It is nearly three decades since we first heard Tony Blair’s top three priorities: Education, education, education. He was right to push this incredibly important human right to the forefront of his priorities.
The tragedy is that this new Labour government seems to be putting education at the bottom of its priorities. Schools across England face massive financial problems because of choices made by this government. The result? Probable redundancies of schoolteachers.
The problem is three-fold.
First, Labour’s tax on employment – the rises in employers’ national insurance contributions – has hit schools’ costs dramatically. Of course, it’s hit the entire economy dramatically, as can be seen by businesses closing across Wyre Forest, but for schools it means all their staff costs go up. And that is not just teachers. Everyone working at a school now costs more in taxes, and every service that is provided by outside contractors have had to hike their rates to accommodate this vicious tax on jobs. Staff costs are by far the biggest element of a school budget, at over 80% of total costs.
Second, teachers are to be awarded a pay rise of around 2.8%. Its above inflation, but they do an important job. They deserve it. But Bridget Philipson, the Education Secretary, and Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, have chosen to dump this extra cost on schools, opting to freeze the financial settlement for education. They expect schools to make “efficiencies”. That’s redundancies in normal speak.
Third is the extra burden on state schools because of Labour choosing to break convention and tax a basic human right. Philipson estimated that her education tax would push just 3,000 of the 551,578 privately educated children into the state sector.
Any economist would tell you that hiking a price by 20% would result in a dramatic shift on the price / demand curve, and so it was. The Independent Schools Council estimate that in the last 12 month, 13,000 pupils have switched. So that is on over-estimate of the tax receipts, and an under estimate of the burden on the state sector.
Of course, this mismanagement follows on from their education bill, that rows back on changes that brought significant improvements for England in international league tables.
What next? Having established that the Government is happy to tax education, the next logical step is to complete the process and tax university fees. That’ll make for an interesting conversation at the student union.