Whitehall “braced for private schools collapse” 7

[ICouldBeVioletSky]

Continuation of previous threads discussing VAT on independent school fees. The thread title is a headline from a Times article last autumn.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5237575-whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5242586-whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse-2
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5280646-whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse-3
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5301690-whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse-4
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5317397-whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse-5
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5337850-whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse-6

@Araminta1003 - I think you underestimate the harm done by multigenerational unemployment and lack of self-belief. If you envisage the UK as a garden, we have tended the rosebed for decades, but at some point we decided the rockery was looking a bit the worse for wear and, rather than put a lot of work into giving it a new lease of life, we decided largely to leave it to its own devices, with just the occasional half-hearted attempts to make it slightly more cosmetically appealing, because we no longer really thought it was worth the effort to deal with the root cause of the problem. To our apparent surprise, the rockery now looks really hideous, with all sorts of weeds and parasites infesting it, and now the issues that started in the rockery are spreading across the garden and threatening the rose garden. Now we wish we had paid a bit more attention to the rockery.

@Walkaround - I understand your analogy, but to some extent, London is also now a dying city due to lack of births, higher crime rates, and off the books SEND funding as well - half of London councils could go bust too. We cannot just send all our council tax to the rockery willy nilly, got our own issues here too. You mentioned up thread the naked ambition of Londoners over spilling to the regions in eg schools. It is and was the drive and positivity and get up and go that makes London productive and makes Londoners work and put up with all the crap. Restoring self belief into certain regions or let’s use the word “grit” etc, it need not cost loads and overspill into other areas. Perhaps just listening and community interventions etc will help. But these people need to develop their own get up and go and stop believing in the bogeyman. They cannot rely on anyone else. There is no collective “we” anymore, there are many dissonant voices and a few people in charge temporarily who keep passing the buck. There is no magic solution going to come their way. It is self reliance all the way. We are just no as rich and all powerful as we used to be as a nation. We have a cacophony of talented people and voices that need to work together in a harmonious whole rather than hate and fight each other. It is pretty much all we have. And education is a bedrock of that talent pool.

OK. Apology accepted. Thanks.

@Araminta1003 I think the problem is, London did not appear to care when other parts of the country were dying. I am not referring to where I live in that, btw - I still live in an area with high employment, my children have left school and either also left university or are at the “best” universities in the UK, so not dying here (yet). And I think you are confusing ambition and paranoia with regards to Londoners leaving London. A real entrepreneur, or person with real “get up and go” would go somewhere no-one else has thought of, not follow their friends to the next wealthy enclave with oversubscribed schools. Even someone not particularly entrepreneurial, but reasonably ambitious, could have a better radar for the places with potential, rather than the places that are already saturated. Wanting to stick with people like yourself is not ambition, it’s seeking security. If you are willing to go just a small way out of your comfort zone, you will find a bigger pool of people more similar to you than you thought, that’s all I’m saying. When others join the bandwagon, of course, then the people with get up and go sometimes get up and go.

Or, back to the rockery - an entrepreneur might have been able to make something of it, rather than flocking to the roses. It’s somewhat unfair to say it was fine to flock to the roses and that it’s not at all unfair that you left a place starved of nutrients and expected it to turn itself into an ordered haven of peace and prosperity. If the people flocking to London thought they could make something of nothing, they might not have moved to London, after all.

Public Schools were, and still are to some people, the ultimate othering.

It wasn’t that long ago that the answer to ‘which school did you go to’ opened (or closed) doors, with famous public schools being a huge and powerful network.

This has changed somewhat due to being a (slightly) less class obsessed society and a more money obsessed society, but it still exists in certain areas.

• Senior Judges:
• A large majority (65%) of senior judges in the UK attended private schools, according to The Sutton Trust.
• Civil Service Permanent Secretaries:
• Nearly 6 in 10 (59%) of civil service permanent secretaries received their education in private schools, according to GOV.UK.
• House of Lords:
• Over half (57%) of the members of the House of Lords attended private schools.
• Foreign Office Diplomats:
• A majority (52%) of diplomats in the Foreign Office also come from private school backgrounds.

You can argue that other countries have private schools, but they don’t command the same networks as those in the UK do.

For a lot of foreign students, they are buying into a stratum of society first and foremost when they educate their children in the U.K.

@Newbutoldfather - this is not some sort of get you like you think. People typically earn far more as a successful QC than as a judge and you become a judge “to give back” to society, something quite entrenched in a lot of the public schools, as you should know. Same with diplomatic services or civil service. You can make far more money in eg private equity, trading, banking, City law than any of these jobs so it is hardly surprising that kids from poorer backgrounds who are clever choose the moneyed route over the prestigious but worse paying jobs, that the private school moneyed lot choose as they have inheritances coming their way and feel a debt to society, down the generations.

https://ifamagazine.com/londoners-contribute-the-most-tax-in-the-nation/

@Walkaround - seems to me that what happens in London affects tax take so effects the whole country disproportionally, so in terms of services and quality of life for all, it still matters what happens to and in London. Hopefully the young and entrepreneurial are indeed increasingly moving elsewhere to cheaper Cities to bring talent there, but in the short term, those in charge do have to care what happens to London. And young talented people moving to other parts of the country is good, but people leaving with assets and talent is bad.

