Every element of our education sector has great strengths. Having worked for, and with, most forms of school over a lifetime dedicated to helping the deserving young I find little comfort in the VAT proposal for the education sector. Furthermore I believe that the whole charity sector’s impact should have to benchmark it’s efforts against appropriate published indices …… like Free School Meals and Pupil Premium. This should include independent school charities.
All forms of schools face funding issues. 2024 to 2025 was going to be tough before the current VAT policy for independent schools was suggested.
No parent wants
- disruption for their children;
- to be dictated to on their choice of education;
- to be let down by an underfunded sector.
Current policy will lead to all of the above with even deeper uncertainty on funding across all elements of the sector. It will force further sacrifices and damage to family life, and the quality of educational delivery will diminish; it will cause further pressures on our limited supply of great teachers
Independent school charities have been largely responsible for the threat to their existence because many have not seized the opportunity to reap the rewards of charitable status by being “truly” philanthropic both locally and nationally. Too much has been invested in lavish capital assets harming the optics for independent schools.
I have been saddened by that state school leaders have been unwilling to celebrate their partnerships with independent schools.A sector wide dialogue has been hampered by State school leaders feeling they cannot contribute to the debate on the future of their sector and by independent school leaders failing to produce a unified response which embraces the transparent challenges to their futures.
This is no way forward and a dialogue must be encouraged. There should be a number of cross-sector steering groups around the the country that develop with government the future of the sector. “CHANGE”, whatever that means, should not be driven by politicians in either the education or the health sector. Those who dedicate their lives to education – and therefore to students, parents and teachers – should be engaged in a process that delivers an appropriate strategy for the sector. We need to respect our stakeholders and respect choice. There is no one size fitting all solution for any child and a philosophy of inclusivity, diversity, and equality of opportunity can and should be instigated across all forms of schools in the sector. That is why the independent schools should have grasped their charitable status.
Recently a 200 year old charity founded as The London Orphan Asylum produced its second British No 1 tennis player. We need the best of opportunities to be truly accessible to all and this means that all types of schools need to seek the highest levels of performance from their students. Only recently I was debating with a top former player whether a state school could harbour a similar high performance scheme. In my view of course they could, and they can, through seeking external funding. All schools need to look beyond their gates and build funding partnerships as charities.External investment in all types of schools must be part of the equation, and not disruption and a potential levelling down on aspiration.
Perhaps the current VAT vision really is levelling up. However my fear is we may well all miss the joy of and access to the celebration of, achievement at the highest level.
There is no doubt that there is a need for change and I have hinted at elements of the required change. The “VAT” vision has made the sector review the appropriateness of the education schools deliver from the standpoint of social impact. Hooray ! But … let’s make sure we genuinely facilitate levelling up for all and choice. As things stand this policy could well be the undoing of a Government.
