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

If academies have failed it is down to the individual academy or mat

Disagree. It is also a feature of a system that sets local schools in competition with each other instead of incentivising them to work together to improve the local offer.

His time might be better spent discovering why NI primary school children do so well in reading and maths despite living in an area with an equally low, if not lower, standard of living as well as the highest level of mental illness in the UK.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-38141281

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-42222488

After all, the foundations for success in secondary school are established in primary school.

I think the most interesting suggestion is "appoint a "minister for good schools", to be based in Grimsby or Blackpool". I think a first-hand perspective over a period of time would highlight some of the fundamental causes.

IMO one of the root causes is the lack of professional/skilled jobs. Historically these areas had reasonable levels of employment but in lowed skilled jobs where an academic education was not required. I think put the grants into attracting new industries, employ locals and draw in some from outside who have an expectation of higher educations standards.

I think the schools try hard and have some inspirational head teachers in these areas but they are all also having to run breakfast clubs and try and engage parents.

Disagree. It is also a feature of a system that sets local schools in competition with each other instead of incentivising them to work together to improve the local offer. Have to disagree with that interpretation as in Hull most of the MAT's comprise only Hull schools so they have come together.

Sorting out the issues that places like Blackpool suffer are ping overdue. If taxing private education is the most practical way to fund it then so be it.

noble it depends on what you meant when you said privileged. The richer friends of my children’s have all gone away to study. Though my son may come back to do his next postgrad stage to save money. We aren’t rich, though.

The stretched middle are not using private education. It's about 7% of the UK population that use private education. Allowing 3 or 4 per cent for the properly wealthy and overseas contingent, we should not allow the concerns of such a small amount of parents to drive fundamental education policy.

Outside of one or two areas, it would be feasible to absorb extra pupils in the state sector. The state sector has had to deal with it for years with recent immigration.

In my LA every single secondary school is an academy or a free school (a couple). They are not set against each other at all. In fact they work closely together for their common well being.

I think some comments on here are very outdated. A certain amount of wanting to do better than a neighbouring school never hurt anyone but there is no detriment to any school where all are academies. If schools haven’t got round to it or haven’t got an appetite to improve, that’s down to their leadership and governance and they should be trying to get the best for their children, not just supporting political ideologies.

Huge determining factors regarding the success of a school are the SLT, the parents, the pupils and the teachers. Academy, or not academy, matters very little if the above factors are all pulling together and are good at their respective roles within the school community.

The state sector has not dealt effectively with immigration though, has it? That is why classes are large, there are not enough places and many schools are over subscribed, especially the best schools. Putting even more pressure on these schools means a very responsive way to build new schools will need to be found for the overflow because it won’t be in Blackpool or Clacton where there are no school places.

Large numbers of parents who use senior independent schools in the South East are fairly well off with London high end salaries. They may absorb any hikes but at the lower end, they won’t. The scrimping and saving parents will be the hardest hit. In some schools this will be a lot of children needing state school places.

n my LA every single secondary school is an academy or a free school (a couple). They are not set against each other at all. In fact they work closely together for their common well being.

Therefore it must be true in all LAs and MATs, right?

Academy, or not academy, matters very little

Sure, tell that to the schools that have been unceremoniously ditched by their MAT or who have had an unpopular MAT forced on them by the DfE.

It sounds like he hasn't worked out how the country could afford to pay for this. Has he been drinking the Corbyn Kool-aid?

I get that not all schools work together but how are they "set against each other"? Surely at worst they would have nothing to do with each other.

They are in competition with each other for local pupils. League tables are all a big local competition. Look at Open Evenings. They are less about giving parents useful information for comparison and more about blinding parents with sparkle.

