This is a ridiculous point. Public transportation is heavily subsidised in the UK.
That doesn't therefore mean that petrol can't be subject to VAT because commuters who drive would use up government subsidies if they travelled by train.
This argument is never, ever applied to anything other than private education.
Well, putting tax on petrol most certainly does reduce the total amount of driving. You may well feel that this is a good thing, and that likewise reducing the number of pupils in private education is a good thing, but it seems silly to deny that it will happen.
My mother recently paid for private healthcare because the NHS queue was too long for her condition. As in she might have died before she saw the NHS consultant.
She had savings, she grumbled loudly about it but paid to get the healthcare.
I highly doubt whether an additional 20% would have made any difference about the decision. It was painful, she didn't want to have to pay.
But given the circumstances, if it had been more money she would have paid more money.
And from what I hear from people who pay for private healthcare, private dentistry etc, they mostly feel the same.
I am certain sure that fewer people would use private healthcare if 20% VAT were levied on it, either because they were unable or unwilling any longer to do so, and that those who did continue to use it would be most unhappy about the imposition of the VAT.
Well I don't think there's any actual evidence of that. People choose to pay for various reasons even though there is a free alternative if they wait in an NHS queue.
This is a ridiculous point. Public transportation is heavily subsidised in the UK.
That doesn't therefore mean that petrol can't be subject to VAT because commuters who drive would use up government subsidies if they travelled by train.
This argument is never, ever applied to anything other than private education.
Well, putting tax on petrol most certainly does reduce the total amount of driving. You may well feel that this is a good thing, and that likewise reducing the number of pupils in private education is a good thing, but it seems silly to deny that it will happen.
My mother recently paid for private healthcare because the NHS queue was too long for her condition. As in she might have died before she saw the NHS consultant.
She had savings, she grumbled loudly about it but paid to get the healthcare.
I highly doubt whether an additional 20% would have made any difference about the decision. It was painful, she didn't want to have to pay.
But given the circumstances, if it had been more money she would have paid more money.
And from what I hear from people who pay for private healthcare, private dentistry etc, they mostly feel the same.
I am certain sure that fewer people would use private healthcare if 20% VAT were levied on it, either because they were unable or unwilling any longer to do so, and that those who did continue to use it would be most unhappy about the imposition of the VAT.
It's true that there will be some effect at the margins but the evidence is that the supply/demand relationship for private schooling is largely inelastic (the fairly significant rises in fees over the last two decades provide a natural experiment here).
Studies by the IFS show that there would around a 3-7% drop in the number of children enrolled in private schools should the tax changes go into effect.
It's true that there will be some effect at the margins but the evidence is that the supply/demand relationship for private schooling is largely inelastic (the fairly significant rises in fees over the last two decades provide a natural experiment here).
Studies by the IFS show that there would around a 3-7% drop in the number of children enrolled in private schools should the tax changes go into effect.
This percentage I could believe. I can accept that demand is fairly inelastic but not totally inelastic.
It would be interesting to see a chart of fee rises over the last twenty years versus percentage of UK pupils educated privately (of course a number of independent schools have expanded their numbers of overseas pupils during this time too).
It's true that there will be some effect at the margins but the evidence is that the supply/demand relationship for private schooling is largely inelastic (the fairly significant rises in fees over the last two decades provide a natural experiment here).
Studies by the IFS show that there would around a 3-7% drop in the number of children enrolled in private schools should the tax changes go into effect.
This percentage I could believe. I can accept that demand is fairly inelastic but not totally inelastic.
It would be interesting to see a chart of fee rises over the last twenty years versus percentage of UK pupils educated privately (of course a number of independent schools have expanded their numbers of overseas pupils during this time too).
From their report:
"The share of pupils across the UK in private schools has remained around 6–7% for at least the last 20 years (or about 560,000–570,000 pupils in England). This has occurred despite a 20% real-terms increase in average private school fees since 2010 and a 55% rise since 2003."
The wealthy will whinge but mostly cough up to keep their kids away from the riff-raff.
The truly wealthy won't be impacted at all - they have more than enough spare cash to cover the rise in fees.
The ones who will be made to hurt will be those who need private schooling because of their child's special needs, and those in the aspirational middle class who currently make savings elsewhere in their lives in order to get the fees paid for their child(ren) to have a better chance at life in the future.
The net result will be to make private schooling even more elitist, and a reduction in social mobility.
"Aspirational middle class" is code for "wealthy but don't think of themselves that way".
My wife went to a low end private school. They're an absolute con playing on fears stoked by the media about the quality of state education. My state comprehensive was far better than Mrs Feet's private grammar.
It's true that there will be some effect at the margins but the evidence is that the supply/demand relationship for private schooling is largely inelastic (the fairly significant rises in fees over the last two decades provide a natural experiment here).
Studies by the IFS show that there would around a 3-7% drop in the number of children enrolled in private schools should the tax changes go into effect.
This percentage I could believe. I can accept that demand is fairly inelastic but not totally inelastic.
It would be interesting to see a chart of fee rises over the last twenty years versus percentage of UK pupils educated privately (of course a number of independent schools have expanded their numbers of overseas pupils during this time too).
From their report:
"The share of pupils across the UK in private schools has remained around 6–7% for at least the last 20 years (or about 560,000–570,000 pupils in England). This has occurred despite a 20% real-terms increase in average private school fees since 2010 and a 55% rise since 2003."
This is a ridiculous point. Public transportation is heavily subsidised in the UK.
That doesn't therefore mean that petrol can't be subject to VAT because commuters who drive would use up government subsidies if they travelled by train.
This argument is never, ever applied to anything other than private education.
Well, putting tax on petrol most certainly does reduce the total amount of driving. You may well feel that this is a good thing, and that likewise reducing the number of pupils in private education is a good thing, but it seems silly to deny that it will happen.
My mother recently paid for private healthcare because the NHS queue was too long for her condition. As in she might have died before she saw the NHS consultant.
She had savings, she grumbled loudly about it but paid to get the healthcare.
I highly doubt whether an additional 20% would have made any difference about the decision. It was painful, she didn't want to have to pay.
But given the circumstances, if it had been more money she would have paid more money.
And from what I hear from people who pay for private healthcare, private dentistry etc, they mostly feel the same.
I am certain sure that fewer people would use private healthcare if 20% VAT were levied on it, either because they were unable or unwilling any longer to do so, and that those who did continue to use it would be most unhappy about the imposition of the VAT.
If the apparent choice is between paying for private and not getting treated then price rises won't make much difference - though it might affect patient welfare if those price rises mean people are cutting other spending to pay for health care, paying for medical treatment and not being able to afford food or heating doesn't really help.
Of course, if private health care is taxed and that revenue is used to support the NHS so that less people feel they're not going to be treated on the NHS then that will reduce the demand for private health care. The only effective way to address demand for private alternatives is to improve the public funded option, and for people to not feel as though public funded is inferior. That's true of health care, social care, and education - possibly some other sectors too.
So that's between 0.21% and 0.49% of children forecast to be displaced into the State system. Two or three per secondary school. I think fears of the state system being swamped may be exaggerated.
Has the report considered the possibility of the rung dropping concept I talked about earlier?
