Education Secretary Launches Fresh Attack on Private Schools
Labour’s hitting private schools with Ofsted bills up to three times higher in its latest raid on the independent sector. The Mail has more.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson will take an axe to the discount private institutions currently enjoy for visits by the schools watchdog.
Two thirds of the inspection costs are currently subsidised by Ofsted, who visit around half of England’s 2,496 registered private schools every year.
But this will be swiftly removed by Ms Phillipson this week, in an announcement which will arrive less than a year after Labour dramatically hiked VAT on private schools.
Since the tax raid on schools last year, more than 50 institutions across England have signalled their intent to close.
On top of this, the numbers of private school pupils have also dipped by 11,000, flying in the face of Labour’s own predictions that only 3,000 pupils would be forced to drop out as a result of the policy.
Such figures have sparked fears over the potential future consequences for the increased Ofsted costs, with the burden potentially hitting the pockets of parents across the country.
The Education Secretary’s move comes amid her battle to succeed Angela Rayner as the Labour Party’s deputy leader, with a tighter grip on private schools likely appeasing her to Labour’s Left-leaning members. …
Official figures showed pupil numbers in private schools in England fell to 582,477 in January 2025 compared with 593,486 the previous year. …
Ofsted inspections at private schools in 2024/25 cost £6.5 million, according to figures set out by then-Education minister Stephen Morgan. But only £2.2 million of that was recovered in fees charged by the watchdog.
Worth reading in full.
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The primary motiving forces behind any left-wing party and movement are: envy and resentment.
The rest is just propaganda.
So, taxing private education is not done to raise money. It is just done out of spite.
(By the way, I did not have a private education.)
You’re quite right it is a deliberate attack on all islands of traditional English values, and neither did I.
This is what this is all about – traditional England and it has to be abolished. Nothing to do with “potential” revenue although I am sure plain old spite plays a part.
Just a slow moving class war.
Agreed
I was a grammar school boy – largely abolished by socialism because they value social mobility (and not brought back by the Fake Conservatives).
That may be their claimed justification for it, but I don’t think that’s the real reason. Grammar schools (yes, I’m a poor example of their output) were open to any who could demonstrate the ability to benefit from that education (yes, there were some barriers. I remember my parents discussing how they could afford my school uniform/kit requirements – I’m damn’ certain they didn’t intend me to hear it). The old argument against the eleven-plus about making such an irrevocable decision at such an early age is bollocks; a very good school friend was apparently a slow starter and transferred in at 3rd year (what would now be Year 9 in England and Wales). From then on he was near top right through to Upper Sixth and into academia.
(Edited to correct word order).
Indeed
The bit about social mobility was sarcasm, not very well done…
Apologies. Yes, I should have realised.
No apology needed!
Socialists claim to want social mobility but seem to prefer the opposite.
Social mobility usually results in a race to the bottom.
Many think that grammar schools increase social mobility- I tend to agree. I don’t think Labour’s supposed interest in social mobility is sincere
Just as sincere as their support for ‘working people’ as they put a tax on jobs.
hence the attacks on the Private sector, the Private home owners, Air travel, the Restaurant and Pub sector, Insurance, Private medical. Indeed anything that people aspire too beyond being forelock tugging Peasantry is despised by Labour.
They are followers of the Mao playbook, they would have us all tilling the land with a hoe, and fulfilling central party production targets. They do not believe in educating the masses, as that leads to critical thinking, questioning and challenge and no Lefty likes that.
What they want is a population that is exhasuted, poor, ignorant and on its knees, such that they can rule us.
Labour is the Party of Spite, envy and malice, it always has been.
Since Labour loathes excellent British private schools so much, it could choose to abolish them rather than make them the exclusive preserve of rich foreign pupils. Leaving them increasingly unaffordable to most British parents is the antithesis of UK social mobility, the holy grail of socialism. So let Ms Phillipson explain why she declines to show the courage of her convictions. Her policy at present is to keep the private education sector but only for the most wealthy.
Well saying that two thirds of the cost is subsidised by Ofsted is one way of looking at it. Another way is that taxpayers are forced to pay for something called Ofsted which in turn forces schools to spend time and energy being inspected.
Yes, it sounds like they insist on more frequent ‘inspections’ for private schools than for State funded schools.
Mind you, I’d be worried if something like a madrassa was not regularly inspected.
I think the state should get out of education completely
If people want schools to be inspected then agencies will emerge that do that, and schools can decide which ones to use, or not
And even if these jihadi barracks are inspected will it be to similar standards?
No, that would be waycist and doubtless infringing on yooman rights.
I’d be very, very surprised if they were regularly inspected, and even more so if that inspection were not carried out by one of their own.
Private schools being forced to pay for state inspections whilst Kneel and co ignore the fact that parents are shouldering the costs of educating almost 600,000 additional pupils.
I see.
Yup – pay for your kids to get educated and then pay again to pay for other people’s including recent arrivals who have made no economic contribution
Yep. Do you think the population just don’t see it or do you think having to endure the scam without being able to fight it is so painful that it’s just better to play along and pretend it’s all good?
I think if you grow up (as I have) in a place and time during which the state is involved in many aspects of life, and people around you seem to take that for granted and want and expect the government to fix everything, you don’t really give it much thought. I didn’t. I have for a long time being in favour of smaller government, but until “covid” I had not really spent much time thinking about exactly how bad things had got. So I think “just don’t see it”. But the “play along” part IMO applies to “covid”. I think there are a lot of people who want to forget about it because it’s uncomfortable to think that it was a big scam.
My friends have stopped watching the news – if they don’t see it, it’s not happening.
That picture: Has it been ‘doctored’? Surely her gob isn’t really that big?
It’s like the opening credits to Monty Python – only she’s not funny.
Fine. Just don’t bother getting the OFSTED inspectors in. They are private organisations after all. If a school is doing crap then parents won’t spend their hard earned money to send their kids there.
That’s what I would do. But I think it’s mandatory. So they’d have to basically enter into rebellion territory.
I wonder how long it will take the population to fully understand that every piece of regulation is an assault on private property?
Why does a private school need mandatory inspections by the state?
The whole point of a private service is that the customer decides how good it is and whether it wants it or not, not the technocratic commissars of a the state bureaucracy.
When is the population going to start pushing back FFS.
It just keeps getting worse. Will it ever end?
Socialists feel the need to control what our children are taught. The private sector is a real threat to that, so it has to be destroyed. That’s what this is all about.
I suspect that has a lot to do with it. Ensuring the ideologies are being promulgated with vigour.
Under Labour everyone will get the same socialist low quality education. Educated enough to make the machines work. But not ask any questions.
Except the chosen lefty few of course. The Blair slime did indeed send his offspring to a state school but the London Oratory is not your bog standard secondary school.
What a godawful woman Wendolene is.