Independent schools and Labour government

[Turquoisesilver]

Has it actually been outlined what the proposals are? I believe there would effectively be a 20% fee increase, is that correct?

There's no legislation forcing you to attend university, so that sort of falls at the first hurdle.

There may not be legislation but higher education is just as necessary for a functioning economy and society.

I do agree. The only way then, would be to sort degrees into necessary and not necessary, so as not to tax the necessary ones. But I'm not sure that would get off the ground.

A “back of a fag packet” calculation perhaps isn’t the best way to be looking at the impact on state schools. To be fair though, it’s probably the same calculation that the Labour Party have used.

Your figures are extremely skewed and have simply divided all private pupils between the entire number of schools, the vast majority of which are primary, some of which will be very small schools. There will be a much greater impact on secondary schools and sixth form education, because there are far fewer state secondary schools and a higher percentage of pupils attending private secondary school. The IFS estimate that 18% of pupils are privately educated at sixth form level for example.

There are currently around 30,000 state schools in the UK. However, around 3,000 are nurseries or early-learning centres. 21,000 are primary schools, and 4,000 are secondary schools. There are around 1,850 special schools and pupil referral units. These are rounded figures only.

So, any pupils moving into the state system at secondary level will be split between approximately 4,000 schools.

There are around 3.2m pupils in state secondaries. Assuming that the estimated number of pupils is private secondary is correct, at about 8%, that’s around 280k pupils. Assuming a quarter move to the state system, that’s 70,000 students across 4,000 schools. That’s just less than 20 per school. However, it’s not as straightforward as that. Lots of schools will have far more than an extra 20 pupils wanting places. The type of parents who are prepared to pay thousands each year for education are not the type of parents who will sit back and just happily send their children to failing schools and those with spare capacity. They will fight for the best state schools, by paying for tuition and high house prices in good catchment areas. All that will happen is that the more deprived children will get pushed out of those schools.

Aside from that, the state system can’t cope with the number of children they have now. An increased number of pupils won’t help that.

This is really misguided @prh47bridge . Private school parents can't impact political priorities. People continually suggest that by forcing private school parents into state there would be this miraculous change in government spending priorities but it doesn't work that way.

The wealthy like everyone else have to use emergency services (there is no private alternative). Everyone wants this to work better and its still garbage!

All forcing private school parents into state will do is crowd out lower income families from the best state schools. The money used for fees will be used to move into the best state school catchments. Parents will then further financially support those specific schools via the PTA and their own children via paying for extracurricular activities and tutoring to fill any remaining gaps.

This is already how the state system works! The differences between the best state schools and the worst are far more dramatic than the gaps between private and state.

During covid our local state primary raised £50k via the PTA for a computer lab while another state primary in a less affluent part of the borough was begging for donations of old laptops so their disadvantaged pupils could do remote learning. The gaps in the state system are vast.

A lot of families see higher education as a luxury. Less wealthy families often believe they cannot afford to send their children to university even with the loan system. It’s absolutely not comparable to state education up to the age of 18.

Aside from that, the state system can’t cope with the number of children they have now. An increased number of pupils won’t help that.

There have been quite a few posts referencing schools closing or amalgamating due to lack of numbers.

It’s absolutely not comparable to state education up to the age of 18.

Yes, that was the point I was making to the poster who suggested VAT on private education will inevitably lead to VAT on university fees. Choosing whether or not to pay for school is not comparable with choosing whether or not to go on to HE, which must be paid for.

People continually suggest that by forcing private school parents into state there would be this miraculous change in government spending priorities but it doesn't work that way.

This. There are plenty of MPs whose children go to state school - are these state schools with MP parents much better as a result?
Isn’t it pretty patronising to state school parents to go on about if private school parents had to use state education there’d suddenly be this improvement?
What can private school parents do that state school ones can’t? Are they some sort of ubermensch who can turn a poor performing school into a brilliant one?
I doubt it somehow.

Also, there are endless threads about how privately educated children take drugs, have eating disorders, are entitled, are far less intelligent than their state school counterparts, are sent to boarding school because their parents can’t be bothered with them etc.
Yet these parents are apparently going to turn round state schools when private ones are banned.

