Nearly £9000 more spent on private secondary pupils than state pupils

[SluggyMuggy]

Research from University College London that found £12,200 a year is the average spending on a privately educated primary pupil, compared with £4,800 on a state pupil. For secondary, it’s £15,000 compared with £6,200.

This entrenches inequality as private pupils are given far more resources towards their education.

So is it that wealthy people shouldn't be allowed ro spend their money in a way that will have lasting benefit to their children's earnings potential? So they should be forced to spend it on fripperies like holidays and snazzy cars and prevented from doing anything that might benefit their children's education? Is it just school fees alone that should be prevented or if a family spend £15kpa on extra tuition, music lessons, educational trips etc should that be prevented too? If a family spend £150k extra buying a house in the catchment area for a high performing state school when they could buy the same house much cheaper in the catchment of an underperforming school is that just as wrong? Or is it that it's fundamentally wrong fot rich people to exist at all and every household should have a uniform income of around £30,000 regardless of the jobs of the adults in the family?

It would be brilliant if state schools were adequately funded to have sufficient resources, well paid staff and enough of them that the workload is manageable, and successful early interventions to ensure behavioural problems are resolved quickly and SEN issues identified and supported well so that everyone can learn. It's criminal that tax money is spent on other things instead of sorting out the basics for everyone - education, health, and security nets for those who can't work due to ill health, disability or age.

I agree that while it's possible to opt out of the state system there's less motivation to sort these things out but it's not clear what a parent earning say £100,000pa ought to do differently. Sending their child to a state school and spending their money elsewhere is not going to improve education outcomes for those from families on £25,000pa incomes. The children from wealthy families will still be advantaged.

State education needs to become so good that the only advantages a private school brings is access to polo tournaments and a better quality of ski trip. That cannot be achieved with the <1% of the education budget that the VAT plan is projected to achieve. It needs more like 30%+

The one thing that could possibly make a difference would be if educating ones children privately became as career-destroyingly unacceptable for a politician as other social crimes like having an affair used to be a few decades ago. If every politician who has used private education lost their seat at the next election, and sending your child to a private school would define you as unelectable for the rest if your life, you might get some changes. The electorate needs to make it clear that resolving education is their top priority, then all political parties would have to take the issues seriously and put education at the top of their political agenda.

At the moment the political will for change isn't there, and except for the people who live in "swing seat" constituencies, and the MPs themselves, most people have no power to make changes and must just do the best they can in the world as it is in reality.

It is true that every child deserves the same quality of education that can be bought for £15k per year by thise who can afford it. However, the families with an income over £100kpa don't have the power to give that to every child. They do have the power to give it to their own children. You can take that power away from some of them but that won't create any power for change. Nothing will improve.

@OpusGiemuJavlo "State education needs to become so good that the only advantages a private school brings is access to polo tournaments and a better quality of ski trip. That cannot be achieved with the <1% of the education budget that the VAT plan is projected to achieve. It needs more like 30%+"

This could be achieved with the current budget. Finland spends less per student than the UK does and is often considered the best school system in the world. Private schools aren't allowed to charge fees and the gap between the best and worst performing students is lower than anywhere else. They avoid a lot of the teaching-to-the-test waste we have and the quality of education is higher.

So is it that wealthy people shouldn't be allowed ro spend their money in a way that will have lasting benefit to their children's earnings potential? So they should be forced to spend it on fripperies like holidays and snazzy cars and prevented from doing anything that might benefit their children's education?

This!! We earn well (wouldn't say 'wealthy') and on a par with our friendship group. We have chosen to send our DS to private school in August for various reasons. So whilst our friends continue to spend their free cash on an extra car, holidays to Disney and Dubai etc, we have opted to spend it on education. Nothing wrong with either but it irks me that people view us as the ones who are privileged in a way that they aren't. Unfortunately we live in a society where a couple of leased Range Rovers in the drive and an annual £10k holiday to Disneyland is 'normal'. But God forbid we opt out of that and pay £12k a year on school fees.

Exactly.

It's easy to decide that other people's children should be used to raise standards in poorly performing schools.

Yep parents can take more responsibility without using other people’s children

Some (most?) schools aren’t putting fees up in line with inflation. So whilst the figures may be higher the value for money, the thing people pay for is decreasing (eg reduction in extracurricular, cutting staff, etc).

