Westminstenders: From Uxbridge to...? Part deux GE 2019 special.

[placemats]

New thread.

General election 12th December 2019. Results out on Friday 13th. Unlucky day for some.

So this election is unusual in that it will focus primarily on Brexit and referendums with domestic issues tagged alongside, for some parties.

Sorry BCF.

I was trying to be on the ball tonight as I've not been so much lately.

DS starting school has ironically ended up with me being more not less busy.

DS starting school has ironically ended up with me being more not less busy.
It's a shock isn't it? It should calm down a bit after Christmas. Christmas though will be full on. Good luck.
Hope he's settled in well

He's settled really well. Better than most. I'm lucky if he says good bye to me most mornings!

Tatiana
Please do not fall for the right wing press hysteria about a conference vote about schools

It was a conference vote not a manifesto pledge
and
IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN
because of
Special schools

Be analytical about all fantastical claims
even ones that agree with your views

Please do not patronise me with advice Listening. I am perfectly aware it’s not in the manifesto. Nor do you know what my views are.

What Labour could try to implement would be to halt the Academisation of schools and bring them back under LA management. But wait, the Policy was New Labour's bright idea in the first place.

This is what I would like to see - schools like Eton stripped of charitable status, and expected to pay business rates like state schools. Academies brought back into the LA, especially ones from failing chains, and those which get 'orphaned' i.e. their chain fails them but no other chain wants them and the LA isn't allowed to take them back. I would also like the LAs to have the authority to build their own schools when the need is there, or force existing Academies where they still exist, to create places. The current system is stupid - the LA is charged with finding places for pupils but no longer controls the provision of places.

Be analytical about all fantastical claims even ones that agree with your views

very wise

My second post was aimed at anybody and everybody.

I also regularly remind FB posters to check the veracity of stories.

All sides of the debate are smearing each other
and as the Tom Watson / Exaro / Carl Beech case has shown,
wanting extraordinary stories to be true does not make them so

If any school can demonstrate charitable status, it is Eton!

The policy will not affect the big public schools. They already do a great deal of charitable works. If they do lose their status, they have enough funds and property to shrug it off.

Loss of charitable status is going to affect the smaller schools, and especially the girls schools, that are not nearly so well endowed.

I’ve not observed the regular posters in these threads in need of coaching on how to interpret media stories.

I am not convinced that Eton does a lot of charitable work, except as a sideline. It's not like thousands of small local charities raising funds for worthy causes, who only have the charitable income to rely on.

However, would it be so terrible to see lots of the smaller schools disappear?

They’re currently paying the fees of 80 students and offer substantial bursaries for others. Not that I’m really defending Eton as a charitable institution.

According to wikipaedia in 2011 they paid for 63 free places and 263 pupils had up to 60% fee remission. So in total, 326 out of 1300 pupils, which I don't personally think counts as a great deal of charitable work. It's more like, just enough to keep in with the Charity Commissioners.

And quite, they have enough funds to shrug it off - something which can't now be said of state schools, where we are seeing cuts biting and biting hard.

Many private schools are already companies.
Many of the ones that are Charitable provide SEN care to the state sector.
The number of super rich envy inducing private schools is tiny in the scale of the whole sector.

The biggers issue - as peregrina rightly says - is the deliberate underfunding of State schools

If state schools were properly funded - eg £6000 per pupil per year
and were all transparently accountable
and LEAs could provide all the places that were needed
the weak private schools would wither away.

The big names would survive, but they would find a way round pretty much any legislation
due to their abundance of lawyer alumni

2011 being 8 years ago.

326/1300 being 25%.

I am aware of the % thanks, but 25% are not getting full fees - it was 5% getting full fees and I for one, won't call that 'a great deal of charitable work'.

But I would happily settle for them paying full business rates as a starter, or alternatively state schools not having to pay them.

Stripping charitable status, putting VAT on school places and charging full business rates etc - all that really achieves is increasing the fees - thus increasing the wealth divide, and allowing less provision for bursaries. The super-rich will always be able to afford them.

Personally I would up the charitable requirements rather than remove them, and increase pressure to provide more free places and bursaries.

Focus attention instead on state childcare on the Scanadanivan models and axing uni fees.

thus increasing the wealth divide

Between private and state I mean schools.

I don't mind them having charitable status if they actually do charitable works, but for some schools it just seems to mean making their school halls available to the plebs once or twice a week (and not free of charge).

Focus attention instead on state childcare on the Scanadanivan models and axing uni fees Agree with both of these, especially the latter.

If that poll in Wokingham is true the Labour voters need to vote Libdem.

I think Radley is the same - we plebs are allowed to use the school swimming pool for a charge of course. Yes, the lads from the school do go and help out doing charitable works, but so do the children from the state schools......

Charitable schools providing SEN education are a different matter.

I don't mind them having charitable status if they actually do charitable works

Exactly and that needs to be increased.

With charitable status you can pressure schools to step up. If you remove it they don’t owe anything to anyone.