– The loan is repaid on income £15,000 p/a, as an extra 9% on top of the basic rate. Although you’re quite right that it isn’t progressive (it’s actually a “regressive” tax in that those on the poorer end of the repaying scale pay the tax for longer) you’re very wrong to claim that “[the loan] is repayable even when someone is earning poverty wages”. It isn’t — it’s a repayment plan that is tied to income, and has an allowance worth 15,000 p/a before someone even has to start repayments.

What I wonder, though, is if Gove is planning to simply foist the ex-service personnel on schools as a means to cut the cost of teaching staff – non-qualified teachers earn less than teachers who have their QTS.

I think what you refer to as Gove’s ‘decentralising instincts’ are part of this ‘straw man’ thing that Dave refers to, referring to the way in reality teachers deliver a curriculum as they see fit, making the odd bow of convenience to central diktat but largely just getting on with the job. It’s very convenient for the Tories to have us believe that there’s always a government (ofsted) bureaucrat breathing down the neck of teachers, but it just isn’t true. What is true is that teaching and learning research is used to guide teachers, but that (again as Dave says) is or can be a good thing.

(In passing, as a theoretical underpinning to this relative, and strategically defended, autonomy on the part of teachers, I think Lipsky’s semiinal ‘Street Level Bureaucrats; Dilemmas of the individual in public services’ is very useful

And as with teaching methods, so with the rest of a school’s operation, in my experience (which is of primary school governorship/chairmanship of finance). I’ve written about this at my place a while back, when primary academies were mooted by Gove (but no concrete proposasls set out) , so I’ll be lazy and just quote from there:

‘First, I’m not even sure what the Tories mean when they say ‘political interference’. It’s a vacuous phrase based on the notion that all politics is necessarily bad, but other than that I really have no idea. They are simply insinuating that all schools are prey to lefties, as far as I can work out. If only.

As for the notion that schools don’t currently control their own budgets, that is simply nonsense. There is already very tights (though complicated) legislation about the very high percentage of overall budgets from central government to local authorities which must be ’passported’ straight through to school budgets, and most local authorities actually pass on a much greater percentage than the minimum requirement.

In turn, governors of schools have total authority over how they spend their budget allocation already. While schools do ‘buy back’ into centralised functions such as finance support or grounds maintenance, which are generally considered more effectively delivered across lots of schools, they are at absolute liberty not to do so if they want to arrange it for themselves

To suggest that schools need more budget freedom is, put simply, based on a lie about the current situation.

As proof, look back at the story of my school (part 1). Although the school adviser advised us as a governing body against taking what we considered a calculated financial risk by maintaining a three class structure as the school roll dropped, there was nothing she could do to stop us.

The real issue was about whether we, as parents and governors, were prepared to take the power we had in our hands and use it, because we knew more about our school and its future than the LEA did.

We were prepared to do so, and it worked. The question is whether the governing body or ‘Local Education Partnership’ of an academy, made up not of parents and teachers but by private sector representatives and sponsors would have taken the same steps, based on the same feelings of solidarity and wider understanding of the dynamics of our area. I suspect not, and our school might now be closed.

Of course the Conservatives might counter that academy schools will bring on private sector funding.

Let’s just look at the facts, though. The secondary academies had to raise 2 million pounds in sponsorship to attract 25 million in central government investment. So the private sector brings 10% of the start-up budget, and gets control of the school by doing so – a pretty good commercial deal, I’d say.

Meanwhile, PTFAs up and down the country, year in year out, raise huge amounts of money, many between 5% and 10% of the overall school budget at primary level. Yes, thy do exactly the same thing as the private sector sponsors, and what thanks do they get?

And what of freedom over the curriculum? Again, this is just a vacuous insinuation that primary school curricula are a matter of absolute diktat from the state, and this is simply not true. Certainly there is a national curriculum based, perhaps a little too much on the ‘basics’ of reading and writing, and there is guidance that literacy and numeracy should figure in most school days, but there is no centralised timetable, and primary schools have just about as much fleixbility as they need on the basis that children learn (though it is all far too geared towards SATS 1 and 2).

