The Labour Government

[bluenova]

Has any detailed planning / analysis been conducted on which parts of the country and indeed individual councils are most likely to see private school pupils moving to the state sector, and whether the state sector in those particular areas could absorb this increase in numbers?

Talking about spare capacity in the state sector as a whole is a non-argument if the movement is likely to be concentrated in particular regions.

Something like 85-90% of Local Authorities have more spare spaces than they have private pupils, with the others being fairly close, and easily able to absorb much more than even the most dramatic of Daily Telegraph predictions.

The only real outlier is Surrey, but even there they could absorb over a third of their public school pupils. I'm pretty sure no-one is going to (non) argue that a complete collapse of the Surrey public school system is likely. Obviously within a borough, the demand may be spread out, but it's unlikely to be so distorted as to cause unsurmountable problems. Anyway, public school kids are used to travelling longer average distances to get to school, so maybe even that fear will turn out to be a red herring.

 

[bluethrunthru]

Look at you celebrating the home secretary getting a positive write up the Sun ..... deary fucking me.

look at your reaction to a Govt planning - deary me - you lost get over it

 

[Craig]

I see everything that points to big lazy state, low growth and more debt. More entitlement and more laziness.

FFS

 

[I'm With Stupid]

Reading the last 10 pages, it's insane how much people care about class, about classifying people into categories. For what end? Why? Why do we have this obsessive behaviour about class in the UK?

I can't help but think this is the "if we don't talk about it, it will go away" attitude. People talk about class because the last 14 years has seen the biggest transfer of wealth from working people to the ownership class in living memory. We should be talking about class. It's the biggest factor that determines someone's outcomes in life and this is increasingly the case. Wages of workers have stagnated and ownership of assets (like a house) has flatlined at the same time that the wealth of the rich has exploded, and yet some people still don't see a link between these two facts.

But if we are going to talk about it, it would perhaps be better to talk about it in terms of people who work for a living, and people who live off the income from assets they own. Because the last 14 years has massively favoured the latter group, yet any attempt to redress this is labelled 'class warfare' as if that's a bad thing. Class warfare has already been quietly happening, and the upper classes are winning.

 

[KS55]

Reading the last 10 pages, it's insane how much people care about class, about classifying people into categories. For what end? Why? Why do we have this obsessive behaviour about class in the UK?

The UK’s obsession with class starts with the fact that we have a living, breathing active aristocracy headed by a king FFS. Until recently many sat in parliament by virtue only of their birth. Even now, they sit there voted in by……oh, the aristocracy.
Labour policy is to abolish hereditary rights to sit in parliament. Better late than never.
I would like to remind you all that we are actually living in the 21st century.

 

[remember arthur mann]

I see everything that points to big lazy state, low growth and more debt. More entitlement and more laziness.

You're certainly on to something there worze, but all this happened on your crews watch.

 

[KS55]

thanks for your kind words

Love that you call me a "faux communist" I am probably more influenced by Kropotkin than Marks, more Lenin than Trotsky, i am not a Stalinist, Gramsci intrigues me, not read much though.

What you have to remember is there are differences as the left always argues over small details.

Marxism believes in the public ownership of the means of production, whilst Communism believes in the collective ownership of the means of production. Can you see the difference?

Lenin though was quite comfortable with small business as they should remain outside of state control.

Trotsky s ideas were of perpertual revolution until the world was socialist.

You my friend are obviously a Capitalist, which makes yo a supporter of the most murderous ideology than mankind has ever seen.

Bless you x

Lucky citizens of Pol Pot, Mao, Castro, Stalin and others to have escaped the murderous tyranny of capitalism.

 

[Blue Maverick]

Public sector pay recommended at 5% but government only budgeted for 3%! Be interesting to see what happens, as an aside since I’ve retired if the next pay deal goes through the fire service will have had a 17% pay rise in 3 years! I didn’t get that in 20 years.

 

[urban genie]

Reading the last 10 pages, it's insane how much people care about class, about classifying people into categories. For what end? Why? Why do we have this obsessive behaviour about class in the UK?

because we live in a class system maybe?

we have a social heirrchy starting with the royal family, aristocracy, landed gentry, those on middle income and then those on lower income and those on none

Most nations have a class system of one way or the other and also obssess over it

 

[BrianW]

In practical reality, there will always be different incomes. A consultant surgeon will always get paid more than the person who cleans the hospital bogs. I doubt many object to that. (Although you could argue that the absence of a bog cleaner is more swiftly noticed by more people.)

