Just this week I wrote of my dissatisfaction with journalists giving Labour an easy ride on its “stress tests” and allowing Keir Starmer wrongly to assert there are “no reports” indicating a migration from the independent to the free taxpayer-funded sector following a 20% price hike.
I’m not a massive GB News viewer, but the more people complain about it the more I’m glad it exists. Actually, over Christmas with Mum I watched an enchanting GB News programme with professional musicians trying out exquisite violins, cellos and pianos and talking about them. No overpaid dumbing-down dimwit newly-graduated from children’s telly, no special effects or jingles, just simple production with interesting people talking and playing their instruments, as I sensed it, directly to me.
Back to the subject: here’s a great three minute 45 second GB News clip from Camilla Tominey.
I don’t know about you, but Bridget Phillipson (Shadow Education Secretary) doesn’t fill me with confidence as she recites the gospel according to the IFS in defence of the state producer’s interest. You can hear her concern for the state schools which (she says) are “very sadly” demographically projected to be short of pupils, while she shows total disinterest in the effect on independent schools, families and most importantly children. She’s on about “tax breaks” and repeatedly fails to respond even to the “best case” 20,000 migration in light of current teacher and classroom shortages.
I could start watching more of this. Camilla, give me a call and I’ll give you much more ammo for your next barrage.
I don’t want to get into the immigration debate (nor do I even have very strong views about it) but the track record of local authorities predicting and responding to changing demand for school places isn’t exactly stellar. In theory we have a handle on who is born and expect to give them a school place a few years later; we are much less good at knowing who is arriving next year by boat or on a student visa, and we definitely don’t know how schools and families will respond to a 20% tax hike. It’s been painful for immigrant families and for their neighbours, all of which is regrettable. My impression is Phillipson’s okay with the VAT pain as long as she’s hurting ‘the rich’.
I wonder if British families no longer able and willing to pay school fees will be offered a good place at a decent state school that ‘works’ for their domestic and professional arrangements, so that they can continue being significant taxpayers without the deadweight cost of an unnecessary house move? Or will it suffice, in Bridget Phillipson’s opinion, for their local authority to give them ‘any place’ given all the good state schools are, as Tominey reminds her, chock-full? That could have bearing on my main bugbear – wondering if moderately affluent people will still choose the inconvenience of work once they start receiving kids’ education for free paid-for by taxpayers.
Or will there be a place at all?
What’s also revealing is Phillipson’s commentary that independent schools can instead “make savings”, having put fees up above inflation (around 20% in real terms over 12 years). As I’ve explained, if the schools absorb the VAT increase, there’s much less money in it for Labour, and some schools will very likely still have to close.
I know somebody else who has put fees up. Up by 20% in real terms in just four years, and slated to keep rising. To paraphrase Bridget Phillipson, surely this is unaffordable for her constituents as well as for GB News viewers?
That’s right, I’m talking about the Government, where although we can sack the boss, we can’t escape paying the next one. Can we look forward to Government cutting its cloth, as she is demanding of the private sector? I’m guessing not. What’s ours is hers, and what’s hers is hers. Clause 4 stuff.
Now I’m not in this for party politics. I’m just calling for the Labour Party to adopt an education policy that is consistent with the modern, competent, innovative future Starmer “I want independent schools to thrive” and Rachel Reeves “taxation will not lead to prosperity” talk about. That means not harming children and families, not pitting working families against each other and not harming good schools.
I’m struggling to square that with what this interview suggests: bad old-fashioned “public ownership of production”. Perhaps they’ll have a re-think.
Mr. Chips is a pseudonym for an employee of a private school. He writes on Substack.
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