From The Daily Mail (as The Times is behind paywall):
Private schools save the taxpayer billions of pounds every year, their head teachers claimed yesterday.
The schools not only provide a huge financial benefit to the Exchequer but also wider benefits to society, according to analysis from the Independent Schools Council.
The report found that private school fees have doubled over the last 15 years, with the latest annual rise hitting more than 3 per cent.
Fees go up at compound 7% year because they are largely rent, they charge according to what parents are [daft enough to be willing] to pay*. The fees have nothing to do with real costs, if parents' net disposable income goes up by £x,000, then fees go up by £x,000.
But heads said the savings from taking pupils out of the state education system as well as the added benefits of community facilities, jobs created and tax contributions added up to a £20billion boon for the taxpayer, The Times reported.
£20 billion? That's bollocks. There are 615,000 children at private school, the average cost of/amount spent on one child at a state school place is about £6,000 a year, 615,000 x £6,000 = £3.7 billion a year.
Ah...
This was made up of £3.5 billion saved by freeing up state school places...
OK.
... £4.1 billion in tax paid by the schools and their suppliers
How is that relevant? If people weren't doing work for private schools they'd be doing something else, possibly much more useful to the economy, and still paying the same amount of tax.
... and a further £13.7 billion in the value of the work supported by the schools across the economy.
A completely made up figure, in other words.
I wonder why they opened themselves to ridicule like this, had their headline figure been £5 billion a year, that still sounds like a lot of money to Joe Public (although it isn't, in national accounts terms) and I wouldn't have questioned it.
* I am happy to report that my 18 year-old's grammar school has taken the last term's fees, ever, and I have cancelled the direct debit. That's £150,000 I'll never see again. Two more years of my 16 year-old's school gouging me and I'm done with this bullshit, which was all Mrs W's idea, as you can imagine.
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