Whitehall “braced for private schools collapse”

[ICouldBeVioletSky]

Whitehall ‘braced for private schools collapse’ due to fee rises

Worth reading the whole article, it’s not quite as alarmist as the headline suggests. But as you’d expect, gov sources are talking it all down while the ISC is ringing the alarm bell.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/e6465c9e-d462-48cb-a73e-74480059a1f3?shareToken=05bf599cd4a2376fe3ce83cdce607100

I’d be quite surprised if some of the schools near us don't fold tbh. There will definitely be a contraction in the sector, I just hope those that hold on can remain a viable concern.

Labour wants to shut down the independent sector entirely.

Once they have priced out and driven away the middle classes they will then be able to argue that independent schools really are the bastion of the elite, the ultra wealthy.

My point was that the middle class has already been priced out - as reported on by The Telegraph for the last decade.

Spot on.

She’s saying (as per the Telegraph over the last decade) that the middle class has pretty much already been squeezed out.

It’s not contradictory to say that the additional VAT won’t squeeze that many more out (in her opinion) as most have already found it unaffordable.

The relevant question is not whether the middle classes find it unaffordable. The question has always been how the state is failing DCs with SEND and denying it and not handling the SEND crisis. If most of the middle class families still in the private sector are only there because their DCS have SEND and are making sacrifices accordingly, this policy will 100 per cent blow up in her face spectacularly.

Latin knowledge helps students with English language, spelling, grammar, historical references in English literature, it helps with scientific Latin names (if you want to do medicine, science, biology or be a gardener), and it helps students to learn the other modern foreign languages which have Latin roots.

While it's true that people were feeling the squeeze before VAT, it's not true that the middle class have been priced out entirely. In schools I know, there are still plenty of "normal" middle class families. Most of them have both parents working and no frills, though. Frequent combinations are: two teachers married with one receiving a staff discount on their kids fees (which promoted stability and gave them a further vested interest in the success of the school), or doctor married to nurse/pharmacist.
Consequences of the VAT introduction include:

1. schools cutting staff discounts on fees for teachers' children will make it unaffordable for teachers to keep their kids in the school they work in.
2. Doctors will be cutting their NHS hours to do more private work to fund the VAT.
3. Some families will be pushed into elective home education. And for most home educated kids, there's an economically inactive adult.

That's all well and good for your DD and your BF's DD, but for many children state education does NOT work for them and just getting through their education is mission impossible for them.

We had every intention of a state school education for our child but that wasn't to be. I would much rather have put my earnings into savings for his future, into a pension, to have given him a sibling. He is ?ND and he would struggle immensely in a class of 30, life is hard enough for him (and us) in a small class with high levels of pastoral care, therapies and SEN support. I wish I didn't have to spend my entire earnings on his education but for many of us, that is the reality we are faced with.

i’ve news for you … Classical Latin stays the same, so it doesn’t make any difference whether they’re teaching from the Cambridge Latin course or Kennedy’s Latin Primer. By definition they aren’t learning about how to ask directions to the internet cafe, or discuss whether they enjoy computer games.

There are whole areas and even disciplines in the humanities which require a detailed knowledge of Latin, from Classics to analytic philosophy to lots of parts of English, theology, linguistics, history, and the history and philosophy of science. Is it OK that only a few privately educated people get to do these and even get jobs in universities teaching them?

Do the plebs not get to study lots of these (very interesting and fertile) subjects, then? That doesn’t sound so diverse to me?

There are plenty of middle class people putting their kids in private schools. My family all are, despite the fact that my parents grew up on council estates, and none of my siblings earn more than 60k. DD’s school is full of the children of academics, doctors, software engineers, solicitors, scientists and so on. Plenty of day schools all around the country are like this, and aren’t remotely full of the global super-rich.

Now you can perfectly well feel that accountants and solicitors should pay more tax: but why them, rather than taxing property empires, corporations, high net worth individuals, people buying houses over £1m, or even a land tax on the very wealthy schools like Eton directly, if you really hate the poshos so much?

They also said schools should stop visiting museums as too elitist and do graffiti workshops instead (as more useful?..) 🤦‍♀️

Fair enough @tortoise18 although it does go to the (lack of) heart of the whole thing to me, that we live in an age where it's never been easier to acquire knowledge in whichever way works for the student and find things to do with that knowledge/those skills but that education 'policy' is pushing kids to a reduced basic model of core subjects taught at one type of school.