Well the VAT will make it harder as more well funded parents try to use the grammar

@Araminta1003 I know someone who has a similar role, and they are inundated and can't touch the amount of pupils who need her in a day.

One of the biggest differences between state and private school children is that when private school children get a job they may know more about where to store and grow that money.
Because their parents teach them about investing. That's a key driver of making and keeping wealth.

So secondary pupils get £27k a year more spent on them in education.

Parents are paying much more than that for that privilege!

Don't get me wrong I think state education is horrendous. But for the fees of independent the difference in spending per pupil isn't as high as I thought it would be.

@itsgettingweird granted these numbers are pretty out of date (fees have risen steeply in many schools over past 5 years due to rising costs), but not all private schools are as expensive as people think. There’s a pretty wide spread within the private sector. The average will also factor in scholarships and bursaries

@SluggyMuggy

Very selfish indeed. Do you care about my DC having to leave their school where they get SEN support they need and very happily settled? because I won't be able to afford VAT?
No? guessed so. Who's selfish here?

If/when VAT is added to private school fees, which it should always have been because they are not charities in reality are they, I am sure there will be financial arrangements for plans that can be paid back a couple of years after your child leaves.

VAT on fees has nothing to do with the charitable status of the schools. "Education and training" are exempt from VAT.

So not the upper class, but the aspiring middle class parents whose kids are in grammar or private we know, the kids are under so much pressure and there is only so much you can spoon feed a secondary school pupil.

They start GCSE courses a year early giving them 3 years to do GCSEs, but you still only get 2 years for A levels and at uni you are not babysat. There is increasing burn out at uni because some are just not prepared for it.

There was an interesting article, in Tatler magazine years ago about an upper class 6th former who didn't get into Oxford. Because it was just expected. How they had to settle for "the next tier" down uni.

There are so many more jobs now that are top dollar but you have to be able to actually do stuff. Like banking cyber security, it really doesn't matter who your dad was or where you went to secondary school if you can't make that system secure. But if you can do it you can charge the banks a lot of money to do so.

They’re not given their parents pay for it?!

This certainly isn’t the case across all schools. Our private school starts GCSEs in year 10. A nearby comprehensive with results far below the national average starts in year 9.

Many private schools are not charities. The VAT position is entirely separate from charitable status. It’s mind boggling how some people can have such strong opinions on something they don’t understand and where they don’t even know the basics of the proposed policy (admittedly it seemingly took the Labour Party a few years to realise that VAT and charitable status were separate issues).

If this is brought in, of course VAT will inevitably be added to uni fees too.

Your kids will be delighted to have even larger loans to pay back. Well done.

@frozendaisy
You are sure - based on what please? do you work in the sector?
Let me reassure you that it's not the case and we already received the comms about it. Even if there was some financial arrangement it won't change a thing for my DC as I won't be able to repay VAT later.

So again, who's selfish here?

They are not perpetuating the inequality - the government not funding state schools perpetuates the inequality.

Private schools (day schools, not boarding) quite literally demonstrate the cost of a good education. The fact that state schools are being handed less than half this sum is outrageous, particularly when statistically they will have a wider range of abilities, SEN and other challenges to account for. Shout about that - tearing down private schools or pretending that they are somehow "unfair" is just passing the buck and supporting the insupportable status quo.

Some of us are lucky enough to live in the catchment areas of absolutely wonderful state schools, and have never had to pay for any kind of extracurricular training or tuition to help their child along, but that is not the case for most. The poorest kid in the country should have free access to the kind of education a child at Magdalen Boys School in Oxford does.

steps down off soapbox

I don't understand the point of these threads. I can afford to pay for private dentistry, so I do if I can't get what I want on the NHS.

Is that perpetuating dental inequality?

People who can afford to pay for something they want, and aren't ideologically opposed to doing so, will do so. Other people can't, so don't.

The logical conclusion of the "inequality" argument is that all wealth should be evenly distributed so that everyone has the same. History has shown that that doesn't work.

Ban them all. Get politicians to send their kids state. Build more schools to accommodate. Tax the wealthy to fund it. If they aren’t playing 20k a year school fees they can afford it. Education system would be transformed. They won’t do it though as the current system works for them and they don’t give a shit about kids in state.

Greenleafants · Today 14:14
Ban them all.

Will the buildings and all the schools’ property be bought by the government or confiscated?

Would you ban private hospitals as well? What about plush care homes? Nicer private nurseries?