Whitehall “braced for private schools collapse” 5

[ICouldBeVioletSky]

Starting a continuation thread in anticipation of the fourth one filling up…

www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5301690-whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse-4?page=39

Of course, a lot of people are changing their behaviour, especially at transition points. However, it is complicated for some families who eg started out in private schools and now have younger DCs having to go to state schools. There are plenty of good state schools, of course, but it creates the kind of bad vibe/emotional deep seated resentment towards a political party, for life. I have no doubt that many of these people will be drilling into their children to never ever vote Labour when they are adults. People hating Tories has already happened. Now we are witnessing a sort of visceral deep seated hatred towards Labour taking hold as well. This is why divisive policies for no significant tax gain (and potentially a loss long term) are a terrible idea and whoever has pushed Starmer into doing this (including the farmers’ tax) should be sacked. I also think the WFA cuts were incredibly badly timed in an announcement before winter into a cost of living crisis for the elderly too. A lot of this is about incredibly bad timing.

I have said multiple times on these type of threads that I think Labour would have got away with the VAT policy had it not been for all the other pressures on the finances of families. It was a policy at the 2019 election and they carried on with it at the 2024 election without any regard for the cost of living crisis in the intervening years. They have then added further pressure due to the NI increases, minimum wage increase and ending business rates relief. They were stupid to think that families could just pay more and more out for school fees…unless closing schools was their actual plan…

Those people who say that private schools 'should' perform public good are irrationally entitled.

A private school that has charitable status has to demonstrate that it provides a public benefit to fulfil its charitable obligations.

1. The nature of the organisation’s objectives has to be a benefit to the community, in other words “a good cause”; and

1. The people who benefit from the implementation of that purpose have to be a sufficiently broad section of the public.

In other words, the purpose must be for the benefit of the community as a whole.

And what benefit is there to keep charitable status? Reduced corporation tax as against the additional compliance requirements which have a cost impact. For a school with little or no profit (which is common), then it may not make financial sense for it to continue as a charity.

How funny that you think you can change the law and the social contract to suit yourself - to other people' detriment - and you actually think those people being harmed can't/won't change their behaviour wrt the social contract in response.

I would argue that the biggest benefits that private schools delivery to the community is that they generally pump out well educated and well rounded young people at the parents foot the bill for this.

Society benefits as we need educated young people to drive forward the economy and fill important roles in society. Society also benefits because the state effectively saves itself almost £100k which can be redirected elsewhere in the community.

I seriously can't get my head around why people think they also need to be doing more to justify their existence. The government should be incentivising more people to go private rather than doing what they're doing. I say this as someone with a foot in each camp. The state school my child attends does absolutely nothing to help the wider community and nor should it be compelled to do so. They have enough on their plate trying to educate children.

Absolutely. I can't think of many charities providing so much public benefit.

It's very normal for charities to focus most of their resources on their actual charitable aim. So much benefit to the UK as a whole is unusual.

And the way the parents funding that huge benefit to the UK are vilified by Labour and their supporters is completely unique.

Absolutely. One of the reasons we’re outliers with Labour’s poor and damaging policy.

Yes who cares about equality, the rich stay rich and the poor have to put up with the crappy state schools.

perfect.

Equality? Have you used the state sector recently? The inequality embedded within the state sector is far reaching and incredibly unfair. The fact that we are all funding this with our taxes and the vast majority of our children use these schools mean that reforming the state sector should be the absolute top priority if you genuinely care about equality. The focus should be especially on helping those who are currently recieving the worst education and have few genuine options. Decimating the private sector absolutely won't help these children but I suspect that you and Labour don't really care about these children. If you did then you would see that all of this is a massive red herring. Where is the real reform we so desperately need?

That’s the point. The “crappy state schools” (in your words) won’t improve with Labour’s plans. The money raised (if any is actually raised) was never going to be enough to improve the state system. The IFS have said this. Labour aren’t interested in improving state schools. They want to achieve “equality” by knocking down those schools performing well. The government have already made cuts in the state system (STEM/modern languages/music/latin etc).

By making private schools even more expensive, all they’re doing is making them even more exclusive.

