Labour’s flagship private schools tax is one of the worst policies of all time
Back when I was teenager at a north London comprehensive, I was stridently in favour of abolishing private schools in the kind of earnest way only a 16-year-old can muster.
In the seven years I was at secondary school, there was only one school play, vandals burned down our sports pavilion (never rebuilt) and some boys in the year above went to prison for murder. No, this isn’t a lost Monty Python Four Yorkshiremen sketch, just a fairly average state school.
But now that Labour has decided to take aim at private schools, the teenage angst has dissipated and the People’s Republic of East Finchley has been disbanded.
In an election devoid of any real policy detail, Labour’s plans to add VAT to school fees and remove schools’ business rates exemption is increasingly unravelling.
The policy is flawed in so many ways. Most simply, a tax on education just doesn’t feel right.
You get the impression it isn’t the kind of plan that sits naturally with Sir Keir Starmer who, now infamously, attended a grammar school in Surrey which became independent during his time there (though he didn’t pay any fees himself).
Labour has long wanted to raid the private sector. Back in 1997, New Labour abolished the Assisted Places scheme, launched by Margaret Thatcher’s government, which helped fund 75,000 bright children from lower-income backgrounds.
And in 2019, under Jeremy Corbyn, conference delegates endorsed a plan that would have effectively abolished private schools altogether. Rachel Reeves, who will become chancellor next week, has previously Tweeted that “we should work to abolish private education”.
But already the wheels are beginning to shake on Sir Keir’s lightweight version. Increasingly, it looks like he’s only clinging onto the plan as a sop to the left wing of his party.
It is now expected the changes will not come into effect until autumn 2025 and you can bet that there will be a whole host of carve-outs when reality hits.
Already, some children with special education needs will be exempt, as will 32 state boarding schools. It seems highly far less money will end up being raised than Labour estimates.
Even if it did get enough cash to fund the 6,500 new “expert” teachers the manifesto says the policy would fund, it’s hard to see how much of a difference that would make across Britain’s roughly 21,000 primary schools and 4,200 secondary schools.
What it certainly will achieve is pushing out the just-about-managing parents who are bending over backwards to keep up with school fees which rose 8pc last year, without any VAT being applied.
Bursaries will also be cut and so private schools will become even more exclusive, while class sizes in the state sector will be fit to burst.
The aim should be to improve all our schools, not take wild swings at our world-renowned independent sector in a vain bid to keep Labour’s more radical members happy that they’re still fighting the good red fight.
Hopefully Sir Keir will see sense on July 5 and focus his mind on the battles actually worth fighting.
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