If the government bought out all the private school…

[Tiredalwaystired]

inspired by the thread where a parent was incredulous when they investigated their local state school and really liked it after sending their kid to private school until now without having investigated state at all.

Imagine a world where we decided there was no more private/state school divide.

Imagine the government bought out all the private schools exactly as they are - same teachers, class sizes etc.

But instead of being exclusive anyone could now apply and they had the same admission requirements as any other school.

Would you be happy with this arrangement? Would you have any concerns?

Even if they didn't have to buy the assets, in order for the school to continue to run in the same way the government would need to match the running cost. It's not the buildings which result in private schools giving a better education!

So the government would need to increase per child funding from £7k per child to £20k per child. (Best case, since £7k average includes the state spending for children with very high needs. If the average child currently costs £5k then that's an even bigger jump). And if you increase the funding for that school, then it would need to be matched across all schools in the UK.

So they would need to triple the state education budget from £105billion to £315 billion, ie an extra £210billion.

Increasing basic income by 1p raises £6.2billion.
Increasing higher tax by 1p raises £1.3billion.
Increasing additional tax by 1p raises £0.12billion.

So increasing basic income tax to 47%, higher rate tax to 67% and additional rate tax to 72% (plus National insurance and all other existing taxes of course) would do it. Well, if it didn't change behaviour, that is - which it probably would.

Much as I would love every child in the UK to have an amazing education, I don't think that's a good balance for the UK's finances.

I was responding to the OP which specifically says that, in this thought experiment, the class sizes are being kept the same.

Would they be LA schools or academies?

The state sector is not equal at all. Islington Borough couldn’t force an academy school to close with a falling roll and had to instead close a better performing LA one. It was litigated. They can’t control church schools either who own and run their own admissions.

Much of state education is already semi privatised anyway.

That's fortunate for your child.

The state senior school place we were offered, even Ofsted said it wasn't safe, that bullying was rife, that staff had no idea who was on site. They wound the trust up 12 months later. For us, there was no alternative. If necessary, I would have moved county to give ds something else, but with stamp duty, that would have cost more.

Oh, the government would actually need an extra £10billion for the children currently educated privately and currently funded £0 by the government, whose parents would likely now go state.

So an extra 1.5% on each rate of tax.

We're now at 48.5% basic income tax, 68.5% higher rate tax and 73.5% additional rate tax + NI and other taxes.

More if some people change their behaviour to work less since the reward is less.

In terms of teaching Maths and English, our local church state school is as good as the local private school, despite having much larger class sizes.
What the state school does not offer is academic selection - in state, the kids who cannot learn quickly or have SEN get more attention. Parents in the private school openly state everyone there gets the same amount of teaching time. The private also offers a much broader curriculum especially in sport, art, DT and music and science/humanities at primary level. In state, the teachers don’t have the time to get through the national curriculum for all AND teach more broadly.
In secondary, private is academically selective and sets a bit more but mainly the extra curricular is better and they get lots of school trips. Pure academics and grades - I think the local grammars are better anyway.

What would be better is to turn the private into a huge after school and holiday centre for deprived children and have SEN there during the day in smaller class sizes.

So where I live your idea wouldn’t achieve much unless they had to take all SEN and FSM and they get smaller class sizes.

A school near me went from private to a free school so basically what you describe.

The only differences from other schools in the city is that they are 'all through' and offer boarding and 'long days' that parents pay for.

theroyalschool.ovw9.devwebsite.co.uk/

Ah I didn't spot that.
Yes you are right, that's an unrealistic part of OP's thought experiment.

I would have concerns because I wouldn't understand why the state was paying huge amounts more for some pupils to be in small classes with longer days and extra things, over other pupils. It would feel not fair.

I understand that the current system is some pupils are already in smaller classes with longer days based and extra stuff based on parents ability to pay which is very unfair too but I dont mind that.

I dont know why I prefer the parents paying for the unfairness over the state paying for the unfairness. I think it's because I wouldn't personally be paying towards the unfairness through taxes.

I feel that the state has different duties to parents and some of the things the state would be paying for if they took over private schools, are not necessary they are nice to have and therfore not for the tax payer to cover the cost of.

I think the really high earners would then move abroad or reduce hours so it wouldn't be great from an income tax perspective.

If the government had that much money available for education, I would rather it be used to improve existing state schools.

I think you could be right even for those in more normal high-earning professions like doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, IT workers and even middle-earning professionals like experienced teachers (very in demand in the ME).

With the tax rates I listed as needed for that education spending, a £100k salary would result in £45k take home pay (£3.7k per month) and a £200k salary would result in £67k take home pay (£5.5k per month).

Lower tax countries would become more appealing during a professional's peak earning years.

I rather have a choice because the type of government that would propose something like this would probably want to tell my kids how to vote and make them vote since very young. May be even be brainwashed . I want my kids to think for themselves and be critical thinkers. I want the state out of it.

Labour DID propose this at a previous conference and guess who voted in favour?! They then realised they couldn't realistically do it but this desire underpins everything about them

No. I wouldn’t be happy because it would be a misuse of tax payers money.

Funding should be per pupil not weighted towards certain schools so there would no way to continue their existing operations without further depriving state schools.

