Whitehall “braced for private schools collapse” 2

[ICouldBeVioletSky]

Starting a second thread as the first one is still very busy, albeit it's veered off in a few directions...

Original article

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

For me it’s just another example of why schools can’t be one size fits all.
Kids are different and the education they are offered has to reflect that.

We need better SEND provision for those kids.
We need a good ‘standard’ education for the majority children that sit somewhere in the middle of the academic spectrum.
We need a way to push and challenge kids that excel academically.

However what we have seen from Labour policies so far, further narrows the variety of education in the UK of State or Private.

VAT on private schools will close schools that can offer specialist provisions whether it is for SEND kids or high performers.

The new schools bill all but abolishes academies and free schools.

• It removes autonomy to determine pay and conditions. Can’t get a GCSE maths teacher? No bargaining chips will be available.

• No ability for schools to offer anything distinctive outside the curriculum, even if it proven to be highly successful.

• Failing schools forced back to LA control (and we know they never do a bad job with funding and services…)

Whether you are in a private school, a leafy middle class state academy or a failing comp, Labour’s education policies are a huge concern. Also please remember 14 years of Tory austerity was due to Brown’s government overspending. Anyone remember the note they left at the Treasury? “there’s no money left”

"Also please remember 14 years of Tory austerity was due to Brown’s government overspending. Anyone remember the note they left at the Treasury? “there’s no money left”

Was it? My mistake, I thought the lack of money was to do with the 2008 global financial crash predicated by sub-prime mortgages in the USA and banking policies....but no, it was Gordon Brown, was it?

So Brown’s government gets to blame the 2008 financial crash but the Tories (who people forget shared power/policies for the first 5 years of that 14 years with the LibDems) aren’t allowed to cite an unprecedented global pandemic, the Russia/Ukraine War or the instability of the Middle East and it’s impact of oil prices both preceding and pursuant to the Hamas/Israeli conflict as the reason funding was a bit tight?

🤣

Given all those things happened many years after the deliberate, dogmatic and imbecilic choice to impose austerity at a time of historically low borrowing rates, no they're not allowed to cite that.

I thought that was partly due to the lack of appropriate regulation, amplifying the financial crises?

luckily, we now have better regulations - oh wait….

www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jan/08/bank-of-england-plans-to-let-insurers-make-riskier-investments-as-regulations-eased

Well THANK GOD the Labour government is steering well clear of deliberate, dogmatic and imbecilic decisions in bashing the independent school sector for ideological shits and giggles, while raising £diddly squat to improve state schools.

What a relief that is, eh?!

Some of the welfare changes in the school bill are good - some of the driving down academic standards/one size fits all are rubbish. So now what?
PMQ hot topic of the day - Badenoch claims it is all the appease the Unions? Someone care to explain?

Conceptually you can surely drive up child protection and welfare without at the same time vandalising academic standards and vandalising the private education sector.

Why would they be a contradiction. ALL children deserve the best possible outcome. That includes SEND, poor children, but also higher achieving children and even children in private schools.
Why is there this thinking that you cannot have it all? Of course you can, if you prioritise AND FUND education properly.

One policy (austerity) was very large, the other (VAT on private schools) is very small. Surely you can see that?

And for some light entertainment there is a subtle message in Call the Midwife, Season 14, episode 3. Touching on disabilities and middle class families.
Social services essentially tell the midwife that the middle class family and their disabled child is not a priority, as there are so many poor children in the community. Their middle class child won’t be taken into care.

Middle class people also have children with SEND and they deserve just as much as any other child to be protected! This Government needs reminding yet again that they represent the interests of ALL children equally.

It's so obvious that school diversity (including flexi and online options) is desperately overdue. I can see that a curriculum at one school could be overly rigid and wrong for your dc, and you should have other school options.

I don't see these changes increasing parental choices whatsoever.

Whilst I did not agree with austerity at the time, and certainly disagreed with Brexit, (but that was put to a public vote) - exactly how would Covid have been funded without a period of austerity? Surely it would have gotten even worse and there would have been less scope for paying people who could not go to work?
Hindsight is not a terribly useful thing.

I agree @comedia24 - for example, if there were flexibility and some vision, why can children not be part of a SEND hub in a state school and keep in touch regularly, but at the same time have funded online schooling?

Although this is desperately off-topic now, austerity was a missed opportunity for investment and growth. There's also a fairly compelling counterfactual that without austerity, there would have been no Brexit. There would have been a stronger economy with more, not less, money available to deal with Covid.

At least you finally/implicitly accept that the VAT policy is indeed dogmatic and imbecilic.