However, the level of inequality in this country is much higher than in most civilised countries, bar the USA. It is a proven fact that more equal societies are happier.

It did not use to be like this. In the 1970s, the UK was much closer to the norm. The change is due to the deliberate policies of successive governments, either Tory or faux Tory. The logic behind it was a need to give 'incentives' to wealthy individuals. (When the poor demand 'incentives' they are called greedy, selfish and even unpatriotic.)

I strongly favour a greater degree of equality - note, not absolute equality. I believe it would make this country a much more contented place. Do I see this, or any other likely government, going down this road? No, frankly. Because it's a surprisingly hard sell. Start making suggestions like that and people think you want Pol Pot in charge and that you think the newest immigrant should be on the same money as King Charles. The Daily Mail would say it was 'Marxist' and that it would lead to us all dying, and, more importantly, a fall in house prices.

 

[threespires]

Has any detailed planning / analysis been conducted on which parts of the country and indeed individual councils are most likely to see private school pupils moving to the state sector, and whether the state sector in those particular areas could absorb this increase in numbers?

Talking about spare capacity in the state sector as a whole is a non-argument if the movement is likely to be concentrated in particular regions.

Not being funny but if the incoming government had decided to appoint as Secretary of State for Education a macaque monkey trained to throw it's faeces at a whiteboard and then populated the DfE with ring-tailed lemurs skilled in plunging cocktail sticks into pieces of paper, as the central part of the policy and planning process, then it would still have taken the concept of planning in education more seriously than the previous government had done. I say this a someone who has spent the last 8 years trying to decipher the incoherent tosh emanating from the DfE on a variety of different subjects from academisation, to covid protocols, to T-Levels etc etc.

This policy was a smart one politically in that, relatively speaking, it is not that complicated to plan and execute and seems quite radical whilst also being pretty low risk.The private education lobbying and special interest groups have been well organised and well supported, they have got their narrative out there extensively often under the guise of 'research' but none of this has moved the dial in terms of sympathy for the sector. The right need to move on and find other battles to fight because this one is pointless. In fact it's worse than pointless because if Labour have any sense, when the bottom fails to fall out of the world as this policy is executed, they will be able to use the level of bleating and scare mongering as a stick to continue to beat the right with.

 

[urban genie]

Is that targeted at an individual? As I don’t think there’s many people that wouldn’t agree that anyone with failed asylum should
be either staying or working here illegally.

This is the problem on the whole, someone here who came on, say a student visa who doesn't then leave is not an asylum seeker or refugee (unless they claim it after the fact) yet all are lumped in the same in the immigration arguement.

I am guessing this crackdown is on such whose visa have ran out and have not gone home, having worked in the hospitality trade there is still plenty of places paying cash in hand to these people on overstays.

deporting illegal workers on overstayed visas and stopping the boats/deporting people claiming asylum are different things but talked about in the same breath, confusing the issue

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

It won't be the Winchesters, Eton 'n 'Arrows that go to the wall, it'll be the smaller local independents that will disappear so there may well be an exodus that the state system cannot accommodate, and we'll be back to the 'Golden Age of the 50s where there were hordes in every class.

I stridently predict only a small handful of private schools will close.

 

[Brewster's millions]

Not being funny but if the incoming government had decided to appoint as Secretary of State for Education a macaque monkey trained to throw it's faeces at a whiteboard and then populated the DfE with ring-tailed lemurs skilled in plunging cocktail sticks into pieces of paper, as the central part of the policy and planning process, then it would still have taken the concept of planning in education more seriously than the previous government had done. I say this a someone who has spent the last 8 years trying to decipher the incoherent tosh emanating from the DfE on a variety of different subjects from academisation, to covid protocols, to T-Levels etc etc.

