It is but as always beware of the stats. Most grammar schools achieve far more strongly at 8/9+ GCSEs to say nothing of massively strong performance at IB and Alevels in the sixth form. The 5+ GCSE measure is a very crude statistic.
I'm a little surprised to see the Conservatives agreeing to the foundation of 100% Muslim-only madrasahs as state schools. No doubt this will play well with the tabloids.
Yeah, I am worried about the bit on faith schools.
Trouble is that Christian based faith schools are popular, and one can't discriminate.
Why not?
There have been well documented problems with such schools and I can see no good reason why we should permit them just because other faith schools (which have not had such problems) are permitted.
Discrimination for relevant reasons is not only not wrong but desirable, indeed essential.
Permitting schools to exist which teach a curriculum/way of life which is incompatible with life in Britain/hostile to our values or which lead to the sort of segregation which makes integration difficult or impossible is wrong. And it is no answer to say that other faith schools are permitted.
Ignoring matters which are relevant is stupidity of the highest order at a time when we have well documented problems in this country (as well as elsewhere in Europe) of integration of Muslims into our societies and the violence (both to some of the children subject to such education and to others in the wider society) this can lead to.
If Westboro Baptists decided to open a faith school here - I can't imagine that'd be allowed at all. I don't think it's beyond our wits to say that any academic organisation that preaches against gays/equal rights blah blah isn't acceptable.
Lumping Catholics or Jews in with Islamic schools is just daft relativism. We don't have a problem with the former. When the issues of Islamic terrorism and cultural ghettos are fixed - then we can look at it again.
Who are you going to believe? Theresa May or your own lyin' eyes?
If you think May was proposing a rollout of the Kent system across the country, you were listening to a different speech.
One test for social mobility will be to see whether any new grammars are required to provide preferential selection for pupil premium children (providing that they achieve the threshold mark for grammar entrance)
It would have been reassuring to hear from May some idea of how she proposes to address the manifest failings of the education system in Kent, if she is intent on re-introducing a core pillar of that county's system.
Reading through that should absolutely terrify moderate Labour MPs. The PM is firmly placing her tanks on their lawn.
It's Buy Your House from Thatcher era stuff. For the aspirational lower middle/working class family - it's right in step with recent BMG polling on Labour voters.
Not really. Anyone could buy their council property. Most parents will not be able to get their kids into a grammar school.
I thought a while ago you were quite pro Grammar schools?
I am in principle. But I have always said that it's vital to ensure that they do not prejudice the interests of the majority of kids who will not attend them.
Fair enough...it is why I am of the belief we need a range of different types of schools, mobility possible between them and by range I don't mean Grammar vs Comp. Unfortunately, the blob / Guardian would do their nut if the government tried something like, with things like KIPPs schools here.
Also, evidence from the US shows that simply applying positive discrimination doesn't work for when you get to college system and of course successive governments are effectively encouraging that here with "widening participation" agenda.
I wonder if "charitable status" is going to be examined more widely by this Government and not just in relation to schools.
Guide Dogs for the Blind, Cancer research and Cats protection league are obviously charities, but I have my doubts as to some 'others' recently mentioned in the press.
I hope so, a hell of a lot of charities seem to be political movements in disguise.
I agree for example ASH is registered as a charity but really it is a campaign group against smoking. Interestingly FOREST is not a charity as far as I can see.
Through their charitable status, private schools collectively reduce their tax bills by millions every year. And I want to consult on how we can amend Charity Commission guidance for independent schools to enact a tougher test on the amount of public benefit required to maintain charitable status.
It’s important to state that this will be proportionate to the size and scale of the school in question. Not every school is an Eton or a Harrow. Many public schools are nowhere near that size.
Smaller independent schools who do not have the capacity to take on full sponsorship of a local state school will be asked to provide more limited help such as direct school-to-school support where appropriate. This could include supporting teaching in minority subjects such as further maths or classics, which state schools often struggle to make viable. It could include ensuring their senior leaders become directors of Multi-Academy Trusts; providing greater access to their facilities and providing sixth-form scholarships to a proportion of pupils in year 11 at each local school.
But for those with the capacity and capability, we will ask them to go further and actually sponsor or set up a new government-funded school in the state sector and take responsibility for running it and ensuring its success.
The tax private schools save is less than the cost of educating the children that attend them in the public sector. So the State gains financially from the fact that people are willing to spend their taxed income in this way in the same way as the NHS gains from the fact that some choose to use private medicine rather than NHS resources.
I accept that there are social mobility and snobbery issues in respect of private schools. But this tax benefit stuff really is nonsense.
It's debatable, but hardly nonsense. In any event, twisting the arm of the private sector to engage with the public sector is likely to be to the benefit of both.
Hmm, movement at 14 (4th form?) is a decent sticking plaster, as long as it is in both directions and not just to replace pupils who have left or been expelled. That would, IMO, demotivate the middle classes enough to not bother with gaming the entrance exams.
It could also be a precursor to full in selection at 14 if it is done right and an introduction of middle schooling but I'm not sure that the PM had thought that part through. It does at least open the door.
It is but as always beware of the stats. Most grammar schools achieve far more strongly at 8/9+ GCSEs to say nothing of massively strong performance at IB and Alevels in the sixth form. The 5+ GCSE measure is a very crude statistic.
Who are you going to believe? Theresa May or your own lyin' eyes?
If you think May was proposing a rollout of the Kent system across the country, you were listening to a different speech.
One test for social mobility will be to see whether any new grammars are required to provide preferential selection for pupil premium children (providing that they achieve the threshold mark for grammar entrance)
It would have been reassuring to hear from May some idea of how she proposes to address the manifest failings of the education system in Kent, if she is intent on re-introducing a core pillar of that county's system.
The weakest element of KCCs performance is more with Primary schools than the secondaries.
Policies and announcements that have nothing to do with May’s theme of meritocracy are being delayed or shunned until ministers can think of a way to make a link. In some departments, announcements and updates on old projects where the money has already been spent are being held back
Through their charitable status, private schools collectively reduce their tax bills by millions every year. And I want to consult on how we can amend Charity Commission guidance for independent schools to enact a tougher test on the amount of public benefit required to maintain charitable status.
It’s important to state that this will be proportionate to the size and scale of the school in question. Not every school is an Eton or a Harrow. Many public schools are nowhere near that size.
Smaller independent schools who do not have the capacity to take on full sponsorship of a local state school will be asked to provide more limited help such as direct school-to-school support where appropriate. This could include supporting teaching in minority subjects such as further maths or classics, which state schools often struggle to make viable. It could include ensuring their senior leaders become directors of Multi-Academy Trusts; providing greater access to their facilities and providing sixth-form scholarships to a proportion of pupils in year 11 at each local school.
But for those with the capacity and capability, we will ask them to go further and actually sponsor or set up a new government-funded school in the state sector and take responsibility for running it and ensuring its success.
The tax private schools save is less than the cost of educating the children that attend them in the public sector. So the State gains financially from the fact that people are willing to spend their taxed income in this way in the same way as the NHS gains from the fact that some choose to use private medicine rather than NHS resources.
I accept that there are social mobility and snobbery issues in respect of private schools. But this tax benefit stuff really is nonsense.
It's debatable, but hardly nonsense. In any event, twisting the arm of the private sector to engage with the public sector is likely to be to the benefit of both.
Why should the fees I pay for my son out my taxed income be increased so that the school has additional resources to subsidise state schools that I am already paying for through my taxes even though I am choosing not to use them?
Through their charitable status, private schools collectively reduce their tax bills by millions every year. And I want to consult on how we can amend Charity Commission guidance for independent schools to enact a tougher test on the amount of public benefit required to maintain charitable status.
It’s important to state that this will be proportionate to the size and scale of the school in question. Not every school is an Eton or a Harrow. Many public schools are nowhere near that size.
Smaller independent schools who do not have the capacity to take on full sponsorship of a local state school will be asked to provide more limited help such as direct school-to-school support where appropriate. This could include supporting teaching in minority subjects such as further maths or classics, which state schools often struggle to make viable. It could include ensuring their senior leaders become directors of Multi-Academy Trusts; providing greater access to their facilities and providing sixth-form scholarships to a proportion of pupils in year 11 at each local school.
But for those with the capacity and capability, we will ask them to go further and actually sponsor or set up a new government-funded school in the state sector and take responsibility for running it and ensuring its success.
The tax private schools save is less than the cost of educating the children that attend them in the public sector. So the State gains financially from the fact that people are willing to spend their taxed income in this way in the same way as the NHS gains from the fact that some choose to use private medicine rather than NHS resources.
I accept that there are social mobility and snobbery issues in respect of private schools. But this tax benefit stuff really is nonsense.
It's debatable, but hardly nonsense. In any event, twisting the arm of the private sector to engage with the public sector is likely to be to the benefit of both.
Why should the fees I pay for my son out my taxed income be increased so that the school has additional resources to subsidise state schools that I am already paying for through my taxes even though I am choosing not to use them?
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Noblesse oblige is I think the appropriate response.
I'm a little surprised to see the Conservatives agreeing to the foundation of 100% Muslim-only madrasahs as state schools. No doubt this will play well with the tabloids.