In my school, there is no local authority bureaucrat hanging round telling us that we can’t devote a bit of time each May to practising the Maypole dancing, part of a 150 year old tradition of the Village Treat Day.

Essentially, what the Tories are saying about primary schools is hokum, devoid of facts, designed to have just think all our primary schools are Stalinist Institutions which need liberating from the ever-oppressive state.

Yes, additional flexibilities for teachers and parents just to get on with stuff – to be empowered – would be good, as would a greater shift to redistributive funding.

But to suggest that this will be achieved through a string of academies prepared to out-market neighbouring schools and bully them into submission under the rhetoric of ‘competition is good for us all’, and to do so by insinuating things about the current state of affairs which are simply not true, is something of which the Conservatives should be ashamed.’

It’s at http://www.bickerstafferecord.org.uk/?p=748 if you can (again) be arsed.

‘Treating like an adult’ means – make the decision yourself whether to go to Uni. If two kids face that decision, one goes straight off to work, starts paying taxes, the other goes off the university, gains a discounted future bill: I don’t see why the first should have to pay for the second.

When people don’t benefit from their education, they tend to pay back far less.

Loads of stuff from the IFS on that.

You may be right about Academies – years of results needed. I’m not going to fly off and give a judgement till then, but I like the idea.

As for tuition fees:

1. Because someone went to university, it does not follow that they benefit economically (except on average, which is not the same thing) and it therefore does not follow that someone should be forced to repay what they have only socially benefitted from in an economic fashion.

2. I don’t see how any of it has anything to do with being treated like an adult. Most kids don’t see any of the money paid directly to their university on their behalf; the half they do see, they have to manage – but this is no different from when the money was simply paid as a grant.

3. Adding an extra bill to someone earning £14,999 per year is not fair. £14,999 is barely enough for someone to live on, never mind adding a 9% surcharge to their outgoings.

4. By throwing the cost of tertiary education into the general taxation pool – especially through increased corporation, capital and inheritance taxes rather than by yet another income band – the wealthy pay for third level education.

I’m not particularly bothered if that seems ‘fair’ on the basis that most of those people cannot hope to benefit from such education, because the very act of getting wealthy doesn’t seem fair to me. It only occurs through the appropriation of a surplus from a value produced by somebody else.

Edit: you didn’t mention my reply to your question about the Lib-Dem policy for funding…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/28/mossbourne-academy-gcse-results

The progressive point as much reflects the fact that it is overwhelmingly kids from better off backgrounds that get to choose whether to go to uni or not: the ones that fail to get good enough A levels are normally poorer.

The maths is done more here

http://www.centreforum.org/assets/pubs/times-up.pdf

What you are saying is that you came from a median family. Helping median families is neither progressive nor regressive. But charging the person who benefits most directly from the decision to study is fair, and treating them like an adult, which is what most are.

On the whole, the way tuition fees are paid back is “taxing the wealthy over the course of their lives”. It is a 9% surcharge to your income tax about £15,000, but one that ends after you’ve paid your due. Sounds fair to me: more fair than throwing it into the general taxation pool, which already hits a whole bunch of people who cannot hope to benefit from that education.

As for tuition fees, if it is our goal to ensure that the wealthy subsidize the education of the poor, why does it have to be in the form of tuition fees? Why not simply tax the wealthy over the course of their lives?

And incidentally, tuition fees are far from progressive. I don’t come from a rich family, but I don’t come from a poor one either; I would not have received any help to go to university beyond a loan – a loan which is repayable even when someone is earning poverty wages.

But no, I dislike the Pupil Premium idea. Surely the whole purpose of comprehensive education is that wealthy, poor or middling, there is the opportunity for the same education? I am all in favour of schools in deprived areas being awarded extra funds to supplement the sort of social services which we should build into them through the Extended Schools programme – but the idea of school funding changing from year to year dependent on the socio-economic characteristics of the pupils is ridiculous, inconstant and could endanger services which benefit many by such short term planning.