Private schools should be taxed at 25% to fund teachers for Blackpool says Lord Adonis

[noblegiraffe]

Private schools should be taxed at 25% to fund extra pay for teachers in hard-to-recruit areas like Grimsby or Blackpool says Lord Adonis. This £2.5 billion fund could also be used to fund tuition for those in danger of failing maths and English. I'm sure some people on here might have opinions on that?

And he doesn't think pupils should be expelled unless they've broken the law (not sure what he thinks they are currently expelled for but even breaking the law is often overlooked).

"He said whole towns and cities are affected, referring to reports of how doctors in Blackpool use the "Shit Life Syndrome" description.

"Deep poverty, pervasive drugs, obesity, anti-depressants and mental illness in a large isolated town exhibiting alarming signs of disintegration – including the largest encampment in Britain of children expelled from school.

"...For Blackpool today, read also Hull, Grimsby, large parts of the North and the Midlands, and large towns in the South, including Hastings, Dover and Folkestone.""

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/lord-adonis-calls-ban-expelling-pupils-unless-they-break-law

It would be a good way of meaning that the only people in private schools would be the children of oligarchs or those so poor they get bursaries. Interesting mix.

Yes, once we're out if the EU, if we do so in a fairly 'hard' way and can vary VAT in ways beyond current limitations, then this becomes a distinct possibility in a couple of years.

If we go for softer Brexit, I'm not sure it would be permitted by EU.

Though I am dubious about this proposal - families who don't use state schools are already saving the government a considerable amount, and there isn't a tidy linkage between family wealth and use of private education. If you want to drain the rich, there are better proxies than this one.

You have to balance it with ways of preventing house prices near good state schools soaring so that only the very rich could afford them. Or tax those houses too?

You’ll lose 50% of independent schools instantly if you raise costs this much (smaller or without a foundation battle chest) Many are struggling to make income equal expenditure already.

As a parent I would object to paying tax for a school system I don’t use, on top of school fees (which most parents I know scrabble about for) on top of additional payments to the school to make up the short fall in state funding for places in some areas of the country. The Govmt puts nothing into independent education but loses 7.5% of the nations children to them whilst still receiving 100% of the tax for both state and independently educated children. It’s not a magic porridge pot but it’s always a fun target.

The government gives charitable status and its associated tax breaks to independent schools - hardly putting nothing in.

As a healthy person who can’t remember when any of my family last visited a doctor I should object to paying tax to subsidise those less fortunate. I don’t because that’s how tax works.

I agree, it’s how tax works but I think that people have an idea that all independent schools are these multi million pound businesses that make a massive profit each year just ready to plough back into essentials such as boating lakes (...) The vast majority don’t and many are so close to closing that any change will put them under for good. Every pupil at that school then has to find either a state place or a place at another independent. The ‘still open’ ones have to raise their fees to cover the added tax and hence most parents have to them resort to state places. That’s a massive number of extra pupils in an alresdy groaning system. My point is that the very thing they are trying to do (fund and help the state system) is likely to be totally buggered by doing that.....more money but far more pupils to educate.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that some independents and the very privileged parents can easily afford to do this, but they are few and far between, especially outside of London.

It would be a good way of meaning that the only people in private schools would be the children of oligarchs or those so poor they get bursaries. Interesting mix.

Yep.

Brexit is going to make most of us poorer. Just as in any recession this means that private schools will struggle to retain the pupils they currently have, even without a mandatory 25% increase in fees.

Some people who could afford to pay, even if fees increased by 25%, wouldn't. They'd pull their children out and put them in their local "outstanding" schools, supplementing their state education with support from home and tutors where needed. (As in practice already happens in many of the wealthiest parts of the country.)

Well he went to a private school and Oxford. He knows absolutely nothing about the problems faced in the schools he's referring to. Perhaps he should spend a year teaching at one and then he can legitimately gob off about this issue. That's if he's not on long term leave with stress after the experience.

I do agree re expulsion.

I don’t think children should necessarily be provided for in mainstream schools and/or lessons, but expelling them permanently isn’t the answer.

Lord Adonis is grandstanding. It's not really workable.

More annoyingly, it plays into the orthodoxy that education is the key to social mobility. Education is definitely a good thing and can help. But the structure of the labour market seems to be more important. So loading all of social mobility onto education is harmful for two reasons: it creates unhelpful pressure on education, distracts us from making the meaningful societal changes that we should.

This is a US based study, but I think there is much that applies to us:
www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/education-and-economic-mobility/541041/

Adonis was in the SDP, Liberal Party and then Labour Party. He was made a peer so he could become a Government Minister under Tony Blair without ever being elected to Parliament. He is a non-exec director of RM plc who call themselves a "leading education resources, IT software and services group". Their latest interim accounts state the "demand for discretionary curriculum products continued to be impacted by increased pressure on school budgets." They were down 7%.

What a daft idea. 25% extra would kill off the golden goose. Better to look closely at whether indies should have charitable status and are doing enough to keep it.