Yeah, I am worried about the bit on faith schools.
Trouble is that Christian based faith schools are popular, and one can't discriminate.
There have been well documented problems with such schools and I can see no good reason why we should permit them just because other faith schools (which have not had such problems) are permitted.
What May said:
Of course, there must be strict and properly enforced rules to ensure that every new faith school operates in a way that supports British values. And we should explore new ways of using the school system to promote greater integration within our society generally.
We will encourage the grouping together of mono-racial and mono-religious schools within wider multi-racial and multi-religious trusts. This will make it easier for children from different backgrounds in more divided communities to mix between schools, while respecting religious differences.
Through their charitable status, private schools collectively reduce their tax bills by millions every year. And I want to consult on how we can amend Charity Commission guidance for independent schools to enact a tougher test on the amount of public benefit required to maintain charitable status.
It’s important to state that this will be proportionate to the size and scale of the school in question. Not every school is an Eton or a Harrow. Many public schools are nowhere near that size.
Smaller independent schools who do not have the capacity to take on full sponsorship of a local state school will be asked to provide more limited help such as direct school-to-school support where appropriate. This could include supporting teaching in minority subjects such as further maths or classics, which state schools often struggle to make viable. It could include ensuring their senior leaders become directors of Multi-Academy Trusts; providing greater access to their facilities and providing sixth-form scholarships to a proportion of pupils in year 11 at each local school.
But for those with the capacity and capability, we will ask them to go further and actually sponsor or set up a new government-funded school in the state sector and take responsibility for running it and ensuring its success.
The tax private schools save is less than the cost of educating the children that attend them in the public sector. So the State gains financially from the fact that people are willing to spend their taxed income in this way in the same way as the NHS gains from the fact that some choose to use private medicine rather than NHS resources.
I accept that there are social mobility and snobbery issues in respect of private schools. But this tax benefit stuff really is nonsense.
It's debatable, but hardly nonsense. In any event, twisting the arm of the private sector to engage with the public sector is likely to be to the benefit of both.
Why should the fees I pay for my son out my taxed income be increased so that the school has additional resources to subsidise state schools that I am already paying for through my taxes even though I am choosing not to use them?
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Yes, I think that's fair. I also think that if private and public schools want to keep their charitable status they should open up sporting facilities to local schools on weekends and a couple of afternoons a week.
I thought May got quite stroppy and exasperated with the Sun journalist (or was it Guardian) during the Q&A. Came close to saying, Are you stupid - didn't you listen to the speech?
But the question was a fair one: i.e. what happens to those who don't get into the grammars?
Through their charitable status, private schools collectively reduce their tax bills by millions every year. And I want to consult on how we can amend Charity Commission guidance for independent schools to enact a tougher test on the amount of public benefit required to maintain charitable status.
It’s important to state that this will be proportionate to the size and scale of the school in question. Not every school is an Eton or a Harrow. Many public schools are nowhere near that size.
Smaller independent schools who do not have the capacity to take on full sponsorship of a local state school will be asked to provide more limited help such as direct school-to-school support where appropriate. This could include supporting teaching in minority subjects such as further maths or classics, which state schools often struggle to make viable. It could include ensuring their senior leaders become directors of Multi-Academy Trusts; providing greater access to their facilities and providing sixth-form scholarships to a proportion of pupils in year 11 at each local school.
But for those with the capacity and capability, we will ask them to go further and actually sponsor or set up a new government-funded school in the state sector and take responsibility for running it and ensuring its success.
The tax private schools save is less than the cost of educating the children that attend them in the public sector. So the State gains financially from the fact that people are willing to spend their taxed income in this way in the same way as the NHS gains from the fact that some choose to use private medicine rather than NHS resources.
I accept that there are social mobility and snobbery issues in respect of private schools. But this tax benefit stuff really is nonsense.
It's debatable, but hardly nonsense. In any event, twisting the arm of the private sector to engage with the public sector is likely to be to the benefit of both.
Why should the fees I pay for my son out my taxed income be increased so that the school has additional resources to subsidise state schools that I am already paying for through my taxes even though I am choosing not to use them?
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
You get private schools which aren't charities and are run as a business,send your kids to one of those.
Hmm, I'm not sure about creating a total meritocracy. It's great for people like us who debate these things and our children (or future children for those of us yet to reach that stage), but it does nothing for the unmerited. In an education system where reaching academic excellence is the primary goal, what then for those who are not academically excellent?
I'm not sure the PM has thought this through very well. It needs a much larger reform and introduction of a German style system or leaving alone. If that is her ultimate goal.
"Over the last few weeks ministers and civil servants have grown frustrated at Downing Street’s insistence that every single policy must have a “making the country work for everyone” angle. Policies and announcements that have nothing to do with May’s theme of meritocracy are being delayed or shunned until ministers can think of a way to make a link."
I'm a little surprised to see the Conservatives agreeing to the foundation of 100% Muslim-only madrasahs as state schools. No doubt this will play well with the tabloids.
Yeah, I am worried about the bit on faith schools.
Trouble is that Christian based faith schools are popular, and one can't discriminate.
Why not?
There have been well documented problems with such schools and I can see no good reason why we should permit them just because other faith schools (which have not had such problems) are permitted.
Discrimination for relevant reasons is not only not wrong but desirable, indeed essential.
Permitting schools to exist which teach a curriculum/way of life which is incompatible with life in Britain/hostile to our values or which lead to the sort of segregation which makes integration difficult or impossible is wrong. And it is no answer to say that other faith schools are permitted.
Ignoring matters which are relevant is stupidity of the highest order at a time when we have well documented problems in this country (as well as elsewhere in Europe) of integration of Muslims into our societies and the violence (both to some of the children subject to such education and to others in the wider society) this can lead to.
It might fall foul of the Equality Act and Religious Hatred Act.
Of course, you might agree with me that those should be heavily modified or repealed, but at the moment the Government has little choice to pick and choose.
As others have mentioned, at least the rhetoric of a meritocratic Britain is positive. And no, this could not and did not come from Cameron who ran an incredibly socially elitist government.
The tax private schools save is less than the cost of educating the children that attend them in the public sector. So the State gains financially from the fact that people are willing to spend their taxed income in this way in the same way as the NHS gains from the fact that some choose to use private medicine rather than NHS resources.
I accept that there are social mobility and snobbery issues in respect of private schools. But this tax benefit stuff really is nonsense.
It's debatable, but hardly nonsense. In any event, twisting the arm of the private sector to engage with the public sector is likely to be to the benefit of both.
Why should the fees I pay for my son out my taxed income be increased so that the school has additional resources to subsidise state schools that I am already paying for through my taxes even though I am choosing not to use them?
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Yes, I think that's fair. I also think that if private and public schools want to keep their charitable status they should open up sporting facilities to local schools on weekends and a couple of afternoons a week.
Community engagement isn't necessarily expensive for the school, things like opening up facilities on days they're not used, workshops and bast-practice sharing with the community schools, maybe lending specialist teachers for a couple of lessons a week in Russian or Chinese, careers fairs with the local schools etc.
All that doesn't add up to a lot financially, but makes a big difference to the perception of the public school within the local community.
Hmm, I'm not sure about creating a total meritocracy. It's great for people like us who debate these things and our children (or future children for those of us yet to reach that stage), but it does nothing for the unmerited. In an education system where reaching academic excellence is the primary goal, what then for those who are not academically excellent?
That's what the Tory parliamentary party is for. Stick em in a tweed jacket, gift them a safe seat, point them in the general direction of the lobby and all is good.
Mr. Sandpit, they could always rebrand as religions.
The Scientology judgement a few years ago indicated that merely self-identifying as a religion was enough for the tax breaks.
That reminds me someone on here recommended the Joe Rogan podcast where he talks with Louis Theroux about his film on scientology. It's well worth a listen for anyone interested in such stuff.
As another anecdote my wife (who's Bulgarian) is very keen on sending our own children to private school.
Why?
She's convinced that doing so ensures one speaks 'properly' and gives access to networks and contacts that later prove very useful to getting on in life, and that one is at a disadvantage if one does not have those. She feels her own experience in trying to get into law has just reinforced her views on this.
Of course, I have explained to her that it doesn't quite work like that but I can't deny there is an element of truth in what she says.
As others have mentioned, at least the rhetoric of a meritocratic Britain is positive. And no, this could not and did not come from Cameron who ran an incredibly socially elitist government.
Yes it is positive, but making it the central aim of the government and education system is a step too far. What does it mean for those "unmerited" children who are unable to excel academically without the options of vocational or other forms of education until they have been thoroughly demoralised by the system?
I hope the government is true to its word and ensures that it works for everyone. Not just the 20-30% who will do very well out of what is being proposed.
Hmm, I'm not sure about creating a total meritocracy. It's great for people like us who debate these things and our children (or future children for those of us yet to reach that stage), but it does nothing for the unmerited. In an education system where reaching academic excellence is the primary goal, what then for those who are not academically excellent?
I'm not sure the PM has thought this through very well. It needs a much larger reform and introduction of a German style system or leaving alone. If that is her ultimate goal.
