Tag Archives: private education

Is VAT affecting private school results?

Posted on by
Reply

It might well be a bit of a stretch to believe that the effect of VAT being imposed on private schools in January 2025 is responsible for the decline in the percentage of pupils in such centres awarded Level 7 or above in GCSE level qualifications in some subjects this year, but, interestingly, there has been a decline in the percentages awarded Level 7 or above in some key subjects in such centres.

The subjects include: biology; business studies; chemistry; citizenship; drama; England; English Literature; mathematics; physics and social sciences. Most of the falls are probably not significant, being only a matter of a decimal point or two, and thus within the expected margin of error. Indeed, in most subjects the percentage gaining level 7 of above is still higher than in 2019, before covid struck.

This year, although physics dropped from 60.8% in 2024 to 60.0% in 2025, and mathematics from 33.5% to 32.0% – subject where percentages in the public sector schools generally increased, although they still remain well below the percentages achieved by the private sector centres. In both subjects the private sector percentage was above the 2019 outcome. In mathematics, it might be that 2024 was ‘a good year’, and 2025 is a more normal outcome?

Now, another possible explanation for the drop in percentages, if it isn’t disappearing pupils, might be that the teacher supply crisis is finally impacting private sector schools in some subjects where recruitment is challenging. This might possibly be responsible for the declines in physics and mathematics percentages.

Another possibility is a change in entry policies that allowed marginal candidates to enter, but considering the financial consequences of widening entry at a time when private sector schools might be expected to be looking for cost saving measures, this reason seems unlikely.

Since many private schools are day schools, as a result it would be interesting to know to what extent parents have invested additional funds in private tutoring and Easter revision classes for pupils where there were concerns about outcomes after any ‘mock’ examinations. However, I suspect such investment would be more likely be at ‘A’ level than at GCSE, except perhaps in English and mathematics.

There is a useful table that allows comparison between public and private sector institutions Outcomes by centre type

The outcomes for physics at Level 4 or above are interesting

Grade 4 and above in Physics GCSE %2019202320242025diff 2023 to 2025
All State Funded91.490.290.491.00.80
Independent schools inc CTCs96.896.296.495.9-0.30

The trend in state funded institutions has been upward, despite any possible issues with staffing, whereas the picture is more mixed in the private sector. However, neither percentage take account of who is allowed to take the subject and the prevalence of combined science in many state-funded schools rather than the separate sciences.

Perhaps even more interesting is how different state schools perform with different groups and the extent to which MATs can achieve good results across the Trust.

Four-day week for teachers?

Posted on by
Reply

A Labour MP has called for a four-day working week to be introduced across the public sector.

Lib Dem-run South Cambridgeshire District Council’s cabinet will meet today to approve the continuation of the trial for all desk-based staff as well as extending it to cover caretakers and binmen. 

These are just two of the headlines from an article that I read this morning. What would be the implications for teachers of the introduction of a four-day week? The answer depends upon whether the same amount of face-to-face contact with pupils was maintained as at present and whether that was contact time spread over four or five days? What effect would four longer school days have on pupils, especially younger pupils? After all, some early years settings already offer wrap around care that is much longer than the traditional school-day.

What would the psychologists and those that study brain development in children have to say about putting five days of work into four? Perhaps a model would develop of four days of taught time and the fifth for ‘homework’ or supplementary activities.

On the plus side, parents also working a four-day week would have an extra day with their children: on the downside, parents whose working week did not coincide with the school four-day week would have to deal with the need for extra childcare.

Any change would come with a cost both to individuals and to the State. If there wasn’t sufficient funding, schools might be tempted to cram the teaching into four days and use the fifth day to generate income from their school sites and playing fields.

In a sector struggling to recruit enough teachers at present, would a four-day week make the profession more or less attractive to potential teachers. Certainly, if the bulk of graduate careers moved to a four-day week, teaching, already operating an employer-driven form of flexi-time, might be unattractive without some other boost to conditions of work.

A four-day working week might be a real challenge to the private school sector, where the additional costs would most likely have to be passed on to parents through increased fees. An increase of this magnitude might drive more parents back into the state sector, upping the cost of state education to the government. Add VAT on to the costs, and such numbers switching might increase still further.

During the Corbyn era, Labour proposed four additional bank holidays for workers; all during school holidays, so teachers would have seen no benefit from them. The implications for the teaching profession and others working in schools of the widespread introduction of a four-day working week do need to be considered.

However, I don’t think that the present model of schooling will continue as it has for the past 150 years. The AI revolution may well turn out to be as profound for society as the microchip revolution that started in the 1970s and transformed the world of work beyond recognition in many areas, but only to a limited degree in schools.

 Technology and its interaction with the process of schooling has further to go in the future. Perhaps the pressure for a four-day working week for humans might be the catalyst for major changes in schooling?

Private schools: important sector of job market for teachers

Posted on by
Reply

Nearly one in five vacancies for teachers of mathematics that were advertised during the first two months of 2022 placed by schools in England came from private schools responsible for educating children of secondary school age. This included both senior and preparatory schools across England. However, the vast majority of posts from private schools were advertised by located by schools in London and the South East of England. There were relatively few vacancies from schools across the north of England.

The data produced by TeachVac, the national vacancy service for teachers, shows that the private sectors share of the job market for teachers so far in 2022 has increased from, around 12% of vacancies in the first two months of 2021, to 14% across the first two months of 2022.

Other subjects, apart from mathematics, where the private sector dominate the job market for teachers include, perhaps not surprisingly, classics, but also some posts for teachers of specific languages, including Russian, where there have been three recorded vacancies so far in 2022.

