To have though of a fairer way to fund state education than VAT on private?

[wlakaaf]

State schools are in desperate need of funding.

Money needs raising.

Instead of sticking 20% onto private fees - when those people are already paying 100% of the costs for educating their child, how about this:

Parents of children currently in state schools ought to contribute to their education on a means tested basis. There would be no argument over means, it would be a simple reference to the council tax band of the house you live in. We have bands A-H. I would propose that people in band A-F pay nothing. People in band G pay a fixed charge per year and people in band H pay a higher fixed charge per year.

Keir Starmer has used money to buy a massively expensive house, worth in the region of £2m, in the very tight catchment of a lovely state primary. This is buying privilege, same as buying private education. So why does he get away without paying?

Universities are a private business running at a loss that’s picked up by the tax payer as it’s partly funded by our taxes.
Private schools and other businesses don’t throw loss onto the tax payer
Ultimately if private education gets taxed Universities and all private educational establishments will be up for grabs too

Increasing tax for a working single mother bringing in £20k a year is fairer than taxing well off families who are voluntarily paying for a luxury on that luxury?

A tax increase to support state education would be on everyone
Whether they use private schools, don’t have kids, have kids or did have kids. Everyone.

👏👏
well said.
I think the issue really with 4 people and 5 ideas is everyone needs to look at the bigger picture and consider more
what ifs……

Things were different. There was family allowance and then family credit for example. There was tax relief on mortgage interest. VAT was generally at much lower levels. There was windfall profits to be made from people with insurance policies and savings with "Mutuals" and of course privatisation of utilities etc. There was usually a hefty profit to be made on endowment mortgages. Right to buy council houses made a lot of council tenants pretty rich! It's all swings and roundabouts.

Re universities, today's students are paying tax and NIC AND student loan repayments AND workplace pension contributions AND losing their child benefit if they earn over £60k, and lose their personal tax allowance if they earn over £100k, AND paying a hugely higher mortgage or rent due to massive house price inflation. Today's younger generation are worse off in so many ways.

Maybe people will realise they need to help state schools improve rather than desert the ship leaving the poor to drown at the end of the day if you can afford private fees now you're not struggling. Improving education for all rather than the elite is better for the country

No argument from me. This is what happens when you make something a commodity rather than recognise it's part of social and economic infrastructure.

Can you provide the links?

That assumes that state education would actually improve, which is something I doubt very much!

Once more for those at the back universities are established by Royal Charter - that is what gives them the authority to confer degrees. They are not businesses. They are charities. They cannot make profits because they are charities.

in 2012 the coalition decided to 'save' the cost of HE by placing the entire burden of university education in England only on students by asking them to take on a £9k debt pa for each year of their degree to be paid back after once they started earning more than £25kpa after leaving uni, with interest fixed to the RPI, and to be written off after 30 yrs.

This figure has only increased once since 2012, in 2017 by £250. In that time all other costs unis have eg salaries, maintenance, capital costs have increased as they have for everyone else. Which is why currently most universities are struggling financially - and if your children are thinking of going look carefully at the financial viability of the uni they want to attend and the school and course they want to do. Loads of depts and courses will be cut in the next few years - not to mention the Tories announcing they'll get the OFS to cut 1 in 8 degrees for other reasons yesterday.

There is only one private university in the whole of the UK - Buckingham. All of the rest are public trusts - that's what a charity is, established by Royal Charter, regulated by the Office for Students and the REF. Highly transparent, accessible to all with no one making any money out of them, no overseas investors, no shareholders etc.

Why this keeps needing to be explained I do not understand. I can only assume the people who want their kids to go to independent schools did not attend universities or if they did had no idea what they were doing whilst they were there.

Can you Google?

Honestly I could find the links, but I can't be fucking arsed with pedants.

I don't just pull bollocks out of my arse for the sake of it. It's one of those stats that's been around for a while for people who pay attention to the news.

Not really.
Those few things you mentioned weren’t available in high £££ and weren’t all available to most.
The payouts in top up benefits today far far out way the little that was originally available.
So as I say
It is disingenuous to say boomers are all net beneficiaries

State education is going to have massive issues with school closures and shrinking class sizes due to the demographic shift.

Why aren't Labour coming up for a plan to deal with this.

People with kids are going to have a much bigger shit fit when their local school closes and they have to transport their child a couple of miles to the nearest alternative school.

By comparison no one will give a shit about private schools in five years time when this starts to hit many many primary schools.

It's hit our area earlier than most and the effect is more pronounced but it is a council wide issue rather than a very localised one. It has been highlighted briefly as an issue that's going to be much bigger in the national pressure too.

We are sleep walking into yet another educational crisis that's totally predictable and therefore can be planned for if anyone competent took this type of thing seriously.

No political party is producing a strategy which addresses this issue. Why?

Too busy playing politics with shite like this idea.

I’m sure everyone is fully aware the state system needs more funding and I’m sure if taxes were raised equally private parents would have no problem with this as I’m sure most people wouldn’t. It’s for the good of everyone including those who don’t even have kids.

improving education for all rather than the elite is better for the country
The state aren’t improving education for the elite
Private kids parents pay into state education and again for private and this ultimately lifts the financial burden from the state
A tax on some forms of education, in the long run, will cost the tax payer more, increase class sizes, make Privates more elite and make nothing.

