2 days ago
Labour's ideological attack on private schools is backfiring spectacularly
Labour had a cunning plan. It was to recruit 6,500 new teachers with the money Sir Keir Starmer's government would raise by slapping private schools with VAT and business rates.
The state education sector would receive an injection of £1.5bn, which, along with the newly trained teachers, would also include career advice and mental health support for pupils.
The nation was to be taught a lesson in equality. Resources would be diverted from private schools to state schools in an attempt to level the playing field.
But the flagship policy appears to be falling apart spectacularly.
Instead of extracting £1.5bn from private schools, Treasury analysis has suggested that the new tax policy could cost the Government an extra £650m per year.
Data published by the Department for Education last week revealed an exodus of over 11,000 pupils from private schools in England alone, far outstripping the Government's estimate of only 3,000 students transferring to the state education system from fee-paying establishments.
Experts expect this number will be materially higher when data from across the country is added to the total.
By some industry estimates, 23 independent schools have announced plans for closure or possible closure since the Government implemented VAT on school fees, causing grave concern to both state and private school leaderships.
The Association of School and College Leaders, which represents state and private headteachers, said the new VAT policy is 'rushed', with ministers being accused of failing to adequately prepare for the added pressure on the state sector from pupils fleeing higher private school fees – many of whom will have special needs.
It now appears that the main benefit of a policy so heavily laden with financial and social costs may not, after all, materialise, as Labour stands accused of abandoning its manifesto pledge to recruit 6,500 new teachers.
The Government, pointing to more than 2,000 teachers recruited last year, is still claiming it is on the right track to achieving its goal.
However, following revelations that the number of primary school teachers have fallen by nearly 3,000, it has now emerged that the Department for Education is not counting them towards the target in a bid to gloss over the fact that the overall number of teachers in state funded schools in England fell in 2024-25.
The Government has blamed the country's falling birth rate, which means there are fewer children being enrolled at primary schools. As a result, it 'would clearly be nonsensical for primaries to be part of the pledge', it says.
The plan – in the immortal words of Blackadder – is truly so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel.
Teachers aren't surprised. A headmaster of a private school with three decades of experience told me that all teachers in a leadership position are painfully aware of the challenges of training and retaining primary school teachers. Labour's ideological rigidity will only make matters significantly worse.
The policy of preventing state schools from recruiting so-called 'unqualified' teachers meant there was never a realistic chance of recruiting that many new teachers over Labour's timeframe.
With the Government now reneging on its flagship policy pledge of providing more state school teachers, what justification can there possibly be for clobbering private schools with higher fees? So far, the policy has resulted in school closures and the uprooting of settled children and imposing them on an already struggling state sector.
Why are we attacking one of the few excellent industries left in Britain? The exasperation across the whole education sector is palpable.
The answer, of course, is ideology. In the quest of equality of outcomes, the lowest common denominator is the inevitable conclusion.
