To think parents of private education school children will be fine

We're in a similar situation. We've worked so hard to get to this point, but, with frozen tax thresholds and inflation, we are actually worse off than we were a few years ago and our work life balance has dived. Now we'll have to pay the equivalent of another 2 years of school more than we were expecting. It'll be years before we can start saving up for anything else. What's the point?

The £100k VAT (over their whole education) is after income tax so we’d need to earn £180k of extra salary over this period.

That’s many, many months of us both slogging away for zero money.

No thanks, will move to a grammar area instead.

I was wondering what day school was charging 50k per year 😂

It’s just to distract voters from asking real, hard questions about the state of schools and what the government intends to do about them.

It's fairly obvious that the reasons why state schools are broken is that they don't have enough money going into them. What do you expect to happen if you cut council budgets by 50%??

I should imagine that if a school expels a student with really bad and disruptive behaviour, they lose a lot of money.

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you stop funding a service, it breaks. That is this government's fault.

If a new government promises to fund state schools again then people will expect them to explain how they will fund it, the same Tory supporters who accuse Labour of 'pissing money up the wall'. Which is actually a load of bollocks when you look at what Labour did for state schools when they were in power.

It would not surprise me if the people harping about how unfair VAT is and aiming their victimhood at everyone else also feel irritated by the idea of social mobility.

The VAT that will be raised will be less than 1% of the education budget. That’s nothing. I have my reasons for choosing private and the VAT doesn’t bother me, but let’s face some facts. There are many schools where kids are running absolutely riot each and every day (and you from the naice state schools have no idea, you really don’t do we don’t need your opinion). Kids cannot learn in such noisy, violent environments and neither should they be expected to. State school SEN provision is utterly disgraceful. In order to ‘level up’ the opportunities kids have the government need to spend an unfathomable amount of money sorting these schools out. The VAT on private schools is chicken feed. It’s just to distract voters from asking real, hard questions about the state of schools and what the government intends to do about them.

So very well said!! Thank you!!

THings mentioned in that thread are ALL linked to funding.

Funding for TAs, teachers, support staff all links in with the overall standard that a school can provide.

"
If there is some more cash to spend I am sure Labour will piss it up the wall before it even gets to the schools, and even if it does reach them, will be in the form of another layer of management or some new woke, never before thought of position, to make sure the school is ramming the latest brainwashing agenda down the poor kids throats, rather than actually erm….teaching them something useful"

Ah, you're one of those. Instantly can be disregarded then.

I am so over this argument now. I actually don’t care about paying more if we decide to stay.

This isn’t the real issue though, although it is a nice distraction for some.

There is a thread on MN right now where someone is talking about the mental strain on their DH teacher, so much so that they are leaving teaching, along with most of his teacher training group. I think he was verbally and physically abused and had no support from his school. This isn’t an isolated incident apparently as other teachers joined in and said how awful their experiences are.

So the real issue here is that a lot of our schools are just awful and the teachers are leaving in droves, not that private schools have been given a tax break.

Personally I think that piss poor parenting has gotten us to this point, and a couple of extra grand spent on your school from VAT on independents isn’t going to change the attitude of students, parents and depressed teachers.

If there is some more cash to spend I am sure Labour will piss it up the wall before it even gets to the schools, and even if it does reach them, will be in the form of another layer of management or some new woke, never before thought of position, to make sure the school is ramming the latest brainwashing agenda down the poor kids throats, rather than actually erm….teaching them something useful.

No they all won’t. That’s the point. And you can keep saying that they will but it’s utter rubbish. You have zero evidence for that.

Well why use it as your justification for charging VAT on private school fees then?

It’s nothing to do with exploiting a loophole or being a luxury service. Education is currently VAT exempt, all education. VAT will not be paid by the schools, it will be owed by those that pay the fees (i.e. the parents). Yes, Labour have been pushing it back on to the schools and saying it is up to them to swallow the cost. But, of course, the biggest outgoing to a school is its staff so what Labour are actually doing is telling schools to cut jobs. Ultimately it will be the parents that have to pay and yes it has been interpreted by many people as “rich” people getting tax breaks. Labour know exactly what they are doing by using this language.

It is exactly the same kind of nasty politics as was used during the Brexit campaign and Labour know that it appeals to the same type of people.

Indeed. It was you who likened this particular highly privileged minority to migrants, and set up a false equivelence between the treatment of these two groups in campaigns, not I.
I understand the 'tax break' reference to be talking about the schools who have been able to exploit a loophole and avoid their particular form of luxury service being subject to VAT, not the people paying the fees. The government to be have been pretty much silent about people who pay school fees, with all comments referencing the schools themselves as far as I'm aware. So in what way are parents being demonised?

It is not a published fact that all private school parents have quadrupled their wealth under the last Government.

That's clearly not what I said.

Why all the mention of “tax breaks” if they are not trying to demonise private school parents? We all know that the tax break point is a load of rubbish and that private school parents save the taxpayer billions every year by not using State schools. It is absolutely demonising a group of people for political gain.

And a minority is a smaller group of people than the majority. It doesn’t have to relate to discrimination.

Yep. Private school parents and private school children will be perfectly fine, I am very glad to say.

Why would you think I was? I have said plenty of times on here that I was educated in a state comp.

And your sighing and other digs just make you come across as rude. They add nothing to your arguments.

It’s a known fact that there is a teacher retention and recruitment problem and it is impacting many schools, include the top state schools and some private schools.

It is not a published fact that all private school parents have quadrupled their wealth under the last Government. Your comment shows you have no idea about private school parents. Most of us are taxed PAYE and are worse off. Or are you denying that the tax burden is the highest it’s been for 70 years? As with state school parents, our mortgages, rent, bills etc have increased and our salaries haven’t kept pace with inflation. Those of us that earn above the threshold have lost our child benefit.

But it's their brand of politics to cut money from public services. Anyone else remember the draughty cabins children had to be educated in under Thatcher? This time it's Thatcherism on steroids.

Also, I don't have any reason to have a chip on my shoulder.

This government has certainly created a culture of people with massively entitled attitudes though.

It's not an assumption - it is a published fact.

What a ridiculous assumption and even more ridiculous generalisation of people using PE! Might want to try getting rid of that chip on your shoulder - not a good look!

"Income wealthy people already pay their way through tax - a lot of it. It's mad to suggest they don't."

They pay a lower rate than they would in many other advanced countries, other taxes like CGT and CT etc are lower too.

The problem is not the higher rate taxpayers paying large amounts of tax. The problem is the chronic mismanagement of public finances by the government. The wastage has been criminal. Wealthy people who pay their tax are not responsible for disabled people having their support services cut, just as immigrants also aren't the responsible. Blame the people in charge of managing the country's finances - that is who is actually responsible.

It says a lot that you think rich people having to pay their way is them being shat on.

Income wealthy people already pay their way through tax - a lot of it. It's mad to suggest they don't.