The state system is swamped, but it's not by a few ex-private school kids going to the local comp. The system is swamped because it's been starved of investment by a government who appear to be deliberately setting out to destroy all public services.
I am not at all convinced that modern Conservatism regards good education for the masses as a Good Thing.
This shows how backwards they are, as the days when a modern state could function based on 15% elite education and 85% elementary are long gone. There are fewer and fewer openings in employment for the poorly educated.
The wealthy will whinge but mostly cough up to keep their kids away from the riff-raff.
The truly wealthy won't be impacted at all - they have more than enough spare cash to cover the rise in fees.
The ones who will be made to hurt will be those who need private schooling because of their child's special needs, and those in the aspirational middle class who currently make savings elsewhere in their lives in order to get the fees paid for their child(ren) to have a better chance at life in the future.
The net result will be to make private schooling even more elitist, and a reduction in social mobility.
There's a lot in here that I think is quite wide of the mark.
Firstly, VAT is charged on most services. That includes all sorts of education and training. It's very unlikely to be legally problematic to legislate that private schools' fees are subject to VAT.
There is a disproportionate amount of media attention on this. Quite possibly because the majority of journalists are privately educated, compared to 7% of the population. The Telegraph stories about thousands of pupils being forced out of private schools has been totally debunked.
The range of fees is quite large, but the sources I found suggest that the average is around £18,000 / per year per pupil. If we assume that the schools will not absorb any of the increased cost and keep their fees the same, then the tax bill is, of course, £3,600 per year per pupil.
The number of pupils who fit into this group whose parents 'can only just afford the fees' is a minority. Moreover, many of them will be at schools with fees at the lower end of the range and hence the tax bill is correspondently smaller. Of course, there inevitably will be some but that in itself is not a compelling argument against a principled position. The real key here is the question: "Why should school fees be exempt?"
Because parents paying these school fees have already contributed towards the education of others through the taxation they pay.
There's a lot in here that I think is quite wide of the mark.
Firstly, VAT is charged on most services. That includes all sorts of education and training. It's very unlikely to be legally problematic to legislate that private schools' fees are subject to VAT.
There is a disproportionate amount of media attention on this. Quite possibly because the majority of journalists are privately educated, compared to 7% of the population. The Telegraph stories about thousands of pupils being forced out of private schools has been totally debunked.
The range of fees is quite large, but the sources I found suggest that the average is around £18,000 / per year per pupil. If we assume that the schools will not absorb any of the increased cost and keep their fees the same, then the tax bill is, of course, £3,600 per year per pupil.
The number of pupils who fit into this group whose parents 'can only just afford the fees' is a minority. Moreover, many of them will be at schools with fees at the lower end of the range and hence the tax bill is correspondently smaller. Of course, there inevitably will be some but that in itself is not a compelling argument against a principled position. The real key here is the question: "Why should school fees be exempt?"
Because parents paying these school fees have already contributed towards the education of others through the taxation they pay.
But they are then choosing to purchase a service that should be subject to the same taxation as any other purchase.
There's a lot in here that I think is quite wide of the mark.
Firstly, VAT is charged on most services. That includes all sorts of education and training. It's very unlikely to be legally problematic to legislate that private schools' fees are subject to VAT.
There is a disproportionate amount of media attention on this. Quite possibly because the majority of journalists are privately educated, compared to 7% of the population. The Telegraph stories about thousands of pupils being forced out of private schools has been totally debunked.
The range of fees is quite large, but the sources I found suggest that the average is around £18,000 / per year per pupil. If we assume that the schools will not absorb any of the increased cost and keep their fees the same, then the tax bill is, of course, £3,600 per year per pupil.
The number of pupils who fit into this group whose parents 'can only just afford the fees' is a minority. Moreover, many of them will be at schools with fees at the lower end of the range and hence the tax bill is correspondently smaller. Of course, there inevitably will be some but that in itself is not a compelling argument against a principled position. The real key here is the question: "Why should school fees be exempt?"
Because parents paying these school fees have already contributed towards the education of others through the taxation they pay.
Should cars be VAT exempt because their owners pay towards the transport of others through other taxes?
Well I don't think there's any actual evidence of that. People choose to pay for various reasons even though there is a free alternative if they wait in an NHS queue.
Indeed.
There is VERY good evidence that price has little effect on demand for healthcare as desper
There's a lot in here that I think is quite wide of the mark.
Firstly, VAT is charged on most services. That includes all sorts of education and training. It's very unlikely to be legally problematic to legislate that private schools' fees are subject to VAT.
There is a disproportionate amount of media attention on this. Quite possibly because the majority of journalists are privately educated, compared to 7% of the population. The Telegraph stories about thousands of pupils being forced out of private schools has been totally debunked.
The range of fees is quite large, but the sources I found suggest that the average is around £18,000 / per year per pupil. If we assume that the schools will not absorb any of the increased cost and keep their fees the same, then the tax bill is, of course, £3,600 per year per pupil.
The number of pupils who fit into this group whose parents 'can only just afford the fees' is a minority. Moreover, many of them will be at schools with fees at the lower end of the range and hence the tax bill is correspondently smaller. Of course, there inevitably will be some but that in itself is not a compelling argument against a principled position. The real key here is the question: "Why should school fees be exempt?"
Because parents paying these school fees have already contributed towards the education of others through the taxation they pay.
But they are then choosing to purchase a service that should be subject to the same taxation as any other purchase.
The problem with this argument is that it posits that parents sending are a net positive to society.
The truth is that the saving on the education budget isn't very much at all. England's schools spending is around £60Bn. If all private pupils were added to the state sector the increased cost be around £4Bn. Actually it's a lot less for various reasons.
But of course, the whole reason parents buy education is for social advantage. There's a reasonable argument to made that in a free society, people should be allowed that choice but it's a stretch to say they should get a tax-break for doing so. It is a competitive advantage for those children, not a benefit to wider society.
But of course, the whole reason parents buy education is for social advantage. There's a reasonable argument to made that in a free society, people should be allowed that choice but it's a stretch to say they should get a tax-break for doing so. It is a competitive advantage for those children, not a benefit to wider society.
It's part of the reason for some, but not the whole reason.
But of course, the whole reason parents buy education is for social advantage. There's a reasonable argument to made that in a free society, people should be allowed that choice but it's a stretch to say they should get a tax-break for doing so. It is a competitive advantage for those children, not a benefit to wider society.
Not true. Many parents are "buying" education (as you put it) because of the p*ss-poor offering available at the local state school(s), particularly at primary level and especially if they have a child who is, say, dyslexic or who is being badly bullied.
In the case of my own children we scrimped and saved to send them to a local few-frills prep school because at the local CofE primary (Ofsted rated Outstanding) they were bullied, their class teacher couldn't tell them apart, the same teacher regularly ridiculed them in front of the rest of the class ("and what do our lah-di-dah twinnies think") and both are dyslexic, one severely so. All attempts to sort out the situation got precisely nowhere. I might add that the parental cliques, formed on the basis of which pre-school children had gone to, were a nightmare.
What was on offer at the prep school was pretty much identical to the local state primary I attended in the very late 1950s-early 1960s - the main differences were far more sport and after-school clubs. It wasn't that the prep school had expanded its offering, it was that the state school had shortened the school day by half-an-hour and reduced what was available.
