Labour to abolish public schools

[cdtaylornats]

A plan is due to be published at the next Labour conference to close fee-paying schools.

Good idea or move towards controlling centralism.

There’s been another thread on this. The consensus seemed to be the financial and logistical side made it impossible. Also hypocritical as many Labour politicians send their kids private.

Ooh another thread on this. What fun.
I did actually hear one of the odious little twerps behind this on the today programme and was somewhat reassured by her total inability to state coherently what the big idea is. She didn’t say abolish outright; but couldn’t seem to say what they would do. Thought that being a charity was a tax status. Not a well informed person.

@TheBigBall Private schools are set up as charities for tax reasons.

www.gov.uk/charities-and-tax

Thread title is misleading, it's not Labour policy. Anyone can put forward a motion to be debated at conference, then it's up to the members to vote on the motion.

I don't have a problem with private schools. I do have a problem with the tax benefit they get by virtue of having charitable status.

Being a charity has far more legal consequences than simply tax consequences, though. The speaker on the programme clearly hadn’t grasped that. Reassuringly ignorant, from my perspective.

So labour in addition to borrowing £trillions to nationalise everything will borrow yet more to nationalise public schools? Sound a rather stupid plan. Plus they have to get elected first and Corbyn gets more unpopular by the day

There’s a letter to the Sunday Times quoted on another thread which shows the naivety of those behind this plan.
One of the ‘solutions’ was that when private schools are abolished and the campuses taken over by the state, their teachers would stay on and become state school teachers instead.
I wonder if those putting this motion forward have asked a single teacher in the private sector if they will go along with this.
Also do they have any idea how much it costs to maintain these campuses, many of which are full of listed buildings?
There are a number of reasons why private school fees are so high and maintaining the buildings and facilities is one of them.

The SNP are talking about removing charitable status from fee-paying schools in Scotland.

Parents are being advised to wake up the SNP by insisting of having their children allocated space at their local state school. SNP politicians are advised to consider what happens when entitled, active, resentful parents with money to burn get let loose.

Of all the measures suggested removal of charitable status mystifies me the most. So you want these schools to be run as corporations, returning dividends to shareholders? How does that make it better? The duty to shareholders means there would be less provision of bursaries, contributing facilities to state schools etc, as these are not profit generating activities.

I've been on the other threads pointing out how impossible it would be to actually abolish private schools. I won't repeat myself.

What might be an interesting potential compromise would be the creation of a different tier of fee paying schools with fees at more like the £9k range, with means-tested student-loan-style government support (debt being for the parents to pay not the child, and being a set % of income in excess of eg £18k, over a duration of 3 times the number of years education received, with an understanding that some will never earn enough to fully repay, indeed vast numbers will only ever pay back the £3k-ish uplift from current funding levels to decent funding levels. The poorest pay nothing and the wealthiest pay more, but still less than current private options)

Such schools would effectively allow anyone who wants to opt-in to the scenario "I would gladly pay more tax if it meant schools being properly funded" which many many people say. Top quality education is a high priority for huge numbers of people. Currently there's a deep canyon between those with the means to pay through the nose for the Rolls Royce option, with everyone else waiting for the overcrowded minibus. Creating a middle way would ensure that the majority of the population could benefit rather than just the wealthiest and a few lucky scholarship winners.

It is frustrating to have to choose between a school where the per-pupil funding from government is barely £6k per year and they can't recruit a qualified physics teacher for love or money and has no sports field vs a private school charging £16.5 per year with such luxurious sporting and arts facilities it's embarrassing. Why isn't there a half way point? There should be!

The reason it "wouldn't work" is because of the way this would leave the remnant of kids whose parents wouldn't sign up for such a deal - left behind in ever-worsening "so called" comprehensives still trying to educate them on £6kpa - and presumably with even less success as the brightest and most motivated would leap for the upgrade option.

DH and I discussed this today (DC at private school). We’d leave the country, as would pretty much everyone we know at the school. There is a high % of dual nationality kids (it’s not an international school), so relocating would be the obvious choice. DH works for an international company and my job is very portable. We’d take our —very high— taxes with us and happily pay them to a government that isn’t determined to screw high earners.

Not all svchools are charities

The 'value' of charitable status is about £200 per pupil per term. It'll easily be absorbed, and is unlikely to force closure.

Unless of course the stripping of charitable status means winding up the charity in accordance with normal Charity Commissioner rules.