That wasn't me. You were responding to @freckles20 who mentioned me.

@prh47bridge yes, 100% you are right, apologies!

I think most of the schools closing/amalgamating are more on the primary side, and a lot of them are smaller rural schools with low pupil numbers. The reason many of them are closing is because it’s not finically viable to run schools with such small pupil numbers. Many schools are hugely oversubscribed, which are precisely the type of schools the privately educated would be seeking places at.

The point I was making about universities is that they’re not comparable to state schools. Further education is not compulsory and many disadvantaged families can’t afford a university education. Going to university is a luxury choice for many, in the same way that private school is often seen as a luxury choice. Given that choice is not available to everyone, there’s an argument that VAT should be payable on university as well, if you believe private school fees should be taxed. Personally I don’t think either should be taxed.

Private schools include an element of the compulsory education which people are entitled to at no cost. Adding VAT onto school fees would be taxing something which is compulsory. In Finland, for example, private schools are partly state funded up to the amount of the compulsory education element. Parents then pay any additional fees charged. There would be an argument for charging tax on that “extra” element.

Exactly. There are endless threads moaning about private education and saying how awful independent schools are. A lot of people seem to think that private schools are full of unintelligent, spoilt snobs, taught by apparently unqualified teachers. Their parents are apparently so out of touch with reality because of their endless wealth. I’m not sure why so many people are keen to have these awful children and parents, and their sub-par teachers in the state system.

The best way to sort people attending private schools out is to make state schooling fabulous. The grammar system in the area I live does exactly this and nearly every family prep or state attempts to get their dc into these. It's the rest of the schools that now need to be sorted out,

But grammar schools basically only get their better results because of the intake. They usually are not better resourced. There isn't really anything that is being done at grammar schools that can be copied in the non-selective options.

Availability of state school places varies hugely from area to area. Locally to us there have been a vast number of new homes built but not one new school. Friends who recently moved from private to state had to homeschool for half a term until a school place could be found. An influx of private school pupils into the state system here would be a disaster.

@Kokeshi123 I didn't say copy the grammar schools but there are a great many layers between a grammar and an inadequate comp. None of these layers are really recognised currently by educational policy it literally feeds the private school market in some areas!

Imo a lot of the less than adequate schools are down to poor provision of SEN schools, which forces pupils with SEN into mainstream schools which will never provide the best for them whilst they also simultaneously disrupt the actual mainstream pupils therefore providing less of an education for them too. If Labour was campaigning for more SEN schools I could definitely get behind that. This whole anti private school rhetoric hides all of this though.

I agree the differences between the average private school and the best state schools isn’t that material. The differences between state schools is more stark

I’m not sure why so many people are keen to have these awful children and parents, and their sub-par teachers in the state system.

Another765 I don’t think they especially do want them though I suppose they can enjoy jeering at the ‘posh kids’.
Im sure, as you say, the snobby, entitled parents won’t be at all welcome.

I thought the snobby entitled parents were going to fix everything in the state system though?

I thought the snobby entitled parents were going to fix everything in the state system though.

Yes, there seems to be some contradiction here.

Agree with everyone labelling this the “politics of envy”. If and when this happens, it will reflect particularly poorly on the UK’s global reputation for civilised aspiration. The country will only develop a reputation for being a grumpy envious bunch akin to a communist state.

Am an economist not an expert, but it is fairly obvious that such policy will only hurt the middle- and lower classes. The VAT would hit only those who can barely afford it anyways (not the wealthy) who will in turn crowd out the poorer pupils at and near the best nearby state schools. No parent is going to try to save a state school (same flawed thinking used to be behind closing grammars), they will simply push up the prices of other services in the area like tutoring, etc.

Much ado and anxiety about nothing much else than a fiasco. Truly wealthy will simply rotfl while the lower and middle clash

Closing grammars wasn’t based on “flawed thinking” though; the actual data shows pretty clearly that the least-advantaged kids do better when you shift to a comprehensive system by getting rid of the 11 plus. Take a look at the studies that have been done; the jury is in on this one.