The value of un and low skilled labour has been collapsing since the end of the war and shows no real sign of slowing down - this is just a choice between Britain doing ok or doing well in the future.
Hmm, I'm not sure about creating a total meritocracy. It's great for people like us who debate these things and our children (or future children for those of us yet to reach that stage), but it does nothing for the unmerited. In an education system where reaching academic excellence is the primary goal, what then for those who are not academically excellent?
I'm not sure the PM has thought this through very well. It needs a much larger reform and introduction of a German style system or leaving alone. If that is her ultimate goal.
No meritocracy is right, if merit be broadly enough defined. We need to nurture talent of all kinds, not just academic.
May mentioned Classics in passing in her speech. One problem is the conflation of "merit" with things like the learning of Latin, which is really just a class-marker, not a true sign of excellence per se.
We need a system to encourage more people like my wife: she is very dyslexic, would never have got into a grammar, but is one of the top in her (creative) field and contributes mightily to UK export earnings (and tax intake).
I notice that Theresa May has pinched one of Ed Miliband's policies again. Raising the bar for the private schools to prove that their charitable status benefits society. Given that Gordon Brown pushed for changes in 2008, it does look like a deliberate attempt to park tanks on Labour's lawns.
"Over the last few weeks ministers and civil servants have grown frustrated at Downing Street’s insistence that every single policy must have a “making the country work for everyone” angle. Policies and announcements that have nothing to do with May’s theme of meritocracy are being delayed or shunned until ministers can think of a way to make a link."
If you think the government's job is to create a more meritocratic Britain, surely making sure policy delivers against that is a very sensible way to run a government?
I thought May got quite stroppy and exasperated with the Sun journalist (or was it Guardian) during the Q&A. Came close to saying, Are you stupid - didn't you listen to the speech? But the question was a fair one: i.e. what happens to those who don't get into the grammars?
Through their charitable status, private schools collectively reduce their tax bills by millions every year. And I want to consult on how we can amend Charity Commission guidance for independent schools to enact a tougher test on the amount of public benefit required to maintain charitable status.
It’s important to state that this will be proportionate to the size and scale of the school in question. Not every school is an Eton or a Harrow. Many public schools are nowhere near that size.
Smaller independent schools who do not have the capacity to take on full sponsorship of a local state school will be asked to provide more limited help such as direct school-to-school support where appropriate. This could include supporting teaching in minority subjects such as further maths or classics, which state schools often struggle to make viable. It could include ensuring their senior leaders become directors of Multi-Academy Trusts; providing greater access to their facilities and providing sixth-form scholarships to a proportion of pupils in year 11 at each local school.
But for those with the capacity and capability, we will ask them to go further and actually sponsor or set up a new government-funded school in the state sector and take responsibility for running it and ensuring its success.
The tax private schools save is less than the cost of educating the children that attend them in the public sector. So the State gains financially from the fact that people are willing to spend their taxed income in this way in the same way as the NHS gains from the fact that some choose to use private medicine rather than NHS resources.
I accept that there are social mobility and snobbery issues in respect of private schools. But this tax benefit stuff really is nonsense.
It's debatable, but hardly nonsense. In any event, twisting the arm of the private sector to engage with the public sector is likely to be to the benefit of both.
Why should the fees I pay for my son out my taxed income be increased so that the school has additional resources to subsidise state schools that I am already paying for through my taxes even though I am choosing not to use them?
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
You get private schools which aren't charities and are run as a business,send your kids to one of those.
Most private schools do not make taxable profits and invest any surpluses in additional facilities anyway. I can see some saying that this charitable status is not worth the candle if the price gets too high.
She's adoptiing the Ed Miliband policy on charitable status that everyone on here slagged off when Ed suggested it :-)
Theresa May is as wrong now as Ed Miliband was then.
Plebs in the boardroom, now this.
Can Theresa May eat a bacon sarnie without it turning into a PR disaster?
I think you're just sore Theresa May isn't the continuity Cameroon you, and many Cameroon MPs, thought she would be when they supported her.
I was backing Michael Gove until JohnO persuaded me otherwise.
I think in hindsight it was more relief that she wasn't Andrea Leadsom
Gove would have been better than Boris - there's a very good book to be written about what happened between those two at the end of June.
Leadsom did the honourable thing in the end, as your header says we would only have had the result today had she remained in the contest. I'd like to think we'd have given May a landslide win if we'd been asked.
Oh, and several bets in from 10/1 on May would have only paid out now, rather than eight weeks ago!! Edit: and all the close to evens lays on Osborne and Johnson, we did all lay the favourites didn't we?
The tax private schools save is less than the cost of educating the children that attend them in the public sector. So the State gains financially from the fact that people are willing to spend their taxed income in this way in the same way as the NHS gains from the fact that some choose to use private medicine rather than NHS resources.
I accept that there are social mobility and snobbery issues in respect of private schools. But this tax benefit stuff really is nonsense.
It's debatable, but hardly nonsense. In any event, twisting the arm of the private sector to engage with the public sector is likely to be to the benefit of both.
Why should the fees I pay for my son out my taxed income be increased so that the school has additional resources to subsidise state schools that I am already paying for through my taxes even though I am choosing not to use them?
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Yes, I think that's fair. I also think that if private and public schools want to keep their charitable status they should open up sporting facilities to local schools on weekends and a couple of afternoons a week.
Community engagement isn't necessarily expensive for the school, things like opening up facilities on days they're not used, workshops and bast-practice sharing with the community schools, maybe lending specialist teachers for a couple of lessons a week in Russian or Chinese, careers fairs with the local schools etc.
All that doesn't add up to a lot financially, but makes a big difference to the perception of the public school within the local community.
My school was a Woodard Foundation school, where such things were routinely done. There were also many local kids (often from the village) who were the on low or no fees. I would have expected here to be some snobbery and hassles over fee-paying and subsidised students, but there wasn't any that I saw.
I'm not sure they opened up the shooting range to the locals, though.
It's very difficult to take away the charitable status for a whole host of complicated reasons. I don't think you can abolish public schools in a free society. Am I going to abolish public schools? No."
What makes this politically notable is that during the Labour leadership election David Miliband pledged to end private schools' charitable status. In an article for the Guardian, he wrote: "Under the Tories, the poorest will end up paying the price of the mistakes of the richest. We should not be afraid of the mansion tax on £2m houses or extending the bankers' bonus tax, rather than charging the poorest with VAT rises. And the idea of taking money from the poorest children while continuing to subsidise private schools is just wrong."
Here, then, is a rare example of a subject on which David leans to the left of Ed.
Hmm, I'm not sure about creating a total meritocracy. It's great for people like us who debate these things and our children (or future children for those of us yet to reach that stage), but it does nothing for the unmerited. In an education system where reaching academic excellence is the primary goal, what then for those who are not academically excellent?
I'm not sure the PM has thought this through very well. It needs a much larger reform and introduction of a German style system or leaving alone. If that is her ultimate goal.
No meritocracy is right, if merit be broadly enough defined. We need to nurture talent of all kinds, not just academic.
May mentioned Classics in passing in her speech. One problem is the conflation of "merit" with things like the learning of Latin, which is really just a class-marker, not a true sign of excellence per se.
We need a system to encourage more people like my wife: she is very dyslexic, would never have got into a grammar, but is one of the top in her (creative) field and contributed mightily to UK export earnings (and tax intake).
I didn't mean unmerited overall, just as defined by a system which encourages academic excellence as a grammar school system does. In a country where the two options are going to be going to a comp or a grammar to do worthless GCSEs and at 16 decide whether university is worth it, there isn't any recognition of non-academic merit.
As I said, I'm broadly in favour of the idea, but the devil, as always, lies in the detail.
I notice that Theresa May has pinched one of Ed Miliband's policies again. Raising the bar for the private schools to prove that their charitable status benefits society. Given that Gordon Brown pushed for changes in 2008, it does look like a deliberate attempt to park tanks on Labour's lawns.
Do Labour even have a lawn left?
Corbyn has sewn it with Agent Orange, and the Conservatives have shelled it to mud with artillery from dozens of miles away.
She's adoptiing the Ed Miliband policy on charitable status that everyone on here slagged off when Ed suggested it :-)
Theresa May is as wrong now as Ed Miliband was then.
Plebs in the boardroom, now this.
Can Theresa May eat a bacon sarnie without it turning into a PR disaster?
I think you're just sore Theresa May isn't the continuity Cameroon you, and many Cameroon MPs, thought she would be when they supported her.
I was backing Michael Gove until JohnO persuaded me otherwise.
I think in hindsight it was more relief that she wasn't Andrea Leadsom
I note you don't deny it.
It's difficult to know where you really stand. You said you'd be happy with either Amber Rudd or Andrea Leadsom during the Brexit debate in June.
I'm afraid I don't take your word for it anymore.
In July, Andrea Leadsom's failure to deny she'd appoint Nigel Farage to her government sent off warning bells for me that was egregiously unfit to be Tory leader, let alone Prime Minister.
I was quite impressed by Theresa May's Downing Street speech, which sounded like a continuation of Cameron's one nation approach.