Because I think turning charitable assets into privately held ones is a massive change of policy, and sets an unfortunate precedent for asset strippers (as 'education' is in itself a legal charitable aim, and removing it as such could potentially cause quite a headache for other charities who provide education if they could no longer use charitable funds to deliver their educational activities.

If the pundits did not explain how they could achieve the privatisation of charitable assets without upsetting a major principle of the charitable sector, then I suspect they are inadequately informed on the legal administration of charities.

I have never seen a proposal put forward that would actually work (never spreading seen a proposal, just grandstanding really). If they have one, this might be a good time to lay it out clearly

What I don’t understand is why the focus on private schools. In my area their are two tiers of state schools. The ones in the more affluent areas do much better than the ones in the sink estates.
Surely sort that out first. It’s highly unlikely any of the local private school kids are going to end up in the sink estate school, not the teachers of the private school. So who is going to help the dc who through no fault of their own are hand a substandard education because of their status at birth. Within the state system.
Corbin has failed to point out there are already huge discrepancies within the state system in results as well. How does he plan to equalise the state system before he runs around claiming private schools are the enemy.
The class system is the enemy. Where you live is determined by how much you earn generally, how much you earn determines how much a school can squeeze out of you, be that by way of a donation or simply the prices of games at the school fete.

In my area we had at one point the second worst school in the country right next door to one of the top 100. Stop that and I’ll understand the focus on private schools. And as for charitable status, fine take that away but rebate the parents spending on fees and therefore not gaining from paying huge amounts of tax back in state schools.

Nor the teachers*

"And as for charitable status, fine take that away"

How? I have never seen a coherent plan put forward for how this would be implemented. Remember that provision of education is a charitable aim in itself, so removing that could have significant unintended consequences.

Transferring charitable assets into private ownership is not allowed at present. I'm not sure about eroding this important safeguard in the first place, so wouid very much want to know the proposals for how it would be done.

Labour were talking on Jeremy Vine the other day about this. Their plan to integrate the public/private schools into the state sector is ridiculous. And I'm generally a Labour supporter.
She was saying that all the local children would have the chance to attend the schools.
You would still have a divide- the house prices near the the ex- private school would be much higher than those near the local comp. who would decide who would attend the ex- private school? Or who would go to the ex-underfunded comp? What would happen to the children already in the private sector on the day of change?
A lot of these schools are boarding schools- what would happen to all these facilities? A lot of the boarding schools are used to provide stability to Forces children who's parents are away? How would they be facilitated?

Bloody ridiculous!
A

Removing charitable status is a possibility (though I know two private schools which are run as not for profits for kids who mainstream schools have failed, most their "customers" are local authorities, they certainly are charitable) but it's fraught with difficulty as to what constitutes a charity

@scaevola my dc are at private schools. I’m confident this plan ain’t happening.
Not to mention if it did I’d move abroad along with a lot of other high rate tax payers. That’s the problem with socialism.

Another one that would move abroad

"it's fraught with difficulty as to what constitutes a charity"

It's a clear legal status. Provision of education is an accepted charitable purpose.

I agree there wouid need to be an absolutely massive expansion in state boarding provision to deal with influx of Forces and other qualifying goverment service families. That wouid also be quite costly, and others with need to board wouid be squeezed out. Though as choice of school for families affected wouid be sharply reduced (and when family is away, then right 'fit' is enormously important, as might be proximity to grandparents) then the actual outcome might be a disinclination to remain in those careers if there is no oroposect of a school which suits. Knock on effect to retention of staff in these sectors too.

As mentioned in another thread, there was an Ind school that closed in my town. It has a wonderful building, great teachers, extensive playing fields and a pool. Due to charity status these facilities were open to many organisations in our town. We have a massive shortage of school places in primary and secondary due to a population explosion in our town. The council was lobbied to keep it as a school. Did they? Of course they didn't. Despite a 350 year old covenant on it to keep it as an educational institution they sold it all to a housing company to make more cookie cutter abodes. The teachers were let go and the kids had to find school places. There were none, so some of them are an hour away at school from their homes.

If you think that your local council is going to buy up private school Hogwarts buildings and turn them into state utopias you are very, very mistaken. They will suck the life blood out of those buildings for every penny they can get from housing developers and stick 40 kids in a portakabin in an existing school.

If you want equality then I suggest the first thing we do is dismantle the class system which is still rife in this country.