What do you mean by "social advantage"? The social mix at the prep school was broader than the local state primary and that has definitely been an advantage, though probably not in the way you think: my cars are still serviced by a fellow prep parent, and another bumps me to the front of the queue at his fish and chip shop. Any other advantage? Yes, the lively trade at the school uniform second-hand shop taught all of them the virtues of thrift.
But of course, the whole reason parents buy education is for social advantage. There's a reasonable argument to made that in a free society, people should be allowed that choice but it's a stretch to say they should get a tax-break for doing so. It is a competitive advantage for those children, not a benefit to wider society.
That depends on your beliefs and preferred ideology regarding the structure and governance of society.
My parents didn't send me to private school for social advantage. It was because as a gifted but socially awkward child I totally would have been the first one to have their head flushed down the toilet. Also our local comp was a dive.
Now, I would prefer a situation where no one's local school is a dive, but I understand and am grateful for my parents' choice, the circumstances being what they were.
But of course, the whole reason parents buy education is for social advantage. There's a reasonable argument to made that in a free society, people should be allowed that choice but it's a stretch to say they should get a tax-break for doing so. It is a competitive advantage for those children, not a benefit to wider society.
The truth is that the saving on the education budget isn't very much at all. England's schools spending is around £60Bn. If all private pupils were added to the state sector the increased cost be around £4Bn. Actually it's a lot less for various reasons.
AFZ
If those who pay for private education are well off they will have already paid for a big chunk of that £60Bn
Personally I'm not criticising a parent who makes a financial investment in their children.
But I don't see it as much more than a luxury that is, for the most part, done for an improvement in the child's life chances and as such I don't see any reason why it shouldn't attract VAT.
There are exceptions, including special needs education.
I'm not clear why everyone thinks it would be so difficult to separate the private special schools from other private provision with regard to VAT.
The truth is that the saving on the education budget isn't very much at all. England's schools spending is around £60Bn. If all private pupils were added to the state sector the increased cost be around £4Bn. Actually it's a lot less for various reasons.
AFZ
If those who pay for private education are well off they will have already paid for a big chunk of that £60Bn
So?
If we invest properly in our children, it pays off many times over.
Moreover, the wealthy only really make money if the population is well-educated.
But of course, the whole reason parents buy education is for social advantage. There's a reasonable argument to made that in a free society, people should be allowed that choice but it's a stretch to say they should get a tax-break for doing so. It is a competitive advantage for those children, not a benefit to wider society.
Not true. Many parents are "buying" education (as you put it) because of the p*ss-poor offering available at the local state school(s), particularly at primary level and especially if they have a child who is, say, dyslexic or who is being badly bullied.
In the case of my own children we scrimped and saved to send them to a local few-frills prep school because at the local CofE primary (Ofsted rated Outstanding) they were bullied, their class teacher couldn't tell them apart, the same teacher regularly ridiculed them in front of the rest of the class ("and what do our lah-di-dah twinnies think") and both are dyslexic, one severely so. All attempts to sort out the situation got precisely nowhere. I might add that the parental cliques, formed on the basis of which pre-school children had gone to, were a nightmare.
What was on offer at the prep school was pretty much identical to the local state primary I attended in the very late 1950s-early 1960s - the main differences were far more sport and after-school clubs. It wasn't that the prep school had expanded its offering, it was that the state school had shortened the school day by half-an-hour and reduced what was available.
What do you mean by "social advantage"? The social mix at the prep school was broader than the local state primary and that has definitely been an advantage, though probably not in the way you think: my cars are still serviced by a fellow prep parent, and another bumps me to the front of the queue at his fish and chip shop. Any other advantage? Yes, the lively trade at the school uniform second-hand shop taught all of them the virtues of thrift.
I hate stories like this. I am so sorry that there was bullying that wasn't dealt with. That is just not right and should never happen. Yet I know it does.
It also makes me very sad how few sports and other opportunities there are is so many state schools.
I don't think either is an argument against VAT on school fees on a national level.
I would add that I was moved from state to Independent (I had to qualify for a Bursary because no amount of scrimping and saving would have allowed my parents to find the fees) partly because of bullying. Where it just got even worse.
Bullying is not a state/Independent issue. Schools everywhere are shit at dealing with it.
The truth is that the saving on the education budget isn't very much at all. England's schools spending is around £60Bn. If all private pupils were added to the state sector the increased cost be around £4Bn. Actually it's a lot less for various reasons.
AFZ
If those who pay for private education are well off they will have already paid for a big chunk of that £60Bn
So?
If we invest properly in our children, it pays off many times over.
Moreover, the wealthy only really make money if the population is well-educated.
No, but it doesn't mean we should go back to sending kids up chimneys or down mines or condemning people to 14 hour days in loud and dangerous mills or manual agricultural labour.
No, but it doesn't mean we should go back to sending kids up chimneys or down mines or condemning people to 14 hour days in loud and dangerous mills or manual agricultural labour.
But you're making a moral argument. Whereas I think @alienfromzog was trying to make an "everybody wins" argument for comprehensive education, ie. the kids get schooling, the capitalists get a skilled workforce. And @Telford was using the 19th Century as evidence that, in fact, capitalists can get by quite easily without expanding education.
FWIW, I agree with Telford. To use a current example, corporations today who outsource sweatshops to SE Asia likely don't give a ratz ass what the education system in those countries is like, as long as the workers can perform whatever tasks are neccessary to assemble the products.
Personal note...
A friend of mine related a story about his high-school principal giving the whole school a lecture about the importance of completing their education. Apparently, the principal told the assembly that he got phone calls from local fast-food joints asking if some kid applying for a job really had the diploma listed on his application form. My friend figured that was BS, and I would be inclined to agree with him. At the very least, even if the principal was telling the truth, I doubt those phone-calls were typical of hiring procedures in the fast-food industry.
The truth is that the saving on the education budget isn't very much at all. England's schools spending is around £60Bn. If all private pupils were added to the state sector the increased cost be around £4Bn. Actually it's a lot less for various reasons.
AFZ
If those who pay for private education are well off they will have already paid for a big chunk of that £60Bn
So?
If we invest properly in our children, it pays off many times over.
Moreover, the wealthy only really make money if the population is well-educated.
Was this the case in the 19th century ?
In a modern economy, especially one not in the Far East, there is a clear correlation with productivity and educational level of the population.
Though, a phone call from the manager at the local fast food outlet to the school head for a reference for someone who'd come in for a job would be perfectly reasonable. Assuming the local manager actually has a say in hiring and it isn't passed up to corporate HR.
Though, a phone call from the manager at the local fast food outlet to the school head for a reference for someone who'd come in for a job would be perfectly reasonable. Assuming the local manager actually has a say in hiring and it isn't passed up to corporate HR.
Unless the student still attended the school or had left in the last few weeks, I doubt the school head would be able to say anything very useful about a specific pupil. I'm not even sure they'd be allowed to store student data.
Though, a phone call from the manager at the local fast food outlet to the school head for a reference for someone who'd come in for a job would be perfectly reasonable. Assuming the local manager actually has a say in hiring and it isn't passed up to corporate HR.
Unless the student still attended the school or had left in the last few weeks, I doubt the school head would be able to say anything very useful about a specific pupil. I'm not even sure they'd be allowed to store student data.