Sadly her actions don't match her rhetoric, and the less said about appointing the disgraced Liam Fox and the flouncer David Davis at the heart of Brexit alarms many leavers, not only remainers.
I wonder if "charitable status" is going to be examined more widely by this Government and not just in relation to schools.
Guide Dogs for the Blind, Cancer research and Cats protection league are obviously charities, but I have my doubts as to some 'others' recently mentioned in the press.
I hope so, a hell of a lot of charities seem to be political movements in disguise.
I agree for example ASH is registered as a charity but really it is a campaign group against smoking. Interestingly FOREST is not a charity as far as I can see.
What annoys me is when I hear on the radio a pundit from some big charity — and there's the implicit assumption of the broadcaster that because the pundit is from a charity they are morally good, and authoritative — banging on about the wickedness of some aspect of government policy that appears to have nothing to do with the purpose of the charity.
Many times I've wondered "what does this have to do with them?"
In the abstract I agree with Theresa May taking a hard look at what qualifies for charitable status. She could usefully look at churches and other religious organisations as well (NB I would differentiate between the religious institutions and some of the good work that they do).
In the real world, she needs to learn to pick her battles better. Public schools have a lot of friends on the Conservative back benches and she doesn't have a big enough majority to play with.
She's adoptiing the Ed Miliband policy on charitable status that everyone on here slagged off when Ed suggested it :-)
Theresa May is as wrong now as Ed Miliband was then.
Plebs in the boardroom, now this.
Can Theresa May eat a bacon sarnie without it turning into a PR disaster?
I think you're just sore Theresa May isn't the continuity Cameroon you, and many Cameroon MPs, thought she would be when they supported her.
I was backing Michael Gove until JohnO persuaded me otherwise.
I think in hindsight it was more relief that she wasn't Andrea Leadsom
I note you don't deny it.
It's difficult to know where you really stand. You said you'd be happy with either Amber Rudd or Andrea Leadsom during the Brexit debate in June.
I'm afraid I don't take your word for it anymore.
In July, Andrea Leadsom's failure to deny she'd appoint Nigel Farage to her government sent off warning bells for me that was egregiously unfit to be Tory leader, let alone Prime Minister.
I was quite impressed by Theresa May's Downing Street speech, which sounded like a continuation of Cameron's one nation approach.
Sadly her actions don't match her rhetoric, and the less said about appointing the disgraced Liam Fox and the flouncer David Davis at the heart of Brexit alarms many leavers, not only remainers.
Yes. You're happy with any Tory until they do something that David Cameron wouldn't have done.
She's adoptiing the Ed Miliband policy on charitable status that everyone on here slagged off when Ed suggested it :-)
Theresa May is as wrong now as Ed Miliband was then.
Plebs in the boardroom, now this.
Can Theresa May eat a bacon sarnie without it turning into a PR disaster?
I think you're just sore Theresa May isn't the continuity Cameroon you, and many Cameroon MPs, thought she would be when they supported her.
I was backing Michael Gove until JohnO persuaded me otherwise.
I think in hindsight it was more relief that she wasn't Andrea Leadsom
I note you don't deny it.
It's difficult to know where you really stand. You said you'd be happy with either Amber Rudd or Andrea Leadsom during the Brexit debate in June.
I'm afraid I don't take your word for it anymore.
In July, Andrea Leadsom's failure to deny she'd appoint Nigel Farage to her government sent off warning bells for me that was egregiously unfit to be Tory leader, let alone Prime Minister.
I was quite impressed by Theresa May's Downing Street speech, which sounded like a continuation of Cameron's one nation approach.
Sadly her actions don't match her rhetoric, and the less said about appointing the disgraced Liam Fox and the flouncer David Davis at the heart of Brexit alarms many leavers, not only remainers.
There is a hilarious / terrifying counterfactual to be written of Leadsom winning the party vote and becoming PM.
I think she would have lasted just a few months before political chaos and a backbench rebellion forced her resignation.
Hmm, I'm not sure about creating a total meritocracy. It's great for people like us who debate these things and our children (or future children for those of us yet to reach that stage), but it does nothing for the unmerited. In an education system where reaching academic excellence is the primary goal, what then for those who are not academically excellent?
I'm not sure the PM has thought this through very well. It needs a much larger reform and introduction of a German style system or leaving alone. If that is her ultimate goal.
No meritocracy is right, if merit be broadly enough defined. We need to nurture talent of all kinds, not just academic.
May mentioned Classics in passing in her speech. One problem is the conflation of "merit" with things like the learning of Latin, which is really just a class-marker, not a true sign of excellence per se.
We need a system to encourage more people like my wife: she is very dyslexic, would never have got into a grammar, but is one of the top in her (creative) field and contributes mightily to UK export earnings (and tax intake).
Indeed. If someone is academic, encourage them to be the best they can academically. If their talents lie in other directions, nurture those talents.
But that takes money from the public purse and effort from teachers, both of which are necessarily in short supply.
As another anecdote my wife (who's Bulgarian) is very keen on sending our own children to private school.
Why?
She's convinced that doing so ensures one speaks 'properly' and gives access to networks and contacts that later prove very useful to getting on in life, and that one is at a disadvantage if one does not have those. She feels her own experience in trying to get into law has just reinforced her views on this.
Of course, I have explained to her that it doesn't quite work like that but I can't deny there is an element of truth in what she says.
My secondary school (UCS) was very rigorous academically, and that has benefitted me all my life, but it didn't open up any networks and contacts to me. Friendships and shared interests have provided work, but I didn't pursue them in order to obtain work, the work arose as a result of the contacts.
"Over the last few weeks ministers and civil servants have grown frustrated at Downing Street’s insistence that every single policy must have a “making the country work for everyone” angle. Policies and announcements that have nothing to do with May’s theme of meritocracy are being delayed or shunned until ministers can think of a way to make a link."
If you think the government's job is to create a more meritocratic Britain, surely making sure policy delivers against that is a very sensible way to run a government?
Rejecting policy because it is contrary to principles has some merit in a "think again" mode. Delaying doing it just because it does not generate a message common to the few listed by a narrow sect is more akin to one of those guru dominated systems of changing a company.... and akin with "The Thick of It".
Hmm, I'm not sure about creating a total meritocracy. It's great for people like us who debate these things and our children (or future children for those of us yet to reach that stage), but it does nothing for the unmerited. In an education system where reaching academic excellence is the primary goal, what then for those who are not academically excellent?
I'm not sure the PM has thought this through very well. It needs a much larger reform and introduction of a German style system or leaving alone. If that is her ultimate goal.
Totally agree, Mr. Max. What will this new initiative do for the 80%+ that are not academically orientated? It might be great politics as far as TMs "Making the country work for everyone agenda" but it is not actually going to do that.
On a tangent, if HMG were to actually implement the sort of reforms, including technical education, that you and I would like to see then big chunks of the HE sector would be up in arms. Universities would have to go back to being preserve of the academics and large numbers of third rate tutors would be out of a job and many institutions would have to go back to being Polytechnics or close down.
She's adoptiing the Ed Miliband policy on charitable status that everyone on here slagged off when Ed suggested it :-)
Theresa May is as wrong now as Ed Miliband was then.
Plebs in the boardroom, now this.
Can Theresa May eat a bacon sarnie without it turning into a PR disaster?
I think you're just sore Theresa May isn't the continuity Cameroon you, and many Cameroon MPs, thought she would be when they supported her.
I was backing Michael Gove until JohnO persuaded me otherwise.
I think in hindsight it was more relief that she wasn't Andrea Leadsom
I note you don't deny it.
It's difficult to know where you really stand. You said you'd be happy with either Amber Rudd or Andrea Leadsom during the Brexit debate in June.
I'm afraid I don't take your word for it anymore.
In July, Andrea Leadsom's failure to deny she'd appoint Nigel Farage to her government sent off warning bells for me that was egregiously unfit to be Tory leader, let alone Prime Minister.
I was quite impressed by Theresa May's Downing Street speech, which sounded like a continuation of Cameron's one nation approach.
Sadly her actions don't match her rhetoric, and the less said about appointing the disgraced Liam Fox and the flouncer David Davis at the heart of Brexit alarms many leavers, not only remainers.
There is a hilarious / terrifying counterfactual to be written of Leadsom winning the party vote and becoming PM.
I think she would have lasted just a few months before political chaos and a backbench rebellion forced her resignation.
There was a Sunday Times article warning of defections, already enough letters to trigger a vote of no confidence in Leadsom from day 1 of her becoming PM.
The weekend of that 'mother superior' interview, I had planned to write a thread on why Andrea Leadsom might the country's shortest serving PM since Bonar Law
As another anecdote my wife (who's Bulgarian) is very keen on sending our own children to private school.
Why?
She's convinced that doing so ensures one speaks 'properly' and gives access to networks and contacts that later prove very useful to getting on in life, and that one is at a disadvantage if one does not have those. She feels her own experience in trying to get into law has just reinforced her views on this.
Of course, I have explained to her that it doesn't quite work like that but I can't deny there is an element of truth in what she says.
