To ask MNHQ for a Private Schools board?

From decades there have been arguments that making sharp-elbowed private school parents use the state education system would force improvements in the state system. The implication was that private school parents are so demanding that it would force schools to change. I always thought it was bollocks. The past few weeks have changed my mind. They just won’t shut up!

This was pretty much my exact situation and why we became private school parents. I have PTSD and depression having watched one of my children nearly die multiple times. He has complex disabilities. We had a terrible state school experience. We are very fortunate that with my mum’s help we could go private.

I’ve seen far, far more spiteful comments on these boards from non private school posters than us apparently “bleating, whining, pop-your-toys-back-in-your-pram poor lamb” private school parents (to reference just a few of the insults I’ve read on the boards here in the past few days). The spite, vitriol and glee being peddled at private school parents from people who don’t know us or our personal situations are quite astonishing.

Personally I would like a private schools board because it might have fewer insults on it and less name calling.

My children are in state school. There is mix of children from all social classes, who get on really well.

My children have friends who live in council flat and have free school meals. My children are also friends with private school kids, who by the way, don't look down on us at all. One of the most helpful and kind family I know.

I'm not sure I would like my kids mixing with children of spiteful people like you and some other posters tho.

Because if that's what you teach them, if that's how you talk about other people and other children then I really hope one day you realise what poison you're passing down on them.

The entitledness is unbelievable! Pathetic. People can't always get what they want by stamping their feet

Not to mention, the fucking outrage (!) At the fact state school places have indeed already been mostly allocated for Sept 2025… so they need to apply now, for undersubscribed school places… some of which could be a few miles away.
Imagine the HORROR of their darlings having to get a bus… seems they’ll stick their kids in a private mini bus travelling for miles and miles for a ‘good’ school but not a state school…

Please do I'm so bored of seeing the same thread endless times

Ahem, no - go and have a look. They’re spamming local councils and schools with letters, and their MPs, and then whining that they’re getting standard answers while prepping a template letter for parents to send to councils.
The idea seems to be to make it seems as if they are all leaving private, demand that places are provided and stomp up and down shouting for school place numbers, student numbers etc.
Then to post the replies from councils crying that facts are being withheld when said councils tell them how state schiol
places work, how it varies from academy to school type, year to year and no actually they can’t tell them right now how many year 7 places EXACTLY there will be next September because that also depends - oh but here’s what it depends on.

I doubt it.

The gambling doesn’t have VAT why should education was a good example.

Plus the let’s all apply for state school places to waste council workers time.

god yes!! Please make this happen Mumsnet!!

You are a liar. 🤥

Vat will not harm Harrow or Eton. Expensive establishments will deduct a lot of VAT from expenses and cut bursaries. Rich parents will not feel the increase in fees.

Small private schools will likely have to close. People will lose jobs. Kids will have to move to already stretched state education, costing tax payer £8000 a year per pupil. Labour absolutely underestimates how many people will be discouraged from private sector and how much it will cost.

I was just talking recently with a mum of autistic child. She said she suffers from PTSD and depression from dealing with her son's disability. State schools can't cater for him. She made many sacrifices to send him to small private special school, even moved in order to that. She pays tax on state education which failed her child, pays fees on something that should be provided for her and now she will have to pay tax on those fees aswel.

I will tell her to cheer up and stop playing "poor lamb ".

It's massively unfair. And if private schools are "loophole" then so are nurseries, universities, private healthcare, children's clubs etc. Wonder what is going to be next.

So many more effective ways of raising money, including wealth tax. But God forbid politicians will come up with taxes that they themselves actually have to pay!

Well, to quote Tesco’s every little helps.

@Heronwatcher It's not a choice of either or. The VAT on private school fees is a drop in the ocean of what's needed. We have major fiscal shortfall. Taxes are going to have to go up in a meaningful way. This is a little spiteful sound bite of a policy that won't amount to fuck all fiscal difference.

Lower earners pay less tax in the Uk than just about any other European country. The very obvious answer is that they are going to need to pay more tax.

So, genuinely, your solution is that instead of the 20% VAT which has always been payable on private school fees actually being paid by some of the richest people in the world, we should impose more tax on lower earners? During a cost of living crisis where teachers, nurses and even junior doctors are using food banks, this winter people are going to be choosing between heating and food AGAIN, and child poverty rates are increasing?

You should see the Facebook group! They’re the ones advising that all private school parents screech everywhere all the time and suggest tactics like telling state school parents that they’ll be worse off too, the private parents are coming for YOUR places…

At what point did anyone think it was going to be possible to abolish tuition for university? The numbers never added up. He hasn't come to accept it. Martin Lewis called Labour's plans or lack thereof a 'fairy tale'. They need sound policies to sort out what is a massive mess. Lower earners pay less tax in the Uk than just about any other European country. The very obvious answer is that they are going to need to pay more tax.

Ideologically Starmer has been clear that he’d like to abolish tuition fees at universities (it was part of his leadership campaign) but realistically he has now had to accept that this simply isn’t realistic. Not least because of the frankly parlous state of the economy post Brexit and Truss. He’s still pledging to make it fairer. And you can hardly use the policies of Labour in 1998 to suggest that he’s now about to impose other taxes left, right and centre when no one has ever mentioned it (despite being very open about private school fees) that’s just scaremongering.

@Heronwatcher How do reckon they won't enact policies that hit 'normal working families' when they're the ones who brought in tuition fees at uni which slammed the door firmly shut for lots of 'normal working families'. The tax is going to have to come from somewhere. Eating the rich will only get you so far.

Of course they haven't mentioned it. Why would they? But reading this, it seems possible that nothing would be off the table

www.gov.uk/guidance/vat-on-education-and-vocational-training-notice-70130

And they've been extremely opaque about tax rises/how they will pay for things. It's concerning.

I very much doubt it because there isn’t a two tier system for any of the things you mention and, despite what private school parents say, Labour have no interest in penalising normal working families. Plus Labour have had this policy on VAT on private school fees since at least 2019 and have never mentioned holiday clubs and breakfast clubs where there is no state equivalent.

If anything breakfast and holiday clubs should be helped by this policy.

Yes please. I can hardly cope with the desperate plight of the only marginally we'll off who will be forced to send their offspring to mix with hoi polloi.

Also can you imagine what AIBU is going to be like if/ when the policy is enacted- with endless complaints about state schools, canteens, accents, polyester uniform, spelling mistakes in the newsletter etc. We need to get ahead of the game here!!

I disagree. These attitudes towards children (including using them as political fodder) hold a mirror up to us as adults. And it's ugly.

First it's private schools. Next it'll be tuition fees. After that it'll be holiday camps and breakfast clubs. Careful what you wish for. You just might get it.

1. they are being sarky or imagining why private school parents apparently think this is the end of the world;

2. this will affect a tiny, genuinely tiny, proportion of people- it’s hardly going to cause a rerun of the poll tax riots!

3. this is why we need a separate board!!!

Yes- absolutely agree. Every time I see yet another thread with a spurious “question” or brilliant reason why the policy is misconceived/ bright idea (“all parents apply for a state school now” 🙄) it gives me the rage! Could we just have one thread where private school parents admit that they just don’t fancy paying it- I’d probably be much more sympathetic/ empathetic. As it is I can’t wait for it to happen.