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

It doesn't matter how many people are pro or against anything. We're not Swiss and have no direct democracy.

”You cannot be pro EU and pro the human rights act AND simultaneously be pro taxing education. You have to pick sides and decide what is more important. Is it really worth sacrificing the former? That is the decision the electorate need to make. And the politicians should stop misrepresenting the facts.”

Thank you @Araminta1003 you have put this really well
Unfortunately people have fallen for an ‘easy’ salve to their anger at the last Government’s abuse of privilege. Remember the Bullingdon Club photo?
Taking anger out on, and harming ‘private school kids’ is not going to make state schools miraculously better, it’ll just satisfy a sense of revenge.

@Climbinghigher you’ve said you support VAT on education but not why?
We know the policy was based on out of date and biased stats.
we know this policy will take us further away from the EU (we know the impact of Brexit is the single biggest issue to crush our economy and aspirations of our kids)
We know it is not going to significantly impact the few truly ‘elite’ institutions or rich families.
We know this will disproportionately impact kids with SEND increasing the chances they will lead less independent lives and costs the state significantly more in the future.
We know the distress caused by the rapid imposition of this policy will in particular cause significant distress and our mental health services are effectively unavailable due to being cut to the bone. So there will be real long term and possibly terminal harm.

In the past I too was theoretically in favour despite the impact on my SEND DC. Then I engaged with those I disagreed with and learnt.

On the nomenclature, it is Bridget Phillipson who has been throwing around the “pushy middle class parent” openly online and in writings, to suit her agenda.
Either they are being priced out of private education to demand more from state school teachers to raise standards, or they have already been priced out of private education and are fully supportive of her policy. She picks and chooses according to the argument she is making.
That is where the “ambitious” parent concept came from, it was meant as a short cut for Phillipson's long form terminology which is simply too classist for my liking.
We can use the term “educationally supportive” or “educationally motivated” instead of “ambitious”. One finds them in all types of educational settings, private, state, specialist and increasingly, in homeschooling too. It is the breed of parent that Phillipson is chasing although it is not quite clear in which way. Sometimes, they have bankrupt the councils due to demands for EHCPs but at other times they have raised standards for all. They are therefore a notoriously evasive breed of human.

I guess the idea of "inclusion" is changing anyway. Covid generations (those who were about 1-1.5yo and upwards at the time of the first lockdown) have been badly harmed en masse so the vast majority have some issue or another. We won't be able to address this crisis, there is simply not enough money or qualified specialists for this number of cases. Neuroses are not the easiest conditions to work with anyway, but now we have an overwhelming tide of them so I guess "inclusion" will soon mean helping a tiny minority of remaining NT children to cope in an environment where the majority have issues. I'm exaggerating a bit, but only so much...

I'm a qualified neuroscientist and tbh I can't see how we are going to deal with the looming tsunami of Covid generations entering the labour market...

My disabled DC went to an "outstanding" state school where he was psychologically tortured by a TA to the point of MH breakdown.

Good for you your DC sailed through. "I'm alright Jack".

@Ubertomusic - good grief - what a unessesary reply.

No more unnecessary than the comment they were replying to

I agree with this. The concept of pushy middle class parents is offensive to everyone.

It implies that teachers have somehow been slacking off and that current state school families haven't noticed/cared.

It also appears 'demanding better' from schools with no suggestion of extra funding is their policy moving forward.

I demand better from the government.

I cannot demand better from my state school colleagues. We give our all every day.

@Ubertomusic’ I'm a qualified neuroscientist and tbh I can't see how we are going to deal with the looming tsunami of Covid generations entering the labour market...’

But but we have influencers and you tubers and tiktokers, reality tv blaggers and internet bloggers. Podcasters and instagrammers. Our cup runneth over with natural talent and skilled practitioners.

You posted a jubilant comment about the policy, right after someone with an ASD child in GCSE year posted very late at night how they could not sleep worrying about their DC.

Who the hell do you think you are to lecture me on anything?

Yes, so true.