5 years from leaving school in Scotland, though qualification records are held by awarding bodies more or less in perpetuity.
Though, a phone call from the manager at the local fast food outlet to the school head for a reference for someone who'd come in for a job would be perfectly reasonable. Assuming the local manager actually has a say in hiring and it isn't passed up to corporate HR.
Unless the student still attended the school or had left in the last few weeks, I doubt the school head would be able to say anything very useful about a specific pupil. I'm not even sure they'd be allowed to store student data.
I think the principal just meant the manager was calling to confirm that the student had, in fact, graduated. Whether a principal in that province would be allowed to give even that much info, I don't know.
I'm sure McManagers do, on occasion, call high schools to confirm graduation, if for no other reason than to see if the applicant is dishonest enough to put false info on their resume. But, in the aggregate, I would not think many people applying for cashier jobs in fast-food are significantly hobbled by any educational lacuna.
The truth is that the saving on the education budget isn't very much at all. England's schools spending is around £60Bn. If all private pupils were added to the state sector the increased cost be around £4Bn. Actually it's a lot less for various reasons.
AFZ
If those who pay for private education are well off they will have already paid for a big chunk of that £60Bn
So?
If we invest properly in our children, it pays off many times over.
Moreover, the wealthy only really make money if the population is well-educated.
Was this the case in the 19th century ?
In a modern economy, especially one not in the Far East, there is a clear correlation with productivity and educational level of the population.
Only if the job requires the necessary qualifications.
The truth is that the saving on the education budget isn't very much at all. England's schools spending is around £60Bn. If all private pupils were added to the state sector the increased cost be around £4Bn. Actually it's a lot less for various reasons.
AFZ
If those who pay for private education are well off they will have already paid for a big chunk of that £60Bn
So?
If we invest properly in our children, it pays off many times over.
Moreover, the wealthy only really make money if the population is well-educated.
Was this the case in the 19th century ?
Not sure if this applies to the UK, but in the US I was taught in history and economics courses that part of the support for universal public education was from factory owners who wanted their workers to have at least basic literacy and numeracy, as it made them more productive. I also learned in an "Intro to Education" class that US public schools (this was in a study done later, in the mid-20th century) were very different experiences in schools where most students were either upper-middle class, middle class, working class, or part of the underclass/lumpenproletariat. Working class schools did try to teach reading, writing, and math, but just as if not even more important was teaching obedience to authority, following rules and procedures, etc. (Upper middle class schools were the only ones that encouraged students to think creatively. This was a dated study, so things are probably different now, although maybe not that different.) Schools teaching the underclass mostly were focused on using harsh discipline to keep them from acting up, regardless of anything they learned, and if they rebelled anyway, then they functioned as a pipeline into the criminal justice system (as school administrators felt it was better to identify delinquents early than to try to reform them or, God forbid, address any potential broader social causes of their delinquency).
This is totally unrelated but I highly recommend the German film from last year, The Teachers Lounge, which is a dark satire of films like To Sir, with LoveDangerous Minds about young idealistic teachers on a crusade fighting against a system that fails students and the jaded, hostile students themselves, although in a German school that seems much nicer than the schools in those English language movies.
Spoiler alert: Basically everything she tries blows up in her face (one decision in particular she makes out of her own sense of justice is particularly idiotic), and you end the movie not particularly liking her.
I have a question about the “aspirational middle class” and private schools and free schools in the UK vs the US.
Coming from the US, it blows my mind that there is a political debate about taxing or subsidizing private schools that makes no mention of race.
Just how de facto racially segregated are public schools in the UK? In the US, public education is more segregated now than it was when segregation was legally mandated in the south, because neighborhoods nationwide are much more racially segregated than they used to be. Schools with overwhelmingly black or Latina/o/x/e populations often have poor student outcomes as measured by test scores or graduation rates (not counting parts of the country like Miami where most of the white population is Latina/o/x/e, but you would see similar trends in Miami if you look at overwhelmingly nonwhite schools, counting Hispanic whites like me as white).
(Side note: charter schools in the US, depending on the district, often do not have to hire unionized teachers. Is that the case with free schools in England? I don't even know if free schools exist elsewhere in the UK.)
In these conditions, there is a lot of debate in the black community about whether or not charter schools, school vouchers (ie, government subsidies of private school tuition, the opposite of what Starmer is proposing), or some other kind of “school choice” might allow at least some children to attend a school with better outcome measures for its students. Yes, wealthy white people who want to dismantle the public education system like the DeVos family do help give a platform to black school choice advocates, and there are plenty of activists of color fighting to prevent students, and therefore funding because funding is often per-student, being taken away from traditional public schools, but the activism in black communities is not completely astroturfed.
School vouchers are not enough to fund private tuition at a fancy private school. Where they exist (in a few Republican-controlled states) they are primarily used to send students to Catholic Schools or other religious schools, or to private schools (both non-profit and for-profit) set up primarily for parents of students with vouchers (Catholic Schools in much of the country, even where there are no voucher systems, often teach a majority non-Catholic student population, and in cities with large black populations relatively very few students at Catholic schools are Catholic, because most black Americans are not Catholic (with notable exceptions, like Clarence Thomas and Donna Brazile)). Education scholars have found very mixed results about whether or not on a large scale over a long time vouchers do much to improve educational outcomes when you try to control for other factors (especially since the parents that make use of them, most of whom are working class, often have a little more time (a precious resource that poorer parents often do not have, given their work schedules) to invest in their children's education, even if it is simply time spend dealing with school searches, applications and bureaucracy. Private schools that take vouchers often find ways to only accept students more likely to succeed, as well, even if they are not supposed to.
Charter schools (ie, free schools), which are not religious as far as I know, often function much like the non-religious private schools that I mentioned above (and yes, that means that some charter schools are for-profit even if they are state-funded), and are also a contentious subject of debate, with many of their proponents and opponents both being African-American. They are accused of filtering out students less likely to succeed. And when they seem to be successful at producing better student outcomes, the question is whether or not the parents of students who seek out charter schools are not parents that for whatever reason (such as a slightly higher socioeconomic status within the working class) were more likely to be able to help their students' education anyway, and whether starving traditional public schools (officially called "feeder schools" here, unfortunately, because neighborhoods just feed their students into them and students do not need to apply) is really worth whatever gains there are.
I'm not a supporter of school vouchers or charter schools, but there were notable Democrats in the Obama administration who supported expanding charter schools (vouchers are much more controversial with the Democratic Party establishment for many reasons, one of which is that the Democratic Party relies on teachers' unions as a core of its activist and volunteer base).
I know the UK has a different history with race and different demographics, but does race not come up at all in arguments over taxing private school tuition?
I have a question about the “aspirational middle class” and private schools and free schools in the UK vs the US.
Coming from the US, it blows my mind that there is a political debate about taxing or subsidizing private schools that makes no mention of race.
Just how de facto racially segregated are public schools in the UK? In the US, public education is more segregated now than it was when segregation was legally mandated in the south, because neighborhoods nationwide are much more racially segregated than they used to be.
The history is different because there was no period of 'official' segregation at the level of the state or local government (which obviously doesn't rule out other forms of discrimination or general racist attitudes). Some commercial establishments used to operate a formal colour bar in the past, and there was a bill in the 60s to specifically address that, and informal colour bars survived well into the 80s.