My secondary school (UCS) was very rigorous academically, and that has benefitted me all my life, but it didn't open up any networks and contacts to me. Friendships and shared interests have provided work, but I didn't pursue them in order to obtain work, the work arose as a result of the contacts.
The network and contact thing is a bit of a myth really, unless you're talking about Eton or Harrow perhaps.
Through their charitable status, private schools collectively reduce their tax bills by millions every year. And I want to consult on how we can amend Charity Commission guidance for independent schools to enact a tougher test on the amount of public benefit required to maintain charitable status.
It’s important to state that this will be proportionate to the size and scale of the school in question. Not every school is an Eton or a Harrow. Many public schools are nowhere near that size.
But for those with the capacity and capability, we will ask them to go further and actually sponsor or set up a new government-funded school in the state sector and take responsibility for running it and ensuring its success.
The tax private schools save is less than the cost of educating the children that attend them in the public sector. So the State gains financially from the fact that people are willing to spend their taxed income in this way in the same way as the NHS gains from the fact that some choose to use private medicine rather than NHS resources.
I accept that there are social mobility and snobbery issues in respect of private schools. But this tax benefit stuff really is nonsense.
It's debatable, but hardly nonsense. In any event, twisting the arm of the private sector to engage with the public sector is likely to be to the benefit of both.
Why should the fees I pay for my son out my taxed income be increased so that the school has additional resources to subsidise state schools that I am already paying for through my taxes even though I am choosing not to use them?
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
You get private schools which aren't charities and are run as a business,send your kids to one of those.
Most private schools do not make taxable profits and invest any surpluses in additional facilities anyway. I can see some saying that this charitable status is not worth the candle if the price gets too high.
To be honest, I think your argument is a stronger defence for making school fees allowable as a pre-tax expense than for keeping charitable status.
... In the real world, she needs to learn to pick her battles better. Public schools have a lot of friends on the Conservative back benches and she doesn't have a big enough majority to play with.
Agreed. So why is she digging her political grave? Just inept? Poorly advised?
In the abstract I agree with Theresa May taking a hard look at what qualifies for charitable status. She could usefully look at churches and other religious organisations as well (NB I would differentiate between the religious institutions and some of the good work that they do).
In the real world, she needs to learn to pick her battles better. Public schools have a lot of friends on the Conservative back benches and she doesn't have a big enough majority to play with.
Surely the way to go is to reform the whole charity sector at the same time.
The PM's friends on the back benches will be happy to cut down to size a lot of the lefty lobbying 'charities' and those that seem to exist mainly for their well paid staff, in exchange for requiring a little more community engagement from the public schools.
She's adoptiing the Ed Miliband policy on charitable status that everyone on here slagged off when Ed suggested it :-)
Theresa May is as wrong now as Ed Miliband was then.
Plebs in the boardroom, now this.
Can Theresa May eat a bacon sarnie without it turning into a PR disaster?
I think you're just sore Theresa May isn't the continuity Cameroon you, and many Cameroon MPs, thought she would be when they supported her.
I was backing Michael Gove until JohnO persuaded me otherwise.
I think in hindsight it was more relief that she wasn't Andrea Leadsom
I note you don't deny it.
It's difficult to know where you really stand. You said you'd be happy with either Amber Rudd or Andrea Leadsom during the Brexit debate in June.
I'm afraid I don't take your word for it anymore.
In July, Andrea Leadsom's failure to deny she'd appoint Nigel Farage to her government sent off warning bells for me that was egregiously unfit to be Tory leader, let alone Prime Minister.
I was quite impressed by Theresa May's Downing Street speech, which sounded like a continuation of Cameron's one nation approach.
Sadly her actions don't match her rhetoric, and the less said about appointing the disgraced Liam Fox and the flouncer David Davis at the heart of Brexit alarms many leavers, not only remainers.
There is a hilarious / terrifying counterfactual to be written of Leadsom winning the party vote and becoming PM.
I think she would have lasted just a few months before political chaos and a backbench rebellion forced her resignation.
There was a Sunday Times article warning of defections, already enough letters to trigger a vote of no confidence in Leadsom from day 1 of her becoming PM.
The weekend of that 'mother superior' interview, I had planned to write a thread on why Andrea Leadsom might the country's shortest serving PM since Bonar Law
That mother superior interview was truly idiotic. And who can forget that bizarre march for Leadsom led by Loughton and de Villiers? The fruitcake is strong with those two...
She's adoptiing the Ed Miliband policy on charitable status that everyone on here slagged off when Ed suggested it :-)
Theresa May is as wrong now as Ed Miliband was then.
Plebs in the boardroom, now this.
Can Theresa May eat a bacon sarnie without it turning into a PR disaster?
I think you're just sore Theresa May isn't the continuity Cameroon you, and many Cameroon MPs, thought she would be when they supported her.
I was backing Michael Gove until JohnO persuaded me otherwise.
I think in hindsight it was more relief that she wasn't Andrea Leadsom
I note you don't deny it.
It's difficult to know where you really stand. You said you'd be happy with either Amber Rudd or Andrea Leadsom during the Brexit debate in June.
I'm afraid I don't take your word for it anymore.
In July, Andrea Leadsom's failure to deny she'd appoint Nigel Farage to her government sent off warning bells for me that was egregiously unfit to be Tory leader, let alone Prime Minister.
I was quite impressed by Theresa May's Downing Street speech, which sounded like a continuation of Cameron's one nation approach.
Sadly her actions don't match her rhetoric, and the less said about appointing the disgraced Liam Fox and the flouncer David Davis at the heart of Brexit alarms many leavers, not only remainers.
There is a hilarious / terrifying counterfactual to be written of Leadsom winning the party vote and becoming PM.
I think she would have lasted just a few months before political chaos and a backbench rebellion forced her resignation.
There was a Sunday Times article warning of defections, already enough letters to trigger a vote of no confidence in Leadsom from day 1 of her becoming PM.
The weekend of that 'mother superior' interview, I had planned to write a thread on why Andrea Leadsom might the country's shortest serving PM since Bonar Law
That mother superior interview was truly idiotic. And who can forget that bizarre march for Leadsom led by Loughton and de Villiers? The fruitcake is strong with those two...
She's adoptiing the Ed Miliband policy on charitable status that everyone on here slagged off when Ed suggested it :-)
Theresa May is as wrong now as Ed Miliband was then.
Plebs in the boardroom, now this.
Can Theresa May eat a bacon sarnie without it turning into a PR disaster?
I think you're just sore Theresa May isn't the continuity Cameroon you, and many Cameroon MPs, thought she would be when they supported her.
I was backing Michael Gove until JohnO persuaded me otherwise.
I think in hindsight it was more relief that she wasn't Andrea Leadsom
I note you don't deny it.
It's difficult to know where you really stand. You said you'd be happy with either Amber Rudd or Andrea Leadsom during the Brexit debate in June.
I'm afraid I don't take your word for it anymore.
Sadly her actions don't match her rhetoric, and the less said about appointing the disgraced Liam Fox and the flouncer David Davis at the heart of Brexit alarms many leavers, not only remainers.
Who would you rather she appointed? And how would they have beeen better from either a competence or political pov?
As another anecdote my wife (who's Bulgarian) is very keen on sending our own children to private school.
Why?
She's convinced that doing so ensures one speaks 'properly' and gives access to networks and contacts that later prove very useful to getting on in life, and that one is at a disadvantage if one does not have those. She feels her own experience in trying to get into law has just reinforced her views on this.
Of course, I have explained to her that it doesn't quite work like that but I can't deny there is an element of truth in what she says.
I made no contacts or networks from my time at private school (13 to 18). Oddly, I did from my earlier time at public primary (4 to 11) and state primary / middle (11 to 13)
None of those contacts have ever helped my career, however prized the friendships that resulted - we're all in different work and home areas (even countries). I made most of my useful contacts whilst at uni, and then mostly from people I met on different courses.
IMO if you're spending a fortune to send a child to public school, make sure it's the right school for the child. Public schools vary massively not just in academic results, but in their ethos and attitude. Send them to the wrong one and it'd be wasted money.
We've been discussing this a great deal recently for the obvious reason, and we're content, at the moment, to end our little 'un to a local school. That may change as he grows up.
I notice that Theresa May has pinched one of Ed Miliband's policies again. Raising the bar for the private schools to prove that their charitable status benefits society. Given that Gordon Brown pushed for changes in 2008, it does look like a deliberate attempt to park tanks on Labour's lawns.
Do Labour even have a lawn left?
Corbyn has sewn it with Agent Orange, and the Conservatives have shelled it to mud with artillery from dozens of miles away.
She's adoptiing the Ed Miliband policy on charitable status that everyone on here slagged off when Ed suggested it :-)
Theresa May is as wrong now as Ed Miliband was then.
Plebs in the boardroom, now this.
Can Theresa May eat a bacon sarnie without it turning into a PR disaster?
I think you're just sore Theresa May isn't the continuity Cameroon you, and many Cameroon MPs, thought she would be when they supported her.
I was backing Michael Gove until JohnO persuaded me otherwise.
I think in hindsight it was more relief that she wasn't Andrea Leadsom
I note you don't deny it.
