The voice of "pushy middle-class parents"? Nope, the voice of unions and bureaucrats

Nobody should believe a word of the Education Secretary's promise to represent the wants of ambitious families in state schools. You'll get what she wants, not what you want.

Three barnstorming articles here, which I’ll ask you to read. I have nothing to add to them directly, please do have a read and come back as they are part of the scene for today’s post.

Educashun, Educashun, Educashun | David James | The Critic Magazine

Bridget Phillipson’s educational agenda must be opposed | James Price | The Critic Magazine

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/06/bridget-phillipson-committing-educational-vandalism-labour/

If we want more kids in good schools, across both sectors, taxing people that pay for good schools is a stupid way to start. But maybe Bridget Phillipson has some special sauce to make state schools better, right? We’d all love that, right?

In the Times, after complaining about being called names, Phillipson goes on to argue:

“this policy allows us to raise more money to invest in what really matters for families”

and she’ll be “the voice of pushy middle-class parents” who have been priced out of sending their children to private schools and “would demand better from state schools”.

“many parents wanted more investment in state schools, which 94pc of children attend, she said”.

The sophistry is extraordinary even by her standards. It won’t be parents’ voice, it will be the voice of Phillipson, teaching unions, and the Education Blob. I’ll explain why.

Families are price insensitive, except when they aren’t

Let’s start with families “priced-out”. Er b-b-but th-the business case for the Education Tax is built on the facts evidence faith-based vibes that almost all parents are highly price-insensitive - the IFS says all the “rich” can just pay more, they always have done, because some Catholic families received sibling discounts in the USA thirty years ago (I’m not joking, that’s the evidence the Government takes as gospel while ignoring the much more relevant Greek example).

So how can anyone be “priced out” - don’t we all just have infinitely deep wallets? Of course not.

What does anyone want….?

But today I wanted to focus on this oft-repeated stuff about “pushy-middle-class parents”, one of which I am, and proud of it (it’s Labourspeak for “parents that go an extra mile for their children” boo hiss etc.)

It’s normal for aspirational ambitious “pushy middle-class parents” to want what Nick Gibb outlined: a knowledge-based curriculum, discipline, manners, ambition, in short what most high-performing schools offer today in both state sector (like Michaela which I wrote about) and independent sector.

Equally, some parents go for alternative approaches like Steiner schools and Montessori. These choices suit some children, some families, and hurt nobody. The very existence of Montessori means parents wishing to incorporate a little Montessori magic at home have something to refer to. In future, adults who had different educational backgrounds might bring diverse approaches in whatever careers they choose. That’s all OK by me.

The Education Tax is an existential crisis for the entire Montessori movement in UK.

I’m struggling to imagine any parents, especially “pushy middle-class” ones are remotely supportive of the ultra-progressive agenda that’s heavily criticised in the articles we started with. But if they are, lucky old them, because that’s what EVERYONE is going to get.

…and how are we going to get it?

In economic relationships, you have two strategies to try to obtain what you want. You can “voice” your dissatisfaction and tell your counterpart to pull their finger out. Or you can “exit” and try to find what you’re looking for elsewhere. Threatening exit is, of course, a variation on “voice”. Making your complaints public (imposing a reputational cost on your counterpart) is also a form of “voice”.

In schools (regardless who pays) we need:

• for voice to work:

  • processes and culture by which the school listens and acts in response to feedback

  • incentives for schools to listen, such as bad consequences if families pull out (risk of closure, less money) and also good consequences if more families become satisfied (opportunities to expand, more money) if there’s no “exit” then those consequences are weakened

• for exit to work: alternatives, which must

  • be different not just “more of the same”

  • have attributes that switching parents can identify, by informational mechanisms like reputation, advertising, industry or regulatory reporting, exam results

  • be available with a tolerably low switching cost

  • be actually available and not operating at 100% capacity

You could call exit “choice” and then you’d also recognise the fact of families entering the system, building new relationships. You’d also have something catchier. Voice and Choice. Even voice’n’choice. Salt’n’shake. Shake’n’vac.

You can exercise voice and choice individually, or collectively (as a group). You might be motivated to improve outcomes for your family; for other families at your school; for other families in your neighbourhood; and for families nationally. Mostly, we assume people are very highly motivated for their families, moderately motivated by their extended social circle and neighbourhood, and scarcely motivated by what happens nationally. That’s how we’re wired, it’s how we evolved over some 100,000s of years.

