Who swamped the comps? Not us
Labour promise parents a "welcome in a brilliant state school" but then blame parents for seeing if there's even a place - helpfully, proving the essential need for the independent sector
As this article in iNews says Labour has promised every child “a welcome in a brilliant state school”. Hmm.
The Education Not Taxation campaign has rigorously NOT encouraged parents to protest against Corbyn’s Education Tax by demanding state school places they don’t need. This post explains why before exploring the reaction to such actions….
“How dare they demand the places we insist are freely and readily available?”
…which unwittingly, and perfectly, proves the protesters’ point and also everything ENT has been saying for months. There are not places available, the state system depends on the independent sector, and the independent sector is a huge benefit to society, and that is ample justification for the VAT exemption.
Read on to understand why:
Bridget Phillipson’s warm welcome
Bridget Phillipson sometimes starts from a good observation. Wouldn’t private school families like there to be better state education? Yes, absolutely. I want better schools for everyone for three very good reasons
Self-interest. I value education for the children who will in future sell me tomatoes, fix my car, create jobs and join me in paying taxes
I’m a decent person. Call me soppy, but I like the idea of lots of people gaining opportunities through education. Not because it’s “fair” (yuck) or a “yooman right” (yuck yuck) but because it goes with being a decent small-c conservative. When we say opportunity, we mean it
Self-interest again. Yes, if a “brilliant” state school suddenly appeared down the road, I’d love the option to save £££s, do less work and pay less taxes
But that’s different from the promise that there IS a warm welcome at a “brilliant” state school. Reeves here maintains that independent education is a luxury, compared to a restaurant etc. I totally reject that argument because (1) restaurants have no social benefit (2) there’s no state provider of restaurants and (3) the state doesn’t make anyone visit restaurants. But the “luxury” argument 100% depends on that “warm welcome” piece. If there isn’t a place, then independent education is not only social benefit, but a necessity and a legal obligation.
Swamp The Comp - and why we didn’t encourage it
Predictably there have been several rounds of WhatsApp messages encouraging families to apply for a state school place whether they need it or not, to disrupt applications and make a point. Very early in the Education Not Taxation campaign we decided NOT to encourage this because:
most importantly, we’re sympathetic to people actually needing to apply for limited places at decent state schools, whether coming out of independent schools or state schools, and we don’t want them to have an even harder time; similarly we have no fight with the schools themselves, we just want good schools
we want to maintain moral capital and be able to discuss reasonably with Labour leaders, to whom we have written on several occasions and look forward to a response
parents would be trying to prove there aren’t spaces in certain areas of the state sector, which has already been amply demonstrated so the protest is not necessary
But we did encourage bona-fide applications
Having NOT encouraged applications-in-protest, we of course DID encourage people to apply for any of the following reasons:
if you need a place
if you might need a place
If there’s a decent state school as your fallback option and you want to beat the rush
if you are legitimately finding out your options in an uncertain world…given:
Nobody knows exactly what form Corbyn’s Education Tax will take, or when it will come in
Nobody knows how schools will react i.e., absorb the tax or pass it on
Nobody knows how families will react, and certainly (as even the IFS agree) nobody knows what form that will take at local level
Nobody knows if their school will stay open
Virtually all parents will need to give a term’s notice in order not to get stung for fees they don’t use - but as every Local Authority reminds those who look into it, it could be an offence to leave a school without certainty of another school to join, so you have to get your ducks in-a-row in advance.
And many, many members of our Facebook group confirmed the difficulty, or impossibility, of finding a place.
Dismissive reactions from Labour and why they’re grossly inappropriate
Here, Bridget Phillipson tweeted:
"Children deserve better than to be used as campaign pawns by the Conservative Party.”
You can read here the reaction of (grammar and private school educated, "pull the ladder up”) Labour peer Lord Foulkes:
“I think this is a disruption tactic. It is also disgraceful and selfish. Not only do they want to protect their privilege, but they are trying to protect the subsidy on their privilege.”
We also have the reaction here of (privately-educated, private school parent “ladder up”) Scottish Labour Leader Anas Sarwar who previously said “it was unfair to use his family’s choice of school to attack his integrity and he didn’t use his children as a political pawn”
“parents of children at private schools should not be “gaming” the education system to demonstrate against Labour’s policy”
Well these wealthy, privileged lady and gentlemen can do one. I mean, words fail me to describe how revolting their reaction is. But I can explain why they’re wrong. Most obviously, how dare they and the Labour party
belittle and continually ignore the genuine concerns of people needing (because of the Education Tax) to find non-existent unfunded state school places, while
immediately making a song-and-dance out of people who are just TALKING in private messages about demanding, in protest, the places they already pay for, are entitled to, and are explicitly promised exist by Bridget Phillipson?
accuse anyone else of using children as “campaign pawns” while disdainfully treating children, families and teachers as campaign pawns
Again, if there is a “warm welcome” available, if private education is a “luxury”, if there’s “no excuse for choosing it”, then….why does it even matter if people demand what they are promised for free at taxpayers’ expense?
It matters, of course, because in Surrey, Bristol, part of Oxfordshire, the Fens, and many other local authorities, there are NO state school places, let alone enough to accommodate up to 25% of private school children, let alone enough to offer 100% of private school children, as promised, a “warm welcome at a brilliant state school”.
Quite right too. It would be very odd, and we’d be most upset about the waste, if the state system had 600,000 spare places. The state system and private system exist next to each other; they are in approximate and semi-accidental balance; they can both be seen to be meeting needs the other can’t fulfil. That’s OK. In fact, it’s excellent.
But observing that, you can see how the independent schools meet a need that’s not a “luxury” at all, from the perspective of the families themselves, the state schools, or the taxpayer. You can also see that a 20pc tax can easily upset that semi-accidental balance, to everyone’s disadvantage. So Lord Foulkes and Anas Sarwar, for all their own private education, are the ones out-of-touch insisting there’s only “privilege” and no necessity.
They’re proving exactly what we’ve said all along:
The social benefit of education is not confined to the state
Corbyn’s Education Tax rests on the radical premise that the only socially beneficial education is that delivered by the state.
There’s an accurate label for that belief, for the world view that the state should not only exist (moderate liberal) and be powerful (socially democratic), but be supremely and uniquely powerful (begins with F….sorry, but it does).
More normally, opponents of the tax argue that education has social benefit regardless who pays for or provides it, and there’s particular social benefit when independent schools save Rachel Reeves £8-12k per child. Some opponents argue that it’s sensible to subsidise education, not tax it. Opponents, that is, being:
me and 172k other signatories of this petition (please sign and share widely)
50.2% of voters who voted for either Conservative, Reform or Lib Dems in the 2024 election, vs 33.8% for Labour (and hardly any of them give a stuff about the Education Tax)
anyone who was taught at A-level about merit goods and positive externalities
all mainstream economists including the 2/3 of those surveyed in 2006 who support school choice via vouchers, effectively the opposite of an Education Tax
some governments that go as far as subsidising education including those well-known Thatcherite extremists in Sweden, Denmark, Australia and Chile
every government in the world, ever, except the Greek Marxists who caused general mayhem with their short-lived Education Tax experiment in 2015