catchment areas but also reduces VAT take which Labour expected. I believe at the end of last academic year net tax impact was already zero (don't remember where I read it), from 2025/26 it's likely to be negative.

So they want to screw middle classes to force them back to private schools.

Proverbial 6500 extra teachers - any signs anywhere??

There is not a single policy at present aimed at actual improvement of state education, none, zilch, nothing.

All they do is trying to redistribute to make everything equally bad so at the end of their term God forbid someone can blame them that middle classes/higher earners do better than benefits claimants.

Labour's demise will be much faster and more dramatic than Tory, they won't last more than this terms but the issue is that Reform don't even need to move a finger, KS and RR do everything to bring Nige to power. Urgh

People also laughed when posters suggested VAT on private healthcare might be a possibility once VAT on education was implemented. Lord Kinnock has now said that private healthcare should be taxed.

They’ll have to be pretty loud as Labour have a tendency to barrel through regardless.

I think the possibility has been questioned because of this part of their manifesto

“Respect and equality for all
Everyone in this country deserves a government that matches their ambition. Labour will ensure no matter whatever your background, you can thrive, and therefore we will enact the socio-economic duty in the Equality Act 2010.”

It’s under the section “break down barriers to opportunity” which is largely about education.

Some posters have, quite reasonably, been questioning whether this policy actually exists. It may well not do.

But whether it does or it doesn’t, it won’t happen. The left-wing middle class who proudly announce their opposition to fee paying schools but buy into a good comp’s catchment area would squeal, and this idea would disappear.

My cousin said her kids school was like that
No idea why she seemed to think that was funny

Agree they wouldn’t gaf
Don’t agree they’ve thought it through because they never do

I think the policeman said it best, when he said the school was more a herding pen than anything else.

Oh I know, I think I agree with your take

Interesting because I thought I was being sarcastic

Oh they did. They just don’t gaf.

Ah yes well said.

Or poor parenting

It’s a good idea. The houses in the catchment for the outstanding schools in my area go for a million +.

I’m really happy with my kids (non-outstanding but actually very good, and more diverse) school, and we wouldn’t class as lower income anyway, so have no dog in this fight, but I’d like to see the kids of non-high earners also get a good education too. High earners have gotten away with gaming the system for far too long.

People said the same re welfare cuts on here ‘media speculation’ / whistle nonsense etc, which turned out to be happening.

I absolutely agree and I’ve made that point in previous posts. If all state schools offered an excellent education there wouldn’t be a need for parents to move houses/tutor/use private education etc.

I haven’t seen a single idea from the Labour government that’s going to do anything to improve the poorer performing schools though. It’s all about knocking the better performing ones down. They are aiming for equality by dragging the better ones down, rather than dragging the worse ones up.