The destructiveness of Labour’s schools plan
Labour’s leadership has been busy throwing out policies that it fears will cost it votes at the next election, notably promises to spend vast amounts of non-existent money to achieve improbable carbon reduction targets. Moreover, Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, has effectively committed to spending and tax plans already announced by the Conservatives.
But the party’s Left needs its red meat and that has come in the form of another attack on elitism in education. Not content with leading the charge 60 years ago to close most grammar schools, Labour now wants to inflict maximum damage on independent schools.
The party’s intention to apply VAT at 20 per cent to school fees will force many institutions out of the market. A poll for this newspaper of 350 independent school leaders has found that nearly all expect to increase prices as a result of the policy.
Of schools surveyed who said they will increase fees, 76 per cent said their fees would have to rise by more than 10 per cent. The poll found that almost three quarters of private schools fear they would be forced to close in the next five years if a Labour government introduced VAT.
Faith schools, family-run schools and special schools around the country would find it hardest to keep going. Average annual fees for a UK day school of £16,656 per year would rise to nearly £20,000 if VAT was added in full.
Labour appears to think these schools can cut their costs by a fifth to compensate, a call to prudence it does not follow in any other sphere. But most small community schools operate on tight margins and such savings are impossible.
Others will try to absorb the extra cost by reducing the work they do in partnership with state schools. Who benefits from that? Inevitably top schools would survive because their pupils come from better-off families so Labour’s policy would impact on children in poorer areas. Furthermore, more than 500,000 children attend private school. If a significant number has to be absorbed into the state system, the pressures would be considerable.
This is a vindictive, class-warfare policy whose only outcome will be to shut down good schools, put some of our best institutions far beyond the reach of all but the wealthy, wreck the partnerships that have built up between the independent and state sector and ultimately be to the detriment of the country. Sir Keir Starmer likes to maintain that he has changed his party but that sounds like a familiar Labour litany.