Labours plans to impose a 20% VAT on private school fees are still causing a hell of a row. If the party wins the general election, Labour intends to take the money raised by that extra VAT – an estimated £1.6bn a year – and use it to pay for more teachers in the state system (6,500 more, according to its pre-election pledge) which seems... Oh, I dunno. Incredibly fair? I write, admittedly, from a biased perspective, as a state educated individual who wouldn’t private educate my kids if I had any (I don’t), even if I could afford to, (I couldn’t). I’m no radical leftie, a moderate one on my leftie-ist of days, but I do passionately believe in the comprehensive system. I think it’s just sensible. Socially responsible, just, smart, a decent, realistic preparation for adult life, yadda ya.
I’ve got mates who privately educate their kids. Do I judge them for it? Of course not. We all make our choices, we all lead deeply morally compromised lives anyway. Let she who didn’t just step over a homeless person on her way to spend four quid on a latte cast the first stone, eh? And I truly appreciate that, if you have a kid already in the private system, and this increase in cost will mean they have to come out: that could be miserably disruptive.
Still: I have had some awkward convos on the subject. Especially when I hear Labour’s VAT policy described as ‘the politics of envy’. As if it could only possibly be explained as a cynical attempt to win votes by trading on the spite-laden, petty-minded pique of the 93% who can’t afford private education, so want nothing more than to see others denied it.
Children’s education is not a heavily logo’d handbag, the newest iPhone, a flashy car loitering in the driveway of your house.
This confuses me. Partly because not everyone thinks about private education like that. Some of us look at the sh*t show of the Government of the last few years – with particular reference to Boris Johnson – and think: that’s what very expensive education gets you, folks! Entitled incompetence at the highest level!
But mainly, it confuses me because, if you truly believe private education is wonderful, and state education, a poor second (which, if you’re bandying around terms like ‘the policy of envy’ – you presumably do): surely, what we’re talking about is not ‘the politics of envy’, but rather ‘the politics of bitter disappointment so many children are being so badly short changed’? Because children’s education is not a heavily logo’d handbag, the newest iPhone, a flashy car loitering in the driveway of your house. It’s not three holidays a year, one in Mauritius, let the Instagram followers see that and weep. It’s the basis of our kids’ future. Framing it in envy, then, is just terribly ugly, and terribly off.