Whitehall “braced for private schools collapse” 6

[ICouldBeVioletSky]

Continuation of previous threads to discuss VAT on independent school fees.

Exactly. It's not about claiming back unused tax. It's about saying that each child in the UK is entitled to £8000 worth of education each year.

Their education is a benefit to the child, not the parents. It's about training a UK citizen, who we hope will become a productive member of society - and tax payer - in their adult life.

And maybe it would be more effective in terms of overall UK education if this was made available in the form of a voucher, which could either be exchanged for a whole education in a state-run school, or could be part-payment for an education which was topped up by the child's parents.

It's an option for how to provide state funding towards the education of our citizens. There's no inconsistency there. It's a choice.

As @Runemum says, it would be perceived as unfair that some parents can top up more than others. In reality, that wouldn't be fundamentally different to the unfairness that already exists in the state education system: with people buying access to much better state schools, and buying extra education outside school.

It would just get rid of the huge cliff edge (ie giving up the child's £8k education subsidy).

The behavioural change currently caused by that huge cliff edge is that it reduces direct parental investment on education during the school day to only 6% of children. The rest of the parents who would like to invest in education currently only invest once: either in tutoring/time helping to get into grammar, or else an unrelated investment in housing - to gain access to a particular school.

But since it isn't an ongoing investment in education - and it's hidden - that gives people an illusion of equality, which they don't want to let go of.

But the social cost of that cliff edge is that it reduces overall parental investment in education. Getting rid of the cliff edge may result in a better educated population (not being controversial here: just linking education funding and education outcome, which people certainly seem to believe in when they call for more state funding of schools).

@strawberrybubblegum ,

‘Exactly. It's not about claiming back unused tax. It's about saying that each child in the UK is entitled to £8000 worth of education each year.‘

That is semantics.

We are all entitled to all government services paid for by taxes. Vouchers are a slippery slope where the wealthy pay for better everything, being given an unneeded subsidy.

How about us all being allowed to have £3,000 of security a year but we can opt out of police patrols and employ private security companies? This is not so far fetched because some people in wealthy areas do pay for fast response private security.

Ultimately the idea of this VAT is to raise money, not reduce educational choice and, if it does fail in this, it will be a massive own goal. But, if you look outside lobby groups, most economists who model this do think this will be revenue positive for the exchequer.

I am far from an expert on SEN but I have taught quite a few with mild SEN-most mainstream private schools aren’t interested in serious SEN, especially if it impacts on the learning of the majority, as parents just wouldn’t put up with it. Loads won’t say it but choose private precisely because behaviour is guaranteed to be good, and that includes not allowing disruptive pupils (for whatever reason) joining the school.

Hopefully we can all agree on the aim of maintaining choice in schools and educating everybody as well as possible. Which is why have frequently stated that forced moves out of private within a school phase is a very bad result and unfair on the pupils and parents. I used to see these forced moves every year as parents ran into unfortunate financial circumstances and they are always sad.

But, moving private schools from 7% to 6% of the school population (say) is not a disaster in any sense of the word.

Posts have referenced Labour getting a number wrong.

What did they base that on?

Education vouchers are a great idea if you want to improve education choices and raise the overall standard of education, it won’t be great if you want to highly centralise education and carefully control the world view taught to children.

Even with a pro education and less identity politics obsessed government, I can’t see education vouchers being rolled out in a country where the electorate are so easily persuaded to give up their right to a tax free education.

@Newbutoldfather - stop making excuses for the Labour Party. This is educational vandalism, pure and simple. Just like Trump’s attack on Harvard. Trump may be annoyed that his son did not get in and that loads of Chinese students are benefitting from an elite US style education and then eg inventing Deep Seek when their Government should expand their own universities, but the way Trump did this, is completely inexcusable. What the Labour Party have done is similarly completely not excusable, in any shape or form.