Schools in the state sector usually advertise for teachers of modern languages rather than for teachers of specific languages. The same balance between advertising for teachers of specific subjects and a generic vacancy is often also seen in vacancies for science teachers. Private schools favour vacancies for teachers of specific subjects, whereas state schools advertise for teachers of science, at least at the classroom teacher grade.

As with the state sector, there has been less demand for teachers of arts and humanities so far in 2022 by private schools. At least in England, this is not a part of the curriculum likely to absorb the over-supply of such teachers being trained at the public expense.

The next three months will cover the period between March and May when the majority of vacancies for teachers will appear. Nationally, across both state and private schools, and the primary and secondary sectors, nearly 20,000 vacancies for teachers have already been advertised in 2022 according to TeachVac’s records. 2022 might well see a total for the year of close to 70,000 unless demand falls away later in the year.

Should some universities decide to withdraw form government funded teacher preparation courses then they may well still be able to maintain initial teacher education by providing recruits for the private school sector. As academies don’t need to employ qualified teachers, any universities outside the government scheme can also provide new recruits for that sector, providing that a funding route can be found for trainees, perhaps based upon a greater use of a salaried scheme funded by schools. It would be interesting to speculate what such a divergence of public and private training might do for the levelling up agenda?

Should politicians lead by example?

Posted on by
4

This blog starts with not one but two ethical issues. Firstly, should we discuss politician’s children and specifically their education and secondly, should politicians send their children to state funded schools? These questions arise after media speculation that the Prime Minister is to send his son to a private school, thus saving the State several thousands of pounds a year on his education.

I would normally regard this as a private matter and fully support the right of parents to educate their children as they see fit. However, the Prime Minister has form in this regard since the discussions as to where his daughter would go to secondary school were all over the media in 2014. Indeed, according to the Daily Mail on line, in October 2014 he was in favour of the state sector. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2796964/cameron-set-tory-pm-send-children-state-secondary-viewing-three-four-schools-wife-samantha.html Part of the headline read: No one should need to go to a private school, says Eton-educated PM.

The article went on to say

In an interview with Good Housekeeping magazine, the Prime Minister suggested the Government’s education reforms were designed to make private education redundant.

‘If you pay your taxes you shouldn’t have to pay all over again. There is no reason why our state schools can’t be among the best in the world, and some of them are,’ he said.

‘What is exciting is there this change not only in practice but also in culture which is all about excellence and wanting to be the best and wanting to get the best out of every child, and you are now seeing that in more and more schools.
Well that seemed pretty clear. So perhaps he can tell us why he has changed his mind? It cannot be as a result of the social mobility index the government published yesterday, as that rates London very highly for social mobility compared with say many seaside resorts. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/496103/Social_Mobility_Index.pdf

If the Prime Minister does opt out of state education for his son, what does this say about the government’s own academy programme?

Is it a slap in the face for hardworking teachers and other staff in our state schools that the person leading our public services doesn’t want to use them for his own family? Of course, London state schools might lose out under the funding review coming up shortly and their performance, which has improved dramatically over the last few years, might deteriorate over the next few years, especially if they have difficulty recruiting staff due to the pay cap in the public sector. We these the factors that help change Mr Cameron’s mind from eighteen months ago? We don’t know and, as I said, at the beginning, all parents have the right to decide how to educate their children. The State is the default position if you don’t, won’t or cannot take a decision yourself. But one cannot help but feel that leading by example is good for the morale of those that work in the public sector.

The cost of schooling

Posted on by
1

You can tell we are approaching the start of the new school year when education stories start to dominate the front pages of our newspapers once again. Yesterday, The Times; today The Daily Telegraph. The news that DfE data suggests some state schools outperform private fee-paying schools raises the issue of why do so many parents still pay for their children’s education?

There are, of course, some concerns with how the data was used in the comparison. Selective state schools based on choosing their pupils by academic ability should, by their very nature, do better than other schools, especially those where parents have to find around £18,000 per year for tuition alone, as they do in London. Nevertheless, the data does show how well some state school are beginning to preform, albeit in some cases perhaps because of a judicious entry policy for examinations that excludes those not likely to achieve good grades – compare either physics or further mathematics and media studies ‘A’ level outcomes to see what I mean – from taking the examination.

I wonder what Jeremy Corbyn’s reaction to the story would be. Is he in favour of closing down all private schools or letting parents use their income to continue to pay for them? No doubt someone will ask him at some point? After all, he want to give these parents and their offspring free university education. Closing all private schools would probably cost the tax payer several billions of pounds in educating the children not currently funded by the State. It would poses questions of whether the State would pay for specialist schools for foreign nationals and in areas such as sports, music, drama and the rest of the arts.
Private schools, especially boarding schools and some 16-19 colleges are now important export earners, both bringing in money to the country through the fees of overseas students and by exporting their brands overseas.

I am sure That the Daily Telegraph didn’t want to demolish this source of national wealth, but parents will no doubt start to question whether using the local state school plus topping up with private tutorial support and revision classes where that school is perhaps weaker than it could be might be a cheaper alternative to outright school fees. This might especially become the case if universities were school-blind in reviewing applications and looked just at the pupil and their profile.

No doubt there are those that use the private school sector to avoid mixing their offspring with children that attend state schools or because they think the non-academic facilities and outcomes are better at such schools. Those are the parents that also move house to find the best state school that suits their tastes.

Although the effectiveness of private education is an interesting issue for Daily Telegraph readers, the main concern for most of us in education must be to continue reducing the gap between the worst achieving and their peers in schools. Those under-achieving are frequently from the least well off sections of society. Living in poor housing or even bed and breakfast accommodation doesn’t aid learning and often leads to fractured schooling patterns. As we know this frequently means starting school at a disadvantage. The Pupil Premium has started to help close that gap in society. The present government needs to continue with that work. I am sure it can leave the value for money arguments about private schooling to the parents to decide what to do with their cash.