Let the condition of a commercial school's continuing charitable status be its having been adjudged satisfactory or better by Ofsted, using the same criteria as for state schools, with the reports published, and with the value-added measure applied, thereby requiring those schools to have demonstrated how they had improved pupils' abilities.
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Private schools already provide an enormous social benefit just by existing. Your part of the political spectrum (the class warrior part) never read anything.
ReplyDeleteAs Simon Heffer noted back in April" "This week, figures showed independent schools pay £4.7 billion tax a year and provide 275,000 jobs.
That strikes me as a good return on the annual £100 million tax break— not forgetting the fact that thousands of poor children are given free places every year.
Also, the already creaking state system would collapse if the 550,000 or so pupils in the private sector suddenly turned up to be taught at state schools...""
Private schools are of course good precisely because they aren't subjected to Ofsted's politically correct Inquisition and are thus free to teach properly. Ofsted is a force for "child centred learning" liberalism and bad teaching.
Every teacher quite rightly hates it.
They do, but not for that reason.
DeleteYou will, then, presumably wish to abolish that creation of the Conservatives, which was once headed by Sir Chris "sex with one's Sixth Formers is acceptable" Woodhead?
Yet another reason why you should be in Parliament. It is wrong without you.
ReplyDeleteYes I do wish to abolish it.
ReplyDeletePrivate schools are one of the few beneficiaries of taxpayers money that actually give back far more than they receive.
As Simon Heffer has also pointed out, private school parents actually pay twice for their children's schooling; once, in taxes for state schools they don't use and then a second time in fees.
They're making a double contribution to society.
And I must add that Ofsted was of course set up as a gimmick-like the many others since-to address the persistently falling school standards caused by Anthony Crosland's closure of selective schools and by Leftwing dogmas that had crept into teaching, such as the Plowden Report's "child centred learning". As explained below...
ReplyDelete""By 1992 there was evidence of falling standards in 'important aspects of literacy and numeracy' (DES 1992:1); Piaget's notion of 'learning readiness', as set out in the Plowden Report, was dubious and the progress of primary pupils had been 'hampered by the influence of highly questionable dogmas' (DES 1992:1).
Unsurprisingly, 22 years later our state schools are just as atrocious and just as full of "questionable dogmas". After 13 years of Labour, the OECD report found our schools were worse than Romania.
Establishing Ofsted as a state spy agency to nationalise education was not the solution. Of course, I know what the solution is.