Schools as a business ...

[MN164]

I have a gut bad feeling about schools making a profit - groups like Cognita and Alpha Plus (50 schools in the UK between them).

I was trawling around the lists of options and noticed one that is owned by a private investor group and crossed it off my list (list includes all flavours, state, co-ed, faith, private, grammar etc).

Is that wrong and narrow minded?

[straggle]

Universal networks - 'it does not mean that they don't get private companies to do much of their work for them but that is not the same as the assets and infrastructure being owned by non-profit-making companies.'

[rabbitstew]

Thanks, prh47bridge.

[prh47bridge]

rabbitstew - The 22 hours is the total spread across however many employers the individual has. I don't know of any statistics that cover how common it is for people to have multiple zero hours contracts. For "average hours" the ONS has used the arithmetical mean. They haven't published median or mode figures.

[MN164]

PastSellByDate

You are right. However, because we live in London, we are overwhelmed with choices of all "flavours" - comp, grammar, faith, private, co-ed, single sex, etc. Taking a reasonable commuting distance (I draw the line at 1 hour, but it would have to be pretty special to be more than 30 mins away) we have over 50 "options". The smallest number being stat comps we need to be in catchment for. The grammars, for the most part, don't have a "catchment limit". Faith schools have huge diocese to draw from. The largest group is, of course, private schools.

Of the 50+ options there are about 5, that I know of, that are "for profit". That still leaves plenty of "choice".

[PastSellByDate]

MN164

Stepping aside for the moment from the thorny issue of 'for profit' education vs. not-for-profit

could I just put a plea in for your DC on this list.

Perhaps you should have your DC make a list of senior schools they'd like to go to and why - because I suspect your DC will have issues/ concerns themselves:

are their friends going there too?
can I continue with my music teacher there?
can I join clubs?
Is there afterschool provision - homework clubs/ sports/ drama/ etc....
ability of the school to meet your child's needs (e.g. SEN/ G&T/ etc...)

I get that you have particularly strong feelings against private for profit provision of education - but I do think you may have to temper that with your child's needs/ desires at this stage in their life.

After all they'll be going there day after day for at least the next 5 years. 7 if they stay for A-level.

HTH

[rabbitstew]

prh47bridge - that is interesting. When you say that on average people on zero hours contracts work 22 hours per week, do you mean per zero hours contract that they are on, or in total (if they have such an arrangement with more than one employer)? And how common is it to be on more than one zero hours contract at a time?

Also, what is meant by "on average" when quoting official statistics? Unfortunately, I did mechanics and probability at A-level, not statistics, and have ever since felt at a disadvantage when trying to interpret summaries of statistical data, as an "average" to my rather basic understanding can be worked out in various different ways and I have no idea how it is done in the official statistics, or how great the differences would be if calculated in different ways.

[prh47bridge]

You may be interested to know that around 35% of people on zero hours contracts report that they actually work full time. I haven't seen any analysis of this but I suspect this is things like, say, a restaurant that has all the waiting staff on zero hours contracts so that they can adjust staffing levels to match bookings, cover illness, etc., but has within that a core staff that they use all the time.

[prh47bridge]

rabbitstew - People on zero hours contracts are most likely to be found in Accommodation & Food Services or Health & Social Work. Those two sectors between them account for nearly half of all workers on zero hours contracts.

You may be interested to know that on average people on zero hours contracts work 22 hours per week. That compares with an average of 32 hours for the workforce as a whole. People on zero hours contracts make up around 2% of people in employment.

Regarding continuous employment, it depends very much on the contract and the way the employer and employee work together. If the contract gives a continuing relationship regardless of whether or not the employee is actually working that is definitely continuous employment. Some employers use such contracts because it is easier for them to administer such matters as holiday pay and any benefits to which the employee is entitled (even on a zero hours contract the employee is entitled to the same benefits as other staff doing the same job). Even if the contract doesn't create a continuing relationship, if there is a well-founded expectation that there will be further engagements between the employer and the employee that can be sufficient to create a period of continuous employment.

straggle - You cannot qualify for all of the benefits I listed simultaneously. If you are not working enough hours to qualify for Working Tax Credits you will still qualify for Child Tax Credits and probably out of work benefits such as Income-based JSA. If your hours fluctuate the average working hours over the 5 weeks before you made your benefit claim are used. Since on average workers on zero hours contracts work 22 hours per week a lot of them will be entitled to WTC.

You are a long way out on tax credit overpayments. They run at about £1.6bn per annum. Underpayments run at about £1bn per annum. The vast majority of both under- and overpayments are due to families reporting changes in circumstances either after the year end or so close to the year end that there was insufficient time to adjust the payments.

[straggle]

How can you claim tax credits on a zero hours contract when you're meant to work a minimum 16 hours a week and how often are you meant to apply for them? Are zero hours contracts the reason why there is so much error and overpayment in tax credits (not even counting fraud), something like £10 billion per year? That would explain a lot.

[rabbitstew]

Are there statistics on the sorts of employers and fields of employment that use zero hours contracts?

[rabbitstew]

Just looked up info from ACAS on zero hours contracts. Doesn't look to me like continuous employment rights and zero hours contracts are very often bedfellows... Is that a blue moon I see?

I can see when zero hours contracts could work for all parties, though - when you only need or want casual work, rather than needing a proper income to live on; or when your work is spectacularly well paid and/or you are getting lots of it and like the freedom to say no. I suspect a lot of the time, though, zero hours contracts are most useful for employers of low paid, low skilled people.