"It's about 7% of the UK population that use private education. Allowing 3 or 4 per cent for the properly wealthy and overseas contingent, we should not allow the concerns of such a small amount of parents to drive fundamental education policy."
The point Im trying to make is that the "properly wealthy and overseas contingent" are not going to be bothered by any increase in fees. It's those who are struggling to pay now who will be and who will be forced to leave independent education if VAT is added to fees. Thus creating any even bigger divide and all its associated advantages between the tiny % who are "properly wealthy" and everyone else is that what our society wants and needs?

And yet when primary schools struggled to deal with immigration, the sharp elbowed parents were strangely quiet. Or do they only make a fuss when their education is threatened? They can't just complain about it now it suits them.

Just because you pay fees does not mean you get to opt out of caring about the education of the rest of society. Because an inconvenient education minister might change policy, or, heaven forfend, your circumstances might change and you're forced to use state school.

I'm interested in what Adonis thinks this Minister for Good schools would do that Nick Gibb, Minister for Schools doesn't. Or what a school's minister based in Blackpool would do that the Regional Schools Commissioner for that area doesn't.

This debate is a hardy perennial. I won’t say anything about the issues as all the points have long been made.

I will just say that it is time we started debating how to improve our education system and get better results instead of worrying about which goodies go to whom.

An utterly fair educational system that turns out uneducated morons isn’t going to preserve our standard of living in the future. India and China are each turning out approximately a million engineers per year now. That’s way more EACH YEAR than there are in the U.K. in total.

If we don’t improve quality soon, we will be competed away to poverty before long.

Fairness is not the only important aspect of an education system.

VeryPunny if your addressing your comments at me then I'm not complaining I'm just pointing out the obvious and asking if we want to create a society where only the "properly wealthy and the overseas contingent" are able to afford to buy their children education and all the advantages it can often bring?
Maybe you think that's ok? I have some genuine concerns about it.

One issue for me in taxing private schools at 25% is just what are they taxing? Private schools are mainly charities with an educational basis, just as all Academies are. So how is Lord Adonis suggesting that they are taxed, create a new law?
If he does, then it would be the quickest way to increase the number of Academies as all the private schools will become academies to circumvent the law he is proposing.

If all schools are similar, and good, there isn’t huge competition for pupils. This is surely the goal. This confrontational attitude isn’t helpful and how do you think secondary modern schools get to be outstanding or good with the top 30% in grammar schools? It is not about grabbing the best children, it’s about what you do with them. Suggesting that they can only manage the local university is not the way forward either. At worst it keeps children in the low level economy at home rather than making strides elsewhere. Teachers should know better.

That should read: it’s about what you do with your pupils when they are in your school.

happy when there is so much going on in this country, so much genuine need, the concerns of a privileged group (and it is an enormous privilege to send your children private) about whether they can continue to enjoy that privilege is pretty far down my list of things to care about.

And surely the question should be, why does private education confer so many advantages?

This is such bollocks, and Lord Adonis knows it. The vast majority of independent schools are charities, so are exempt from many taxes.

It’s virtually impossible to remove charitable status.

Therefore, the tax situation can’t really change.

It sounds impressive for a Labour politician to call for something, and then to find that his hands are tied. It makes him look good for trying.

The other thing is that we don’t have a culture of hypothecated taxes in this country (except for the BBC License Fee). All monies raised go into one big pot. There is absolutely no guarantee that Blackpool schools would raise any money from taxation of independent schools.

There’s also the moral question of why, as a parent paying school fees in Surrey, should fund schools in Lancashire, when we are already being taxed to the hilt.

Very I think maybe you're missing my point. I'm not convinced that it's right that in our society the only properly wealthy, or privileged i.e. those who will be unaffected by any very significant fees increase in fees will continue to reap the advantages of a private education when they already have huge advantages associated having proper wealth.
"And surely the question should be, why does private education confer so many advantages?"
Its inevitable that if your child is at an independent school who have significantly more money to spend on each child and thus have smaller classes, amazing facilities, a myriad extra curricular activities etc etc that this will confer advantages on them when compared to state education where money is very tight.