Having all kids going to a comprehensive school (even one with sets and streams) has several advantages. All the kids benefit from the same school wide culture, rather than the sense of failure which hangs over the latter-day secondary moderns. The same teachers mostly teach all the kids (whereas in 11 plus areas it is impossible to stop the best teachers drifting towards the grammars while the the SMs end up with the rest). And kids with spiky profiles (example: nerdy kid who is great at maths and hard sciences, struggles with language/art-base subjects) can go into sets that are right for them, rather than ending up in the wrong level school for several of their subjects.

Communism also works in theory, which is why it is utopian thinking. The flaw is in the “all” as Labour is not talking about mass nationalisation. VAT will only push an aspiring middle class around, making the private schools more elitist, and the state schools less provisioned as any money raised via VAT will be spent towards higher avg pupil numbers via state distribution in a less efficient setting, which will offset any theoretical gains and simply make it worse.

Have you not seen the news, though? School age children's numbers in the UK are set to shrink by close to 800,000 over the next 10 years. That's significantly higher than the entire number of kids going to private school right now. VAT and loss of charitable status won't be happening for several years because Labour has to get in for a start, and unpicking all the many complexities around charitable status and tax laws and then gradually grandfathering a new system in will take a few years. By that time, pupil numbers will have dropped for the youngest age groups quite a lot anyway, and it'll mainly be the younger kids who may, in some cases, either get yanked from private schools or don't start at prep in the first place.

I agree with PP that these changes (adding VAT and losing charitable status) are not going to have some sort of marvellous "levelling-up" effect on state schools anything in particular; those who think they will, are guilty of wishful thinking IMO.

But the fulminating OH MY GOD THE APOCOLYPSE IS NIGH posts from some of the fee-paying parents here are just bloody silly, honestly, and smack of highly motivated reasoning. The effects of these changes will be minor in either direction (positive or negative) and will be largely lost in the wash of demographic changes that are happening anyway; the whole thing about which schools are considered "good," "less good" "undesirable" is in a constant state of flux in any case, and that will increase in the next decade as falling pupil numbers mean that decisions have to be made about merging or closing some state schools anyway.

Instead of getting angry about VAT and charitable status, why not talk with your school governors about ways to cut costs? For example, a school with a selective intake shouldn't need tiny little classes to teach; academically able neurotypical kids ought to be able to keep up fine in reasonable sizeably groups.

I think we can be pretty confident that school management will be having rather a lot of conversations about cutting costs right now, without parents needing to ask them!

Yes, but where you cut makes all the difference.

It is in the best interest of schools to protect academics including good teachers, subject choices including MFL, sport including coaches to tournaments, music including orchestras, and pupils/families as affordability translates to higher selectivity translates to better attitudes and results.

That leaves admin staff (headmasters on 200k salaries and paper pusher secretariats need to go) and energy efficiency (alternatives like wind can yield massive savings).

Unfortunately the admin staff is also often the political class, so parents and teachers have to stand up together to force that change.

Agree it makes a difference, but I also think that what really matters to children's education is not necessarily the same as what matters to prospective parents. A class size of 25 clever, well behaved kids might not make a dramatic difference to the actual education compared with a class of 20 - but smaller class sizes are one of the main reasons parents give for choosing private schools, and they might think a class of 25 is not so worth paying for as a class of 20. And it's those paper-pushers who provide the slick experience and quick responses that massively affect prospective parents' impressions of a school. If a school can't recruit good pupils, it's sunk.

Also, you talk about the importance of keeping the best teachers - but teachers want smaller classes and a nice working environment and plenty of administrative support (who's going to organise all those sports matches and orchestra tours?) - those are some of the appeals of teaching in the private sector in the first place, and are some of the reason why teachers put up with the disadvantages of the private sector (like pushy parents and lots of extra curricular demands). Cut too many costs and you're going to reduce your appeal to the best teachers. As for headteachers, I totally disagree with you - a good head can absolutely make or break a school, and if you want the best, you're going to have to pay.

I agree about energy efficiency though!

Generally, I think it's an incredibly tricky tightrope for schools to walk, between making fees so high that parents are put off or proved out, and cutting too many costs so that parents no longer think the product is worth paying for.