Abolishing private schools - how would it work in practice?

[Dongdingdong]

Labour has voted to abolish private schools:

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-public-private-school-abolish-eton-vote-conference-corbyn-education-policy-a9115766.html

Whether you agree with this or not, I don’t understand how the logistics would work. Would private schools suddenly cease to exist from say, summer 2023, with all pupils forced to find a place at the local state school for the autumn term onwards? What would happen to the buildings and facilities - would they remain as state schools or be sold off to developers for example?

I think people grossly underestimate the effect and costs that would be involved in taking on all the existing private school staff and their huge pensions, paying for the extra 7 percent of private pupils heading their way, the crippling costs of buildings maintenance and improvements. It’s a lot of nonsense. Corbyn seems to incite hatred rather than a collective positive momentum. It would be quite frightening if I thought he stood even a tiny chance of winning.

3% of Finnish kids are educated in private schools in Finland.

Most state schools have smaller class sizes for SEN and units.

Most definitely not MOST in my experience of teaching in state schools for the best part of 20 odd years. This is even more the case, in my experience, at primary level and pretty much none existent at infant schools.

It makes me happy to know how jealous JC and his cronies are of people like me. As I know they will never be in power, and I will continue educating my dcs privately and they will continue to do well in life

I wish labour would deal with the real emergencies first, like disability provision, the NHS and state education underfunding. Another one with dc in private provision due to abject failure of SEN provision the state sector. Do we believe it's fair? No. Were we all miserable as a family due to lack of state care? Yes. Personally I'm not worried about the conference vote, because by the time they get round to enacting this. my DC will hopefully be far enough through and Corbyn has one term disaster written all over him, IF he can get elected.

Where will all the Labour hypocrites send their children? Are they going to abolish private medicine? Will you be prevented from giving your child a leg-up by reading with them, talking to them? Shall we all race to the bottom?
A lot of private education is funded by people in relatively ordinary jobs tailoring their lives to give their child a good start, should they buy new cars, expensive holidays, cigarettes, would that be accpetable to the socialists? Those hair-shirts must be very uncomfortable.

Communists.

Source? The generally accepted figure is that for those private schools which are charities, VAT exemptions NHS on their business costs are wrth £200 per pupil per term. That is nowhere near £3.5b

Its business rates as well, day fees are around 25k, 45k for boarding, 20% vat is far more than £200 per term or £600 per year.

Fees (for schools and universities, though not crammers) are exempt from VAT because of EU ruling. Only after Brexit could that be changed

They don't pay vat because of their charitable status, nothing at all to do with the EU whatsoever, Tory Phillip Hammond had plans to put VAT on private school fees.

The crap on FB is unbelievable and is destroying our democracy.

It’s bizarre, Labour’s real chance of getting in was to show that they weren’t communists with lunatic policies and actually were socialists who care about the less well off and more vulnerable in society.

And now they’re announcing that they’re going to seize control of private school buildings and make them state schools? What else are they planning on seizing?

The crap on FB is unbelievable

Yeah, the absolute bollocks shared by Canary etc is infuriating

Most state schools have smaller class sizes for SEN and units
The very straightforward answer to this statement is no, they don’t.

well their unpicking of clause 4 was a strong signal that they believe everything should be in the public domain! I take my hat off to new labour for keeping these loonies out of the labour limelight for so long, frankly.

@tillytrotter1 maybe they should force us all to stop being happy too as that has been shown to have an impact on children's attainment...

DH has met through work several Labour polititians children who went to state boarding schools - isn't that the ultimate in privilege?? You get in because of who your Dad is and make the rest of us pay for it?!

For what it's worth DH and I have voted Labour in the past, but never will after this. We didn't have the luxury of being able to afford to live in the catchment of our good local state (even flats in the catchment are double the price of where we live now. Houses are in the millions). It was cheaper to choose private in our case.

Labour might be able to seize the school buildings (I dunno, is that legal?) but they won’t be able to just seize the teachers, who may not want to work in the state sector.

The state sector already is critically short of teachers. Where does Labour plan to get more from?

So off the top of my head Labour members who have sent their kids to selective or independent schools -

Diane Abbott
Seumas Milne
Valerie Vaz
Debbie Abrahams
Shami Chakrabati
Emily Thornberry

Yet another shining example of one rule for them and fuck everyone else because they've done what they wanted for their kids.

And yet again, another fantastic example of Labour making themselves increasingly unelectable. But then this is the party that decided to debate anti-semitism on a Saturday, when observant Jews will be at home celebrating Shabbos and therefore unable to participate.

What I find most upsetting is the limiting of university places. Why should children be punished for their parents choices? I don't say children who went to Eton or who had tutors or brighter parents should be limited.

Why doesn't the Labour party start by only employing the same percentage of their own children/ families as politicians make up the general population? Maybe they could hire one of their children every 500 years...

I'm amazed that Milne and Thornberry sent their kids to grammar and selective schools - what utter hypocrites. I verified it on wikipedia as I couldn't believe that the doyens of the most unelectable labour govt we've had in years could really be such hypocrites but politics still can surprise me it seems!

The hypocrisy has been going for years, the Granddaughter of Tony Benn managed to go to the super selective girls school near me, despite living quite a way out of the catchment area, I wonder how that happened?
I hate that Labour do this stuff, I’m an avid non Tory - who the hell am I supposed to vote for when the opposition are stuck in the ‘70s?

They’ll never manage it but even if they did then all that would happen would be that the chasm between good and poor state schools would open wider and wealthier parents would still tutor their children up to the eyeballs .

I don’t think whether it will ever happen is really the issue at this point, with all the shit happening in the country at the moment it’s the fact that they are even thinking this stuff

It’s just a headline

It would happen because it can’t happen as there isn’t enough money for it to happen

I fully support private schools losing their charitable status - this I believe could happen and should happen

it can’t happen

Don't delude yourself - if the current Labour Party ever gets a majority, it will happen on Day One. The far left has been waiting for a chance like this for decades. If they get it, there's no way they'll let it go.

Jeremy Corbyn went to a grammar school, not a fee paying school (in response to a previous poster). My Dad went to the same school. He is thick as mince though.

This is creating more problems that it would solve.

Why? Why are they even going with this? There is no way this will work, where is everybody supposed to go?

British Private schools are big business, with the Russians, Chinese and so on, they bring money.

This Red Romanticism scares me, "democratic distributed" assets chills me to the bone.