I'm up north and it's slightly different here but in terms of who goes to private school it is interesting.
I live near a reasonable high school and grammar schools.
The 'posh' parents tend to pay to have their kids coached / move house to get into catchment of the grammars to get the better chance of getting in.
The kids at private school are a mix of the ultra wealthy, the gifted but 'poor' who have got a part scholarship after the state education failing them led their parents to seek out other options and the kids who have additional sen needs who the state education totally neglected and have been left to rot leaving their parents in a state of panic about how far behind their kid is.
The vast majority I know locally fall into the category of having been failed by state education. These are middle class families but I wouldn't say they were posh at all. Far from it.
I think my problem here is that we are really addressing or acknowledging WHY there is such demand for private school places, particularly in certain areas of the country.
Historically my area has had particularly low funding per pupil in schools. It's amongst one of the lowest in the country and has been for years. Instead with a drive for inclusion and COVID causing massive delays to assessment it's just hit crisis after crisis. Low funding generally in well off areas might not be such an issue to schools if there were prompt and decent funding for pupils with additional needs. It's the SEN issues that are the problem here.
Middle class parents perhaps have the option to buy their way out of that lack of support and provision. Why is the ethos to race to the bottom and make middle class kids suffer with the rest of us rather than acknowledge where the actual issue is.
This is essentially a 'red meat' policy akin to one the Tory's have about immigration rather than really talking about why it's been happening.
And in this sense, just getting a bunch of tax isn't going to solve anything. Firstly the money is going to go into a pit of tax and secondly the money out to education will be a pittance in comparison because the issue that Labour aren't talking about in the same loud voice is SEN issues. Because they know the problem is just so chronic.
The government would almost be better to work with the private sector to build more provision for SEN kids with the long term goal of having new units state run but initially having more places available for poorer kids separate from mainstream education. Don't tax - require more assisted places. Then have an actual plan to have more Specialist units for children who have SEN but aren't pretty much not verbal (as that seems to be the only kids who get special schools now) and more specialist behavioural units for kids who don't just have sen issues but also have more complex behavioural issues too (and should be kept separate from particularly vulnerable kids who have SEN issues but not the same concerning behaviours).
Inclusion just doesn't work. It's fuelling anti-social behaviour (which is one of the other big drivers of middle class parents wanting to go private) and failing all kids with SEN needs.
No one is willing to say this. Teacher retention in state education owes a lot to the expectations placed on teachers around inclusion and having to be social workers in addition to their teaching. It's not realistic to be trying to teach a child who can't write at all at age 9 in the same class as one who is reading the likes of Harry Potter and writing their own little fantasy books for fun. It's just stupid. It's not helping anyone. Even the kids in the middle who education is pitched to at that particular age, suffer because of the frustration and boredom that it's creating and manifesting in behaviour problems.
I fail to see how just saying we are going to tax private school is going to achieve better education for all, if you aren't pushing that part of the narrative far harder than the headline grabbing populism of taxing private schools.
This is a push / pull issue. Make it more attractive for parents to not send their kids to private school in the first place. There are other ways to do this apart from taxing private schools directly.