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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Looking at the polls it seems that increasing numbers of people are waking up to the fact that anything that Labour touches is toxic. Economy, energy, education, immigration etc. They literally haven’t put a foot right.
Just wait until the formal recession hits and unemployment shoots up. Labour will then be sub 20% in the polls. Reform will be the main beneficiaries.
Reform already are.
The only question remaining is how to get the Student Union party out of Westminster. And make sure we destroy the Tory party on the way
Don’t forget Whitehall, the deep state that you can’t vote out. Doomwatch is on tonight on TPTV. It often reminds me of Yes Minster the way they clash with officials.
I think the Tories are doing a good job of destroying themselves – as are Labour.
That this government would be nothing but Wokezilla on the rampage was the plan from the start. This mirrors a political plan brought forward to the German Greens by a so-called independent journalist when it became clear that their governing didn’t exactly make them more popular with the electorate (before the coalition collapsed): You have until the next election to ram through whatever of your policies you can. Make sure to use this chance to save a planet!
It’s clear to me that this government does not have a constructive plan at all: just a laundry list of destructive policies compiled by immature, intellectually and morally bereft, grievance apparatchiks. In a sane world they would be jailed for what they are doing.
bankruptcy beckons
16 year olds to get vote ? Did I get this right ?
But… reports from both sides of the Atlantic say that Gen Z – those under age 25, have turned away from the Left towards conservatism.
Giving 16 year olds the vote, might not produce the outcome the Labour-loonies hope.
Contrast this:
Now repeat with rejuvenated faith: Two-tier justice is nothing but right-wing conspiracy theory!
In case your faith in that wasn’t rejuvenated, a Crown Prosecution Service near you might have to have an interview with you.
But the marine is white, and male he needs to check his privilege. Whereas Mr Rudakaba or whatever is a diverse and beautiful but opressed man who was just expressing his frustration with the cultural insensitivity shown to him by those little girls dancing to Taylor Swift.
As our betters tell us we are bad, white colonialists who must pay for the colour of our skin and our ancestors.
Laurie’s reference to those who pleaded guilty to their on-line ‘offences’ got me thinking. I’m just wondering whether the PM’s references to them as ‘criminals’ before a trial may have had a subliminal effect on their plea. Just a thought.
they pled guilty because to do otherwise they could have been held on remand in jail for months or even years awaiting trial, this was how the Government and judiciary got away with what they did. including having the blood on their hands of the man who killed himself.
But as they have no conscience they don’t let it worry them
What if his language is unrelentingly negative?
“So what are you in for then?”
“For unrelentingly negative language.”
“Didn’t know that was a crime.”
“Nor did I, until the police came to arrest me…”
In an attempt to appear reasonable, stating that he was speaking up against illegal immigrants only and not the legal ones invites the idea that protesting against legal migration and being very negative about it is wrong and not to be allowed.
But who are we kidding. There really is no free speech in Britain. It’s an island of serfs who didn’t know they were serfs but some are beginning to realise they are.
“Unrelenting negative” = free speech.
is Buffy paying costs?
Is Buffy short for Buffoon, I wonder.
Well, she’s run away from Twitter in the last couple of months, so there’s that.
I expect Buffy Williams will be resigning.
Can the police sue the CPS for wasting police time? Can Jamie get compensation for wasting his time and damaging his mental health given that is all the rage these days. I understand that the elite were using remand as a punishment – look at what the DemoTwats did to the J6 political prisoners given that many were still on remand when Donald released them. However, they should have gone before a jury of their peers.
HURRAH FOR FSU
And well done that man. The f***ing state of things, it makes me sick.
Well stood up for yourself, Royal Marine.
Meanwhile Sir Two Tier bleats on about the far right from a position of cognitive bias well toward the far left.
Human rights lawyer and former DDP who cares not one jot for the human rights of legitimate protestors leaned on by Plod to plead guilty to avoid months on remand.
Not for nothing is the law known as the last refuge of the scoundrel.
Thank you so much Free Speech Union team. You’re our guardian angels.
Excellent. It shows the value of juries – “we the people” have had enough of this nonsense.
This is fantastic news! Well done to the Free Speech Union lawyers and all involved in the fight to obtain justice for that veteran warrior.
It is salutary to think that if Lord Toby hadn’t founded The Free Speech Union, that former Royal Marine Jamie Michael wouldn’t have had a chance against the Leftist/ Globalist/ Marxist “Common Purpose” Subversives pervading our entire government, society and legal system.
It’s scandalous that many protestors were induced to plead guilty. It’s not dissimilar to the plea bargains system which puts so many people in gaol in the USA.
You should be able to plead not guilty without an adverse effect on your sentence
Well done to the Jury who found him Not Guilty.