• The human, empirically-grounded approach says that’s amazing, and the key is to leverage people’s motivation so that more people put their energy into their families and their communities. We ask: how can we encourage more people to engage constructively?

• The utopian socialist approach, the Phillipson approach, says that’s awful. She asks: how can government “make” us contribute at a national level (under her control) to overcome the awful selfishness of humanity family/local motivation?

This is classic supply-side Liberalism vs zero-sum Marxism. In the former, choice and voice are good things; it’s how parents get schools to improve, it’s the mechanism for parents to incur the cost (time, energy) of engaging with the school, it’s how we debate what works, it’s how we get to have diverse schools meeting diverse needs. Because engagement is constructive, we expect more of it.

Phillipson wants to take an existing level of engagement for granted and imagines she can smear it around like butter. Voice and choice not required. She doesn’t fool any of us. She talks about “investing in what really matters for families” and she’ll jolly well decide for you what that is. There’s no question of “what families want / demand / choose”. No voice, no choice.

What will pushy parents be allowed to do?

As I wrote here, there’s a wildly-confected idea that engaged, supportive families and their bright children forced out of independent schools are just the ticket for state schools. If only they weren’t in the independent sector, supposedly, these parents and children would sprinkle fairy dust in their state school and lobby for more taxes so their state school, and every state school, can improve. The IFS in their ludicrous paper “imagine” positive spillover effects of this type (no evidence required…but just “imagine”).

Newsflash for Phillipson: independent school parents are human, like state school parents. Many are very supportive of their school. Some aren’t, particularly - maybe too busy earning the fees, or maybe can’t be bothered. A smaller number are stalwarts of the broader community, volunteering in their local state schools etc. A handful, just like in some state schools, are horrid, I’ll-run-your-child-over-so-mine-gets-in-the-team….I exaggerate, obviously, a bit.

There’s no particular reason any parents should be expected to apply superhuman collective effort for state schools in general. That’s not how we’re wired (it’s also a profound insult to engaged and effective parents and teachers in state schools, to suggest the only thing they need to happen is for people like me to swoop in and save the day). There’s no reason to expect behaviour beyond what peers in state schools do, now: the wealthier/engaged ones, in general, find a catchment area, buy tutoring, support their PTA / school trips / fundraising etc, and leave the government to do the rest.

Destruction of choice’n’voice

As I noted, to have any influence at all on a school, parents need to have choice and voice. What does this Government think about choice and voice? Based on the three articles I shared:

• They don’t want OFSTED grades which parents used to choose schools

• They don’t want diversity of provision or curriculum which is essential to choice

• They don’t want schools to respond to choice or voice: they don’t want popular schools to be able to expand; they are exercising more control over admissions so they’ll be able to stop that happening; they’ll be gifting teaching unions what they want which is forcing children to attend a school chosen by the local authority and throttling choice

• They’ve cancelled investment in free schools, which parents like, and which offer parents the opportunity to design schools they like, so no voice

• They’ve binned off Latin, which parents like, despite the voiced opposition from parents and children mid-GCSE cycle

• Their SEN strategy is to force SEN kids into mainstream, which parents of SEN kids and other kids don’t like, but is convenient for administrators and takes children out of the boo-hiss private sector

• They’ve appointed Becky Francis, whose credentials to offer anything parents actually want were scrutinised by James Price and David James above, right back to her disdain for academic achievement

• They’ve taken the excuse of the Sara Sharif tragedy to set up for more control and regulation of homeschooling (rather than calling for more effective use of existing laws)

Conclusion

State school parents should all be as alarmed as independent school parents. On the upside, “‘we’re all in this together” is perversely becoming true, and the state school agenda will to some extent prop up VAT receipts as attentive parents try even harder to stay in the independent sector.

On the downside, state school parents can confidently expect the Education Secretary to force the Becky Francis agenda down their throats. Your role is to let Bridget Phillipson do what she wants, and to support “more investment in state schools” regardless of outcomes. Your voice won’t be heard, but hers will.

The only “engagement” that’s allowed is your acquiescence to pay more taxes. The Education Blob will do the rest.