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From 2025, the UK government has decided to charge VAT (20%) on tuition fees for private schools causing pushback from interested parties. Not enough participants in this market are discussing whether education qualifies as a public good (for example, German or Scandinavian governments support this notion by guaranteeing secondary as well as tertiary education to their citizens at public expense). The more practical dimension of not leaving one’s children to their own devices in publicly funded schools predominates. This naturally leads to the next question – is private education in its current form worth its price tag?
Dissatisfaction with the education system (whether privately or publicly funded; whether secondary or tertiary) almost knows no bounds. Elon Musk has decided to set up his own school named Ad Astra (later re-named Astra Nova) for his children and those of SpaceX employees; offering an entirely personalised curriculum centred on creative problem solving as opposed to gaming of standardised tests and free from an age-based seniority system that mistakenly assumes all children develop at the same rate. Former Snapfish CEO Ben Nelson established Minerva University in America where undergraduates are assessed by means of group discussions and project work as opposed to formal examinations at the year end and where they experience communal living across major metropolises of the world – including San Francisco, Seoul, Berlin, and Buenos Aires. Mr. Cho Chang-Gul, founder of the Korean furniture manufacturer Hanssem, has established Taejae University which requires its students to study a multi-faceted educational curriculum (including having to learn foreign languages and programming languages as well as critical thinking, character building and “global harmony”) and to live in economic and political centres around the world. In the UK, AC Grayling has set up the New College of the Humanities (now acquired by Northeastern University) to rekindle an interest in the humanities and to simulate a one-on-one tutoring model which has hitherto been the trademark of Oxford and Cambridge universities.
Innovation in private education is probably a plus factor, all things considered. If for no other reason then for the fact it provides a welcome stimulus for governments and publicly funded schools to do better. Lack of innovation also affects private schools that do not deliver value as advertised. In the new age marked by globalisation, technological advancements and geopolitical tensions, appearance of competence by association with certain strata of society will no longer work as well as actual competence and, as such, private schools will need to pay more attention to the latter. What follows is a possible blueprint for an ideal private school (which may also be taken up by publicly funded schools):
- Transformation. The value of a good education lies in its transformative effect on the individual. A private school may justifiably take credit for turning a student lacking in several important areas into a student excelling in all those areas. However, this cannot be said for most schools whose modus operandi is to admit those who are almost "ready-made" and who will develop further on their own without significant intervention by the school.
- Burden Sharing. If a student underperforms, the fault may lie with the student himself as well as with the teaching staff. There may be issues with a teacher’s level of knowledge, style of delivery, or due fulfillment of his role as a caretaker. However, it would not be in the school’s interest to admit their teachers could be in the wrong so they do not.
- Post-Graduation Outcomes. It is worth recalling that a private school is not an end in itself. Eventually, the student will leave the place and make his own way in the world. If a school cannot stand behind the post-graduation outcomes of its graduates, this logically casts doubt on the quality of education it has provided. There is virtually no private school that satisfies this test. The closest are German hochschules which guarantee employment for its graduates by way of refunds but these are vocational schools rather than conventional schools.
- Well-Roundedness and Social Network. It will be argued by some that the real value of a private school lies in the development of a balanced individual and of a reliable social circle. To assert that developing oneself into a mature human being, or making friends of a good quality stock, can only occur within the four walls of a private school and at that point in one's life just beyond puberty is quite a statement to make. This is also hard to square with the utilitarian motivations of most parents who believe they are paying for advanced test preparation programmes.