The Private Education Policy Forum says it will be fine to go ahead and tax education, like no other country in the world, because even if schools or parents won’t (or can’t) cough up, the schools can just transfer into the state system. The only thing these Marxists want is more people in state education, ideally on an ‘equal’ basis (equally atrocious is absolutely fine) so they don’t really care about the costs of this latest ploy, because they don’t care about any of the costs of their nihilistic destruction.
They do, however, unwittingly prove that this policy isn’t about raising revenue, it’s about destroying as many as possible of the world’s best schools.
Introducing PEPF
The PEPF claims it exists to “reduce inequalities relating to private schools and fee-paying education by platforming research and debate”. A couple of observations:
- You’ll note its cares about “inequality” – but there’s no mention at all of choice, quality, innovation or diversity (such as special needs provision, performing arts, or high-ability children who are notoriously poorly-served by mainstream schools). That’s quite a list of things not to care about if it was remotely interested in improving education outcomes for anyone.
- It does care about family, but only in the negative sense. If you read its turgid prose, you’ll realise that families that do terrific things for their children, which could include sending them to private school, are the selfish scum of the earth. Meanwhile where families do a less terrific job (in situations ranging from unlucky to blameworthy) you’ll find they don’t need help, encouragement, education, cajoling, better incentives or direction – so that they become better families – they just need the state to replace them.
- It doesn’t care about all inequality, however. The much greater inequality within the state system is absolutely fine. So privately-educated Francis Green and David Kynaston are totes in the clear for having sent their own children to grammar schools. Nice people.
These people are on a mission and it’s a simple one: trash the private schools. The connection between the Education Tax and improving education – for anyone – is for the birds.
The latest idea: nationalise the schools
So according to this Sunday Times article, private schools hit by VAT on fees could join state sector:
Private schools forced to close when VAT is levied on school fees could become state run under plans being developed by the architects of Labour’s flagship manifesto promise.
The Private Education Policy Forum… has advised Labour on its policy. … Francis Green first began working with Labour when the VAT policy was devised by Jeremy Corbyn in 2017. He and other PEPF members have since helped Bridget Phillipson, the Shadow Education Secretary, make it one of Labour’s core manifesto promises.
The PEPF is developing proposals that will look at “routes to conversion” for private schools that decide to join the state sector, particularly those left struggling with the increase in fees. A spokesman said that “changes to VAT and ethical imperatives among head teachers may encourage some schools to switch”.
Objectives of the Education Tax – a reminder
The aim of the Education Tax is to raise £1.51bn (according to Labour’s Manifesto, a little more than the IFS’s ludicrously optimistic £1.3-1.5bn estimate), in order to spend more on state education. Starmer says he wants private schools to thrive and we’re therefore asked to believe the Education Tax is a tidying-up exercise, a sensible revenue raiser, a nice little corner of life unsullied by Government that cannot be tolerated.
For the policy to raise £1.5bn, it has to be the case that only a very small number of children leave their schools, and all schools continue with their existing business, and no schools cut their costs. I’ve written at length about why this won’t work, for example here and here; it was catastrophic when the Greek Marxists tried it; the backers of the tax are completely and deliberately out-of-touch with its effects
Review of the latest from PEPF
So here we have the PEPF saying schools will indeed “struggle with the increase in fees” and could be “forced to close”. Never mind that it’s a departure from the script – consistency and the avoidance of hypocrisy clearly aren’t a big deal for Green and friends. What happens if some schools, or lots of schools, take up the suggestion and transfer themselves into the state sector?
Here’s my analysis, starting with the easy ones:
- A school switching to the state sector means the state earns nothing from the Education Tax.
- A school switching to the state sector means the state incurs immediate expenses:
- Per-child costs of around £8,000 a year.
- Losses on the direct, indirect and induced taxes generated by the independent sector, valued by Oxford Economics at £5.1bn a year or around £9,000 per child.
- The state also acquires the liability for the buildings, which may include Grade 1 listed architecture. Since we are always being told the buildings are so lavish because all schools are like Eton, the state has to choose: pay the utility bills and maintenance costs that go with them, face the expense of repurposing them, or break the law by letting them fall into disrepair. It’s just one of the elisions made in discussion of this tax: “Boo, your kids get educated in a 300-year-old palace.” Indeed they do, and that makes for a pretty impractical, uncomfortable and expensive operation, it’s not all a “privilege”. And now paying for it becomes a “privilege” for taxpayers.
- Since the school must operate on the state’s per-pupil costs, it will have to increase its pupil-teacher ratio (PTR). On average, state sector PTR is double the independent sector
- That probably implies a huge rebuild project to increase classroom capacity. And repurposing Grade 1 listings? A famously reasonably-priced activity, I’m sure local authorities can’t wait to add that to their priority list.