Foreign uni students pay higher tuition fees. Do foreign students to posh schools like Eton?

The problems in areas like Blackpool are far too big for schools to fix alone. Throwing all the money in the world at the education system there won't solve the underlying problem - lack of decent employment. Even Lord Adonis himself points to deep poverty as the first symptom of Shit Life Syndrome.

As for expelling students - WTAF? Permanent exclusion from school is an awful solution (and one which isn't used lightly), but keeping all children in mainstream without adequate support is a bad idea too. Things which would work better (imo):

• more (and better funded) alternative provision,
• mental health support for students,
• slt prepared to address low-level troublesome behaviour in students before a child escalates to behaviour warranting exclusion.

I think a lot of private schools might close if an additional tax was introduced (not sure if that would be such a terrible thing?!) Definitely need to look at how they manage to keep their charitable status though.

Noble - no, foreign students don't pay more fees to 'posh' schools like Eton. Nor to any other private schools - posh or not - as far as I know.

No foreign students don’t pay more but I believe that they have to pay the year in advance, whereas the British pupils pay termly.

They should be subject to VAT as a luxury purchase.
Charitable status should be removed.
The state should stop funding CCF in Independent schools.

I give up.

It’s the cheapest way to educate over 600,000 pupils in this country....to get their parents to pay for it. Charitable status helps, but it really is the golden goose and if you push it too far it will be stuffed and cooked for Christmas. Where will we put the extra pupils and how the bloody hell would we afford it? Short sightedness at its very worst.

Ah, just what I was looking for - Adonis is a visiting professor at KCL. On their website it states "Adonis was made a life peer in May 2005 and drove through the academy schools programme as Minister for Schools."

So, academies not able to provide in Blackpool then? Driving through academisation not working? But you forced them into it.

But forget that, just find another scapegoat to blame, because it couldn't possibly be Blair/Cameron/May's governments fault.

Academisation as we see it now is nothing like what AA envisaged and instigated. Nothing. And 'he went to a private school and then Oxford' is technically true - but it was only thanks to an LEA grant that meant he was able to move from the children's home he'd lived in since the age of three, and board at Kingham Hill from the age of 11 until his head teacher persuaded his father to let him apply to Keble. He is acutely aware that not every child from his background was so lucky, and this absolutely drove his approach to being Schools Minister.

I think at some independent schools “foreign children” do pay more not the big names but this may be because of their EAL needs.

They should be subject to VAT as a luxury purchase

Despite the tenacity of the rhetoric, VAT is not and never had been a 'luxury tax'. It is a general consumption tax. Education in schools and universities is exempt, according to all interpretations of EU rules. This won't change before Brexit

Charitable status should be removed

It can't be just removed, under the law as it stands. You have to close the charity, and donate the proceeds of sale to similarly aimed charities. can we afford the influx of pupils into the state system. It's still struggling with the demographic bulge, is adding to it going to be a good thing?

The state should stop funding CCF in Independent schools

Fair enough. However I prefer the plans to expand CCF into state schools, rather than putting obstacles in the way of existing units.

Yes, once we're out if the EU, if we do so in a fairly 'hard' way and can vary VAT in ways beyond current limitations, then this becomes a distinct possibility in a couple of years.

We'll still be stuck with EU VAT rules if we keep with EU VAT. There are currently countries outside the EU but with EU VAT and they have no flexibility and have to abide by the same rules as countries within the EU. The only way to get back control of VAT is to create our own VAT system (i.e. completely leave EU VAT) which won't happen as it will cause untold problems with imports & exports. So, regardless of soft or hard brexit, we're stuck with the current VAT regime.

Perhaps he forgets that private schools help take the pressure off state schools.

By raising the fees by 25%, those that are struggling to make ends meet will be priced out, and only the very wealthy will be unaffected. So effectively he will be increasing social disparity.

the problems in areas like Blackpool are far too big for schools to fix alone. Throwing all the money in the world at the education system there won't solve the underlying problem - lack of decent employment.

Most seaside resorts have the same problems. Not only has the decline of the UK holiday market caused massive damage. "Problem" tenants have been transported to them from other areas, due to the large amount of empty old boarding houses and hotels (empty because of the decline of the tourist industry). So it's been a double whammy. No jobs for the locals, and if that wasn't bad enough, they bring in huge numbers of people with all manner of problems, and as usual, without the support they need, thus causing all kinds of social problems. The schools problems are the tip of the iceberg. One local authority actually "advertised" in prisons to encourage prisoners about to be released to move to their seaside town to occupy the empty MHO accommodation - but of course, the same LA didn't think of the repercussions of the anti social behaviour, crime, drugs, etc that it caused!

I hate this idea that somehow people who privately educate their children are somehow doing us all a favour and saving us loadsamoney. They are not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.

Private education allows them to opt out of giving a damn about the state options. We live in a fairly free society so it's up to them, but they are precisely the kind of parents who would demand better state schools. I'm all for Lord Adonis's idea.