Do think tanks think?

I was taken by this piece in Wednesday's Telegraph which claims the Fabian Society is advocating:

Putting VAT on private school fees could finance an opportunity fund to tackle educational disadvantage,"

I haven't been able to find any detail on the web or at the Fabian Society* so can't vouch for its veracity, but lets assume that as the Telegraph is a reasonably accurate source we can take the statement at face value.

Anyway, when I read the piece something just didn't stack up so I thought I would do a bit of research to see what it really means.

Firstly, how much would be raised? The Independent Schools Council reckons there are 509,093 children in ISC schools so based on the Fabian's estimated £2,500 in VAT per pupil this would raise £1.27bn.

Now, my first though on this one is that the VAT would probably push the price beyond a number of parents so lets apply the well know 80/20 rule and assume that they only raise 80%, that would be just over £1bn.

However looking at the ICS figures for the number of children we find that there are 67,335 boarders @ an average of £6,712 for boarding per term and £3,715 for tuition per term, this leaves 441,758 pupils @ £2702 per term in tuition fees. Using my trusty excel spreadsheet I calculate that would raise £995m and applying the 80/20 rule would be £796m. You would think the big brains in a think tank could have done that calculation as well, wouldn't you? Still for the sake of analysis lets stick to their predictions for now.

Next, looking at the Department for Education and Skills, Departmental Report 2007 (H/T Mark Wadsworth for providing this link in his Statistics (UK) and Stuff section)we can get some stats for England.

The education for school children (excl. higher education and adults) budget for this year 2006/2007 is £40.75Bn (p98 (pp102/176))spread over 7.44m pupils (p57 (pp 61/176)) which works out at, using my trusty spreadsheet, £5,477 per pupil. Now that is the budget for England but the ICS numbers for UK so lets assume that 80% of the money raised in VAT is spent on schools in England (I reckon that's a bit generous, but its a number). This means there will be an extra £814.5m or £109 per pupil.

But if we assume that those parents who are forced to take their children out of schools put them in to state schools then the numbers are slightly lower than that, but I think you get the picture.

Now, what troubled this humble blogger was:

If we can't educate our children on £5,400 per pupil how the fuck do they expect to make a difference by spending an extra £109 (£80 by my reckoning) per pupil?

These think tanks really lose credibility when they come out with crap like this, because it isn't about raising the money, its about shafting parents who have the temerity to make sacrifices and instead of pissing their money away on holiday in Torremolinos, or wherever chav's go on holiday, want to spend it on educating their children, because the state can't.

After thought: I am sure I read somewhere that a % of all VAT has to go to the EU, but I haven't been able to track it down so if anyone can help on this score then I will amend these numbers.

Update 15 12 07

* As a result of this post I have been contacted by the Fabian Society to say that I could have received a copy of the speech if I had contacted them. They also dispute the figures that I use. The full text of their objection can be found in the comments section. I still maintain that beggaring parents who send their kids to private schools is now way to improve social mobility, other than down.