One of the Labour party's more familiar zombie policies of recent years has been their various statements on independent education' and so it was no surprise when' at the Labour Party conference' Sir Keir Starmer resurrected Jeremy Corbyn's manifesto promise to put VAT on private school fees and remove the business rates relief which applies to many schools
Aside from the fact that those at the top of the Labour Party are often more against independent education when it applies to other people’s children rather than their own – Dianne Abbott and Shami Chakrabarti spring to mind – or indeed that many of them’ including both of the leaders above are products of private schools’ the policy itself was roundly rejected by voters at the last election and regular surveys show that over half of parents would send their children to a private school if they could afford to do so.
However’ it’s not hard to see why the policy keeps coming back. On the face of it’ it is a simple Robin Hood tactic: taxing the immensely rich schools’ or the equally rich parents who use them’ will generate billions of pounds for the treasury which can be used to invest in underfunded state education. At the stroke of a pen’ the problems of social inequality will be removed and the engine rooms of privilege and exclusion will be destroyed.
Even if you felt the above outcome was desirable’ the economic reality of the policy simply doesn’t stack up. The simple fact is that most independent schools’ local day schools that are small and without significant endowments or assets’ would struggle to cope VAT was imposed on their fees and would have to pass that cost onto parents. Parents at such schools are not overwhelmingly rich and many would drop out of the independent sector if fees went up by 20%; a reasonable estimate is that around a quarter of these parents would remove their children. So’ the suggested £1.7bn which would be raised through VAT is likely to be way above the real figure. Furthermore’ that 25% of departing children would of course return to the state sector which’ based on current per pupil funding’ would cost the state an extra £2.5bn to school them. So’ the policy would lead a net cost to the state of over a billion pounds.
Of course’ that level of financial analysis isn’t something that the Labour Party have spent too much time thinking about. The emotional pull of the policy is far more powerful than the reality of its implementation. For many of them’ the current and previous Prime Ministers embody all that is wrong with private schools and the perception is that an Eton education will catapult relative mediocrities into positions they would never reach if private schools were outlawed.
Again’ that notion somewhat ignores the reality of most independent schools and their customers. Over recent years’ the level of bursary funding has exceeded fee rises and schools are increasingly committed to widening participation from all sectors. Transformational bursary programmes are enabling more and more pupils to access an education that they would not otherwise be able to afford; this is not done out of lip service to charitable status but as a result of a deeply felt commitment to being part of the solution to social mobility problems. The vast majority of parents at independent schools are not superrich but make sacrifices to enable their children to attend our schools. And that’ for me’ is where the Labour Party’s policy is most misguided. All parents want the best education for their children. What the Labour Party could do most to enable this is to allow independent schools to continue to do their excellent partnership work with state schools and other groups to make outcomes better for all. Attacking private schools may satisfy an atavistic urge’ but it will not do anything to improve the standard of education for all across the country.