This policy was a smart one politically in that, relatively speaking, it is not that complicated to plan and execute and seems quite radical whilst also being pretty low risk.The private education lobbying and special interest groups have been well organised and well supported, they have got their narrative out there extensively often under the guise of 'research' but none of this has moved the dial in terms of sympathy for the sector. The right need to move on and find other battles to fight because this one is pointless. In fact it's worse than pointless because if Labour have any sense, when the bottom fails to fall out of the world as this policy is executed, they will be able to use the level of bleating and scare mongering as a stick to continue to beat the right with.

When the attrition rate from private to public proves highly uneven across the country, and particular councils are put under real pressure to find additional places in schools that are already oversubscribed, the policy will simply appear as a completely unnecessary own goal.

Completely unnecessary in the sense that the policy has negligible fiscal benefits (if any), and it will simply risk increases in class sizes and in fact a deterioration in the quality of education provided in the impacted state schools.

Given your grievances about the numerous education policy changes of recent years and the uncertainty created around the sector, would you not have preferred a period of calm and careful planning, without the distraction created by an ideologically driven policy? In particular a policy which is likely to offer little to nothing from a fiscal perspective?

Starmer has made a big thing about putting the country ahead of party politics but I’m afraid he’s fallen at the first hurdle here.

 

[mosssideblue]

When the attrition rate from private to public proves highly uneven across the country, and particular councils are put under real pressure to find additional places in schools that are already oversubscribed, the policy will simply appear as a completely unnecessary own goal.

Completely unnecessary in the sense that the policy has negligible fiscal benefits (if any), and it will simply risk increases in class sizes and in fact a deterioration in the quality of education provided in the impacted state schools.

Given your grievances about the numerous education policy changes of recent years and the uncertainty created around the sector, would you not have preferred a period of calm and careful planning, without the distraction created by an ideologically driven policy? In particular a policy which is likely to offer little to nothing from a fiscal perspective?

Starmer has made a big thing about putting the country ahead of party politics but I’m afraid he’s fallen at the first hurdle here.

You might also be wrong in your assumption

 

[Brewster's millions]

You might also be wrong in your assumption

I think the one thing that we can be sure of is that the movement of pupils out of the private sector will not prove uniform across the country, and so talk of spare capacity across the state sector as a whole is redundant.

 

[PPT]

thanks for your kind words

Love that you call me a "faux communist" I am probably more influenced by Kropotkin than Marks, more Lenin than Trotsky, i am not a Stalinist, Gramsci intrigues me, not read much though.

What you have to remember is there are differences as the left always argues over small details.

Marxism believes in the public ownership of the means of production, whilst Communism believes in the collective ownership of the means of production. Can you see the difference?

Lenin though was quite comfortable with small business as they should remain outside of state control.

Trotsky s ideas were of perpertual revolution until the world was socialist.

You my friend are obviously a Capitalist, which makes yo a supporter of the most murderous ideology than mankind has ever seen.

Bless you x

Ideological bollocks.
Dream on comrade. Or grow up.

 

[bluenova]

I think the one thing that we can be sure of is that the movement of pupils out of the private sector will not prove uniform across the country, and so talk of spare capacity across the state sector as a whole is redundant.

I answered your question about this last night. You asked about problems across the country and even within "individual councils", and I pointed out that nearly every council in the country could absorb an almost total collapse of the private sector. The only outlier was Surrey, and the state there could still absorb around a third of the private sector - something that I'll bet anything you like won't happen.

There is no way that the drops will be anything like the levels that would make serious dents in the state sector - most predictions are in the low single figures.

 

[Brewster's millions]

I answered your question about this last night. You asked about problems across the country and even within "individual councils", and I pointed out that nearly every council in the country could absorb an almost total collapse of the private sector. The only outlier was Surrey, and the state there could still absorb around a third of the private sector - something that I'll bet anything you like won't happen.

There is no way that the drops will be anything like the levels that would make serious dents in the state sector - most predictions are in the low single figures.

No serious analysis has occurred, as you well know.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

I think the one thing that we can be sure of is that the movement of pupils out of the private sector will not prove uniform across the country, and so talk of spare capacity across the state sector as a whole is redundant.

With a combination of cost absorption by the schools, and parents having to find an average of a couple of grand a year extra, the movement you refer to will be nugatory.

The overwhelming majority of those who can afford private education in the first place can stand an extra 10-20% on way or the other.