Education should be a private good

[StaffAssociationRepresentative]

Given the high levels of dissatisfaction with regards education should we not now make it a private good? The government should only provide education for free for those who are below the poverty level and then provide a sliding scale of support in a manner similar to child support. This will then give some schools the chance to charge more to ensure that any provision can be properly funded.

This will lead to happier schools, happier staff, happier pupils and a happier Mumsnet. Parents will therefore be free to buy provision that they want.

YABU - let education continue as it is
YANBU - fully privatise and let parents decide

@LavenderLotus so higher taxation with the increase ring fenced for education - that gets my vote

I can't even be arsed to tell you how awful this idea is. But luckily many posters seem to have the energy.

We need to fund education properly.

I agree. I don't think your proposed model is workable though.
All most people want is good quality decently funded education on their doorstep. That should be paid for by general taxation.

So children with Sen’s patents need to pay for some additional needs, and in the deprived area schools no extra money but in the affluent areas all the facilities the chose.

Some parents don’t value education and wouldn’t pay so they would be at home .

It hits top stupid ideas I have read on here . Yes schools do need additional funding but not from parents

If we increase taxation it will be from everyone. The system has to be funded as we can not carry on the way it is

and so we all need to pay up.

People do pay up, what they can’t do is force the money to go into the right areas. Perhaps people should stop voting for a party who’s hellbent on destroying the public sector.

No, that’s what income taxes pay for.
What next? Police are a private good and every family pays for a bodyguard? And if you can’t afford a “personal retainer” you are at the mercy of any ruffian. It’ll be just like the bad old days of 1620.

If we increase taxation it will be from everyone.

Yes. As it should be.
We all benefit from an educated population, not just the parents.

Increased income taxes aren’t the answer to everything.
To be fair, businesses benefit from an educated population from which to draw workers. Yet their top tax bracket is 26% on profit only (after all expenses like rent, etc deducted) They should be paying the higher taxes, not regular people who pay high enough taxes already.

@firstmentat wouldn’t that increase the divides between different income brackets?

@ArriettyJones - it is not goady it is looking for a way to increase funding for our schools. We really struggle to balance the books at schools. For some schools if it was not for an active PTA there would be few nice things for the children

Increase funding?!

What you’re proposing is to throw us back into pre-modern times.

Ahh yes, let’s return to the Victorian era. Sounds great.

@ABucketOfShells
I think the current system of free state vs very expensive private is more divisive, no? I know many families who are not able to afford £15K fees per child, but will happily pay £3K for smaller classes, extra music, sports, languages, robotics etc.

Haven't RTFT but IMO education should be free , even higher education, just like all healthcare should be free, then it's accessible to everyone.

I would happily pay more tax for both, if I knew it was going to where it was needed.

We have this whole generation of adults in this country who just dont understand the concept of investment (taxes, education, stimulus). They want to just do everything on the cheap now and dont see how that fucks us up in the future.

Yep schools are underfunded.
So lets increase taxes dear god. Not give the rich a better education because they can afford it... FFS elitist question from someone who has no idea what it is to be poor

Sending your children to private school is one of the most selfless things people can do for the good of the country.

If more people can - then they should.

Selfless to send your kids to private school?! People dont send their kids to private school to benefit others. They do ig because they want their children to have advantages other dont have. Which is normal but the definition of selfish.
Tax those who can afford it more. Offer better education for 'free' to all.level the playing field and the best and brightest workers will advance not dependent on whether their daddy has inherited his wealth.

Sorry- or mammy

You can't just choose whether something is a public or private good. Education IS a public good, no matter who pays for it, because it benefits us all to live in a society where everyone else gets education. In the same way, health care is a public good: it's better for us all if everyone else gets access to it.

What definition are you using? It doesn't correspond to what google has told me. The following seems comprehensive:-

www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microeconomics/market-failure-and-the-role-of-government/externalities-topic/a/public-goods-cnx

A public good has two key characteristics: it is nonexcludable and nonrivalrous. These characteristics make it difficult for market producers to sell the good to individual consumers.

Nonexcludable means that it is costly or impossible for one user to exclude others from using a good.

Nonrivalrous means that when one person uses a good, it does not prevent others from using it.

As I understand it, education is not a public good, because it is possible to exclude someone who hasn't paid from having it. In contrast, defence, police and fire services are public goods, because everyone benefits, whether or not they've paid. (Although there was a time when fire services were private sector, and you could only call out the fire service you had a contract with. In the USA anyway, don't know if the UK was ever like that.)

Absolutely selfless to send your children to private school. Frees up money for other children/schools, frees up spaces in schools that are difficult enough to get into anyway.

Yes to put your children through 15 years of schooling without a single penny cost to the tax payer is of course selfless.

Education is expensive. Far more so than most parents realise. It's also possible yo obtain best value at scale, and public administration of schools prevents a two tier system with a gaping chasm between what is accessible to the poorest vs the better off.

Note that there are private schools in the UK and over 90% of people cannot afford or choose not to pay for them.

We don’t need any tax increases, just better distribution of taxes - we already pay for education via our taxes & people who have more money both pay a higher amount towards education through higher taxes plus if more if they want to pay for their children to have a private education.

If large corporations paid tax properly then both healthcare and education could be funded properly, but as the people in power have a vested interest in the rich not paying tax they don’t. The amount of people with enough disposable income to pay more money out for anything in the UK - with house prices and rentals at the ludicrous levels they are at & wages not actually much different to 20 years ago would be a tiny percentage of households. Plus that disparity of choice already exists, all you’d be doing would be penalising the poor & middle income families more than they already are meaning children from less privileged backgrounds have zero hope of being in a less precarious situation than their parents. You’d also be entirely dependent on parents wanting their kids to have the superior level of education, which takes the responsibility back from society to the individual & if this pandemic has taught us anything it’s that a lot of individuals are fundamentally selfish cunts, which makes the idea particularly stupid.

Clearly the majority of people don’t want to prioritise healthcare or education or they wouldn’t keep voting the Tories in..

It’s also bizarre that some posters think the only reason they can’t send children to private schools is inheritance from “mummy and daddy.”

It couldn’t possibly be from hard graft could it?

Education is expensive and the U.K. is trying to do it on the cheap.

Plenty of parents pay extra for clubs and tutoring so there is already a gap with so many paying for extras.

@Howdidido - I am council estate kid who had a really tough time in the early 80s. Thatcher didn’t like my dad