Deb

Tony Blair: “I always used to say the greatest source of election-losing advice was the Guardian”

@PaulfrYorkshire @AdamJ10812 @IsabelPat1886 Indeed. You say 'those are the findings the authors chose to highlight'. So, academics write their own press releases?

@Elephantastick @AdamJ10812 @IsabelPat1886 I read the UCL press release and these financial aspects are precisely the research findings that the authors chose to highlight. What can I say? ucl.ac.uk/news/2026/may/…

Except... the research is flawed in very important ways that undermines its conclusions. A🧵:

Further to Blair. Literally every honest sensible person in all the main parties privately agrees with all these propositions: - welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap - defence spending is too low - the triple lock is unsustainable - without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution - we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea - migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state - any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement - we are deeply embedded with America in ways which the public does not understand and cannot be told and however joyous it makes us feel to hate Trump, disengagement at the deep state level is not only wholly unrealistic but also undesirable - Whitehall needs a total overhaul so specific project expertise and political appointees can be brought in quickly Blair basically says all that. The one thing he doesn’t say and which the same group of people agree on is this and it’s something Blair left behind: - judges and quangos have too much power, are unaccountable and without redressing the balance in favour of parliament it is very difficult to do anything big fast - the bare minimum that needs to change in this regard is to reform judicial review and planning law so we can put building and economic growth ahead of newts and NIMBYs None of that above really ought to be up for discussion. It is all common sense but not one of our politicians will publicly say all of it Whatever you think of Blair, engage with what he’s saying not how he makes you feel. The bare minimum we should expect from any leader is that they have an analysis of the current situation and a plan to deal with it which is as coherent and realistic as his intervention. Pretty well every critique I’ve read so far has failed to meet this requirement. Over to Andy and Keir and Kemi and Nigel and Zack and all the others

It's hard to argue with this from Tony Blair: "Governments which succeed don't start with a personality contest. Or a political question - as in how do we "save the country" from Reform. They start with an idea, a project, a governing purpose"

@PaulfrYorkshire @AdamJ10812 @IsabelPat1886 Oh Paul. You won't lead me down the path of commenting on this issue. It is not an integral part of Green's paper. It is not a finding of his analysis. The FRS is not a robust source for such data. And yet, for some reason, its all you want to discuss 🤔

@Elephantastick @AdamJ10812 @IsabelPat1886 Do you think it’s ok that the value of grants has decreased as a % of fees? Do you not think this runs counter to aiming for increased access?

@PaulfrYorkshire @AdamJ10812 @IsabelPat1886 The headlines aren't reflective of the papers actual results- most of the households at private sch, reporting a fee reduction, in the FRS were middle income. Its absolutely critical to consider selection effects before concluding that this shows anything about bursaries & access

@AdamJ10812 @IsabelPat1886 @Elephantastick They needed to reduce costs then. Supporting less well off kids was part of the mission.

@PaulfrYorkshire @IsabelPat1886 The fundamental point is that the paper cannot tell us what effect bursaries had on ACCESS because the dataset contains no access denominator.

@PaulfrYorkshire @IsabelPat1886 The FRS is a x-sectional, household survey. It was not designed to measure private-school fees or bursary systems. Green's inclusion of fee data is not a research method or part of the study design- its to provide rhetorical support for his conclusions.

@PaulfrYorkshire @IsabelPat1886 Nice try. Methods first. Politics and emotive narrative later 😉

@Elephantastick @IsabelPat1886 I read your thread. I haven’t had time yet to read the full paper and consider your points. But the financial data is stark. Grants shrunk as percentage of fees. You’re not disputing this?

Me trying to work in this heat.

@PaulfrYorkshire @IsabelPat1886 Paul. Seriously- the study design is flawed. It simply cannot make claims about ppl it did not include in the study.

@IsabelPat1886 @Elephantastick It is my business because these were charities given financial relief via my taxes and who claimed they were directing their profits to support less well-off kids. This always seemed like a smoke screen and this research suggests it was. They increased fees & here we are.

@jrkdenison Thats just the study design. I haven't even started looking at the robustness of the stats-potential probs could be absence of adjusting for household clustering and multiple statistical testing (both could mean bigger p-values i.e. chance findings more likely)

@Elephantastick Damn

@PaulfrYorkshire @IsabelPat1886 That is categorically NOT the heart of the Green article. Why not engage with the substance of my critique rather than focusing on the one sentence from a 20pp paper that (probably) already fits your world view? The research cannot answer the question it claimsto have done.

@IsabelPat1886 @Elephantastick “The value of these grants fell sharply relative to RAPIDLY RISING FEES . The average grant covered 57% of total school fees in 1997–2000; by 2021–24 it had fallen to 27%.” My emphasis. And there is the heart of the matter.

@abritishparent Exactly! Why has the media coverage just accepted it at face value?

@Elephantastick They're then breaking that very small subgroup down further by income & drawing conclusions about the effectiveness of bursaries. Add in that some of their subgroup are in fact scholarship (not bursary) recipients & it’s hard not to question the robustness of this paper.

We said this would happen We were ignored

@abritishparent They shouldn't be aggregating across 30yrs of data- too many non testable assumptions (e.g. 1997 is 'similar' to 2026)! But if they didnt lump this data, the sample size would be too small - stuck between balancing validity or reliability & getting neither.

While Phillipson makes it impossible for parents of middling means to send their children to fee-paying schools. World class hypocrites, the Labour elite.

@HuntersofPutney @drdavidajames @theipaper @IsabelHardman The study is seriously undermined by its lack of methodological rigour. 1 example: dubious decisions to lump 30 years of cross-sectional survey data as if relative income centiles from 1997 are combinable with 2010, let alone 2026 (given economic stagnation, wage compression etc)

@drdavidajames @theipaper @IsabelHardman Wonderful understatement here. How could it possibly make sense to lump together academic scholarships (which are “needs blind”) with bursaries (which are “means tested”)? It’s the kind of thing that suggests the entire study should be ignored.

An interesting and objective piece in today's @theipaper by @IsabelHardman

@IsabelPat1886 @drdavidajames @theipaper @IsabelHardman The study doesn't even say that "richest" are dominating private schools. I really wish that journalists wouldn't just read the press release - this is a genuinely flawed study. The conclusions are unrelated to the actual data available!

@drdavidajames @theipaper @IsabelHardman It's better than some of the fawning coverage But it quietly accepts the ideas that (1) education should be equal (2) it's somehow private schools' fault (not the state, not rich state school parents, never the unions) that state schools fall behind. These are bad ideas. 1/

13/ The paper is open access - which means anyone can read it for free: doi.org/10.1080/014256…

12/ By itself, this doesn't mean the study is invalid. But it is an omission readers and journalists may reasonably consider important & are entitled to transparency on that relationship.