It’s hard to pinpoint the most egregious side effects of Rachel Reeves’s Budget so far, with its blizzard of bizarre policies fraught with unpleasant unintended consequences. Who do they most want to hurt? Business owners, farmers and parents who have the cheek to want the best education for their children are, naturally, first in line for a thrashing.
Some of Britain’s biggest employers in supermarkets and hospitality are claiming the budget will lose them billions which they warn will end up in food inflation and job cuts, and, according to a letter sent to Reeves from major names in the hospitality industry, “some jobs on the minimum wage will become unviable”. If there was an impact analysis done before the Budget, Labour aren’t keen to share it.
Their other flagship policy, imposing VAT on private school education, is causing mayhem for parents up and down the country. It’s the politics of envy fare, executed with spiteful precision. Imposing the sharp rise in fees in January, in the middle of the school year, means many children are having to leave their schools in part way through their GCSEs and A-levels.
It’s the politics of envy fare, executed with spiteful precision
Social media is aflame with parents describing how none of their local schools have places for their children. Not to mention the 100,000 SEN kids in private education without an Education Health and Care Plan who will be negatively affected and whose education, if they re-enter the state sector, will cost millions.
The tax is expected to raise £1.725billion a year, according to the Treasury, to go towards the public finances and help improve education and outcomes for young people, but, of course, as it all unfolds record numbers are now going to enter the state system which will eat away at any financial gains.
What I can’t understand is what people like Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson hate so much about parents wanting to sacrifice everything for their children’s education, while happily paying their share to subsidise the education of others. Yes, some parents who send their kids to private school are rich. But a lot aren’t.
Why not tax people who ski or who drive 4x4s? Isn’t spending your money on your children’s education something that should be applauded? If this Budget is a moral mission why didn’t Labour include a single tax hike on gambling companies or gig economy firms? This policy will make us the only country in Europe to tax education.
It’s a shame when you think how much the private education sector does charitably
And it’s a shame when you think how much the private education sector does charitably. More than 100 children at Eton pay no fees whatsoever. At some of London’s top schools, such as Latymer, one in four children is on a bursary with an average of 83 per cent remission in fees. Not to mention how many private schools share their facilities for free with local schools. How many parents now paying 20 per cent extra will look so favourably on schools offering such big discounts to less well-off children? Let’s see.
And as we all know, there are huge imbalances in schools in the state sector, with middle-class parents inevitably playing the system to make sure their children attend the best schools. How long until this means poorer kids get pushed into the least attractive ones?
And why, when Britain is on its knees, go after an industry that not only is the envy of the world but whose value to the economy is £16.5billion and which contributes tax revenues of £5.1billion a year already — enough to fund the average salary of more than 120,000 teachers. The number of jobs supported by the sector is more than 328,000 — equivalent to the staffing of Asda, Sainsbury’s and the Co-op combined. Why kneecap it now? Several private schools have closed already, citing the VAT policy. How many more will follow?
Staggeringly, now it’s not just private school children Phillipson is going after.
She has now put a halt to the plan for Eton to open three transformational sixth-form colleges in the north of England for disadvantaged children, a project the school was going to put its own money into. Middlesbrough was about to get a transformative sixth-form college helping disadvantaged children get into universities like Oxford, but, alongside 44 free schools that had been approved by the last government, it’s now been stopped in its tracks. In a statement, Phillipson argued that where free schools create damaging competition with existing schools they should not be allowed to open. Others would argue, of course, that by pushing standards up in one school others lift themselves up, too.
This anti-aspiration rhetoric is the problem we face with this Government. Whereas most people want equality to mean giving everyone the chance to succeed, we are now ruled by people who seem to want to ensure everyone has the same dismal outcomes.
This anti-aspiration rhetoric is the problem we face with this Government
In her socialist campaign for equality, Phillipson should be mindful how easy it is to legislate against excellence, and how much easier it is for governments to dismantle than to build.
If Labour really want to phase out private education in Britain, why not do so with a thoughtfully devised plan that gives parents and children time to adjust to the new reality? This feels ill thought-through and cruel to all the children who will now have to leave their schools at short notice.
And it’s a class war they’re still fighting which is so pointless because that battle has been won. It’s just ignorant to think all of the children educated at private schools these days are Bullingdon Bollinger-swigging bully boys. Proper blue-blooded aristocrats are an endangered species. Labour are the ruling class now. And now they’re the nasty ones.
Anna van Praagh is chief content officer at The Standard
