Last year there was an 8 percentage point gap between the proportion of students getting A*-A grades in south-east England and that in the north-east – wider than the five-point gap in 2019 – while pupils in private schools were more than twice as likely to achieve top grades as those in the state sector.
So they’ll stick 20% VAT on school fees to create as smaller private sec tor and thus lower inequality.
Fun how lowering inequality never does mean sorting out the shite that the state provides, does it?
They can’t, when the staff providing that shite are their majority voters, i.e. the public sector.
That’s a price worth paying to finally achieve equity.
In the new utopia everyone, including “I’m not a little bitch” from yesterday irrespective of whether he turns up, will receive (and deserve them you bigot!) the same perfect grades. Lake Woebegon on steroids.
Tim Worstall is going to be so, so, so embarrassed when, very shortly, a Labour minister provides a justification for imposing VAT on private schools that includes the word “Education”. Maybe won’t mention educational outcomes, but the word Education is coming. I’m sure of it!!
Making all the stalks closer to average by decapitating the tall ones.
I’m sorry, but I really can’t get too excited about the Reichsfúhrer’s government putting VAT on private education. It’s a service. But I can’t say I’m particularly enthusiastic about public schools. In effect they encourage the establishment of dynasties. Having had a quite of lot of contact with the product of the better public schools – Harrow, Eton, Rugby etc – can’t say I’ve noticed them being more intelligent. More socially polished, maybe. But I think you have to look at the results.
Parents claim they pay for a private education because it enables their offspring to do better in their careers. No doubt it does. They’re better educated. But being better educated does not imply more intelligent. As the growth in university attendance has shown. So the outcome is the decision makers throughout society are better educated. And hasn’t that worked out so very wonderful? You have decision makers at every level of government & the private sector you wouldn’t trust to run a second hand shop in Bognor for a wet a wet week in February. And a country slowly spiralling down the toilet.
I think the public schools served a purpose when they were the only places one could acquire the tool kit that is education. Not so sure now.
The attainment gap cannot be closed by making opportunities equal through abolishing/impoverishing private schools. The attainment gap is due to a combination of innate aptitude in the subject, teaching quality and effort (“application”). Private schools have entrance exams so their pupils are all above the average for the state sector in ability, and their purpose is to provide a better education to jutify their fees so they make more effort and demand more effort from their pupils (and parents who are paying a lot generally make more effort as they think its worth it and expect their children tomake more effort) which jointly make more difference than the superior quality of teaching and facilities.
Abolish private schools to bring everyone down to the level of the state sector and you will *still* have some children with far greater aptitude than others and some children willing to make greater efforts to learn.
To remove the attainment gap without abolishing private schools would require a new law that only those who *failed* the entrance exam (for e.g. Holland Park Comprehensive) could go to a fee-paying school to raise their attainment levels.
@john77
I think one of the things has been forgotten is the primary benefit from education is learning how to learn. Crack that & you can learn anything. Put that together with intelligence & anything is possible The subjects are a learning material to work with to learn the ability.
The “educated” are just those that have acquired a possibly useful toolkit. Minions hireable by the hour & useful if whipped regularly & kept a close eye on. Same as you might a ditch digger. Actual intelligence is something completely different.
I’m wondering now whether a private education contributes to the attitude of the soi-disant elite that they are superior to those of us who went to state schools and thus entitled if not duty-bound to control us.* I personally think that nobody who yearns for power should be allowed anywhere near it.
* Present company excepted, of course.
For clarity, I went to a grammar school which was always in the top ten in the country. I have no desire to control anyone. Except those damn pigeons.
Note that the well-off lefties’ favoured form of private education, private tutors, are still exempt from VAT.
I have an idea. Why not have an elite type of state schools that you need to pass an entrance exam to enter? We could call the exam the eleven plus and we could call the schools grammar schools.
The main benefit of attending a private school is the connections made.
@ Andy
If that is the case your father has horrendously ripped off by the fees he paid unless they wre less than the cost of school meals.
No, no, Andy. Take lonely little Justin Welby: he’s not even friends with God.
BIS,
“Parents claim they pay for a private education because it enables their offspring to do better in their careers. No doubt it does. They’re better educated.”
It doesn’t. Or at least, barely. People have done studies and it’s nearly all correlation. Same as the South East thing. The South East schools aren’t better than the North East. They just get the kids of more successful people.
“But being better educated does not imply more intelligent. As the growth in university attendance has shown. So the outcome is the decision makers throughout society are better educated. And hasn’t that worked out so very wonderful? You have decision makers at every level of government & the private sector you wouldn’t trust to run a second hand shop in Bognor for a wet a wet week in February. And a country slowly spiralling down the toilet.”
I think this is more about the private school kids that go into politics. They’re all doing PPE which strikes me as a bit of a joke degree compared to something like physics or maths.
Possibly, the numpties in power have either forgotten, or ignored, the desire of military and FCO staff for their children to have a balanced education, usually in private boarding schools, while they are stationed abroad.
@ Western Bloke
It is less “doing better in their careers” than *having better careers*.
“Success” in most careers is measured by how far up the corporate ladder one climbs and one is soon into “management” rather than actually doing a job, which is almost uncorrelated with academic intelligence/IQ or aptitude in one’s job [ICI did an experiment years ago when IQ was in fashion in order to decide whether to include an IQ test in its recruitment process and found that IQ was not a good guide for choosing potential future leaders].
A large number of boys at my school went into the medical professions which many/most of them would not have considered if they had attended their local Grammar School; a smaller but still significant number became lawyers (ditto); a handful went to Sandhurst and became army officers (ditto); … I remember one of my friends telling me that he didn’t reckon he was clever enough to go to university but was fairly good at maths so he chose to become an accountant.