It's difficult to know where you really stand. You said you'd be happy with either Amber Rudd or Andrea Leadsom during the Brexit debate in June.
I'm afraid I don't take your word for it anymore.
Sadly her actions don't match her rhetoric, and the less said about appointing the disgraced Liam Fox and the flouncer David Davis at the heart of Brexit alarms many leavers, not only remainers.
Who would you rather she appointed? And how would they have beeen better from either a competence or political pov?
Dominic Raab would have been a great appointment, ditto Michael Gove for starters.
In the abstract I agree with Theresa May taking a hard look at what qualifies for charitable status. She could usefully look at churches and other religious organisations as well (NB I would differentiate between the religious institutions and some of the good work that they do).
In the real world, she needs to learn to pick her battles better. Public schools have a lot of friends on the Conservative back benches and she doesn't have a big enough majority to play with.
Surely the way to go is to reform the whole charity sector at the same time.
The PM's friends on the back benches will be happy to cut down to size a lot of the lefty lobbying 'charities' and those that seem to exist mainly for their well paid staff, in exchange for requiring a little more community engagement from the public schools.
Yes, that could work. As with the "everyone goes to a grammar" policy, I'm just not sure this has been very well thought through. If reselection at 13 for fourth form is just a way of opening the door to middle schooling then that's fine, if her attack on private school charity status is just a cloak for reforming the whole charity sector then that's also fine. I'm just not sure thay they are.
My initial view is that this policy mix is geared towards benefitting not the top 10%, and not the bottom 50%, but those who fall between the two.
This was the key non-education part of the speech:
It means putting government firmly on the side of not only the poorest in our society, important though that is and will remain, but also of those in Britain who are working hard but just about managing. It means helping to make their lives a little easier; giving them greater control over the issues they care about the most.
This is the change we need. It will mean changing some of the philosophy underpinning how government thinks and acts. It will mean recalibrating how we approach policy development to ensure that everything we do as government helps to give a fair chance to those who are just getting by – while still helping those who are even more disadvantaged.
I don’t pretend this change will be easy – change rarely is – but this is the change we need if we are to make Britain the great meritocracy I want it to be.
She's adoptiing the Ed Miliband policy on charitable status that everyone on here slagged off when Ed suggested it :-)
Theresa May is as wrong now as Ed Miliband was then.
Plebs in the boardroom, now this.
Can Theresa May eat a bacon sarnie without it turning into a PR disaster?
I think you're just sore Theresa May isn't the continuity Cameroon you, and many Cameroon MPs, thought she would be when they supported her.
I was backing Michael Gove until JohnO persuaded me otherwise.
I think in hindsight it was more relief that she wasn't Andrea Leadsom
I note you don't deny it.
It's difficult to know where you really stand. You said you'd be happy with either Amber Rudd or Andrea Leadsom during the Brexit debate in June.
I'm afraid I don't take your word for it anymore.
Sadly her actions don't match her rhetoric, and the less said about appointing the disgraced Liam Fox and the flouncer David Davis at the heart of Brexit alarms many leavers, not only remainers.
Who would you rather she appointed? And how would they have beeen better from either a competence or political pov?
Dominic Raab would have been a great appointment, ditto Michael Gove for starters.
How could anyone trust Gove? Least of all the Foreign Secretary?
She's adoptiing the Ed Miliband policy on charitable status that everyone on here slagged off when Ed suggested it :-)
Theresa May is as wrong now as Ed Miliband was then.
Plebs in the boardroom, now this.
Can Theresa May eat a bacon sarnie without it turning into a PR disaster?
I think you're just sore Theresa May isn't the continuity Cameroon you, and many Cameroon MPs, thought she would be when they supported her.
I was backing Michael Gove until JohnO persuaded me otherwise.
I think in hindsight it was more relief that she wasn't Andrea Leadsom
I note you don't deny it.
It's difficult to know where you really stand. You said you'd be happy with either Amber Rudd or Andrea Leadsom during the Brexit debate in June.
I'm afraid I don't take your word for it anymore.
In July, Andrea Leadsom's failure to deny she'd appoint Nigel Farage to her government sent off warning bells for me that was egregiously unfit to be Tory leader, let alone Prime Minister.
I was quite impressed by Theresa May's Downing Street speech, which sounded like a continuation of Cameron's one nation approach.
Sadly her actions don't match her rhetoric, and the less said about appointing the disgraced Liam Fox and the flouncer David Davis at the heart of Brexit alarms many leavers, not only remainers.
There is a hilarious / terrifying counterfactual to be written of Leadsom winning the party vote and becoming PM.
I think she would have lasted just a few months before political chaos and a backbench rebellion forced her resignation.
There was a Sunday Times article warning of defections, already enough letters to trigger a vote of no confidence in Leadsom from day 1 of her becoming PM.
The weekend of that 'mother superior' interview, I had planned to write a thread on why Andrea Leadsom might the country's shortest serving PM since Bonar Law
That mother superior interview was truly idiotic. And who can forget that bizarre march for Leadsom led by Loughton and de Villiers? The fruitcake is strong with those two...
In the real world, she needs to learn to pick her battles better. Public schools have a lot of friends on the Conservative back benches and she doesn't have a big enough majority to play with.
Her situation is a big unique because she has no meaningful opposition from Labour, but instead is lumbered with this one big, central, impossible problem, which is Brexit. Her only hope is to distract people's attention from it while she goes about not solving it. It doesn't matter what battles she picks and whether she wins or loses them, as long as people are talking about them, not that.
@TCPoliticalBetting I just don't think she's very good. Definitely echoes of Gordon Brown, but with less low cunning.
I have 3/4 threads left to write, I think one of them might be
'Theresa May is just Gordon Brown in kitten heels'
Margaret Thatcher got the aspirational working class very well. It's something Lab has never understood because they prefer to keep the plebs as plebs and would be frightened witless if one were to appear beside them at a pop-up bar.
If TMay is reminding us that the Tories are an aspirational party all well and good.
If she overshoots to prove her point then it is understandable given the toff-wards drift of the Cons over the past decade or so.
Through their charitable status, private schools collectively reduce their tax bills by millions every year. And I want to consult on how we can amend Charity Commission guidance for independent schools to enact a tougher test on the amount of public benefit required to maintain charitable status.
It’s important to state that this will be proportionate to the size and scale of the school in question. Not every school is an Eton or a Harrow. Many public schools are nowhere near that size.
But for those with the capacity and capability, we will ask them to go further and actually sponsor or set up a new government-funded school in the state sector and take responsibility for running it and ensuring its success.
The tax private schools save is less than the cost of educating the children that attend them in the public sector. So the State gains financially from the fact that people are willing to spend their taxed income in this way in the same way as the NHS gains from the fact that some choose to use private medicine rather than NHS resources.
I accept that there are social mobility and snobbery issues in respect of private schools. But this tax benefit stuff really is nonsense.
It's debatable, but hardly nonsense. In any event, twisting the arm of the private sector to engage with the public sector is likely to be to the benefit of both.
Why should the fees I pay for my son out my taxed income be increased so that the school has additional resources to subsidise state schools that I am already paying for through my taxes even though I am choosing not to use them?
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
You get private schools which aren't charities and are run as a business,send your kids to one of those.
Most private schools do not make taxable profits and invest any surpluses in additional facilities anyway. I can see some saying that this charitable status is not worth the candle if the price gets too high.
To be honest, I think your argument is a stronger defence for making school fees allowable as a pre-tax expense than for keeping charitable status.
I'd be all in favour of that, tbh.
Now you're talking. I pay £11K school fees for my son. At 40% that would give me tax relief of £4,400, still less than I save the State by paying for his education twice.
That mother superior interview was truly idiotic. And who can forget that bizarre march for Leadsom led by Loughton and de Villiers? The fruitcake is strong with those two...
“So which point, what do you do. I thought, ‘well we probably better march’. We had people like Bill Cash. Bill Cash, well in to his 70s, probably never ever been on march like that before. And some other sane people.”
She's adoptiing the Ed Miliband policy on charitable status that everyone on here slagged off when Ed suggested it :-)
Theresa May is as wrong now as Ed Miliband was then.
Plebs in the boardroom, now this.
Can Theresa May eat a bacon sarnie without it turning into a PR disaster?
I think you're just sore Theresa May isn't the continuity Cameroon you, and many Cameroon MPs, thought she would be when they supported her.
I was backing Michael Gove until JohnO persuaded me otherwise.
I think in hindsight it was more relief that she wasn't Andrea Leadsom
I note you don't deny it.
It's difficult to know where you really stand. You said you'd be happy with either Amber Rudd or Andrea Leadsom during the Brexit debate in June.
I'm afraid I don't take your word for it anymore.
Sadly her actions don't match her rhetoric, and the less said about appointing the disgraced Liam Fox and the flouncer David Davis at the heart of Brexit alarms many leavers, not only remainers.
Who would you rather she appointed? And how would they have beeen better from either a competence or political pov?
Dominic Raab would have been a great appointment, ditto Michael Gove for starters.
How could anyone trust Gove? Least of all the Foreign Secretary?
