Play date with mum who agrees with education tax

[BonnuitMy]

Please let me know if I’m overreacting. I recently overheard a new mum at school talking about a local private school closing down due to the education tax and how this is somehow a good thing. She’s now invited my DD for a play date, would you accept?

Not what I said at all.
Academies have many faults. They would be better back under LEA control.I didn’t even mention grammars. If parents want grammars, fine, but the results for a whole cohort in grammar areas dont tend to be as good. I wonder if anyone would campaign as hard for secondary moderns, but they are the flip side (even if we call them ‘comprehensive’ they aren’t in a grammar area).

I think this is your second use of ‘comrade’. It’s a bit silly. And also irrelevant. I’m not a communist, but communism isn’t the only authoritarian government system available.

What I want for education (with 35 years of experience in both state and private schools) is for every child to be offered an excellent education regardless of what their parents earn.

I am utterly confused as to why you would want to support a system of privilege which means those who go to independent schools are advantaged if your own children aren’t among the advantaged group, but I’ve never said I don’t believe you.

Eh? What have migrants to do with independent schools? Unless you really dislike the many overseas students who are keeping many small independents afloat…
It’s true they rarely get mentioned in these threads. Wonder why?

Academies are de facto unaccountable to anyone. Not even the department of education can overturn their decisions.
This is exactly what has caused the scandals at Holland Park School and at Westbourne in Hackney, on which I made. A very long thread last year

Also, ca 3/4 of secondary schools are academies.in some councils that's 100%. So it's not like there's much choice. We cannot choose not to fund them with our taxes. And in many cases we don't really have the choice of sending our kids elsewhere.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/secondary/5225872-mossbourne-academies-investigations-into-alleged-emotional-harm-and-abuse-why-are-needlessly-strict-academies-unaccountable

Private schools are the symptom, not the cause.
The kids who go to private schools would most likely continue to do well even if private schools were hypothetically abolished, because their main advantages come from family money, connections and education, and those wouldn't change even if we abolished private schools. That's what the social justice warriors on this sub don't get. And I say this as someone who'd never send their kids private

Yes, I agree they are a symptom of an increasingly unequal society. They do help to perpetuate it too, though.

Edit to add: social justice warriors? Is it wrong to want to aim for social justice then? That’s on a par with thinking ‘dogooder’ is an insult. And please don’t assume you understand things better than others on a thread (not sub).

“I am utterly confused as to why you would want to support a system of privilege”

@cardibach - being more European in my thinking, I do not equate “privilege” with going to a certain type of school. And my own kids are plenty privileged enough as it is. And if they have poorer teaching in some subjects in some years I am perfectly capable of supplementing myself.

It is also obvious to anyone with some common sense that there will be bullies, poor behaviour and some poor attitude in all types of schools, whatever the cost or not of them. Just as there will be clever and not so clever kids in all types of schools.

I think @Araminta1003 was trying to suggest you couldn't possibly be someone who works in a school, because you can't have passed a DBS check with those anti child views you hold. 😁

So presumably all my DBS checks didn't happen either (not that I work or have worked in schools) as I must hate children because I consider that private schooling isn't a necessity.

No, @cardibach didn't say "Independent schools, academies and grammar should all go right?". Just that Academies, which don't have to follow the National Curriculum or have teaching qualified teachers. And can ignore any local council needs, don't have to have any parents on their board of governors, tend to pay teaching staff less.

I didn’t equate privilege with a certain type of school. I suggested independent schools were part of a system of privilege and exclusion, which they are.

Is that a correct interpretation @Araminta1003 ? Are you implying I don’t have a DBS and couldn’t get one? Very nasty if so. Or that I don’t have 35 years of experience teaching, several of them in independent schools?

I didn’t say anything about a DBS implicitly or otherwise @cardibach …
I have one too btw.

So what were you posting about DBS checks on school staff for? The subject hasn't come up at any time in the thread just that one line response to @cardibach when they were talking about how CVID affected some private schools less than many state schools, and how "disrupting children's education" is used as a reason to try to stop teachers moving jobs.

@Allergictoironing .
I think it was @BonnuitMy who was casting doubt about DBS checks.

I've got one too BTW 😁

I do have one thing to say to you though @cardibach which is, if I were paying a fortune for private schooling for my DC, I would not want someone teaching them who does not like private schools, even in the abstract. There is another poster on another thread who seems quite anti private school and claims to have taught in an independent school.
I mean why would you teach there if you disagree with them, even in principle? Makes no sense to me.