Absolutely. The inequality within the state sector is huge, but no one seems to bother about that (presumably because the government ministers’ children are in some of the few excellent state schools; the type of school which most of the population could only dream of).

Precisely. I feel like there is some crazy cognitive dissonance going on where people are desperately trying to justify penalising private schools with the idea that this is somehow improving the situation for the most deprived children stuck in terrible schools even though there is no real mechanism for this to happen. The problems associated with 'sink' schools extend far beyond a tiny bit of extra funding and to be honest even significant funding would struggle to address some of the issues. Labour haven't even begun to think about what reforms are necessary, let alone started putting anything into action. The irony of course is that they haven't wasted a second implementing the VAT policy and have diverted a lot of time and money towards this at the expense of making real change. For this reason I will never ever be lectured on the idea that this VAT policy is about addressing inequality. Labour couldn't care less about equality.

I am not a Labour voter but there were many things wrong before Labour got in. You can't blame all the ills of the moment on them. There were several Tory shit shows before Labour got in to fuck things up further. Brexit was probably the biggest cock up of all.

You're deluded if you think everyone is going to be jacking in their job or dropping to part time and switch their DC to state school or home school because they are fucked off with the government. Too short sighted. They have still to bankroll university, cars and house deposits for starters. It comes around quickly and it all gets more expensive as they get older.

I take it you still believe in the £££ VAT moolah bonanza that will fund 6500 new teachers, new roofs for all state schools and 60p of toast?

You're completely lacking insight if you think that only huge changes like moving to another country, jacking in a job or moving kids to state school matter.

You're also misjudging the impact on human behaviour of feeling connected to our communities versus victimised. It may not seem rational, but it's actually quite adaptive: how much it makes sense to invest in your community depends on whether they have your back.

From tiny things (eg most people don't put charitable giving on their tax return to claim the higher rate back... damn sure I will now) to much bigger things (eg more aggressive IHT planning), it's fiscally pretty impactful to alienate that part of your population which contributes disproportionately and also has options to change behaviour.

Here we go again, hopefully you can explain in a coherent and tangible way why closing schools and pushing more children’s education to paid for by the state is going to benefit anyone? Nobody else has been able to so far.

More a case of the uber rich stay rich.

The poor put up with the crappy state schools.

The middle and somewhat rich do everything possible to secure the best state schools, and then supplement with tutors and extra curriculars (and stashing away enough so kids can pick university based on the best course not the cheapest accommodation).

Only now, there are more of that group and because they're now wanting state education not private, that bumps a few others down to the crappy comp.

But hey, we're all equal and using the wonders of the state provision.

I’m just pointing out that you’re wrong (again) about charity law in that schools with charitable status must do things for the benefit of the wider community.

Maybe you should switch your DC to a school without charitable status or insist that your DC’s school(s) change structure since you feel so strongly?

I was thinking about alternative models again. Whilst we cannot afford to give up the 6k-7k state education per year (miserly amount locally) and pay 25-35k plus now locally (that is the price here), we could afford to pay a private school for after school extension 4-7pm daily and great extracurricular etc. So I hope some schools with great facilities start opening up models like that where many kids can go to do music, arts, sports in one place.
The whole difference in private and state is around the extra opportunities and extra curricular really. I think running a model where they tap into that, provided they have huge grounds could work quite well and make a lot of money. That would also fulfil the charitable obligation even if it raises a lot of funds.

If private schools fold en masse there will literally be hardly any sports grounds, swimming pools, concert halls left for future generations so it has to be avoided at all costs. I will happily subsidise our local private schools by using clubs there, if they were to run more and more.

Nah. I trust my DD's school to understand their actual legal obligations. I do hope that they will do not a whisker more now.

And I'll generally subvert from within. Mwah ha haha.

Our academy trust has charitable status. Are they doing stuff for the community? Has this been litigated formally?

Oh wait, for the Academy Trust doing Education is enough to have charitable status, because it is state school kids you know. Should be tested in court perhaps.

Of course that's different.

State school kids = BP's 'Our children'. They're the only ones that matter to Labour.

Quite a lot of think tanks have education departments and charitable status...