Interesting decision by the CJE which should be of comfort to PB. Having hyperlinks to copyright material which itself has been improperly published or published without authority is not a communication to the public unless it is done for profit:
A decision like this is also a good demonstration as to how complicated it is going to be disentangling our law from EU law in so many areas.
Surely it's the exact opposite, will be a nightmare for Mike and the mods of any website that makes money from advertising. It means that linking to an image or a site is illegal if that site doesn't own the copyright for what's on it. It could, in extremis, apply to a link to a Google page holding a copy of a Times article. This judgement really doesn't understand how the internet works.
@TCPoliticalBetting I just don't think she's very good. Definitely echoes of Gordon Brown, but with less low cunning.
She is clearly more decisive than Brown. But maybe she shares with Brown his mistake in not planning all the major changes that she would do if she got the PM job. Maybe she was just unprepared for it thinking that Osborne was a shoe in? Since she ruled out a GE before 2020 she creates a situation where she has to take 90% of her MPs with her on each issue. Another example is nuclear energy - if she knew what she was going to do on day one then she should have set the delay into force rather than delaying it hours away from a ceremony.
As another anecdote my wife (who's Bulgarian) is very keen on sending our own children to private school.
Why?
She's convinced that doing so ensures one speaks 'properly' and gives access to networks and contacts that later prove very useful to getting on in life, and that one is at a disadvantage if one does not have those. She feels her own experience in trying to get into law has just reinforced her views on this.
Of course, I have explained to her that it doesn't quite work like that but I can't deny there is an element of truth in what she says.
I think your wife is correct, up to a point. It depends which school you (she?) chooses for your children though. There are private schools and private schools. Before I finally retired I had some very wealthy clients and they sent their boys to Radley, Stowe, WInchester and Eton*; the girls all seemed to go to Beneden (even if their mothers went to Roedean or Cheltenham). Places like Hurstpierpoint College, despite providing a good education, were not even in consideration. Networks cost a lot of money.
*Those children who failed common entrance went to places like St. Edwards in Oxford.
She's adoptiing the Ed Miliband policy on charitable status that everyone on here slagged off when Ed suggested it :-)
Theresa May is as wrong now as Ed Miliband was then.
Plebs in the boardroom, now this.
Can Theresa May eat a bacon sarnie without it turning into a PR disaster?
I think you're just sore Theresa May isn't the continuity Cameroon you, and many Cameroon MPs, thought she would be when they supported her.
I was backing Michael Gove until JohnO persuaded me otherwise.
I think in hindsight it was more relief that she wasn't Andrea Leadsom
I note you don't deny it.
It's difficult to know where you really stand. You said you'd be happy with either Amber Rudd or Andrea Leadsom during the Brexit debate in June.
I'm afraid I don't take your word for it anymore.
Sadly her actions don't match her rhetoric, and the less said about appointing the disgraced Liam Fox and the flouncer David Davis at the heart of Brexit alarms many leavers, not only remainers.
Who would you rather she appointed? And how would they have beeen better from either a competence or political pov?
Dominic Raab would have been a great appointment, ditto Michael Gove for starters.
Raab has been in Parliament for 6 years....Davis for nearly 30.......May was going up to Oxford when Raab was born.....what's this fascination with youth?
In the real world, she needs to learn to pick her battles better. Public schools have a lot of friends on the Conservative back benches and she doesn't have a big enough majority to play with.
Her situation is a big unique because she has no meaningful opposition from Labour, but instead is lumbered with this one big, central, impossible problem, which is Brexit. Her only hope is to distract people's attention from it while she goes about not solving it. It doesn't matter what battles she picks and whether she wins or loses them, as long as people are talking about them, not that.
Which we are, so she's winning.
Yep, agree. As I said yesterday this smacks of 'dead cat on the table' to me.
Through their charitable status, private schools collectively reduce their tax bills by millions every year. And I want to consult on how we can amend Charity Commission guidance for independent schools to enact a tougher test on the amount of public benefit required to maintain charitable status.
It’s important to state that this will be proportionate to the size and scale of the school in question. Not every school is an Eton or a Harrow. Many public schools are nowhere near that size.
But for those with the capacity and capability, we will ask them to go further and actually sponsor or set up a new government-funded school in the state sector and take responsibility for running it and ensuring its success.
I accept that there are social mobility and snobbery issues in respect of private schools. But this tax benefit stuff really is nonsense.
It's debatable, but hardly nonsense. In any event, twisting the arm of the private sector to engage with the public sector is likely to be to the benefit of both.
Why should the fees I pay for my son out my taxed income be increased so that the school has additional resources to subsidise state schools that I am already paying for through my taxes even though I am choosing not to use them?
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
You get private schools which aren't charities and are run as a business,send your kids to one of those.
Most private schools do not make taxable profits and invest any surpluses in additional facilities anyway. I can see some saying that this charitable status is not worth the candle if the price gets too high.
To be honest, I think your argument is a stronger defence for making school fees allowable as a pre-tax expense than for keeping charitable status.
I'd be all in favour of that, tbh.
Now you're talking. I pay £11K school fees for my son. At 40% that would give me tax relief of £4,400, still less than I save the State by paying for his education twice.
Probably not with the times though.
I save the State even more by not having any kids in the first place. Do I get £4,400 too?
Through their charitable status, private schools collectively reduce their tax bills by millions every year. And I want to consult on how we can amend Charity Commission guidance for independent schools to enact a tougher test on the amount of public benefit required to maintain charitable status.
It’s important to state that this will be proportionate to the size and scale of the school in question. Not every school is an Eton or a Harrow. Many public schools are nowhere near that size.
But for those with the capacity and capability, we will ask them to go further and actually sponsor or set up a new government-funded school in the state sector and take responsibility for running it and ensuring its success.
I accept that there are social mobility and snobbery issues in respect of private schools. But this tax benefit stuff really is nonsense.
It's debatable, but hardly nonsense. In any event, twisting the arm of the private sector to engage with the public sector is likely to be to the benefit of both.
Why should the fees I pay for my son out my taxed income be increased so that the school has additional resources to subsidise state schools that I am already paying for through my taxes even though I am choosing not to use them?
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
You get private schools which aren't charities and are run as a business,send your kids to one of those.
Most private schools do not make taxable profits and invest any surpluses in additional facilities anyway. I can see some saying that this charitable status is not worth the candle if the price gets too high.
To be honest, I think your argument is a stronger defence for making school fees allowable as a pre-tax expense than for keeping charitable status.
I'd be all in favour of that, tbh.
Now you're talking. I pay £11K school fees for my son. At 40% that would give me tax relief of £4,400, still less than I save the State by paying for his education twice.
Probably not with the times though.
I save the State even more by not having any kids in the first place. Do I get £4,400 too?
In the real world, she needs to learn to pick her battles better. Public schools have a lot of friends on the Conservative back benches and she doesn't have a big enough majority to play with.
Her situation is a big unique because she has no meaningful opposition from Labour, but instead is lumbered with this one big, central, impossible problem, which is Brexit. Her only hope is to distract people's attention from it while she goes about not solving it. It doesn't matter what battles she picks and whether she wins or loses them, as long as people are talking about them, not that.
Which we are, so she's winning.
Yep, agree. As I said yesterday this smacks of 'dead cat on the table' to me.
Couldn't disagree more vehemently. This was rumoured to be her big conf announcement - but it leaked. A dead-cat is an OTT deliberate gaffe to distract momentarily.
Through their charitable status, private schools collectively reduce their tax bills by millions every year. And I want to consult on how we can amend Charity Commission guidance for independent schools to enact a tougher test on the amount of public benefit required to maintain charitable status.
It’s important to state that this will be proportionate to the size and scale of the school in question. Not every school is an Eton or a Harrow. Many public schools are nowhere near that size.
But for those with the capacity and capability, we will ask them to go further and actually sponsor or set up a new government-funded school in the state sector and take responsibility for running it and ensuring its success.
I accept that there are social mobility and snobbery issues in respect of private schools. But this tax benefit stuff really is nonsense.
It's debatable, but hardly nonsense. In any event, twisting the arm of the private sector to engage with the public sector is likely to be to the benefit of both.
Why should the fees I pay for my son out my taxed income be increased so that the school has additional resources to subsidise state schools that I am already paying for through my taxes even though I am choosing not to use them?
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
You get private schools which aren't charities and are run as a business,send your kids to one of those.
Most private schools do not make taxable profits and invest any surpluses in additional facilities anyway. I can see some saying that this charitable status is not worth the candle if the price gets too high.
To be honest, I think your argument is a stronger defence for making school fees allowable as a pre-tax expense than for keeping charitable status.
I'd be all in favour of that, tbh.
Now you're talking. I pay £11K school fees for my son. At 40% that would give me tax relief of £4,400, still less than I save the State by paying for his education twice.
Probably not with the times though.
I save the State even more by not having any kids in the first place. Do I get £4,400 too?
Certainly not. Kids are a public good and you should be penalised for dereliction.
Through their charitable status, private schools collectively reduce their tax bills by millions every year. And I want to consult on how we can amend Charity Commission guidance for independent schools to enact a tougher test on the amount of public benefit required to maintain charitable status.
