arents and pupils everywhere have much to fear from Labour’s proposals to impose punitive taxes on independent education.
Whilst it might at first seem tempting (they can afford it, right?) this is a dangerous policy based on myths and dodgy maths. It will effectively destroy independent education and drive up costs and class sizes in state schools.
First, let’s bust those convenient myths. Most independent schools are not the couple of famous schools everyone thinks of, but small schools, with no spare income. Some are special needs schools or give places to children in care. Any spare cash goes straight back into education, including free or discounted places for lower income families and supporting local state schools; that’s why they are charities. A third of pupils get discounted fees and parents choose to spend their money that way rather than on tutoring their children or buying houses near good state schools. All this saves the taxpayer over £3.5 billion a year.
This is important, because the real losers from such policies will be parents from all walks of life who choose all types of education. For those who choose to pay, John McDonnell’s policy is a fundamental attack on their freedom of choice – a right enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Those least able to pay will be driven into the state system, unable to afford the inevitable rise in fees necessary to pay the extra taxes.
So what of parents with children in state schools, faced with an influx of children into their local schools? Class sizes and costs will go up, as schools battle to find the money to educate even more pupils. Independent research from Baines Cutler shows that nearly 135,000 pupils would be pushed into state schools over five years, at a total cost of £1.35billion. At the end of the first five years, the taxpayer would be over £416million worse off, taking extra tax revenue into account.
Everyone loses.
And reports suggest there is something even more dangerous at play. Labour’s tax grab could well be part of a plan to kill off independent schools and bring all schools under state control – death by a thousand cuts. If so, we face a world in which parental choice is eradicated, costs may well cripple the state sector, property and assets are seized by the state and charity and employment law is torn up.
The saddest thing about all this is that it genuinely wouldn’t improve education for all pupils, and it wouldn’t improve social mobility. It is commonly accepted that middle class families would continue to colonise the best state schools, tutoring their children and buying homes by the most sought after schools.
Ultimately, we all want the same thing – to improve life chances for all young people. Labour activists are ignoring the fact that independent schools play a hidden but critical part in that; for example, do they really want to destroy the independent school-sponsored London Academies of Excellence, which this year got more disadvantaged pupils into top universities from inner London boroughs than ever before? A third of the pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds at Oxford university come through our schools this year, and we stand ready to do more.
Ultimately, we need a new conversation, about all types of schools working together to improve education. Blaming a few independent schools for being too good will not solve that dilemma.
Mike Buchanan is the Executive Director of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC)