Whitehall “braced for private schools collapse” 6

[ICouldBeVioletSky]

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

Fin tech is quite relevant though, even for consumers. Fact there are now platforms with instant access savings products across many banks and direct stock purchasing is great for the consumer. New goods are also not necessarily a good thing, private equity supporting recycling of clothes sites, is excellent. There really is no big demarcation between tech and finance in the real world. They work hand in hand, as does precise engineering at the top level. Countries who will progress the most understand there has to be the perfect balance between financing, tech/academic developments, bringing in the right people (often from abroad actually) and regulation that is wholesome and honest.
Services are often online now including for work spaces. Things have changed fundamentally in the last 20 years.
If I would criticise anything right now here it is the gambling industry. That needs some taxing, especially online gambling.

It is the same with Education, the landscape is changing rapidly and smart people want choices. Governments cannot take for granted that people with skills and means and flexible working patterns will send kids into substandard overcrowded physical schools, or pay a penalty for opting out of that model. Homeschooling including accessing overseas schools or upping sticks entirely is precisely what the next generation of tech workers will do.

@Araminta1003 ,

You have this fantasy about the way people choose schools, which is that they want to punish the Labour Party for VAT on private schools and the U.K. for Brexit.

A tiny proportion of the Islington intelligentsia may think that way, but the vast majority don’t.

Those who have built a comfortable lifestyle here with their children in private schools that they are happy with won’t change anything. For two children, the total difference VAT may make is about £150k (or even less) over the entire length of schooling. Who would change countries for that? For most it is one decent bonus (or less than that for a successful lawyer or banker).

Home schooling will always be a tiny minority. It is incredibly niche.

Most who have any choice choose school which will give their children the best opportunities regardless of whether they are in the state or private sector.

Of course, on the margin, you will see some changes, but it will have minimal affect on the country as a whole.

What is sad is how many private schools have acted in a very short term and selfish manner over this. If they showed that they conferred a genuine benefit to the community they were in and worked with the government as stakeholders in everyone’s education, they could make a good case to the next government to remove the VAT.

Some private schools, like Westminster, get it and confer an immense benefit to the community they are in, as does Charterhouse (Physics teacher training hub) and Dulwich (SKITT hub).

I am sure there are others who are doing valuable community work too.

But too many remain bastions of privilege within very mixed communities and don’t see the broader community as a stakeholder.

I do not think so @Newbutoldfather - you are clearly a different generation to me. I am on the cusp of Millenial. We think differently, certainly my younger siblings do who are proper tech millenials. A lot of this is generational misunderstanding.

There’s a reason Labour’s policy is an outlier even with support from some.

But I do admit that I move in quite international circles now in London, lots of people are in marriages with at least one person with a different passport/born abroad and many mixed races even and so these people have ample choice and options. In fact, I barely know anyone anymore who I work with who does not at least have Irish nationality so that does skew things somewhat, in terms of options they do have and how they think in terms of international borders and even Education. So that is true. But that is a well known fact about London, almost half of us are now born abroad! But given we do finance the rest of the country it certainly should be a massive concern.

I agree with this. It is a fantastic notion that large numbers will up sticks and leave London because of VAT on school fees. I live in a very affluent part of London and I am seeing none of this and it is nothing to do with when I was born. Many high earning families with younger children are not moving anywhere. Considering moving costs and hassle, career disruption and uprooting DC, VAT alone is never going to tip the scale. What bemuses me is that the same posters who highlight the negative disruption to children if their parents can't afford VAT and they have to leave their schools or if their schools close are also claiming that parents will just up sticks to another country at the drop of a hat and voluntarily put their children through that upheaval. The families that are making the most significant tax contributions barely notice VAT.

Same with mainstream home schooling. That is a huge commitment and usually involves significant lost earnings. Not a decision that is made on a whim or in a fit of pique. I understand that SEN is different as some may be forced into home schooling if schools close and there is no alternative suitable provision.

Why did Labour get the numbers wrong on how many would move across to state?

Maybe the same assumptions as below.

It’s not really my fantasy. It’s all over Reddit.

@Araminta1003 ,

Save the ageism, it’s not a great look!

I am a lot older than you and I have close family who live in Europe and friends as far afield as Canada, Japan and New Zealand. Many of my friends are polyglots who are married to different nationalities. You are not the first generation to have an international outlook.

Nonetheless, from my 10 years of teaching at private schools in affluent areas of London (one in arguably the most affluent), the vast majority of parents valued stability and didn’t uproot their children’s education at the flick of a switch.

And a few of my friends who did this recognised the cost in a lack of family support, stable friendships and somewhere to really call home.

And, by the way, for all those who think Europe might be better for special needs, the one European system I know well is France, and there is virtually no provision for them - the kids are still just thought of as ‘mechant’. My relative who is currently living in France is coming over to study at uni in the UK because of this.

