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

I don't think this is the moment for the U.K. to make it even less comfortable for a large chunk of net contributors to the tax base. Personally I have lost several friends since the Brexit vote all of whom privately educate their children and all of whom were high earning net contributors with advanced degrees. If you make private school completely unaffordable then those who stay will park themselves right next to the good state schools and push prices even higher or they will leave the U.K. altogether. The U.K. has to address the real brain drain effect of Brexit and convince those who are net contributors to stay not further alienate them.

All this would do is close a lot of independent schools. The pupils who would then need educating in already full state schools.

So it would raise a certain amount from those pupils who are from seriously loaded families but then put a bigger strain on an already strained education system.
Extra schools would need to be built.

So I wouldn't be banking on £2.5billion. In fact I think it could end up costing more than it would raise.

Absolutely crazy

Another thing,

if middle class DCs had to move to state schools, their mums, who only work to contribute to school fees will give up their jobs. The state will lose their income tax contributions, but have to fund their school places @doublewhammy.

happy, I don't think any of those are the reasons private schools do better, except possibly smaller class sizes. I recently moved schools from state (RI) to private and I've found it is incredibly similar, almost scarily so. The vast majority of better things here cost very little money to implement but aren't politically acceptable.

For clarity, when I say "better" I mean students getting higher grades.

Isabella through work I’ve been involved in state schools and £38k pa boarding schools I have found that two are “scarily” disimiliar. The thing that I have also realised is that most parents in both sectors don’t know what’s actually going on.
I listened to a couple of parents talking about 1 state school whose day to day activities I’m very familiar with they had no idea what was going on, obviously it’s not my role to enlighten 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.

Who was suggesting who could only manage the local uni?

The suggestion was that excellent universities open satellite campuses in areas with no local university. Coventry University opened one in Scarborough so it’s not without precedent.

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

The evidence of PISA is that systems where schools compete produce better results for pupils than systems where they do not. And getting schools to compete does not necessarily mean that some will fail. It is not a zero sum game.

Prh Exam results are a zero sum game. If one school goes up in progress 8, another goes down.

What is progress 8?

The new way of measuring schools. It compares each student's GCSE grades against the national average for students who had the same KS2 profile. If they did better than the average, their score is positive, worse and it's negative. The score for the students in each school is averaged and posted in league tables.

Each student's first entry grades. Not the grades they actually leave with.

I don’t think I’d hold the PISA up as the way forward for UK education. I know enough about Singaporean education (which consistently tops the PISA league tables) to know that it’s not how I would want my children to be educated.

Regardless of the taxation mechanism ............ it is one of those ideas that is laden with unintended consequences.

Exactly this. The lefties would love the soundbites, but people who actually have common sense would know it will end up with detrimental unforeseen consequences.

Just like how the increase in the highest rate of IT to 50% reduced tax take and the subsequent reduction to 45% increased it. Just like how the removal of personal allowance at incomes over £100k was congratulated by the luvvies/lefties, which has led to GP/dentist shortage (as they work fewer hours to avoid a punitive 62% marginal tax rate).

The lefties need to learn to think about the consequences and aim for changes that actually improve things, rather than constantly fall for the headline grabbing initiatives which they love as they "punish" the rich yet cause damage in the big picture.

The suggestion was that excellent universities open satellite campuses in areas with no local university. Coventry University opened one in Scarborough so it’s not without precedent.

In principle it sounds like a good idea. Even earlier precedent has been to place new medical schools in areas with dire NHS quality of service / recruitment problems. However, look at the offer from Coventry at Scarborough www.coventry.ac.uk/cus/courses/ shows it is barely greater than the teacher training dept of Hull University which it replaced. Basically, it says come with minimal qualifications and you can pass any of courses without any exams. How many good quality academics are going to relocate to teach there?

If one school goes up in progress 8, another goes down

Progress8 is more complex than that. What matters is attainment versus the national average for schools with similar prior attainment (i.e. attainment when pupils enter the school). One school achieving higher levels is not enough to force another school down - one school on its own won't budge the national average. However, if a lot of schools achieve a higher level it will result in those schools that haven't progressed moving down. But it is also possible for all schools to improve equally, in which case their Progress8 scores will remain unaltered.

I don’t think I’d hold the PISA up as the way forward for UK education

PISA is, of course, just a test to show how well education systems perform. Research has identified a number of features that lead to higher performance. There are a number of features of the Singapore system, including, I suspect, those features you don't like, that are not linked with high performance.

Stupid idea, a lot of mc people pay school fees but may remortgage house or struggle.

One school achieving higher levels is not enough to force another school down

No, obviously the numbers are bigger than that, but it is inaccurate to say that it’s not a zero sum game, schools can’t all be better than average.

In addition, if lots of pupils do well in an exam, the grade boundaries are lowered.

And actions of local schools can affect schools in the surrounding area. For example School X is boys-only. It becomes mixed, and local girls who would have gone to other schools now go to School X. Girls achieve more highly across the board at GCSE so school X improves its results and the other schools go down.

Even if someone is well off, it's hardly fair that they have to pay for their own childrens educations, and in so doing are contributing towards bursaries which does help a good number of children have the education they/their parents want, and then on top there's a 25% tax levy on their school - someone is going to have to pay for that, them or the school will close!

The lefties need to learn to think about the consequences and aim for changes that actually improve things, rather than constantly fall for the headline grabbing initiatives which they love as they "punish" the rich yet cause damage in the big picture

The rich ultimately don't get punished it is the mc and poorer section of societies who end up paying the price.

Why do you think students cannot afford to leave Home to get to the very best universities noble. This is plainly not true. Courses offered in these satellite universities are not as good and, as far as I can see, have lower entrance qualifications. You seem to think that’s ok. If is exactly why social mobility stalls. Local universities in towns where there is little local need are not suitable for better students.

Actually it is the richer people in society who pay the vast majority of the tax. It is the less well off who received the most from the government. They just don’t think it’s enough!

The Singaporean education system like much of South Asia is a tutor obsessed results obsessed education system. Children are extensively tutored outside of school in key subjects and results and competing against other schools is the main driving factor for ,earning. nothing is learnt unless it’s too obtain excellent passes in exams or beat another school. This could not be further removed what I believe education is all about.

This could not be further removed what I believe education is all about.

All well and good being philosophical, but having a brilliant "all round" education doesn't get you a decent job - for that, you need the qualifications, which is what further/higher education and employers are looking for. Ideally, we should have both, but in today's real world, I think people are better having a good set of qualifications so at least they can get a good job and have options, including more time/money to learn for fun as an adult.

You seem to think that’s ok.

it’s not my suggestion, Bubbles but I thought it worth discussion. I’d rather you stopped the snide remarks tbh because it’s not furthering the conversation.