Whitehall “braced for private schools collapse” 4

[ICouldBeVioletSky]

Continuing the discussion about the impact of VAT on independent schools…

Gosh it's taking long enough.

And yet again, I do not support the policy. I have already said this to you a few posts back. Maybe ask someone who does.

This is such a bizarre thread!
Poster A “A higher than average number of private schools are closing. It’s because of the levying of VAT.”
Poster B “Obviously the levying of VAT is a contributing factor. But there are other factors as well- including in almost all cases a history of falling rolls-some of them are only half full”
Poster A “Why are you refusing to acknowledge the impact of levying VAT?”
Poster B “Why are you refusing to acknowledge the impact of other factors?”
Poster A and B(in unison) “I’m not!”

Actually, it's more:

Poster A: "School X has just announced closure. That sucks for the students and teachers. Labour's policy is shit and they have a lot to answer for"

Poster B: School X would have shut anyway!

Poster A: We can't know that. Not all of them would. We're at 8x normal closure rate

Poster B: You're being ridiculous even mentioning School X without definitive proof that VAT was the ONLY reason it closed

Poster A: WTF? 8x closure rate! It doesn't matter that we don't know which 12% of the closures would have happened anyway! So many schools are closing which wouldn't have. And it's bastard Labour's fault. They refuse to track the consequences. So we will.

Poster B: You're so irrational. You have no proof.

Poster A: #%@^!

And this.

It's unnecessary to split out exactly which schools would have closed this year anyway, which ones would have closed a year or 2 later (disrupting fewer students, if we assume falling rolls) and which ones would have recovered.

It is beyond belief that some cannot understand this basic concept.

Yes so very few posters support the policy. Not even someone who posts at every closure as you do to question it.

It’s a dud and damaging. Once you accept that then why bother do it at all. Arguing the toss over every school is irrelevant.

Yep this.

You seem quite gleeful about schools closing though? Did you feel this way about the businesses that closed post Brexit? We have seen a 52% rise (so less than the x8 rate we are currently seeing for schools) in business shutting between 2021 and 2023 that is attributed to Brexit. Obviously some of these were weaker or more clearly linked to Europe than businesses that haven't closed but would have survived without Brexit.

I do think taxing independent education is slightly comparable to Brexit. Pulling on treads in society without really understanding the ramifications just because it is a populist vote (WE HATE IMMIGRANTS! WE HATE RICH PEOPLE!).

It doesn’t matter if a school could be fuller than it currently is or if it is a small school operating at its full but small capacity; then the loss of a few pupils to the impact of 20% VAT unaffordability is going to obviously cause the school finances to tip into closure.

Because schools are at the same time trying to cope with rise in NI, business rates, And parents are also affected at the same time by financial climate and job uncertainty, cost of living crisis, housing affordability crisis etc etc.

So it’s a perfect storm of cost pressures deliberately imposed by government on private schools, plus whose paying customers and whose businesses are already making decisions in the same shaky UK and global economic environment that all customers and all businesses are living in.

We may as well also piss about trying to identify which parents with kids at private school and which wider families financially supporting them, are going to find the VAT imposition unaffordable in conjunction with annual fee rises and so will be forced to take their kids out of their school this year, or next year or the year after?

It doesn’t matter. Net result will be now or soon, many more schools will be closed permanently and many more kids disrupted, many more teachers will be out of a job, many more state schools will be put under even more pressure, the government tax take will be down from what it would have been, while huge additional costs will be placed on the public purse to meet eg SEND needs that their own families were previously meeting via paying for private schools .. but to be fair it will be entrenching happy days for the already most affluent elite private schools and entrenching happy days for the already most affluent elite state schools. Is that what we really want?

That’s not an effective government policy unless the government policy is just to decimate an entire area of UK education and business, with no consideration of economic and social consequences. Which is shameful.

These are real kids facing huge disruption, real schools closing, real teachers and school office and maintenance and catering staff losing their jobs, real parents having to return their kids to the state sector that failed them before which is extremely painful. It’s not an entertainment laid on for the celebratory idiots who are treating this policy like they did banning fox hunting.

I’m a lifelong Labour voter and I can’t believe the party that once said ‘Education, Education, Education’ is now keeping state education running on thin air, is actively about to make access to what SEND resources there are in state schools worse, and is also quite purposely killing off private schools of all kinds. These policies will have harsh impact on many kids at state schools for all the reasons we have stated on these threads for months. Some of which are being voiced in court this week, which I really hope will be successful.

Beautifully put, thank you. It's the needless destruction and anti intellectualism that hurts me the most. Very very different from Labour's Education Education Education of old indeed.

I agree too. It’s depressing to see.

@strawberrybubblegumFair enough. I chose not to editorialise my summary. We need more light not more heat.

@CurlewKate In a thread about school closures caused by poor/malicious government policy - and all the harms caused - 'both sides' is not actually a neutral stance.

If you want less heat, then posters should refrain from minimising the unjustifiable each time a concerned poster records yet another closure.

As the put in the pp arguing each school individually isn’t relevant.

If overall the closures are up, which has been shown, and there’s still cuts in state funding, what’s the point?

So to be clear. The only reason private schools are closing is the levying of VAT and employers NI contributions. All other possible reasons are irrelevant-and discussion them is “minimising”Right then. Got it. I’ll leave you to your echo chamber.

Have to laugh at you imagining that you aren't editorialising, when you've mis-characterised the thread as being purely a tit-for-tat argument about whether an individual school's closure is 100% due to VAT or 0% due to VAT!

You're completely ignoring that the entire reason for the thread is to record school closures (which Labour are refusing to track) and recognise the enormous harm caused by the excess closures: which are a direct and possibly deliberate result of government policy.

Not editorialised indeed!

Even looking at the overall is flawed if there are various factors as well as timing considerations at play. If a school closes, how much do you attribute to VAT, cost of living crisis, NI hikes.

Well if the whole point of the thread is to record school closures, a bit of background to each one is helpful. You can't just look at the quantitative without a bit of qualitative or it is fundamentally flawed.

Far too simplistic.

Your rewriting is incorrect here, but it was a telling non answer to what’s the point?

Perhaps there isn’t one, the policy is a damaging dud.

Do what you want but this isn’t an echo chamber. Posters on here are just tending to adhere to common sense.

When an excess way above a statistically expected level of an event is reported, and that excess coincides with several relevant factors being observed at that same time, then common sense will usually assume that those relevant factors were causative. That assumption is very often proved to be right in the long term.

Closures are 8 times up.

You can't see the wood for the trees.

And sadly, there’s not going to be many trees left to be seen soon either

I am not in the slightest bit gleeful about schools closing. Can you please reference anything I have written that gives you that idea. It is insulting. I think you are confusing questioning conclusions with being behind a policy.

Agree.

To distract the masses and make it seem like they're sticking it to the rich

To attract a few voters (or MPs) who might be wavering on defecting to Reform

To keep the Labour party united by keeping the Corbynistas happy as the party leadership gradually morph into Cameron-Osborne austerity-mongers.

To whip up a bit of class hatred and scapegoat kids at private schools and their families for the general stagnation in both educational and living standards.

To look busy and pretend they're doing something useful while failing to address the elephant in the room (Brexit, and the increasingly clear need to reverse it).

It has lots of points, as long as you're cynical enough to stomach them.