- It also implies doubling pupil headcount, raising the question of where those pupils will come from and what will be the impact on the surrounding state schools. Reducing the closure risk of under-populated state schools, in future (given predictions of falling rolls) and in some areas (many others being heavily oversubscribed), is transparently one of the drivers of the policy. Is it okay if state schools now close in this instance, given the gleeful triumph the PEPF will feel when an independent school is nationalised?
- Or, it implies halving teacher headcount, raising again the question of whether the PEPF or Labour Party has the courage to look teachers in the eye. Is this the first time a Labour Party has taken such an anti-labour position?
- Moving to reduced funding implies reduced pay for teachers, particularly senior ones, and thus a reduction in payroll tax receipts. ‘Labour’ indeed.
- Unless the school becomes a free school or grammar school (which is most unlikely as Labour will block it) it will lose control of admissions. It cannot be assumed that parents will sign up to it. This is typical Stalinist thinking. PEPF imagine schools, families and children are just like little Lego people, and they can move an entire school onto a different footing without affecting either attendance or the local education economy. Maybe half the parents do a runner and the state is left holding a sub-scale school and has to pay redundancy costs.
- Of course, you might answer that it’s okay if the school just closes, and the state gets a boondoggle in the form of the land, which it can then dispose of at will. A few problems with that:
- A privately-owned school will definitely not voluntarily part with valuable land at below market-price.
- A charity, if it has valuable land ‘to spare’ is more than likely to have sold it or developed it for rent already to stay afloat; it’s not clear that it will quietly ‘give’ the land to the country at no charge, or whether the Board can be assumed to agree to do so, or even whether its charitable objects would allow it to do so.
- Developing land within the curtilage of a Grade 1 listing is likely to be against the law – and it’s not immediately obvious what valuable alternate purpose those buildings themselves can be used for. They aren’t very practical as mansions for oligarchs, and it’s unlikely there’s much demand as ultra-luxury hotels or golf courses.
All in all, it’s yet another part of the Education Tax Policy that needs to be filed in the cabinet labelled “not figured out yet”.
Conclusion
Anyone remotely serious about improving state schools would have started by looking at ways to do so without spending money, noting some schools in both sectors produce world-class outcomes on meagre resources. However, if we accept for argument’s sake that the key is, indeed, to spend money, the next question is how to raise it.
Anyone remotely serious about improving state schools by spending money would want to raise money in the most predictable, least harmful way – and not choose a tax that risks forcing significant expense back into the state system thus soaking up its own revenues.
The PEPF enthusiasm for absorbing independent schools into the state system, at great expense and with hefty risks, tells us it is not serious about improving state schools. Its approval of this costly scenario doesn’t persuade anyone that it has ‘all bases covered’ for the policy, it just proves it’s a terrible policy.
It is only serious about closing private schools. That’s what it considers an “ethical imperative”. At any cost.
Mr. Chips is a pseudonym for an employee of a private school. He writes on Substack.
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Actually pretty funny really. I don’t think he should be punished for private messages between friends.
He should be punished for being a slimy, hypocritical, corrupt bastard though.
I disagree with the personal messages bit,
someone in his position should be painfully aware than no comments on the Internet are personal anymore, saying anything online or on here is not personal, whisper it in someone’s ear if you want it to be personal.
At least now his future job,if any,will be emptying bins not joking about them!
Quite agree, Dings. Nothing’s personal once it’s out there on t’internet. If these had been posted on social media then things might have been even worse for him. As you say, say what you like among friends in person or on a call, but politicians should be held to a higher standard than other people. The guy comes across as a Grade A dickwad. A nasty pasty indeed. Just one among many, though, when it comes to that godawful party.
And his penalty…six months on the back benches for being naughty and then a nice, quiet sinecure. Or a quick shunt to the Lords.
He needs pelted with rotten cabbages by his neighbours and slung in the back of a bin lorry, off to the land fill. Arse-weasel.
And the loss of salary, with more to come if he’s expelled from the Party and won’t be elected again at the next GE.
Nah! They wil find him a quango job. His future iis assured just as they did for Stephen Byers.
“I’ve served the Labour Party all my life”
What he really meant was…
“I’ve taken the piss and filled my pockets all my life.”
Oh yes punish a man who utters a few words, yes let’s punish him. Meanwhile your current gov’t removed winter fuel allowance to thousands of elderly, placed vat on private school fees, slapped inheritance tax on the people who grow our food, and wrote an online safety act to prevent you from free speech, jailed people for writing something on social media. But yes, by all means let’s punish the mp who uttered a few words. The Uk is a joke.
Malcolm Tucker MP
Except he’s worse than Tucker, he was only fictional.
And Sir Two-Tier has the sheer blind effrontery to bleat on about the Far Right.
Pure comedy gold. Cosmic Political Sketchwriter on good form.
Most insightful thing to come out of Labour Head Office since Not Flash Gordon and the recording device left on in the official limo outside the loyal Labour voter’s house.