Where white flight occurred it was more likely to take the form of families moving (generally from the cities to the suburbs), rather than (just) changing their children's schools.
In the early 60s there was a bussing program that ran a few years- mainly of South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi in the UK context) students from inner cities to more suburban schools, but this was an attempt to disperse absolute numbers rather than (primarily) push integration.
I know the UK has a different history with race and different demographics, but does race not come up at all in arguments over taxing private school tuition?
There is but it is less likely to come up as a singular issue and more as one intertwined with religion, class and language fluency. The issue of race does come up in the context of provision of public schooling, but the arguments over taxing private schools are largely free of it.
I know the UK has a different history with race and different demographics, but does race not come up at all in arguments over taxing private school tuition?
In the UK, private schools accept pupils of all races.
One problem we have is one of envy. Left wing parties frown on some schools doing better. They are keen on leveling down. One of the main reasons why they abolished grammar schools. I went to Grammar school and all my parents had to find was the uniform
I have a question about the “aspirational middle class” and private schools and free schools in the UK vs the US.
Coming from the US, it blows my mind that there is a political debate about taxing or subsidizing private schools that makes no mention of race.
Just how de facto racially segregated are public schools in the UK? In the US, public education is more segregated now than it was when segregation was legally mandated in the south, because neighborhoods nationwide are much more racially segregated than they used to be.
The history is different because there was no period of 'official' segregation at the level of the state or local government (which obviously doesn't rule out other forms of discrimination or general racist attitudes). Some commercial establishments used to operate a formal colour bar in the past, and there was a bill in the 60s to specifically address that, and informal colour bars survived well into the 80s.
Where white flight occurred it was more likely to take the form of families moving (generally from the cities to the suburbs), rather than (just) changing their children's schools.
In the early 60s there was a bussing program that ran a few years- mainly of South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi in the UK context) students from inner cities to more suburban schools, but this was an attempt to disperse absolute numbers rather than (primarily) push integration.
I know the UK has a different history with race and different demographics, but does race not come up at all in arguments over taxing private school tuition?
There is but it is less likely to come up as a singular issue and more as one intertwined with religion, class and language fluency. The issue of race does come up in the context of provision of public schooling, but the arguments over taxing private schools are largely free of it.
So none of the opposition to Starmer’s proposed VAT move have come from parents of color whose students attend underperforming de facto segregated schools who want to be able to afford to send their children to a private school? Or are there just not that many underperforming de facto segregated schools in the UK, even in the major cities? And if and where there are underperforming de facto segregated schools, are there many less-expensive private schools available? Or is a major difference between the UK and the US that Roman Catholic and C of E schools are state funded (are they all state funded?), so the whole idea of Roman Catholic schools as a non-free but affordable (for some parents) alternative to underperforming public schools for largely non-RC families not really an issue, because those religious schools are state funded and free to attend anyway?
So none of the opposition to Starmer’s proposed VAT move have come from parents of color whose students attend underperforming de facto segregated schools who want to be able to afford to send their children to a private school? Or are there just not that many underperforming de facto segregated schools in the UK, even in the major cities?
Generally you are eligible to apply for a number of schools related to the area in which your house is in. People typically choose to move or buy a house based on the publicly funded schools that would then be available to them., this ends up being means of segregation (though it's one of those cases where class and race end up being closely intertwined).
Or is a major difference between the UK and the US that Roman Catholic and C of E schools are state funded (are they all state funded?), so the whole idea of Roman Catholic schools as a non-free but affordable (for some parents) alternative to underperforming public schools for largely non-RC families not really an issue, because those religious schools are state funded and free to attend anyway?
About a 1/3 of schools in the UK are 'Faith Schools' - generally either CofE or RC with a small number of Muslim Schools. Where they are publicly funded apart from the religious/moral ethos of the school, they tend to be run in much the same way as any other publicly funded school. There is a slight selection effect in that sometimes the parents that choosesuch schools are more likely to want to be involved in their childrens education - but in effect they are only slightly more likely to better than average than a non-faith school.
There are private faith schools; from the fairly basic to those that would look and feel much like the elite schools you might have read about. These would be part of the sector discussed above (that educates about 6% of all pupils) and will be subject to the new taxes.
@alienfromzog I think the reality that an LEA can get away with saying "we don't recognise dyslexia without a test and we don't test under Year 6" is very definitely a case fo zero-rating school fees for parents who have to go private. And it is a case of having to go private, or do you think it acceptable that a child misses out on 6 years of education? Ditto those parents told that the waiting list for a place at a specialist state school for autistic pupils is 5 years and the LEA drags its heels for years to avoid paying for a private place.
Years ago when VAT replaced the old Purchase Tax there were furious arguments about whether or not to put the new tax on books, and the argument was made then, especially by those on the left, that to tax books would be to tax education. I think the argument must be made now that every tax-paying parent who sends their child(ren) to a private school is already being taxed for the privilege. This policy smacks of lazy, knee-jerk inverted snobbery of the worst kind. Far more creative would be for the state to say that every general private school must have available a certain number of free scholarship places for children from the local community, decision on awarding places to be made by the LEA.
I have a question about the “aspirational middle class” and private schools and free schools in the UK vs the US.
Coming from the US, it blows my mind that there is a political debate about taxing or subsidizing private schools that makes no mention of race.
Just how de facto racially segregated are public schools in the UK? In the US, public education is more segregated now than it was when segregation was legally mandated in the south, because neighborhoods nationwide are much more racially segregated than they used to be. Schools with overwhelmingly black or Latina/o/x/e populations often have poor student outcomes as measured by test scores or graduation rates (not counting parts of the country like Miami where most of the white population is Latina/o/x/e, but you would see similar trends in Miami if you look at overwhelmingly nonwhite schools, counting Hispanic whites like me as white).
(Side note: charter schools in the US, depending on the district, often do not have to hire unionized teachers. Is that the case with free schools in England? I don't even know if free schools exist elsewhere in the UK.)
In these conditions, there is a lot of debate in the black community about whether or not charter schools, school vouchers (ie, government subsidies of private school tuition, the opposite of what Starmer is proposing), or some other kind of “school choice” might allow at least some children to attend a school with better outcome measures for its students. Yes, wealthy white people who want to dismantle the public education system like the DeVos family do help give a platform to black school choice advocates, and there are plenty of activists of color fighting to prevent students, and therefore funding because funding is often per-student, being taken away from traditional public schools, but the activism in black communities is not completely astroturfed.
School vouchers are not enough to fund private tuition at a fancy private school. Where they exist (in a few Republican-controlled states) they are primarily used to send students to Catholic Schools or other religious schools, or to private schools (both non-profit and for-profit) set up primarily for parents of students with vouchers (Catholic Schools in much of the country, even where there are no voucher systems, often teach a majority non-Catholic student population, and in cities with large black populations relatively very few students at Catholic schools are Catholic, because most black Americans are not Catholic (with notable exceptions, like Clarence Thomas and Donna Brazile)). Education scholars have found very mixed results about whether or not on a large scale over a long time vouchers do much to improve educational outcomes when you try to control for other factors (especially since the parents that make use of them, most of whom are working class, often have a little more time (a precious resource that poorer parents often do not have, given their work schedules) to invest in their children's education, even if it is simply time spend dealing with school searches, applications and bureaucracy. Private schools that take vouchers often find ways to only accept students more likely to succeed, as well, even if they are not supposed to.