Apologies. I didn’t look back. It was @BonnuitMy
So @BonnuitMy were you implying I didn’t have, and wouldn’t be able to get, a DBS because of my views on private education? Very nasty if so. If not, what did you mean?

Maybe teaching in them is what crystallises their objections?
In my case it was because I needed to leave the state school where the Head was bullying me, I lived rurally so there weren’t many options, I don’t blame the children in independent schools for the system (contrary to the view of many on here that I must hate them) and they offered me a job. Didn’t work out so well. Within 5 years the system there caused burnout and I had to semi retire. I’ve since done supply in another independent - as supply I’ll go anywhere.

@cardibach Edit to add: social justice warriors? Is it wrong to want to aim for social justice then? That’s on a par with thinking ‘dogooder’ is an insult. And please don’t assume you understand things better than others on a thread (not sub).

I don't assume anything. I simply call out nonsense when I see it.
Good intentions are not sufficient. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
History is full of ill-conceived policies, advocated by those who had the best intentions but had done no homework and were driven by ideology more than by evidence, backfiring and/or causing lots of unintended consequences.

Good intentions are better than bad ones. And the ‘warrior’ jibe implies action. I don’t think it’s nonsense to believe independent schooling is part of the class system and helps perpetuate division in this country and/or to believe we would be better off without it.

@cardibach Good intentions are better than bad ones.
This doesn't mean that having good intentions is sufficient and exempts you from doing your homework and from presenting evidence-based, rather than ideology-based, suggestions and policies!!!

I don’t think it’s nonsense to believe independent schooling is part of the class system and helps perpetuate division in this country and/or to believe we would be better off without it.

No. But it is nonsense:

• to ignore that basically no other country applies VAT to private schools
• to ignore that Greece tried it and it backfired massively, with schools closing and tax revenue dropping
• not to have any argument for why what hasn't worked elsewhere should work in the UK
• to advocate a policy for which the tax revenue has not been set aside (or whatever the technical term is), which means that any promises of investing the money into state schools are utter nonsense
• to think that forcing some families to go to state schools and some private schools to close will change much
• to ignore the concerns of those who say the policy may well cost more than it brings in revenue

Clearer now?
And I say this as someone who has never sent their kids to private school, and who has always voted Labour (except in the Corbyn era, when I voted Lib Dem), even when I knew they would have increased my taxes.

The abolition of tampon tax benefited retailers, not women. https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2022/11/10/tampontax/

It would be much fairer to have the same VAT rate for all products ad services, then intervene elsewhere, eg with universal credit, child benefits, etc.

The current system leads to absurdities like lengthy litigation to determine if Jaffa cakes are cakes or biscuits and therefore how they should be taxed. The moment you start making distinction, you invite lobbyists and lawyers to find loopholes and stretch the definition.

Eg on paper it may seem sensible to exempt children's clothes. But which clothes? Should we exempt the £2000 child dresses sold at Harrods? Maybe not. Then we set a threshold/ How do we set it? Do we set it for entire dresses or single items? If you buy the single items separately do you get round the rule? Etc etc etc

@ParentOfOne - completely agree with everything you say.

I think the constant denial that kids are actually leaving private schools, that families are upset and that schools are closing is tiresome. Perhaps some people just want to believe that private school parents somehow all feel some collective guilt and want to pay VAT and will go into debt to pay it to fund what exactly? It is not even going towards Education anymore.
It is just all cover up and denial.
And yes, loads and loads of millionaires are also leaving Britain. A documented fact.
You just cannot do these weird ill thought out policies across the spectrum and think rationale successful people who have options stay for instability and whacko politics and a quasi schizophrenic system and country in division. Of course, we are not the only ones in this boat, and we still have a lot going for us, but I do not think political stability and certainty is one of them.

In our family we support Arsenal.
Our child has been invited to a playdate at the house of a Chelsea-supporting family.

What would you do in my shoes? /s

I think there is a line though. I doubt you would send your DC to a play date with known Chelsea hooligans who regularly go to matches looking for a brawl.
This was an example of someone who is gleeful at other children’s school actually closing down.

Oh, the opposing view is absolutely clear and always has been.
Nobody is forcing families to go into state. It’s the default if you can’t afford private. Fees have been rising above inflation anyway. I’m ok with the tax take not being big/anything at all. Much as I’m pleased the limiting of WFA lead to more people claiming pension credit. I want more fairness.