Wonder if the penny will ever drop for Rachel and chums.

And the fact that the VAT on school fees policy is small of course goes to the heart of this, I couldn’t agree more! Any positive effect will be small/tiny/negligible, while the other side of the coin is that Labour seemingly has NO big/ “austerity sized” plans to fund proper improvements in education.

Exactly @Araminta1003 and we've had the tech for so many years, easier and easier with some of the AI tutor tools too!

And yet the thought of opening up options is just not there.

I don't accept that. But even if someone does accept that (like you) I was simply saying that comparing a single, marginal policy to an overarching economic theory is ridiculous.

I’d love to see a hybrid approach to learning. Children who do not have SEND but have other issues that mean part time home/in school approaches may suit them better. Also, why do YP have to wait until they have failed to survive 6th form, struggled with exams, when the Access Diploma is just as academically rigorous and gives equivalent UCAS points (and supports the fact that many many universities assess by dissertation and projects rather than exams anyway)?? They should be offering A Levels along side Access style diplomas to support different learning styles.

Where did I say that?
Curricular and Ofsted policy which is what I am critical of re the Tories are philosophical not financial. In my earlier posts I acknowledge the pandemic's impact.

you said: My mistake, I thought the lack of money was to do with the 2008 global financial crash predicated by sub-prime mortgages in the USA and banking policies....but no, it was Gordon Brown, was it?

and I was pointing out that [your position, then is that] GB is supposed to get a pass for extrinsic global factors. The inference should, therefore, be if you follow that logic, that the Tories are also absolved from 14 years of cockups and lack of investment in the education system for a similar medley of extrinsic (and even more catastrophic) global factors doesn’t it? I may have misread the tone of your reply though. Apologies if I did.

I, personally, think that successive governments over the last several decades of all colours have failed generations of children and young people, and this includes the previous and current Labour governments.

It’s time to stop excusing either party and trying to shift blame to the other and accepting that both/all parties have failed to listen to the experts, both tinkered around the edges merely making things worse, both failed to observe the growing demand for SEN assessment and need for child support in CAMHS and make plans to address this in the state education sector.

But both are too wrapped up in their petty mutual spite and internal backbiting and our kids have got lost in the cracks. I could give a shit what excuses the Lab give can give for doing nothing last time, I give equally fewer shits for the Tory government failures - both independent of the pandemic and school lock downs and precisely because of them. And I am enraged by the lack of specific plans or actual policy steps taken by the current government, after 6m, when all they’ve done is fuck about with VAT on private school fees and done nothing about increasing teacher training places (in fact 8% fewer people began training this year!!) or to otherwise entice talented people into classrooms. This is not because of 14 years of Tory failings, but because the Labour party are just a big a bunch of fuckwits who have pissed away 14 years in opposition bickering and posturing and have now arrived in No 10 with no concrete roadmaps to improving things.

Well said @CautiousLurker01!! 🎯

Absolutely yes, @CautiousLurker01 .

Under the Tories’ watch, my disabled child wasn’t offered a state education. Under Labour, we are paying VAT on our other child’s fees to fund…. well, to fund what exactly? I appreciate that they’ve only been in power for six months, but some semblance of a state schools improvement plan really would be nice to see, especially for SEN. And especially because private school parents are already paying for it.

"More parents lying to get children into top state schools after VAT hike
Three in ten parents are using dishonesty to game the system, research suggests, after Labour’s tax rise came in on January "

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/more-parents-lying-to-get-children-into-top-state-schools-after-vat-hike-79q7w5cm6

Meanwhile, Rachel is finding elsewhere that people change their behaviour when you target them, to the extent that the changes you proposed aren't going to raise a penny and need to be canned before they do more harm.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/reeves-davos-non-dom-tax-millionaire-b2684926.html

Not unexpected. I live within 680m of one of the top primary schools in the country and neither of my children got in until a lengthy appeal because people lied about addresses etc and it was over subscribed. Once you have lied to get one child in, you can move immediately and all your other children get in on the sibling preference rule even if you live over the county line (5-6miles away).

The catholic school at the end of the road, so 500m away, has a similar influx of observant young families every year who, mysteriously, no longer attend once their child is fully enrolled. Has ever been thus.

So, for those without Times subscription, that survey (by an estate agency, of course) was of 1,019 parents who had placed a child in school over the last five years, four and a half of which did not involve VAT on private school fees. And those who responded that they had "lied" rose to 28% from 24% in the last similar survey.

All a bit less dramatic than the Times headline anyway, but at least both they and Zoopla got what they wanted.