If people want to help poor schools with a a challenging demographic, then starting with some honesty would be good. Schools in this country are only awful because the parent(s) are awful. Most teachers are fine. If the school is too challenging and awful, then most teachers cannot survive teaching there for long.
If we want to help poor kids let’s start with making sure every single father who fathers a child is never ever let off the hook financially and can never get benefits themselves or make dosh in the black economy. Cracking down on this would have far more impact on education and outcomes than attacking the parents and kids who are working hard and valuing education. It will be a tiny minority of parents in private schools who do not value Education. Targeting them and their children is wrong, on principle.

Improving outcomes for all is about improving educational values primarily, making sure shitty parenting gets eradicated and making sure mothers do not have 5 kids living in poverty with different fathers and shouting at them, being addicts, neglecting them from an early age, not showing up to school, never reading or talking to them. That bit has to be sorted out by Government not the middle class parents sending their kids to private schools or naice state schools for that matter.
Kids from deprived abusive backgrounds would require a lot spent on them and full time in school and nursery from an early age plus free holiday clubs. So they stand a chance to get away from crappy parenting and get actual opportunities and the chance to be around functioning adults who can model a functioning way of being, full stop. However, nobody gives a damn about these kids or wants to spend on them so instead there are nasty pointless vindictive policies like VAT on school fees thrown around. Shambles, all around.

@FairMindedMaiden ,

‘Education vouchers are a great idea if you want to improve education choices and raise the overall standard of education, it won’t be great if you want to highly centralise education and carefully control the world view taught to children.’

A few years ago I helped set up an academy and one of the advantages was that it didn’t have to follow the National curriculum, though we broadly chose to.

However, that works both ways. You take the rather cynical view that the national curriculum was set up to control the world view. I really don’t think that was the case although I am sure in some areas it has happened by stealth and natural bias.

The problem with not having a national curriculum is that you get religious schools mainly in Muslim areas, but some in Haredi Jewish areas too, which don’t educate properly, especially girls.

Another problem with no national curriculum is the likelihood of being taught the same thing several times and missing out other things entirely - unless you stay at the same school throughout your education (with the same headteacher, same ethos, and at a good enough school to at least get its pupils relevant qualifications to enable them to succeed in the world post-school). It is actually helpful to have a general idea of what should ideally be taught and when.

Imvho, people spout a lot about the joys of not having to follow a national curriculum and then the vast majority of schools largely do follow it, anyway, even if they make a few “enhancements”/teach it and also go beyond it, or miss specific elements out (usually religious or relating to sex and relationships - seldom, thankfully, in this country, so as to entirely exclude Darwin’s theory of evolution, for example…).

People who don’t like having their world view “controlled” as they see it are not always open minded to other people’s world views. It’s ironic that so many groups seem to want more freedom to be intolerant of others, as intolerance doesn’t lead to actual freedom for anyone.

?

I don’t think the National curriculum was set up to control the world view, I think left wing governments who impose education tax will use the national curriculum to impose their rather wacky world view. It’s one of the reasons to introduce a damaging education tax in the first place. It’s also a big help if you are planning on giving school children the vote sometime in the near future,
Parents generally know what’s best for their children’s education, much better than the odd balls currently shaping education policy. Parents and children should be given more education choice not less, if the Government can’t manage it then it should at least keep out the way whilst organisations do it for themselves (and also saving the tax payer £4 billion a year).

@FairMindedMaiden ,

‘Parents generally know what’s best for their children’s education’

Do you really think that is true across the population, or are you merely thinking about wealthy middle class parents?

A lot of religious parents would (and do) choose schools which indoctrinate rather than educate. And some don’t think girls really need to be educated at all.

And, if this magical voucher scheme came into being, you would also see a lot more schools like this.

(And I have attended more than one CPD on affluent neglect, which is much commoner than you would imagine in the private school sector).

Parent and pupil voice is indeed important in any school, but it doesn’t trump the expertise of skilled educators.

‘Do you really think that is true across the population, or are you merely thinking about wealthy middle class parents?’
No that’s why I used the word ‘generally’, as in ‘in most cases, usually’ . Parents generally know what’s best for their children’s education. In my experience, it’s generally people who tell parents that they don’t know what’s best for their own children who you need to be wary of.