Charter schools (ie, free schools), which are not religious as far as I know, often function much like the non-religious private schools that I mentioned above (and yes, that means that some charter schools are for-profit even if they are state-funded), and are also a contentious subject of debate, with many of their proponents and opponents both being African-American. They are accused of filtering out students less likely to succeed. And when they seem to be successful at producing better student outcomes, the question is whether or not the parents of students who seek out charter schools are not parents that for whatever reason (such as a slightly higher socioeconomic status within the working class) were more likely to be able to help their students' education anyway, and whether starving traditional public schools (officially called "feeder schools" here, unfortunately, because neighborhoods just feed their students into them and students do not need to apply) is really worth whatever gains there are.
I'm not a supporter of school vouchers or charter schools, but there were notable Democrats in the Obama administration who supported expanding charter schools (vouchers are much more controversial with the Democratic Party establishment for many reasons, one of which is that the Democratic Party relies on teachers' unions as a core of its activist and volunteer base).
I know the UK has a different history with race and different demographics, but does race not come up at all in arguments over taxing private school tuition?
It’s a completely different country.
You just can’t read across like that and my own feeling on it having thought about your post and tried initially to answer it is it’s probably better not to try. Start with a blank piece of paper rather than trying to compare.
@chrisstiles has come up with a couple of fairly thoughtful answers but I think they boil down to the Dorothy ‘we’re not in Kansas anymore’ meme.
It’s different - different history, different present, different people, different mix. I’m not trying to be unhelpful at all - your post really made me think about it, but it does read a bit like saying ‘it blows my mind that your apple is an orange. Is it really not like an apple at all?’
@alienfromzog I think the reality that an LEA can get away with saying "we don't recognise dyslexia without a test and we don't test under Year 6" is very definitely a case fo zero-rating school fees for parents who have to go private. And it is a case of having to go private, or do you think it acceptable that a child misses out on 6 years of education? Ditto those parents told that the waiting list for a place at a specialist state school for autistic pupils is 5 years and the LEA drags its heels for years to avoid paying for a private place.
Years ago when VAT replaced the old Purchase Tax there were furious arguments about whether or not to put the new tax on books, and the argument was made then, especially by those on the left, that to tax books would be to tax education. I think the argument must be made now that every tax-paying parent who sends their child(ren) to a private school is already being taxed for the privilege. This policy smacks of lazy, knee-jerk inverted snobbery of the worst kind. Far more creative would be for the state to say that every general private school must have available a certain number of free scholarship places for children from the local community, decision on awarding places to be made by the LEA.
Didn’t expect to read anyone arguing for the return of Direct Grant places but agree.
@alienfromzog I think the reality that an LEA can get away with saying "we don't recognise dyslexia without a test and we don't test under Year 6" is very definitely a case fo zero-rating school fees for parents who have to go private. And it is a case of having to go private, or do you think it acceptable that a child misses out on 6 years of education? Ditto those parents told that the waiting list for a place at a specialist state school for autistic pupils is 5 years and the LEA drags its heels for years to avoid paying for a private place.
While I don't doubt that members of your family had a particularly awful experience, how is a handful of parents being able to more easily afford private education a solution? Continuing to subsidise private schools doesn't fix the LEA policy for the 80%+ of such kids whose parents could never afford a private school. The money spent on giving rich parents a tax break would be better spent actually fixing the problems you describe for all affected children. Not that identifying and supporting dyslexic children costs a great deal of money in most cases - our LA has a "toolkit" for schools to do their own assessments and in the vast majority of cases this allows support to be put in place in a matter of weeks. The problem of special schools is one where more money is absolutely relevant.
The ethnicity of people intersects but doesn't completely overlap measures of poverty in the UK.
Also the state schooling system is uneven and good schools are associated with expensive housing. So it's entirely normal for middle class and/or earners who are in the higher tax band to impact on their children's lives by spending on particular housing in a particular school catchment rather than directly on an independent school.
It's also fairly common for people from some ethnicities to live in cheaper areas and send their children to independent schools.
Hence we get the truism that in the UK wealthy parents buy better education, sometimes by sending their children to independent schools. Poor parents for various reasons end up sending their children to the lowest performing schools.
Which isn't to say there's no racism in the system, as the more/most exclusive schools tend to find ways to 'weed out' children from families they don't like. At the end of the day they usually want wealthy families who are considered the "right type", which usually but not always means white. In recent decades this has broken down a bit but in general it is still unusual to see people who emerge from the most exclusive schools into Oxbridge (where traditionally the usual entry rules didn't apply to them) and then into the City/Law/Medicine/Politics who weren't from a particular white demographic.
Which is long-winded, but the tl;dr version is that poor white and non-white people tend not to worry much about exclusive schools because they are unlikely to be much on their radar. They're more interested in the schools they actually have access to.
Comments
I am certain sure that fewer people would use private healthcare if 20% VAT were levied on it, either because they were unable or unwilling any longer to do so, and that those who did continue to use it would be most unhappy about the imposition of the VAT.
It's true that there will be some effect at the margins but the evidence is that the supply/demand relationship for private schooling is largely inelastic (the fairly significant rises in fees over the last two decades provide a natural experiment here).
Studies by the IFS show that there would around a 3-7% drop in the number of children enrolled in private schools should the tax changes go into effect.
This percentage I could believe. I can accept that demand is fairly inelastic but not totally inelastic.
It would be interesting to see a chart of fee rises over the last twenty years versus percentage of UK pupils educated privately (of course a number of independent schools have expanded their numbers of overseas pupils during this time too).
From their report:
"The share of pupils across the UK in private schools has remained around 6–7% for at least the last 20 years (or about 560,000–570,000 pupils in England). This has occurred despite a 20% real-terms increase in average private school fees since 2010 and a 55% rise since 2003."
Emphasis mine, extracts from: https://ifs.org.uk/publications/tax-private-school-fees-and-state-school-spending
"Aspirational middle class" is code for "wealthy but don't think of themselves that way".
My wife went to a low end private school. They're an absolute con playing on fears stoked by the media about the quality of state education. My state comprehensive was far better than Mrs Feet's private grammar.
This is a really interesting report - thank you for the link
Of course, if private health care is taxed and that revenue is used to support the NHS so that less people feel they're not going to be treated on the NHS then that will reduce the demand for private health care. The only effective way to address demand for private alternatives is to improve the public funded option, and for people to not feel as though public funded is inferior. That's true of health care, social care, and education - possibly some other sectors too.
Has the report considered the possibility of the rung dropping concept I talked about earlier?
This shows how backwards they are, as the days when a modern state could function based on 15% elite education and 85% elementary are long gone. There are fewer and fewer openings in employment for the poorly educated.
Good posting
But they are then choosing to purchase a service that should be subject to the same taxation as any other purchase.
Should cars be VAT exempt because their owners pay towards the transport of others through other taxes?
Indeed.
There is VERY good evidence that price has little effect on demand for healthcare as desper
The problem with this argument is that it posits that parents sending are a net positive to society.