Despite all your protestations, in five years, I expect to still see you here, complete with your wonderful Irish passport, bemoaning how dreadful the U.K. has been since Brexit and how your children have been denied their soi-disant musical potential.

I wouldn't use that affluent area as a way to determine what movement there will be.

@Newbutoldfather - well we hear our colleagues complain daily about fees, for example.

Let’s take Westminster School. Day fees at 13 plus for 2024-2025 were over 44,000. So excluding the minimum 5 per cent on extras. Let’s call it 46,000 per child and assume a family has 2 children. As is the norm.

Assuming no grandparents to tap in and a typical West London mortgage of 500-1 million, what income do you think a family need, bearing in mind taxation at current levels, to pay those fees?

Once you do the Maths you will quickly see things have changed beyond recognition just in the last 5 years in terms of who can possibly access this type of school. Seeing that you were singing their praises. Also this school, in particular, does not have substantial endowment funds so if they are going to keep that charitable level up, they actually need parents to pay those fees.

The increase into unaffordability for Westminster predated and has nothing to do with VAT though. In a market system, Westminster can always do this, because there will always be people who'll pay for the top brand. Other schools- the ones that are closing down - are finding that they can't.continue to rise prices ahead of inflation for decades and retain customers

Schools like Westminster have made a conscious choice to award bursaries based on affordability rather than scholarships for the more middle classes. That need not continue, in that way. A lot of the schools in London that are private and do not have the same reputation are now offering scholarships again, so even schools like Westminster will need to adapt to attract the brightest and the best, regardless of income. Because right now all the boys grammars in and around London offer a similar or even more challenging peer group.
Unless of course all the children of staff do actually qualify for brightest and best. Which is possible.
However, I do not think you can successfully run a school with multimillionaires /highest earners on the one hand and genuine bursary students on the other, the mix does not quite gel.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lk2p7wpr4o

So 11,000 instead of 3,000 and that was this January, in middle of school year and before parents had time to plan properly.

Next January's figures are going to be even worse.

How did Labour get it this wrong already?

Well they didn't bother to do even the most basic analysis. This is what happens when you just guess: based on a qualitative gut-feel of how you would like the world to work.

This is an initiative which economists told them could range from bringing in £1.3billion to costing £1.3billion, depending on how private school parents react to it.

And Rachel Reeves didn't bother to go to a single private school. Labour didn’t deign to consult anyone who might have some insight into it.

It's laughable to pretend they did any quantitative analysis, given that they didn't even bother going out to get the underlying data - which you would expect the ISC to be your very first port of call for.

Hubris and incompetence.

The self destruction of both the US and the UK is really quite something to be witnessing. It’s all very nihilistic.

As the US goes through its own crisis, the UK really needs its own value system reestablished and Sir Keir and Reeves do not seem to understand this very basic point. I do not really think they have any real values, flitting all over the place.
Destroying your own heritage like private schools that really were part of so much more over the centuries, is incredibly nihilistic. And short sighted. Like I have said all along, this is so much more than about just a tax on private schools.

@Araminta1003 i agree with you. The policy could still be scrapped in a few years. Only Labour try to wreck something we’re good at like this.

I strongly agree that we are at a crucial point in history for the need for all political leaders in democracies to reassert and lead according to common postwar values.

I feel that Labour are failing to really articulate their own values as a party as they lurch around between destructive policies like VAT on education which is designed to appeals
to the worst of left-wing petty authoritarianism and also at the same time desperately trying to stoop to the depths of Reform in other areas of social and criminal policy. A massive failure of leadership.

I was also disgusted to see that under Kemi Badenoch’s leadership the Tories have begun a review project of their own to see how they could try to rip up the UK’s binding engagements with post war human rights values. That’s a huge, hubristic, ignorant red flag right there to see a political party wanting to weaken human rights protections in these times of extreme instability. Not a party that I recognise any more. My trust in political good sense and moderation is so low after Brexit and Covid and with all the huge global challenges of the future to come, I feel that ordinary people need to insist on and hold on to all of the layers of court protections that they already have. But I fear this is the start of another Brexit-style campaign where the status quo will be misrepresented to the detriment of ordinary people https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgj8p2pv117o.amp

@Araminta1003 ,

‘Destroying your own heritage like private schools that really were part of so much more over the centuries, is incredibly nihilistic’

Labour are not ‘destroying’ private schools! Private schools were doing a pretty good job of frog boiling in terms of fees over 25 years. All Labour have done is added 5 years of what private schools have been doing all by themselves in one go.

At some point private schools were always going to hit the ‘sweet’ spot of optimising total fees by deterring enough parents to not send their children. Most of the recent stability in pupil numbers has disguised a huge demographic shift in fee payers from middle class mostly English to the wealthy and foreign students.

Private schools can incredibly easily cut costs by more than 20% without in any way hitting the core educational offering.

That doesn’t apply to every single school, obviously, and never did. The sector has been consolidating for years now with fewer bigger schools and more and more schools in the affluent areas of London and the SE (boarding excepted).