It’s important to state that this will be proportionate to the size and scale of the school in question. Not every school is an Eton or a Harrow. Many public schools are nowhere near that size.
But for those with the capacity and capability, we will ask them to go further and actually sponsor or set up a new government-funded school in the state sector and take responsibility for running it and ensuring its success.
The tax private schools save is less than the cost of educating the children that attend them in the public sector. So the State gains financially from the fact that people are willing to spend their taxed income in this way in the same way as the NHS gains from the fact that some choose to use private medicine rather than NHS resources.
I accept that there are social mobility and snobbery issues in respect of private schools. But this tax benefit stuff really is nonsense.
It's debatable, but hardly nonsense. In any event, twisting the arm of the private sector to engage with the public sector is likely to be to the benefit of both.
Why should the fees I pay for my son out my taxed income be increased so that the school has additional resources to subsidise state schools that I am already paying for through my taxes even though I am choosing not to use them?
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
You get private schools which aren't charities and are run as a business,send your kids to one of those.
Most private schools do not make taxable profits and invest any surpluses in additional facilities anyway. I can see some saying that this charitable status is not worth the candle if the price gets too high.
To be honest, I think your argument is a stronger defence for making school fees allowable as a pre-tax expense than for keeping charitable status.
I'd be all in favour of that, tbh.
Now you're talking. I pay £11K school fees for my son. At 40% that would give me tax relief of £4,400, still less than I save the State by paying for his education twice.
Comments
Plebs in the boardroom, now this.
Can Theresa May eat a bacon sarnie without it turning into a PR disaster?
Lumping Catholics or Jews in with Islamic schools is just daft relativism. We don't have a problem with the former. When the issues of Islamic terrorism and cultural ghettos are fixed - then we can look at it again.
Also, evidence from the US shows that simply applying positive discrimination doesn't work for when you get to college system and of course successive governments are effectively encouraging that here with "widening participation" agenda.
In any event, twisting the arm of the private sector to engage with the public sector is likely to be to the benefit of both.
It could also be a precursor to full in selection at 14 if it is done right and an introduction of middle schooling but I'm not sure that the PM had thought that part through. It does at least open the door.
Can vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/16/vegans-stomach-unpalatable-truth-quinoa
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Of course, there must be strict and properly enforced rules to ensure that every new faith school operates in a way that supports British values. And we should explore new ways of using the school system to promote greater integration within our society generally.
We will encourage the grouping together of mono-racial and mono-religious schools within wider multi-racial and multi-religious trusts. This will make it easier for children from different backgrounds in more divided communities to mix between schools, while respecting religious differences.
But the question was a fair one: i.e. what happens to those who don't get into the grammars?
I'm not sure the PM has thought this through very well. It needs a much larger reform and introduction of a German style system or leaving alone. If that is her ultimate goal.
http://order-order.com/2016/09/09/244876/
"Over the last few weeks ministers and civil servants have grown frustrated at Downing Street’s insistence that every single policy must have a “making the country work for everyone” angle. Policies and announcements that have nothing to do with May’s theme of meritocracy are being delayed or shunned until ministers can think of a way to make a link."
Of course, you might agree with me that those should be heavily modified or repealed, but at the moment the Government has little choice to pick and choose.
I think in hindsight it was more relief that she wasn't Andrea Leadsom
All that doesn't add up to a lot financially, but makes a big difference to the perception of the public school within the local community.
Why?
She's convinced that doing so ensures one speaks 'properly' and gives access to networks and contacts that later prove very useful to getting on in life, and that one is at a disadvantage if one does not have those. She feels her own experience in trying to get into law has just reinforced her views on this.
Of course, I have explained to her that it doesn't quite work like that but I can't deny there is an element of truth in what she says.
I hope the government is true to its word and ensures that it works for everyone. Not just the 20-30% who will do very well out of what is being proposed.
May mentioned Classics in passing in her speech. One problem is the conflation of "merit" with things like the learning of Latin, which is really just a class-marker, not a true sign of excellence per se.
We need a system to encourage more people like my wife: she is very dyslexic, would never have got into a grammar, but is one of the top in her (creative) field and contributes mightily to UK export earnings (and tax intake).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3553750/Labours-class-warfare-in-independent-schools.html
Here is an example of how some on the right wing are not happy with Mrs May's move.
http://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2016/09/too-much-excitement-about-grammar-schools-not-enough-about-technical-schools.html
It's difficult to know where you really stand. You said you'd be happy with either Amber Rudd or Andrea Leadsom during the Brexit debate in June.
I'm afraid I don't take your word for it anymore.
Leadsom did the honourable thing in the end, as your header says we would only have had the result today had she remained in the contest. I'd like to think we'd have given May a landslide win if we'd been asked.
Oh, and several bets in from 10/1 on May would have only paid out now, rather than eight weeks ago!!
Edit: and all the close to evens lays on Osborne and Johnson, we did all lay the favourites didn't we?
I'm not sure they opened up the shooting range to the locals, though.
All I could find was:
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/conference/2011/09/private-schools-labour-status
It's very difficult to take away the charitable status for a whole host of complicated reasons. I don't think you can abolish public schools in a free society. Am I going to abolish public schools? No."
What makes this politically notable is that during the Labour leadership election David Miliband pledged to end private schools' charitable status. In an article for the Guardian, he wrote: "Under the Tories, the poorest will end up paying the price of the mistakes of the richest. We should not be afraid of the mansion tax on £2m houses or extending the bankers' bonus tax, rather than charging the poorest with VAT rises. And the idea of taking money from the poorest children while continuing to subsidise private schools is just wrong."
Here, then, is a rare example of a subject on which David leans to the left of Ed.
As I said, I'm broadly in favour of the idea, but the devil, as always, lies in the detail.
Corbyn has sewn it with Agent Orange, and the Conservatives have shelled it to mud with artillery from dozens of miles away.
I was quite impressed by Theresa May's Downing Street speech, which sounded like a continuation of Cameron's one nation approach.
Sadly her actions don't match her rhetoric, and the less said about appointing the disgraced Liam Fox and the flouncer David Davis at the heart of Brexit alarms many leavers, not only remainers.
Many times I've wondered "what does this have to do with them?"
Six years for stockbroker who claimed rape victim was only upset because of his huge penis https://t.co/JrsbJhXssC via @CourtNewsUK
Good. Appallingly stupid and arrogant defence.
In the real world, she needs to learn to pick her battles better. Public schools have a lot of friends on the Conservative back benches and she doesn't have a big enough majority to play with.
I think she would have lasted just a few months before political chaos and a backbench rebellion forced her resignation.
But that takes money from the public purse and effort from teachers, both of which are necessarily in short supply.
Of course, parents also play a massive part.
On a tangent, if HMG were to actually implement the sort of reforms, including technical education, that you and I would like to see then big chunks of the HE sector would be up in arms. Universities would have to go back to being preserve of the academics and large numbers of third rate tutors would be out of a job and many institutions would have to go back to being Polytechnics or close down.
The weekend of that 'mother superior' interview, I had planned to write a thread on why Andrea Leadsom might the country's shortest serving PM since Bonar Law
I'd be all in favour of that, tbh.
The PM's friends on the back benches will be happy to cut down to size a lot of the lefty lobbying 'charities' and those that seem to exist mainly for their well paid staff, in exchange for requiring a little more community engagement from the public schools.
'Theresa May is just Gordon Brown in kitten heels'
The fruitcake is strong with those two...
None of those contacts have ever helped my career, however prized the friendships that resulted - we're all in different work and home areas (even countries). I made most of my useful contacts whilst at uni, and then mostly from people I met on different courses.
IMO if you're spending a fortune to send a child to public school, make sure it's the right school for the child. Public schools vary massively not just in academic results, but in their ethos and attitude. Send them to the wrong one and it'd be wasted money.
We've been discussing this a great deal recently for the obvious reason, and we're content, at the moment, to end our little 'un to a local school. That may change as he grows up.
A decision like this is also a good demonstration as to how complicated it is going to be disentangling our law from EU law in so many areas.
Very Thatcherite in focus.
It means putting government firmly on the side of not only the poorest in our society, important though that is and will remain, but also of those in Britain who are working hard but just about managing. It means helping to make their lives a little easier; giving them greater control over the issues they care about the most.
This is the change we need. It will mean changing some of the philosophy underpinning how government thinks and acts. It will mean recalibrating how we approach policy development to ensure that everything we do as government helps to give a fair chance to those who are just getting by – while still helping those who are even more disadvantaged.
I don’t pretend this change will be easy – change rarely is – but this is the change we need if we are to make Britain the great meritocracy I want it to be.
Very different from Cameron's noblesse oblige....
Which we are, so she's winning.
If TMay is reminding us that the Tories are an aspirational party all well and good.
If she overshoots to prove her point then it is understandable given the toff-wards drift of the Cons over the past decade or so.
Probably not with the times though.
Classic.
Discussion here on a tech blog:
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/09/08/202228/linking-without-permission-violates-copyright-rules-eu-court
*Those children who failed common entrance went to places like St. Edwards in Oxford.
That's where some PBers were getting Mike into trouble.