The truth is that the saving on the education budget isn't very much at all. England's schools spending is around £60Bn. If all private pupils were added to the state sector the increased cost be around £4Bn. Actually it's a lot less for various reasons.
But of course, the whole reason parents buy education is for social advantage. There's a reasonable argument to made that in a free society, people should be allowed that choice but it's a stretch to say they should get a tax-break for doing so. It is a competitive advantage for those children, not a benefit to wider society.
AFZ
It's part of the reason for some, but not the whole reason.
Not true. Many parents are "buying" education (as you put it) because of the p*ss-poor offering available at the local state school(s), particularly at primary level and especially if they have a child who is, say, dyslexic or who is being badly bullied.
In the case of my own children we scrimped and saved to send them to a local few-frills prep school because at the local CofE primary (Ofsted rated Outstanding) they were bullied, their class teacher couldn't tell them apart, the same teacher regularly ridiculed them in front of the rest of the class ("and what do our lah-di-dah twinnies think") and both are dyslexic, one severely so. All attempts to sort out the situation got precisely nowhere. I might add that the parental cliques, formed on the basis of which pre-school children had gone to, were a nightmare.
What was on offer at the prep school was pretty much identical to the local state primary I attended in the very late 1950s-early 1960s - the main differences were far more sport and after-school clubs. It wasn't that the prep school had expanded its offering, it was that the state school had shortened the school day by half-an-hour and reduced what was available.
What do you mean by "social advantage"? The social mix at the prep school was broader than the local state primary and that has definitely been an advantage, though probably not in the way you think: my cars are still serviced by a fellow prep parent, and another bumps me to the front of the queue at his fish and chip shop. Any other advantage? Yes, the lively trade at the school uniform second-hand shop taught all of them the virtues of thrift.
Definitionally it isn't because it doesn't include those who can't afford prep school.
And statistically, well I just refer back to the IFS report I posted up-thread.
Now, I would prefer a situation where no one's local school is a dive, but I understand and am grateful for my parents' choice, the circumstances being what they were.
I'm not sure it's a social advantage here.
Personally I'm not criticising a parent who makes a financial investment in their children.
But I don't see it as much more than a luxury that is, for the most part, done for an improvement in the child's life chances and as such I don't see any reason why it shouldn't attract VAT.
There are exceptions, including special needs education.
I'm not clear why everyone thinks it would be so difficult to separate the private special schools from other private provision with regard to VAT.
So?
If we invest properly in our children, it pays off many times over.
Moreover, the wealthy only really make money if the population is well-educated.
I hate stories like this. I am so sorry that there was bullying that wasn't dealt with. That is just not right and should never happen. Yet I know it does.
It also makes me very sad how few sports and other opportunities there are is so many state schools.
I don't think either is an argument against VAT on school fees on a national level.
AFZ
Bullying is not a state/Independent issue. Schools everywhere are shit at dealing with it.
Was this the case in the 19th century ?
But you're making a moral argument. Whereas I think @alienfromzog was trying to make an "everybody wins" argument for comprehensive education, ie. the kids get schooling, the capitalists get a skilled workforce. And @Telford was using the 19th Century as evidence that, in fact, capitalists can get by quite easily without expanding education.
FWIW, I agree with Telford. To use a current example, corporations today who outsource sweatshops to SE Asia likely don't give a ratz ass what the education system in those countries is like, as long as the workers can perform whatever tasks are neccessary to assemble the products.
Personal note...
A friend of mine related a story about his high-school principal giving the whole school a lecture about the importance of completing their education. Apparently, the principal told the assembly that he got phone calls from local fast-food joints asking if some kid applying for a job really had the diploma listed on his application form. My friend figured that was BS, and I would be inclined to agree with him. At the very least, even if the principal was telling the truth, I doubt those phone-calls were typical of hiring procedures in the fast-food industry.
In a modern economy, especially one not in the Far East, there is a clear correlation with productivity and educational level of the population.
Unless the student still attended the school or had left in the last few weeks, I doubt the school head would be able to say anything very useful about a specific pupil. I'm not even sure they'd be allowed to store student data.
5 years from leaving school in Scotland, though qualification records are held by awarding bodies more or less in perpetuity.
I think the principal just meant the manager was calling to confirm that the student had, in fact, graduated. Whether a principal in that province would be allowed to give even that much info, I don't know.
I'm sure McManagers do, on occasion, call high schools to confirm graduation, if for no other reason than to see if the applicant is dishonest enough to put false info on their resume. But, in the aggregate, I would not think many people applying for cashier jobs in fast-food are significantly hobbled by any educational lacuna.
Not sure if this applies to the UK, but in the US I was taught in history and economics courses that part of the support for universal public education was from factory owners who wanted their workers to have at least basic literacy and numeracy, as it made them more productive. I also learned in an "Intro to Education" class that US public schools (this was in a study done later, in the mid-20th century) were very different experiences in schools where most students were either upper-middle class, middle class, working class, or part of the underclass/lumpenproletariat. Working class schools did try to teach reading, writing, and math, but just as if not even more important was teaching obedience to authority, following rules and procedures, etc. (Upper middle class schools were the only ones that encouraged students to think creatively. This was a dated study, so things are probably different now, although maybe not that different.) Schools teaching the underclass mostly were focused on using harsh discipline to keep them from acting up, regardless of anything they learned, and if they rebelled anyway, then they functioned as a pipeline into the criminal justice system (as school administrators felt it was better to identify delinquents early than to try to reform them or, God forbid, address any potential broader social causes of their delinquency).
This is totally unrelated but I highly recommend the German film from last year, The Teachers Lounge, which is a dark satire of films like To Sir, with Love Dangerous Minds about young idealistic teachers on a crusade fighting against a system that fails students and the jaded, hostile students themselves, although in a German school that seems much nicer than the schools in those English language movies.
Spoiler alert: Basically everything she tries blows up in her face (one decision in particular she makes out of her own sense of justice is particularly idiotic), and you end the movie not particularly liking her.
Coming from the US, it blows my mind that there is a political debate about taxing or subsidizing private schools that makes no mention of race.
Just how de facto racially segregated are public schools in the UK? In the US, public education is more segregated now than it was when segregation was legally mandated in the south, because neighborhoods nationwide are much more racially segregated than they used to be. Schools with overwhelmingly black or Latina/o/x/e populations often have poor student outcomes as measured by test scores or graduation rates (not counting parts of the country like Miami where most of the white population is Latina/o/x/e, but you would see similar trends in Miami if you look at overwhelmingly nonwhite schools, counting Hispanic whites like me as white).
(Side note: charter schools in the US, depending on the district, often do not have to hire unionized teachers. Is that the case with free schools in England? I don't even know if free schools exist elsewhere in the UK.)
In these conditions, there is a lot of debate in the black community about whether or not charter schools, school vouchers (ie, government subsidies of private school tuition, the opposite of what Starmer is proposing), or some other kind of “school choice” might allow at least some children to attend a school with better outcome measures for its students. Yes, wealthy white people who want to dismantle the public education system like the DeVos family do help give a platform to black school choice advocates, and there are plenty of activists of color fighting to prevent students, and therefore funding because funding is often per-student, being taken away from traditional public schools, but the activism in black communities is not completely astroturfed.