Wonderful to see a madleft lump of slime slithering out into the daylight.
Yes, he needs maximum humiliation, that one. I hope he gets lots of flack from the public as a result of this. He might want to leave the house wearing a disguise or lay low for a while..until the next Labour scandal takes the heat off him.
Ladies and gentlemen: what this episode reveals is the true, unfiltered nature of the Left.
The views of this guy are not an anomaly, not specific to one rogue individual, not some silly careless remark after a beer too many.
No. These are the views of most leftist politicians.
If anybody thinks that Marx, Lenin, Mao gave a monkey’s about the working class, just look at the fruits of their actions.
I have it on extremely good authority that Debbie Abrahams MP, Oldham East and Saddleworth, who relies on the muslim vote for her election and particularly the muslim bloc postal vote actually detests the people she relies on for her life of luxury.
Yes we can see how Union members attack people as ‘Far Right’, who want control of our boarders.
And which is the Nasty Party again?
Well here’s an ‘interesting’ party;
”Pro Islam party launched in Birmingham
Notorious Islamic Lawyer Akhmed Yakoob and ‘muslim activist’ Shakeel Afsar have started the INDEPENDENT CANDIATE ALLIANCE
– They will be targeting the Muslim Bloc vote
– Expect Labour to start pandering heavily to keep them on side”
https://x.com/Basil_TGMD/status/1888305927746437423
This will drive the Anti-white Party (the Labour Party) into paroxysms of anger, fear, and despair. And our anti-white government will rush to introduce Muslim blasphemy laws, and to demonise patriots and supporters of free-speech.
Already happening and will inevitably get worse.
Indeed. Further to my post on loonies running around with knives and chasing girls in Reading the other day, this one’s been caught. By members of the public, I hasten to add. Looks like your typical Labour voter, if not then one of these Muslim independents will welcome him, I’m sure;
”You may have seen my story about an armed man allegedly chasing after women and girls in Reading.
He was caught by two locals with a massive knife on him and is in custody.”
https://x.com/DaveAtherton20/status/1888543090740191736
While it would actually help them if they criticised them more, and ended the Woke mind virus. But that won’t happen.
The muslim vote has decided to cut out the middle man ie Labour and take the gravy for themselves. It’s already happened in Oldham. I posted on here months ago that if there is another GE the Labour Party will be toast because they are loosing the muzzie vote in vast numbers.
I’m guessing that’s why they’ve gone ‘warp speed’ in the brown-nosing department with all of this talk of ”Islamophobia” and further censorship. Reminds me of this;
https://x.com/dsisme48/status/1888546985302536409
I wonder how common is this disdain for vaters in MPs of all stripes. It has floated to the top in this case, as it did with G Brown and the “bigotted woman”.
Massive given they only have to be nice to us once every 5 years. Note how completely detached the vast majority are from the views of the ordinary people – you know, the Far Right. Probably 90% favour doing nothing on immigration for a start.
True and we sometimes forget that the Muslim vote is made up of different who hate each other as well.
‘start pandering’? They have been doing that for years as they ignore the rape gangs.
Seems to me there are more grounds to prosecute this man tan the hundreds (?) wo were persecuted for posting about the murder, many of whom turned out to be right and the government’s spin was wrong.
He is completely safe as they dare not hold a bye bye election. They must be dreading any of their MPs dying, especially in a Red Wall seat.
So that makes three ministers gone from the Student Union government already.
A YouTuber who made humorous if impolite comments like the lovely Mr Andrew Gwynne has made (but in his case about our Great Leader) was arrested last week and held In a Police cell overnight. I presume Mr Gwynne will be likewise arrested later tonight….
He is a nasty piece of work. I hope he never comes back to public life.
It was Judge Tan Ikram who boasted of imprisoning those policemen for exactly this. Will this case go to court, with T.I. as the judge? Don’t hold your breath.
This news has been a bit of a shock to me – I don’t mean about most MPs being two-faced, lying, greedy, self-serving slime bags – but that it is about him. I always thought he was a decent, honest, hardworking individual, one of the rare gems, who frequent the halls of Westminster. He is not. He is a great disappointment. I am also disappointed with myself. I thought I was a better judge of character in identifying such folk but I have failed myself.
My first reaction to these WhatsApp messages is how unbelievably childish…. How ignorant not to know WhatsApp isn’t safe too. What kind of calibre are these people given power over us? A grown man pissing about on his phone about old people and their dustbins says it all.
I smiled at a couple of the remarks. It’s not appropriate for an MP to express them in a shareable medium, so I suppose the punishment was warranted, but I don’t want my ‘side’ becoming as humourless as the other.
Oh dear, no one dose has uttered the few words this man did. He is the drip, drip, feature of tge news the past few days. Don’t worry britain. Rome is burning but your best and brightest are very busy crucifying a Mp who uttered a few words. The country is a shambles.