@Ubertothemusuc I support the policy. I am happy to say I support the policy but I don't direct lecturing 'I'm alright Jack' comments directly at posters.

@redwinechocolateandsnacks Can you really not see how offensive that poster's disingenuous 'I can't see why it isn't OK for everyone as it was for me' comments would be to @ubertomusic given her history of her DC being failed so badly?!

We don't have a right not to be offended. But likewise, we are entitled to respond in a similar way.

@redwinechocolateandsnacks if you support the rushed addition of VAT to education, what about it do you support? The economics have been debunked, we know it’ll further hurt us by taking us further away from Europe, and its rapid imposition is going to severely hurt kids with SEND. However it will increase the cost of state schools using independent school’s facilities (and stop gratis access), increase cost to state education via more places and extra SEND provision, and huge long term cost to manage distress caused by rapid imposition, and further increase house prices around Hugh achieving state schools.
Our only positive is next year we may afford a holiday and might be able to replace car before it’s 20th bday. But that’s if our ASD DC survives a move to a massive, sensory overloading school.

You’re the one harping on about Brexit and how people didn’t vote for it. They did both in the Referendum and in 2019.

Starmer will need to decide EU or US. He can’t have both with Trump in the White House. It will be interesting to see which way he jumps.

I’ve been pondering the messaging from the Labour Party on this and other things. The Times has a story on VAT on school fees nearly every day - they attract lots of comments (often well over 1,000) so they’ll carry on. Anything that gets so much reader engagement is great for a newspaper.

But more generally, the Times seems to utterly despise the Labour Party. There’s a story in there about Keir Starmer cutting the queue for toboggan rides for his children in Madeira. It has well over 2,000 comments. For a centrist newspaper to turn on a newly elected government this quickly is a sign that Labour have done a terrible job in communicating / persuading.

How?

And don't tell me private school parents are going to start investing in the state sector.

They're pretty much immune at this stage of the election cycle.

The Editor is fairly new and joined from the Mail. He isn't popular with readers who accuse him variously of dumbing down (eg Brad and Angelina story today) and moaning about Starmer endlessly (whether deserved or not). The comments section have become far less interesting and far more combative even with the requirement for real names. It's not the paper it was

@LongDarkTeaTime I think that the majority of your assertions are yet to be proven. I am glad the government are thinking of the 94% rather than the 6%. Those children and young people do count and matter but their parents decided to use the private sector and now must decide whether they will afford the increase or not. If you can even think about affording the fees then you are privileged - you have made a choice to buy into a particular service and the cost has gone up. In that case you either decide to pay more or opt out. I am the parent of child with SN - I have never seen SEND children mentioned so often on here. I rather think they deserve better than being made pawns in the VAT wars.
So before others pile on...
It is a good policy - I approve of the ideology.
I don't think Europe care how we run education in the UK - I voted remain but at least one good thing came out of Brexit.
We are yet to see a big exodus from the private sector - papers just speculate.
There are so many other things we should be worrying about than a VAT increase on private education.

So in summary, you can’t give any specifics as to why you agree with it but as long as you have ‘belief’ it’ll work for the majority (when even teachers have said it won’t), and the kids permanently harmed aren’t yours, then it’s ok.
Which other minorities are you ok with harming for ideology?

10K leaving is a pretty significant number and incidentally is pretty much the point at which this policy starts costing the taxpayer.

The problem for Labour is that actually they don't have any good ideas on education or the NHS & social care. There's a recruitment and retention crisis in teaching but they'll magically recruit thousands of new teachers. The NHS and social care are in crisis due to escalating demand, poor pay in social care, Covid backlogs & poorly maintained NHS real estate. Somehow AI will fix that!

We need some difficult conversations about inclusion in education and managing poor pupil & parental behaviour.

There needs to be a national conversation about what the NHS should actually cover and how it should be paid for.

Regardless of your views on VAT, Labour are in lalaland with their approach to improving key public services right now.

It is a good policy - I approve of the ideology.

@redwinechocolateandsnacks do you think 650 teachers will be easy to recruit?