Full disclosure: having started my teaching career in two challenging state schools, I now work in a private day school. I also put both of my now-grown-up daughters through private schools. So, when I claim to be philosophically opposed to private schools, I recognise I am open to the charge of hypocrisy. My answer is that in my ideal world, they would not need to exist and I would choose a vastly improved state system, but it’s not an ideal world. That’s why many Labour MPs find themselves supporting their party’s proposed 20 per cent VAT increase on private school fees, despite having been to one themselves or using one for their own children.
Having taught in state schools, I know all too well that in some, the ratio of actual teaching to behaviour management is depressingly low and the ability of teachers to truly get to know individual pupils is greatly enhanced by 20-pupil strong classes rather than 30 plus. However, until middle-class parents suck it up we will be stuck in a stasis, whereby teachers and parents alike are drawn to the private sector.
Our House of Commons does not reflect the general population: only 7 per cent overall were privately educated, whereas for the last cohort of MPs the latest figure was 32 per cent. The figure was higher (48 per cent) among Conservatives. For Labour, it was 17 per cent and the Lib Dems, 14 per cent.
Even lefties like Diane Abbott have famously educated their own children privately. Abbott heads a long list of socialists who have drawn flak for having done so. And yet, most Labour MPs will blithely support the VAT rise, because outside of the private school dominated right-wing chatterati, this is a win-win policy: a tax rise most of the population support. Yes, the Conservatives have sent out attack dogs to revive “Project Fear”: warning up to 80,000 pupils may flood the state system – which would be overwhelmed.
If true, then perhaps it would be. It takes £8,000 a year of funding per child in the state system. This is not sustained by the £1.7bn extra VAT would raise – never mind that, as I have mentioned previously, there is an alarming teacher recruitment crisis. However, fact-checking the claim reveals a reality: even if 3-7 per cent of pupils left private schools as a result (17,000 to 40,000 children), the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) reports that the school population will decline by 100,000 pupils a year until 2030, because of declining birth rates. We all know a local primary school (state or private) that is either closing or downsizing.
Are private schools nevertheless nervous? Of course, they are. Perhaps “deprived” Rishi Sunak’s alma mater, Winchester, will lose some of its boarders (£52k a year) to its own day school (£38k for sixth formers only) or a cheaper day school. But, there are oligarchs and other wealthy overseas parents’ children queueing to replace them. It is more likely that the children of GPs, dentists, lawyers or headteachers’ own children may be those that will be forced to switch. For the one per cent, it really won’t touch the sides – and they will likely be working with accountants to find ways round it, anyway.
We chose to send our children to private school by accident. In New York I messed up the zoning boundaries and, as a result, chose a much vaunted local private school. Returning to London, I did not even hear back from the local state schools available that I contacted. So, panicked by doom-mongering acquaintances warning our girls would be “so far behind” – which proved to be nonsense – we chose private again. Like I said, it’s not an ideal world.
There is no political appetite for my utopian desire to see private schools banned – as in Finland. Instead, although my well-known school would not agree with me, it is probably just the smaller, lesser-known private schools that may suffer, alongside those middle-class professionals that scrimp and save in order to send their children to them. Few in the wider population will shed many tears.