School vouchers are not enough to fund private tuition at a fancy private school. Where they exist (in a few Republican-controlled states) they are primarily used to send students to Catholic Schools or other religious schools, or to private schools (both non-profit and for-profit) set up primarily for parents of students with vouchers (Catholic Schools in much of the country, even where there are no voucher systems, often teach a majority non-Catholic student population, and in cities with large black populations relatively very few students at Catholic schools are Catholic, because most black Americans are not Catholic (with notable exceptions, like Clarence Thomas and Donna Brazile)). Education scholars have found very mixed results about whether or not on a large scale over a long time vouchers do much to improve educational outcomes when you try to control for other factors (especially since the parents that make use of them, most of whom are working class, often have a little more time (a precious resource that poorer parents often do not have, given their work schedules) to invest in their children's education, even if it is simply time spend dealing with school searches, applications and bureaucracy. Private schools that take vouchers often find ways to only accept students more likely to succeed, as well, even if they are not supposed to.
Charter schools (ie, free schools), which are not religious as far as I know, often function much like the non-religious private schools that I mentioned above (and yes, that means that some charter schools are for-profit even if they are state-funded), and are also a contentious subject of debate, with many of their proponents and opponents both being African-American. They are accused of filtering out students less likely to succeed. And when they seem to be successful at producing better student outcomes, the question is whether or not the parents of students who seek out charter schools are not parents that for whatever reason (such as a slightly higher socioeconomic status within the working class) were more likely to be able to help their students' education anyway, and whether starving traditional public schools (officially called "feeder schools" here, unfortunately, because neighborhoods just feed their students into them and students do not need to apply) is really worth whatever gains there are.
I'm not a supporter of school vouchers or charter schools, but there were notable Democrats in the Obama administration who supported expanding charter schools (vouchers are much more controversial with the Democratic Party establishment for many reasons, one of which is that the Democratic Party relies on teachers' unions as a core of its activist and volunteer base).
I know the UK has a different history with race and different demographics, but does race not come up at all in arguments over taxing private school tuition?
The history is different because there was no period of 'official' segregation at the level of the state or local government (which obviously doesn't rule out other forms of discrimination or general racist attitudes). Some commercial establishments used to operate a formal colour bar in the past, and there was a bill in the 60s to specifically address that, and informal colour bars survived well into the 80s.
Where white flight occurred it was more likely to take the form of families moving (generally from the cities to the suburbs), rather than (just) changing their children's schools.
In the early 60s there was a bussing program that ran a few years- mainly of South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi in the UK context) students from inner cities to more suburban schools, but this was an attempt to disperse absolute numbers rather than (primarily) push integration.
There is but it is less likely to come up as a singular issue and more as one intertwined with religion, class and language fluency. The issue of race does come up in the context of provision of public schooling, but the arguments over taxing private schools are largely free of it.
In the UK, private schools accept pupils of all races.
One problem we have is one of envy. Left wing parties frown on some schools doing better. They are keen on leveling down. One of the main reasons why they abolished grammar schools. I went to Grammar school and all my parents had to find was the uniform
So none of the opposition to Starmer’s proposed VAT move have come from parents of color whose students attend underperforming de facto segregated schools who want to be able to afford to send their children to a private school? Or are there just not that many underperforming de facto segregated schools in the UK, even in the major cities? And if and where there are underperforming de facto segregated schools, are there many less-expensive private schools available? Or is a major difference between the UK and the US that Roman Catholic and C of E schools are state funded (are they all state funded?), so the whole idea of Roman Catholic schools as a non-free but affordable (for some parents) alternative to underperforming public schools for largely non-RC families not really an issue, because those religious schools are state funded and free to attend anyway?
Generally you are eligible to apply for a number of schools related to the area in which your house is in. People typically choose to move or buy a house based on the publicly funded schools that would then be available to them., this ends up being means of segregation (though it's one of those cases where class and race end up being closely intertwined).
About a 1/3 of schools in the UK are 'Faith Schools' - generally either CofE or RC with a small number of Muslim Schools. Where they are publicly funded apart from the religious/moral ethos of the school, they tend to be run in much the same way as any other publicly funded school. There is a slight selection effect in that sometimes the parents that choosesuch schools are more likely to want to be involved in their childrens education - but in effect they are only slightly more likely to better than average than a non-faith school.
There are private faith schools; from the fairly basic to those that would look and feel much like the elite schools you might have read about. These would be part of the sector discussed above (that educates about 6% of all pupils) and will be subject to the new taxes.
Years ago when VAT replaced the old Purchase Tax there were furious arguments about whether or not to put the new tax on books, and the argument was made then, especially by those on the left, that to tax books would be to tax education. I think the argument must be made now that every tax-paying parent who sends their child(ren) to a private school is already being taxed for the privilege. This policy smacks of lazy, knee-jerk inverted snobbery of the worst kind. Far more creative would be for the state to say that every general private school must have available a certain number of free scholarship places for children from the local community, decision on awarding places to be made by the LEA.
It’s a completely different country.
You just can’t read across like that and my own feeling on it having thought about your post and tried initially to answer it is it’s probably better not to try. Start with a blank piece of paper rather than trying to compare.
@chrisstiles has come up with a couple of fairly thoughtful answers but I think they boil down to the Dorothy ‘we’re not in Kansas anymore’ meme.
It’s different - different history, different present, different people, different mix. I’m not trying to be unhelpful at all - your post really made me think about it, but it does read a bit like saying ‘it blows my mind that your apple is an orange. Is it really not like an apple at all?’
Does that make sense?
Didn’t expect to read anyone arguing for the return of Direct Grant places but agree.
While I don't doubt that members of your family had a particularly awful experience, how is a handful of parents being able to more easily afford private education a solution? Continuing to subsidise private schools doesn't fix the LEA policy for the 80%+ of such kids whose parents could never afford a private school. The money spent on giving rich parents a tax break would be better spent actually fixing the problems you describe for all affected children. Not that identifying and supporting dyslexic children costs a great deal of money in most cases - our LA has a "toolkit" for schools to do their own assessments and in the vast majority of cases this allows support to be put in place in a matter of weeks. The problem of special schools is one where more money is absolutely relevant.
Also the state schooling system is uneven and good schools are associated with expensive housing. So it's entirely normal for middle class and/or earners who are in the higher tax band to impact on their children's lives by spending on particular housing in a particular school catchment rather than directly on an independent school.
It's also fairly common for people from some ethnicities to live in cheaper areas and send their children to independent schools.
Hence we get the truism that in the UK wealthy parents buy better education, sometimes by sending their children to independent schools. Poor parents for various reasons end up sending their children to the lowest performing schools.
Which isn't to say there's no racism in the system, as the more/most exclusive schools tend to find ways to 'weed out' children from families they don't like. At the end of the day they usually want wealthy families who are considered the "right type", which usually but not always means white. In recent decades this has broken down a bit but in general it is still unusual to see people who emerge from the most exclusive schools into Oxbridge (where traditionally the usual entry rules didn't apply to them) and then into the City/Law/Medicine/Politics who weren't from a particular white demographic.
Which is long-winded, but the tl;dr version is that poor white and non-white people tend not to worry much about exclusive schools because they are unlikely to be much on their radar. They're more interested in the schools they actually have access to.