No they did not

Gosh, what a load of twaddle about ‘hating the poshos’.

I guess you didn’t bother reading the Telegraph links then?

Here’s another one for you not to bother reading.

Private schools ‘as much to blame as Labour for middle-class exodus’

archive.ph/TkCRa

The BBC is also repeating this line of ‘ending a tax exemption’ when reality is ‘new tax being imposed’

Private school tax breaks a 'luxury', says Phillipson
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c86wd1y7v2xo

‘Phillipson added that "very few" families would move out of private schools, according to the government's impact assessment.’

So when the government say they’ve done an ‘impact assessment’, what do they mean.. ? Not that report by the guy from the think tank? Or has there been an actual impact assessment done properly, by specialist civil servants?

hence it can no longer afford to give, to the vast amount of parents who can easily afford it, a tax break ie no VAT on what is essentially a luxury item

This is just essentially wrong, and it’s why Labour’s messaging on this has been so deliberately mendacious. Education has on principle never had VAT applied to it - including university fees, music tuition and so on. It can’t have VAT applied in the EU, and almost no developed countries tax any form of education on principle. Just like books have never been considered a luxury item, and don’t have VAT applied.

Recycling this rhetoric is the equivalent of saying that it’s great that someone has proposed getting rid of a “tax break” by imposing VAT on books. Now, you could be the kind of person who never buys books, considers them elitist, thinks they are not remotely essential to life but are a luxury, and would be more than happy for VAT to be slapped on them just to tax those jumped up poshos who value reading. That wouldn’t make imposing VAT on books “the removal of a tax break”, though; it would be imposing VAT on something that’s not been VAT-able before. Very different.

Is there anything you think is wrong in my post? Do explain! That there aren’t any middle class kids in private schools (despite my DD’s school and my siblings’ children’s schools being stuffed full of them)?

Or they you think we should tax the middle classes instead of the genuinely rich? Really interested to know!

I can't find a reference to that anywhere.Do you have a source please?

It was in a report to the govt by Lee Elliot Major:

archive.ph/FgM2Q

Also reported here

Cut middle-class references to skiing and theatre, schools told

www.thetimes.com/article/2af563ef-eadf-4386-984f-da1b6174b2b4?shareToken=550c834a4ceb55251b5b488487c8053d

I didn’t say that there aren’t any middle class families at private school, but as per my previous links, it’s been well reported over the last decade that the middle classes are being squeezed out of private school. Two children at an average day school for secondary will set you back £36k a year. That’s a lot to find out of disposable income for the average family, even with two professional salaries.

Your comment about ‘hating the poshos’ is puerile and doesn’t really help your argument.

Ah, so "they" (the government) didn't say this. One non-politician academic among many said it in advance of a curriculum review. Is that it?

My nephew and nieces are all at schools in the north of England and in Cornwall and the fees for each are less than 10k a year. One has SEN. My DD has a bursary and scholarship package which means we pay only around 6k a year for her school.

You don’t seem to know much about the sector if you don’t realise that there are plenty of private day schools around the country which don’t at all attract the super-rich, but the local middle classes. The very wealthy really aren’t going to day private schools in Lancashire or Hull. It’s those schools that will go under, not the schools where the really rich people’s kids go.

And isn’t all of this thread about hating the poshos? Read back some of the comments here, and especially, the total resistance to acknowledging posters with more experience of the sector, and the refusal to consider if the policy has been misrepresented, or will even work at all.

Because taxing the children of middle class people who have SEN doesn’t play into the narrative that it’s only going to hit people who choose to send their kids to Marlborough or Eton and who deserve to be taxed more. Fine if you really want to tax people more. But why not have a tax that really does hit the rich, and not one that only really impacts on the kids and schools who aren’t?

So the Government didn't say that at all. It was a report to the Government. That is quite a difference.

So you lied? Righto

You don’t seem to know much about the sector if you don’t realise that there are plenty of private day schools around the country which don’t at all attract the super-rich

£18k is the average day secondary school fee according to the ISC in its 2024 census.

So not the ‘super rich’, just the average punter.

HTH