I do understand your concerns about the slippery slope, with it potentially leading to state services becoming inadequate.

I actually think the way the UK state is slowly becoming more and more about only redistribution - and only to the least wealthy - is equally problematic. In order to keep buy-in, the social contract requires that Welfare state must tax everyone and benefit everyone. And we're losing that. The sense of unfairness will inevitably lead to demands to reduce state spending, as a reaction.

But I disagree with your assumption that all government services should always be provided in kind. For a start, they aren't - even in the UK. And even if they all were currently, we wouldn't necessarily have got that right!

The state provides some benefits in kind:

• the NHS
• the fire service
• refuse collection etc

The state running a shared capability - and providing the service to people free at the point of use - is appropriate when it's efficient to provision the service centrally. And especially where substantial up-front investment is necessary to build capability and/or it isn’t clear ahead of time (or consistent) who will need it.

But even medical services don't all fall into that bucket. In Europe, hospitals are free at the point of use and organised centrally by the state (big investment, emergency care needed unexpectedly and infrequently by an individual). But people book and pay for medical services like GPs, cardiologists, dermatologists, home-care visiting nurses etc up front, then get the cost reimbursed. That works absolutely fine as a welfare system.

Even the UK state provides some benefits as a direct financial contribution

• the state pension
• Universal Credit including housing element
• child benefit etc

We know and expect these to be supplemented individually according to our means. The wealthy do have better pensions (which they saved up themselves). They do provide more for their children (from their salaries). They do get an extra private medical appointment: to get a mole checked out. That's normal and not wrong.

It's in no way a conflict or illogical for a welfare state to provide a basic level of some benefit - which we agree all citizens should have at some level at a certain time of their life (eg medical care, education, pension) - to everyone. It's neither here nor there for the state to provide it as a voucher that can only be used for that purpose, or as a financial contribution to be topped up. It's not even hard to organise (we already do it for childcare, and in Europe they do it for medical appointments).

I certainly agree that the aim for education in the UK should be to maintain choice in schools and educate everybody as well as possible. I'd add that like all state-provided benefits, it must also treat people fairly - which doesn’t always mean yet more redistribution..

You say that moving private schools from 7% to 6% participation wouldn't be a disaster. But that would be more than the 10% migration which makes this policy loss-making, as well as causing significant personal harm to 71,000 individual children. That seems pretty disastrous to me. We'll just have to wait a few years for the numbers to become clear. I hope you're right that it won't happen, but I'm not optimistic.

It’s not semantics, it’s a necessary distinction between a hypothecated tax from which non-users might be exempted and a voucher system funded by general taxation on which all eligible individuals are able to draw regardless of whether or not they are tax payers. They are, in fact, logical opposites.
Extremist ‘faith schools’ are a straw man. A basic national curriculum with some degree of age and stage based testing to check performance is obviously a good thing. If there were a voucher scheme participation in it could be made conditional on the school adopting the national curriculum, submitting to inspections, and signing up to a basic code of practice. There’s a (massive, obvious) difference between an unregulated educational Wild West and a varied school system which allows for Winchester College’s flagship ‘Divs’ lessons and Michaela’s radical approach to discipline, integration, and learning. It is schools that choose slightly (or very) different educational approaches (whilst still including the national curriculum) that can either find new models of best practice or cater to children for whom more standard schooling is, for one reason or another, inadequate. And given that Labour is ideologically opposed to grammar schools, has shut down a raft of programmes designed to foster academic excellence, and is seeking to limit the freedom of academies, I think the number of children failed by state schooling is going to rise, not fall.
The fundamental problem I keep coming back to with the fixation on a ‘state is best’ approach is that it assumes (I) that all privilege is essentially financial; (ii) that fee paying schools are the most significant and damaging way in which financial privilege is expressed in education; and (iii) that all children besides those with profound special needs will be able to thrive in the same setting. I do not think any of those assumptions is even close to correct.

