As you know by now, this missive is politically neutral. We’re very much the BBC of loosely education based newsletters, maintaining strict neutrality, whilst fulfilling our mission statement “to inform, to educate and to entertain”. And I would say the very fact that we don’t particularly achieve any of these three infinitives is itself proof of our commitment to neutrality.
However, the staggering self-congratulation of ‘Rickety’ Bridge Phillipson, and the Department of Education that she leads, when releasing census data last week – and the implications of the impact of VAT introduction on private schools – really caught in Clarendon’s craw.
You can read what she wrote to LBC here, a Guardian article here and, if you are really time rich, the DoE data here. We know how busy you are, so allow us to paraphrase for you.
- Numbers of applicants for state schools has dropped this last year, showing that the state sector has not been swamped as some had predicted.
- Independent school closures are in line with general trends over the last twenty years.
- The money raised will allow greater spending on the majority – 94% – of children who are educated by the state in the UK, showing that the policy has been an unmitigated success.
- Bridget couldn’t give a rat’s arse about independent schools and their students.
Before Clarendon turns a critical eye on the Education Secretary’s statements, we do want to say that Clarendon thinks Bridget Phillipson has done some applaudable things: the curriculum review showed good understanding of the challenges facing teachers and young people; the recruitment drive of teachers has been partially successful (not as successful as she makes out, nor as successful as was promised, but successful nonetheless); increased spending on education was desperately needed; and we cannot quibble with the fact that it is very much the remit of her job to focus on the 94% of students at state schools.
However, her messaging both misrepresents the data and, Clarendon feels, is calculatedly classist to position herself in what will almost inevitably be Andy Burnham’s cabinet in a matter of days.
Firstly, there are indeed lower numbers of children applying for state schools this year, but that is not because private schools haven’t been devastated. The DoE’s data suggested that a further 22,000 children left the private sector this year, following the 11,000 who left in the first year of VAT’s introduction. The reason these numbers have not – yet – been felt, is because of a general population decline. Student numbers have been declining for state primaries and state nurseries for the last decade. We’re having less kids and we’ve seen a massive net loss of young European families in the last five years. It does seem a bit odd for the DoE to be patting itself on the back for population decline, unless it is claiming that sex ed classes have become much more effective that Clarendon remembers. Numbers at state secondaries have remained stable, probably bolstered by the exodus from the private sector (although the data is not that granular), whilst the numbers of state funded special schools has ballooned to nearly double what it was ten years ago. This may well represent a problem in the coming years, as two areas that the government’s teacher recruit has underachieved is specialist teachers for special schools, as well as secondary school teachers in STEM subjects.
Secondly, whilst it is true to point out that the numbers of independent school closures is more or less consistent with previous years, this ignores something troubling about the types of schools now closing. Between 1987 and 2024, 2,674 independent schools closed, which is around 72 per year, but these were often very small schools with less than 50 students, smaller faith schools, or more recently opened SEND schools or alternative provision schools whose financial modelling hadn’t worked with small numbers. Since the start of 2025, 103 mainstream schools have shut. Furthermore, the average student capacity of these schools is over 200. This is a massive shift. These schools are historical institutions – Fulneck School had been open since 1753, Our Lady Abingdon was founded in 1860, Queen Margaret’s School was founded in 1901 – in other societies they may have been protected. And the schools mentioned are by no means outliers.
Bridget Phillipson writes in LBC that “it is not the job of taxpayers to subsidise institutions that did not manage their finances properly”. This feels a little disingenuous to me; these schools were not getting government handouts. Indeed, each child educated privately is £8,500 the taxpayer doesn’t need to pay. Clarendon doesn’t walk past a betting shop and curse that my hard earned tax is subsidising Will Hill (even though gambling is VAT exempt in the UK). Just because something is not being taxed to the hilt, does not mean it is being subsidised by the tax payer.
As mentioned previously, Clarendon understands that Bridget Phillipson’s duty is to the 94%, but this was a government that ran on a message of growth and supporting businesses. You might have thought that the Education Secretary would express regret at some of these closures, concern for the children upended and the teachers and staff left redundant.
Not a bit of it.
And though Clarendon is no political commentator, we believe that might be because she is not aligning herself to the messaging of the outgoing government, but instead is positioning herself as a force in the next, more left leaning government of the new MP for Makerfield.