Also those schools will be located in more privileged areas so you haven’t got much greater chance of spreading the admissions to less privileged areas anyway.

If you what to abolish private schooling that’s an entirely seperate idea.

I realise you said 'imagine', but even if the government could afford to buy all the private schools, how would they then also afford to pay enough (or indeed find enough) teachers to keep the class sizes small? If all the already-state schools were also to have small class sizes, you'd need even more money and teachers. Oh and a load more classrooms/schools tp teach the extra classes in. If this were possible, the government could reduce class sizes already now in state schools, without even taking over private schools.

Dont get me wrong the privilege of some private schools re contacts etc real however I think the bigger problem is the state school divide (but many MNs won't admit this).

There are hundreds of schools in the UK where MC parents pat themselves on the back as their children are at outstanding leafy secondaries. These schools are funded by additional money from parents, those parents are buying advantage in a similar way to private school parents. There is definitely 2 or even 3 tier state schooling in this country.

So no, your idea would just exasperate the divide. Parents will use every resource they have to make things better for their children and will move into those ex private school areas as push house prices ££££.

The better and fairest thing we could do would be to overhaul the admissions system and spread pupils at all schools in an area to try and raise standards for everyone.

The government can’t afford to fund the state schools properly so once fees stopped private schools would have the same issues as state schools.

Changing state school funding to match the money put into private schools would work better but where do you get that from?

My DD’s school aspires to be needs blind (it’s a girls school, so no ancient and valuable endowments etc) and says they’ve not turned down a girl who passed the exam because they also needed a bursary. So let’s imagine it just continues on that path - it would be great.

But if it had to stop being academically selective (or do it in the very tick box way that grammars use), stick to the National Curriculum, expand class sizes, reduce pastoral care/counselling/SEN support, cut back on sport/music/drama etc then it wouldn’t be the same school. We had a choice of super selective grammar or private, and chose private for all those reasons.

I’ve also seen an excellent private school becoming a failing state school - it happened very quickly. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-67471954.amp

Sounds good, they have similar systems in Russia, Iran, North Korea and they all have good ideologies...

How many children do we think there are in the country who wouldn't benefit from small class sizes, a wider curriculum, better facilities and more pastoral support and individual attention?

If all children would benefit from this, then by what means is it fair that some have it and some don't?

Under capitalism, richer people get nicer things. Under socialism everyone is supposed to get a single average standard (though in practice in any country which tries to enact this, nicer things tend to go to party members or the social elite by some other means either underhand or overt)

So you can stick with the capitalist model and allow the rich to buy a better quality of educational experience or you can bulldozer through what makes the expensive schools more appealing and flatten them down to the level of all the other schools to make them as average as possible.

I don’t get why they are attacking this particular area of "the rich get a better service" and not doing the same in health care where people's lives are at stake.

ducks before I say this but…

One of the reasons that private schools are popular is because the pupils are more likely to be well behaved and motivated. People want their kids in that atmosphere.

Parents who are involved/ motivated to seek out a private school, and who have the funds to pay for it (ducks again), are more likely to have kids who don’t disrupt the class and who motivate others to learn, regardless of academic selection.

Remove that and you remove a lot of the shine.

First hand experience here... the kids are still kids and are not at all necessarily well behaved little sweethearts, they do cause trouble and grief. With being smaller classes generally there is a lot more interaction between parents and teachers/head teachers, so the problems tend to get nipped in the bud a lot quicker. DS2 was what we saw as more of a disruptive, mischievous, not academic child, but due to regular meetings and feedback and reward schemes came out with amazing exam results. Is now in management earning 90k at 25.
Nearly killed us financially and physically working all hours under the sun (and moon) but very glad we can look back on it with some gratefulness we were able.

One of the problems with the state system is the inability for it to keep children safe from criminal behaviour. I want to know that if a child is violent or commits sexual assault to either staff or peers that they will be removed from that setting as a parent. While individual schools can be better or worse at this, national policies make this trickier for state schools to implement than private. The school would become subject to these policies when converting to a state school.

There is a state school not far from here that has amazing facilities - swimming pool, riding stables, acres of rolling parkland, extensive extra curricular etc. There is still a thriving private sector locally. Also the, absolutely rammed into a tiny site and huge numbers of kids, church school is far more popular. Really the main driver behind this is the disproportionate number of children at rolling parkland school who display challenging behaviour having sent by the LA.

What I learnt from this is that parents are more bothered about educating their children with families who have similar values to them than the shiny stuff in both state and private sector!

Depending on the way the funding change hits you could also see less subject choice, reduced support for arts/sports, lower quality childcare run by outside providers.

My concern would be whether it levelled down rather than up
Having sent our DC Private because the local State Comp was really awful while I would welcome more resources etc for State I am very glad I am able to pay for my DC not to have to face some of the issues at the State Comp.
I am actually a Governor at The Comp so do actually have a good idea about what goes on there. There are many many kids who just shouldn't be in mainstream as they can't cope and neither can the school.
That Comp does not have sets and the idea is that the more able kinds raise the standards of the other kids but based on research I have seen and the opinions of several Teacher friends it can be a detriment to the more able kids and that would be my concern about the whole idea I think