[rabbitstew]

Is it continuous employment if you have a zero hours contract with an employer and continuously work zero hours for them for several weeks?

[rabbitstew]

What does continuous employment mean?

[rabbitstew]

It's still educational, though.

[prh47bridge]

What a lot of myths in one post.

Zero hours contracts (or casual labour as we used to call it) suit a lot of people. It is quite right for the government to stop employers using zero hours contracts that prevent the employee from looking elsewhere for work but it would be a mistake to ban them.

If you are on a zero hours contract you are entitled to benefits. Depending on the number of hours per week you work on average you may be entitled to Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, Housing Benefit, Council Tax Support and Income-based Jobseeker's Allowance.

If you are on a zero hours contract you are entitled to paid holidays (7.24 minutes for each hour worked - more if other staff doing the same job get more than the statutory minimum holiday). You are also entitled to automatic enrolment into the company's pension scheme.

If you are on a zero hours contract and employment is continuous you have the same protection against unfair dismissal, etc., as full time employees.

It is true that one of the down sides is that you don't know from one week to the next what your income will be. However, it provides flexible employment on the same basic terms as most workers. It puts you under no ongoing obligation to accept work with no consequences of refusing. A zero hours contract would not suit me personally but I know some people working zero hours contracts who don't want to move to any other form of employment as it suits them.

This is, however, getting a long way from the subject of secondary education.

[MN164]

Selective statistics don't make evidence for a full picture. Unemployment and NEET rates have fallen just as zero hour contracts have exploded.

• The largest group on zeros are under 25
  
• Zeros average working week is 30% or more less than full time
  

Is this improving quality of life or just symptomatic of market abuse of a labourforce?

Sure have a "job" but don't expect any benefits, holidays, pension or job security. In fact from one week to the next you might not have a clue what your income will be. But at least you won't be a NEET.

[rabbitstew]

Problem is, it appears you can only make it look like work pays if you considerably lower the living standards of those out of work - the low paid remain stubbornly low paid. It doesn't seem like a huge improvement in quality of life to increase the number of people working in order to survive rather than thrive. Cheap labour does not equate to quality of life - in fact, working really hard for little reward is most peoples' definition of a very poor quality of life. Also, lowering tax and taking more people out of paying tax altogether because they aren't really well paid enough to be able to afford to pay tax, doesn't seem to encourage pay to go up, it just seems to be reducing the amount of tax coming in to pay for services that make us all feel like we have some kind of quality of life, and increasing profits for the most wealthy and powerful, making the contrast in standards of living between the richest and poorest ever starker and more depressing. This seems to me to be a very unhealthy state to be in. And one that nobody seems to have worked out how to get out of.

[caroldecker]

MN164 You do realise that the Rotherham scandal has its roots in the left view that they are the tolerant and nice group, so what they support must be right and any criticism is driven by hateful arseholes and not worth listening to.

[prh47bridge]

You could, alternatively look at the evidence and discover that poverty is falling faster than it ever has at any time in history. Unemployment in the UK is falling as is the number of NEETs. People with different political views may disagree with you about the best ways to improve the quality of life for the majority and alleviate poverty. That doesn't mean they don't care.

[MN164]

I guess this highlights the tension between free marketeers and those with a social agenda. Is massive concentration wealth for the few more important than quality of life for the majority?

Not worth debating such a fundamental political difference. Free marketeers are clearly fine with widespread poverty, unemployment, high levels of NEETs etc. just so long as the "promise" of wealth appears to exist for everyone because they are "free" to accumulate wealth if the "choose".

[caroldecker]

MN164 My comment has nothing to do with trickle down. Trickle down is the theory that people who set up companies which are profitable employ people and thus make everyone richer.
This has not been been as evident over the past 30 years due to globalisaton of labour intensive industries and the influx of high net worth foreigners.

[MN164]

"So actually we are better off taking the income tax and leaving them with the lump sum."

The famous "trickle down" that is so evident in my local area. It's not particularly clear how the uber wealthy are spreading the £love£ amongst the 20% NEETs.

[rabbitstew]

It's actually a bit scary to think that the richest 1% could afford to give everyone in the UK a £12,000 lump sum if they suddenly lost track of their senses.

[rabbitstew]

Oh, yes, of course - silly us, it's a choice between everyone in the country getting a one-off payment of £12,000 and 1% of people in the UK owning £761bn of wealth between them. Not, of course, that anyone could possibly know how much the richest 1% actually do own, given that they spend one hell of a lot of money on hiding those little details. It's because they're so bl**dy good at it that they proportionately so little tax...

[caroldecker]

A couple of points:

1. Who pays for a service and who provides it are totally different. The NHS is funded through taxes but buys services from private companies (GPs , drug companies, equipment suppliers etc) - so the argument of profit making provision should be separate from the funding and tax arguments.
   

1. The richest 1% of the UK own £761 bn of wealth ONS data.
   

This is a one-off payment of £12k per person if spread across the country, equivalent to about 6 months median wage

The top 1% currently pays around £50bn of income tax each year, around £1,000 per person for the country.

To get £1,000 a year from a lump sum of £12,500, you would need to return about 8%, which is much higher than the majority of investments.

So actually we are better off taking the income tax and leaving them with the lump sum.