@Newbutoldfather I am far from an expert on SEN but I have taught quite a few with mild SEN-most mainstream private schools aren’t interested in serious SEN, especially if it impacts on the learning of the majority, as parents just wouldn’t put up with it.

I am only an ‘expert’ on my own child’s needs. His needs are actually extremely complex and he will never live fully independently. However with 1:1 support he thrived in his own way, at his own pace, in a small quiet classroom in a younger year group in a private school for several years. Eventually the complexity of his needs became too severe for the private school and finally our LA placed him in a special school. I do agree with you though re disruption - he’s the least disruptive kid I’ve ever met. He’s a mouse. And this is partly why he couldn’t manage in a state school classroom, because he was absolutely terrified of the number of children in there, the noise, the busyness. And unfortunately - and this is specific to that one state school - they couldn’t keep him safe, largely because they refused to believe how extensive his needs were.

No state school offered provision for him after this placement though, and we had a three year gap where the LA wouldn’t and actually couldn’t offer specialist either. It was an extremely complicated situation, far moreso than just popping our mildly quirky DS over to private because we felt like it. Our situation is very unusual but we won’t be the only ones.

Agreed, especially with your comments re SEN.

We know and expect these to be supplemented individually according to our means

I should have said according to our means and priorities.

The really big advantage about the state providing a benefit as a financial contribution which can be used as the recipient chooses, and topped up, is that it allows for different circumstances and different personal priorities.

Someone whose child is thriving at state school would have education fully provided out-of-the-box, just as they do now.

Someone with a child who isn't thriving in state education for whatever reason - or who really, really values education and wants to spend all their extra income on it - would be able to make that choice without losing out on the whole state benefit.

That's economically efficient: ie allows people to get the most value according to their own priorities from their own resources.

Interestingly, there's actually another thread running about whether there should be restrictions on how people spend the child element of Universal Credit. The thread suggests that giving it in vouchers would ensure it was spent on the child's needs, as intended. People are pretty vocal on how vouchers would restrict their ability to spend the money in the best way for their family - which is true.

Can you imagine the outrage if the child element of UC started being supplied as a box full of certain state-approved food items and clothing?!? Yet that's what you're saying is the best option for education!!

We're not even proposing the same complete freedom that parents are given on how to spend the child element of UC element (£8k cash for education would unfortunately be misspent by too many parents) For education, we're suggesting a voucher which could only be used with state-approved education providers, much as we do for state-subsidised childcare now.

Much more restrictive than the proposed UC voucher which people are so up in arms about. For some reason the argument for flexibility is seen completely differently, depending on who needs the flexibility: someone on UC or someone choosing a different education.

The Left has such outrageous double standards. Those double standards lead to a feeling of injustice, which has become corrosive in our society. It really needs to stop.

@RoseAndGeranium ,

‘It’s not semantics, it’s a necessary distinction between a hypothecated tax from which non-users might be exempted and a voucher system funded by general taxation on which all eligible individuals are able to draw regardless of whether or not they are tax payers’

That is a bit of a word salad, to be honest. Fine words, nicely written, but with absolutely no meaning.

The government takes taxes from those who can afford them and provides benefits to the population, some for all (e.g free schooling, roads, the police the military, the NHS etc) and some for those who need it only (social security, free school meals etc etc).

It really is as simple as that. I choose to pay for private medicine (not insurance, I just pay when I need it) and would very happily opt out were fully private hospitals available, as in the U.S.

But that would not be fair on those who used the NHS as all the middle class educated people who can advocate for the NHS would just opt out of that area of tax and spend their £7,000 per annum voucher on private care.

What still inevitably happens is that wealthy areas end up with better hospitals and educated people who can advocate for themselves get better NHS care. But that isn’t really an excuse for an NHS voucher system, the building of super private hospitals, complete with A&E and the allowing of the NHS to deteriorate into the U.S public hospital system.

The biggest straw man in this whole thread is the idea that anyone has suggested the abolition of private schools. As far as I know, no one has.

As I have already said, they are a luxury option, reserved for around 7% of the population. If this goes down to 6% due to cost, that isn’t a tragedy.