@RedToothBrush because its a council level issue not a national level one. LEAs are responsible for commissioning school places. National govt could not possibly determine what is needed locally because it varies so much. Where I live the population is pretty stable and the school I am a governor for is expecting to expand not contract over the next few years due to proposed housebuilding. Whilst in London schools are closing due to both falling birthrates and young people leaving the city. Those trends can change fast though and due to academisation some of the financial risks will be born MATs. Obviously it may annoy people that there are fewer schools to go to and you can be allocated anything up to 3m away (welcome to the rest of the country where we are all expected to do this and there's no public transport either). The bigger prob is if/when trends change e.g. people move back to the city and there aren't enough school places.

How this plays out - who knows? But if you are very concerned get involved in local level politics, join the governing body of a local school, see how local s106 money is being spent. It isn't a GE issue.

Speaking of definitions, I'd be curious to know if every poster on this thread had the same idea of what "education" is, should be, and lead to.

Because if there is no common consensus on that, is there any point in discussing who and how to fund it ?

Personally I have this hippy-trippy idea that it provides children with the tools they will need to tackle a world that we have discovered works like it does.

However for other people it's all about shorts, skirts, and the right colour gym bag.

Also, does "education" ever stop. I know mine hasn't, and I never go to bed without at least one new fact in my head. Again, personally, I think education should be there for our lives. So that if you discover at the age of (say) 30 you might have the patience and skills you didn't at 18 to complete a degree then why not ?

Or 40, or 50.

But as I move amongst people, I realise how fucking weird and odd I am, so generally just pipe down. After all, if I was even remotely right, I wouldn't be called a fucking idiot as ,much, surely ?

This is not a London issue.

This is a nationwide issue which is affecting every council area.

We clearly need some greater awareness on this incoming national issue because there seems to be a misconception that it's just about people moving.

It's not. It's a demographic bust. Women are having fewer children due to financial issues across the board.

Via the FT (Is this a good enough source for the pedants?) in November

Falling pupil numbers add to primary school budget pressures in EnglandNumber of students in early education set to fall by 13% by 2032, leading to schools receiving less funding

The number of state nursery and primary age pupils in England is set to fall by 13 per cent over the next decade, according to official data, as schools warn cuts to per-pupil funding will leave them struggling to stay open. The population of primary and nursery schools has been declining since its 2019 peak due largely to dropping fertility rates, Department for Education data showed.

The drop is expected to accelerate from 2024 onwards. The government predicts the number of students aged between three and 11 years old to fall by 13 per cent by 2032, or 578,623, compared with today. The drop in pupil numbers could lead to cuts in per-pupil government funding and pile pressure on schools already facing financial pressure, forcing some to cut costs and staff, and — in the worst case — close altogether, according to education experts. “The main issue for schools is that their funding is on a per-pupil basis, so when they have falls in student numbers the overall pot of money goes down but their costs don’t fall in the same way,” said Jon Andrews, head of analysis at the Education Policy Institute think-tank.

This is going to disproportionately going to affect London (and probably other affluent parts of the UK - I'm not in London and we are looking at more than double that % already by next year locally) but its a nationwide problem.

Most of them don’t have lots of money. My school is a large, successful, full to capacity independent school in a popular city. Following the impact of COVID and the rise in the pension contribution we are running on a very small surplus. If/when the VAT comes in then the school will have to find ways of saving further money. Passing on the whole rise to parents is not possible.

But @RedToothBrush LEAs do know this. They plan school places year to year based on current and projected birthrates. And it does not affect all parts of the country equally. Averages vary massively, historically lower in rural areas than urban areas.

But most importantly TFR is only back to the late 90s levels, it hasn't dropped below that. The level of fluctuations we're seeing are exactly what LEAs are used to adapting for. This is not a national level crisis. LEAs do have to supply over-capacity and handle under-supply (which can mean offering spaces which are inconvenient) and they have to do it for years. I grew up learning in portakabins because there was so little investment in schools in the 80s and the RAC crisis was largely because school buildings had to go up at speed in the 60s as the school leaving age was increased. Compared to those crises reducing demand for places is trivial.

Keep telling yourself that.

I'll get back to you in 5 years and let's see if that pans out like that.

Sorry just saw your quote.

And I just think so what? In rural areas we've been having to close schools due to falling demand or relocating demand for decades. Planning school places over large geographic areas is a ballache. Villages lose their shit when their school closes but my local LEA has been managing to keep schools going with just 8 pupils on roll at times which is clearly not good for anyone. My kids primary was a large village school relatively with 80 children attending but even keeping tha going was hard. And yes your capital and even operational costs stay the same if you have 76 or 80 pupils but you have an income shortfall of 10k or 1/3 of a teachers salary and its a nightmare. No amount of saving on stationary solves that - chairing the finance committee was not fun.

Yeah, schools will have to close or merge to remain operationally efficient units. This is not new news. But given we also have only 60% of spaces for secondary teacher training filled for Sept and the rest of them are fighting for the exit I'd say its reasonably insignificant in terms of what the next govt has to sort from day one to ensure our kids keep having schools to attend.

I can see at least 20% of parents pulling kids out of private, and popping them into the state system. This will lead to private school closures (some have already happened), and then state schools will be over-subscribed leading to additional costs there.... not really sure of this plan?!