I do agree, @Araminta1003. A capital city is a capital city, and it houses a massive population, even if they are ageing, with the young moving out and having to commute to work or give up on the idea of working in London if they want a reasonable quality of life (ie getting London’s disadvantages without the time or money to enjoy its many advantages). It is also still exciting to visit if you can afford it and offers a vast range of culture, art and entertainment. However, whilst you mustn’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg, neither must you ever put all your eggs in one basket, or starve the chickens, as you can never be certain, if you treat them well, whether one of the chickens might turn out to have the capacity to lay a few golden eggs, too - or have an uncanny knack with rock gardens. 😏🤣

Also, to a certain extent, it’s the goose’s success that is killing it off - it is not healthy that the wealth attracted to London has ultimately made it too expensive to sustain family life.

„Also, to a certain extent, it’s the goose’s success that is killing it off - it is not healthy that the wealth attracted to (private schools) has ultimately made it too expensive to sustain (British middle class) life?“

@Walkaround - do you agree with my insertions?

Yes, it is certainly not a place for the middle classes to sustain a middle class lifestyle. Nurses, firemen, police, teachers, paramedics with families - generally commuting to work, not living locally or using London state schools, either. And even commuting is extremely expensive and unreliable.

@Araminta1003 ,

‘this is not some sort of get you like you think. People typically earn far more as a successful QC than as a judge and you become a judge “to give back” to society, something quite entrenched in a lot of the public schools, as you should know’
The proportion of privately educated KCs (Lizzie is gone now) is actually higher, at 73%

’Same with diplomatic services or civil service. You can make far more money in eg private equity, trading, banking, City law than any of these jobs so it is hardly surprising that kids from poorer backgrounds who are clever choose the moneyed route over the prestigious but worse paying jobs, that the private school moneyed lot choose as they have inheritances coming their way and feel a debt to society, down the generations.’

Again, not really true. Poor people, when they can, go for money with stability, not the tightrope walk of a city trader. This is especially true of immigrants who tend to opt for the professions.

68% of senior private equity staff went to private school according to the Sutton Trust.

What do people think Labour’s VAT policy will do re this

For a teacher @Newbutoldfather, you have very little belief in the transformative nature of education (education in its true sense - not just exams)

68% of senior private equity staff went to private school according to the Sutton Trust.

How does the Sutton Trust gather this information? Do they ask every single person who works in private equity where they went to school?

Do the Sutton Trust also look at Sex or are they just obsessed with private vs state schools? As a woman, I am far more interested in how many women made it to the top (regardless of schooling).

This whole narrative of private vs state schools really is rather 1980s male is it not?
What about females, gays, ethnic minorities etc, all the questions that are actually relevant these days?

Why is private/state no longer relevant?

Or in other words, are we actually sure that private schooling does still represent white male privilege of the moneyed kind?

@KendricksGin - because as another poster hinted a lot of private schools are actually full of kids with SEND these days or overrepresented by kids from ethnic minorities (and within that certain groups) and single sex ones from again female minorities and perhaps there may even be over representation of children with LGBT? We do not actually have full data do we?

So if the Labour Party boil the private school question down to male Labour privilege vs male Tory privilege it really actually is a problem. Because it is their petty infighting rather than a representation of what is actually modern 2025 day Britain which I would argue is a bedrock of diversity of all kinds where everyone should be celebrated and their petty class wars (of male privilege) should be confined to the past, once and for all.

People seem to be expecting a lot from this policy. It won’t do much and Labour will just suffer from gap between expectation and result.

The Sutton Trust focuses on social
mobility so not too surprising if they survey this point specifically.

There are a number of “ women in finance” organisations and they may well have done sex-based surveys. Have you had a google?

@strawberrybubblegum ,

‘For a teacher **, you have very little belief in the transformative nature of education (education in its true sense - not just exams)’

On what do you base that fairly random accusation?

Your assumption that a higher proportion of privately educated people in certain professions/at certain seniority levels is due to "doors" opening, rather than capabilities developed through education.

It's hardly surprising that a 'whole child' education - which deliberately and actively develops personal capabilities such as confidence to take up intimidating challenges, appropriate risk-taking, independent judgement, critical thinking - fits children well for careers which need those capabilities.

Of course, children acquire those capabilities through means other than school (usually through non-school experiences their parents organise for them, sometimes just through life) and of course not all private school kids develop them. But an active and deliberate educational approach will make a difference. That's the whole point of doing it.

Labour are contemptibly short-sighted to address differences in outcomes by trying to stop children from developing those capabilities through trying to destroy private schools. The positive solution would be to add that active focus to state schools: the ones they are actually responsible for.