Private schools will continue to do a good job, on average, caring for and supporting the scions of the wealthiest. And I totally support that.

(And, yes, maybe 50% aren’t in the top 10% of income taxpayers, although most are close, but it isn’t just about taxable income, it is far more about wealth. ‘Generous grandparents’, inheritance, housing wealth etc probably pays for the majority of the remaining 50%).

‘The biggest straw man in this whole thread is the idea that anyone has suggested the abolition of private schools. As far as I know, no one has.’

Straw man? The people who implemented these policies voted to abolish private schools in 2019, they’re not quiet about it in the slightest.

Angela Raynor (deputy prime minster) set out plans to abolish private schools: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-49798861.amp
This was supported by Rachel Reeves (chancellor of the exchequer) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-49798861.amp
labourlist.org/2019/09/labour-can-no-longer-shy-away-from-confronting-private-schools/?amp

Or alternatively, raise taxes on the higher earners and then that money goes into the economy for the good of all.

Ideally this would be ringfenced to provide better SEN provision/smaller classes in state schools . Having seen the impact on a friend’s child who has been moved to private, it breaks my heart to think of all the children who are t having this opportunity and are seriously struggling in large classes.

The arguments about costs are missing the impact of a more balanced society with less inequality that this policy will bring. Which is very difficult to calculate but will certainly bring both economic and social benefits.

‘It’s not semantics, it’s a necessary distinction between a hypothecated tax from which non-users might be exempted and a voucher system funded by general taxation on which all eligible individuals are able to draw regardless of whether or not they are tax payers’

It's really not a 'word salad' @newbutoldfather !

I find @roseandgeranium 's posts noticeably clear and precise in both thinking and expression, without any of the fuzziness which most of us suffer from occasionally. You're a physicist - I'd really expect you to appreciate that precision too!

That particular explanation is beautifully accurate and precise - and absolutely spot on about what I was trying to say. And the concept she manages to express (so much more clearly and concisely than I did) gets exactly to the nub of why your argument doesn't hold.

You're making a strawman argument, pretending that we're asking for non-users to be exempted from a hypothecated tax. And you use the NHS and policing/security to show why that isn't reasonable.

But none of these are hypothecated taxes: and neither is education. They are services on which all eligible individuals are able to draw regardless of whether or not they are tax payers, funded by general taxation. There's no tax to be refunded, because it isn't hypothecated. Everyone is entitled to use it.

What I'm trying to get across is that how that entitlement (to the benefit of 'education' ) is facilitated is separate from the entitlement itself.

So providing a voucher/money which can be used in either part- or full- payment (like state-funded childcare, or like the UC cash allowance for children) versus providing the service in kind on a use-it-or-lose-it basis (like education currently, or like a monthly box of food and clothing for UC recipients with children instead of extra cash) isn't decided by logical necessity. It's a completely separate political choice.

I would argue that given that all children are meant to be entitled to education - whether tax is paid by their parents (or the child themselves in the future) or not - it would be much fairer to have an implementation which makes it as widely available to all children as possible, ie not a use-it-or-lose-it model.

You're making the mistake of thinking that anything which increases redistribution (eg denying some 'rich' parents access to state education funding) must automatically increase social 'fairness'. But that's lazy thinking.

Or alternatively, raise taxes on all earners. (Whilst adjusting benefits so that work is still clearly worthwhile to the individual).

A sustainable welfare state must be funded by everyone, and benefit everyone.

Did you know that anyone earning above about £70k pays more tax in the UK than they would on the same income in Norway - and they aren't means-tested out of all the benefits, like we are here!

It's only low- and medium- earners who pay much less tax in the UK than in the nordic countries. Not high- earners.

But given the relative numbers, the only way to meaningfully increase the money available for state services is for that majority to pay their share, instead of siphoning it from a tiny, unpopular portion of the population.

will certainly bring both economic and social benefits

"Certainly"?!?

Can you quantify the benefits? Or provide any evidence that they will be achieved? Or that the cost justifies the unquantified benefits?

Typical fuzzy Lefty thinking.