What’s the difference between a private school and a university?

It’s not often you get a settled Labour education policy, but I’m committed to giving them full scrutiny whenever they turn up.

Keir Starmer’s party has hit (once again) on the very popular idea of charging VAT on private school fees, and removing the charitable status enjoyed by schools. with the rhetorical flourish that some of the funds raised for the exchequer (around £1.6bn, it is estimated) used to further support state schools.

It polls well – 47 per cent of adults agree with the plans, with a further caveat that 27 per cent would see it imposed for those that do not do more to help state schools. It’s actually more popular among the kind of older voters that Labour are keen to bring on board, and the policy is a winner even among Conservative voters and Leave voters.

Individual schools are less keen – with the various private school associations grouping together to write to the Telegraph. They cite a 2018 Baines Cutler report already subjected to a forensic skewering by Sam Freedman to suggest that the policy will actually be revenue negative (spoiler – there’s some low n, cherry picking, and sample bias fun in there).

Back to basics

So what has this to do with higher education? Bear with me. If you are going to put in place a policy that affects private schools you have to define a private school. And in doing that, you raise a number of questions.

If you were to define an organisation that charges fees for education and are regulated and inspected as autonomous bodies by a government agency as a “private school”, your definition also includes universities. If you were to define an organisation that educates under 18s to level 3 – you are also including a small part of what universities do.

The only way to exempt universities and other higher education providers from this policy is to do so explicitly and with careful and judicious use of the OfS register (there are a few providers on the register that are not FECs that offer L3 courses, for instance) and the DfE register of private schools.

Which would be great – except there are three providers (David Game College, ArtsEd, and Regent College) that are on both registers.

Definition of a problem

Many higher education providers are charities (some regulated as charities by OfS, others not). Many have exemptions available to them on VAT.

Some deft parliamentary drafting is going to be required to separate out universities from private schools. Indeed such would be the hassle that an awkward question may be asked. Why?

The popular case against private schools being charities is that, well, they are run more like businesses than charities. They charge fees to entrants, and while they may have a nominal charitable aim around “education” in most cases the overwhelming majority of this provision is only available to those who pay for it. Other charitable activity is sporadic and often difficult to quantify. Despite not being in the public sector, many schools also receive government funding to support what they do. And there will also be funding from elsewhere – both from industry and from private benefactors.

All of those things also apply to higher education providers. The only difference is that the government offers fee loans to some entrants (the majority of entrants to be fair – but recall the government also spent more than £100m on school fees for diplomats and senior military officers in 2017). Universities do make a public contribution – in civic and financial terms – and we even get regular reports explaining this. Just like the ones we see about private schools.

During Covid-19 restrictions – we often lamented the way government saw universities as “big boarding schools”. As I never tire of saying – all policy boils down to data definitions. But this is one example of where the act of making a precise definition might get the higher education sector into some hot water.