Do you think labour will actually implement 20% vat on school fees?

[labpit]

We have two in Year 7 and year 10 and I am not sure what we will do if this happens. It is a certainty do you think?

Well there you go same difference

First year MEng at RG here too, from state London comp

However I’m under no illusion the school we used didn’t have house price selection in the mix and my dc reality as a student may have been very different to a child at another school

He did four A levels for a start and iirc another pp didn’t have that hence private

JassyRadlett thank you for answering my question - all very interesting.

I think in America there is a correlation between property taxes paid (on property value) and local schools funding. This has the effect of expensive houses funding a local school well. If the aim is to reduce inequality perhaps we should have that here with the excess money going to those schools
in areas where the house price is lower. Might be a more effective direct levelling up for those areas.

And I will freely admit I haven't given as much of my time to this as to other issues in the last few years... I definitely haven't bothered nearly as many MPs! I'm hopeful though that the door might open a little with a new govt.

Did your children go to state primaries?

Sorry can you clarify, have you ever used private or grammar schools?

"He did four A levels for a start and iirc another pp didn’t have that hence private"

I don't judge parents for wanting to use private schools.

But I judge people for not acknowledging that the vast inequalities in educational opportunity we have in the UK are ethically unsupportable, profoundly unjust to children, and undermine any claims we might make to being a meritocracy. The system isn't ok just because it works to entrench your own child's privilege.

I'm also a bit disgusted at the seeming refusal to even consider that private schools could cut costs as a way of dealing with a new economic reality - ie VAT on school fees - despite many people's acceptance of big cost cutting in state schools during austerity.

I can see people want to shrink private and get rid of state allocation impacted by house prices

Is this going to actually help the U.K. education overall? Or just level down

Reading this stuff makes me glad we have options tbh

If you’re in London your house prices are likely a factor for your comp too

I've set all of this out upthread. Privately educated myself, children at state schools (including a faith primary, as the chips fell - not a great deal of choice in that one) for reasons and thinking I've set out in quite some detail already.

I haven't ruled out any options for my youngest when it comes to secondary.

Why? What exactly am I clarifying?

Sorry I just didn’t see your post about what you’ve actively chosen for your children, I was interested given your opinions.

My preference would be keep as is but use the falling roll to increase pp funding

If we got down to say 25 pupils per class I think we’d see some change in state without these punitive measures

More carrot - encourage people in

Who accepted cost cutting in austerity? I didn't and that's part of the reason why we chose private due to the impact of austerity.

You are very quick to assume a lot about parents who choose private for their kids. I have never voted Tory and never will but equally I won't be voting Labour at the election now.

It's hard to know, isn't it? It's a really knotty problem but we can see inequality and social mobility are getting worse, and we're seeing a correlation in schools. Overall, the OECD and others see greater inequality as detrimental to economic growth and particularly seems to be a partial contributor to our productivity issues. The IFS has done a good report on this - I'll dig it out - that talks about the cycle where inequality and poor educational outcomes drive each other. The kinds of low-ambition "sink schools" some apps have described - in areas where it's likely Pay or Pray if you want something different for your child, and even Pray might not be an option - perpetuate the problems, as does the school funding formula that got rid of progressivity. There are so many pieces of this puzzle - not least per pupil funding which has shrunk as a proportion of national income - that need tackling. There's no one thing that will fix it, I think. And it's weirdly never a big political priority for voters, which I find baffling.

I don't judge parents for wanting to use private schools.

But I judge people for not acknowledging that the vast inequalities in educational opportunity we have in the UK are ethically unsupportable, profoundly unjust to children, and undermine any claims we might make to being a meritocracy.

Izimbra So as long as you acknowledge there is inequality in education in UK, it’s fine to use private schools?

This is what I want. I have a DS at a super selective state grammar and they increase the number of forms from year 10 onwards so there are 25 in a class rather than 30. That’s at a super selective grammar with pupils of exceptionally high academic ability. If they think smaller classes are important then it must be even more important for mixed ability schools. The falling birth rate gives Labour a real opportunity to reduce class sizes but will they capitalise on it …probably not as they are more interested in attacking private schools!

Are private schools worse than due to the inequalities in education, taking a space at an excellent school from someone who could never afford private?

The only way to make all schools better is to make sure that there are no private schools and every school has to have a certain percentage of those from deprived backgrounds and those from posh backgrounds. Whist the rich can still "buy" better education by moving house to a posh area to schools where only naice children attend, then nothing will change.

The only way to make all schools better is to make sure that there are no private schools and every school has to have a certain percentage of those from deprived backgrounds and those from posh backgrounds.

Kpo58 How do you make sure there is a mixture of backgrounds?
In our village quite a few houses share the same postcode and these houses vary from I bedroom council properties to a nice farmhouse and a very desirable Georgian Old Vicarage.
Or Will officials be sent round to assess each family?

This summarises why I’m suspicious of the ‘I’m left leaning and wouldn’t have gone private if the state school system was better’ crowd.

Because the schools would only be uniformly amazing if the system you suggest was implemented, and frankly it’s impossible - you can’t force people to move house, or live in certain areas, or commit 2 hours to school to keep the diversity ratios correct.

They know this. They know even if private schools were abolished, some state schools would become private in all but name via exclusive catchments and generous donations from wealthy parents. And no doubt they would get their kids into that, citing the same ‘I just want the best for them despite my principles’.

Maybe they would have to change the catchment areas to include some of both? But then you could get issues with trying to get to the school if the posh children live nearby and the less affluent children live miles away.

Kpo58 can you define ‘posh’?

Not this thread but with a couple of posters re inequality and using private schools I’d say so

I did the same. But I got there in spite of my comp school education, not because of it.

I really think the point that surely mostly people agree on is that state education in this country is on the whole dire ( yes there's some pockets of good schools, not everywhere), the tax burden on all families is already enormous (especially relative to the quality of public services you get in return), and adding more tax to private schools is not going to move the needle whatsoever on the disaster happening in state education now. Seems like point 3 above is probably the one people disagree on the most but I don't see how this policy changes things for the better in state schools at all.

@izimbra Schools are looking at these sorts of measures. They will be looking at the structure of SLT, looking at the poularity of some subjects and reducing the overall offer, looking at whether some subjects could be delivered differently.

They may increase class sizes. It depends on how they are now. If the usp is small nuturing classes with lots of support, noone will buy the product any more. They will have to rethink what it is the pupil is getting out of being there other than small classes and hope enough people want that offer instead. If the usp is highly academic, this is an easier sell as you can be academic and big and come up with reasons that bigger classes support high attainment.

However, one issue is that many independent schools have classrooms that are only physically big enough for a certain class size. So if the class was built for 18 pupils, trying to squeeze 25 in doesnt work for learning or fire safety regulations.

For those people trying to promote the idea that there's some sort of parity of inequality within the state sector as between the state and private sector, can we acknowledge that regardless of 'selection by postcode', that the top performing comprehensives in the most expensive parts of London still by and large have 10 times as many children on free school meals as any private school in the UK, and still have the same budgets as the worst performing schools in the UK, which are often less than half the spend per child per year than your average private school.

My kids school was one of the most over subscribed comprehensives in the UK, and is in an expensive area. It still takes large numbers of kids from the roughest housing estates in London, still struggles to recruit and retain STEM staff, still has a crumbling, over crowded and poorly maintained buildings, still has really poor lab facilities, still has large numbers of children with learning and behavioural problems that the school doesn't have the resources to deal with.

Genuinely cheesed off with people defending the vast inequities between state and private by suggesting that these same inequities also exist within the state sector. They don't.