Private school fees - act now for SEND!

Not every parent values education and certainly not every parent values education to the same degree. Some parents send their child to school only because it's illegal not to or to get them away from the house.
If government made it optional to attend school many won't.
The welfare state reduces the incentives to build human capital. This grasping for other people's wealth as the means of removing others from poverty instead of creating more of the opportunities that create wealth ie learning skills to drive innovation, duty, hardwork etc.

If you can show that your child genuinely has SEND that a state school cannot cater for (and believe me, most state schools' SEND provision is pathetic) and your child has an EHCP, the COUNCIL will cover ALL school fees at a nominated private school, and not necessarily at a specialist SEN school.
An ECHP is very difficult to get without legal help, so the best way to achieve this is to hire an educational solicitor. The cost is about £20k, about the cost of one year's private fees.
So, for the cost of one year's fees, you can get an ECHP for your child with SEN and also have the rest of your child's private schooling paid for by the council.
I know a good number of parents who have saved themselves about £100k in school fees that way.
So you can save not only the vat, but also the entire fees!
I can see a lot more of this happening, so in addition to getting some vat in, the state will be paying a lot more in fees for those who have been priced out and instead choose to spend the money on an educational solicitor.

Thank you. Mine too. There are potentially several points of legal challenge.

Gambling is subject to tax but not VAT.

Todays Kings speach

Children's Wellbeing Bill
A bill to raise standards in education and promote children's wellbeing, including measures to remove the exemption from VAT for private school fees, which will enable the funding of six and a half thousand new teachers.
This bill will also require free breakfast clubs in every primary school, limit the number of branded items of uniform and PE kits that a school can require and create a duty on local authorities to have and maintain Children Not in School registers.

Hmmm must've been a bad article, it's in any case not the EHCP equivalent, but hopefully it does the job labour are trying to use it for, to exempt VAT on fees the govt pay for.

And only 40 kids have what labour thinks is the equivalent 'CSP'.

The most recent census data shows there are 1,318 pupils in Scotland with CSPs.

So public sector pay (teachers) and council funding in 5 big problems:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1e5pw1qpx8o

Given that labour want to take back the Scottish parliament in 2026, their VAT policy although popular here in general is clueless as to the completely different SEN system here or the impact on Edinburgh.

Really shows all the things the SNP bang on about with regard to Westminster not understanding Scottish issues...which is such an easy bar to hit - they could've talked to some of their Scottish labour colleagues.

It really looks like a back of a fag packet policy here.

@geography21 I'm sorry to hear about the situation in Scotland. We forget how lucky we are in London. At least there is choice here: even if it can be a bit illusory due to house prices, travelling somewhere else is often an option due to density of population.

That figure of 7% also conceals a lot of age and stage variation. So it's much higher in London and Edinburgh and Surrey, higher at sixth form, higher in areas where there's historically been a shortage of state places etc. Higher in areas where the private sector has a good reputation or fills some particular niche. And then there's the specialist schools for e.g. music, drama, sport etc. And the boarding schools. Lower in areas where there's not such a demand for places or where the population's been falling.

Few parents will have the time - if you've spent several years trying and failing to get state support, some years in private and then to try and fight through EHCP again - my dc have already had too many bad years.

That's why anyone who can will try and lumber on til a stage they can move them at.

Well said.

I don't want my child to go to private school because of the opportunities, academics, facilities or connections. In fact the private school we're considering isn't great for any of these things.

I just want them to go somewhere where they can actually cope with attending and ideally won't talk about killing themselves if they have to go.

@geography21 and that's before the tendency of LAs to cut and paste information about total strangers' children into your documents! GDPR nightmare.

I think it is unlikely that a significant number of parents would win such a fight against an LA. Going from SEN needs, paying private fees to getting an EHCP AND forcing the LA to pay private fees is a cliff to climb. It's not going be climbed by more than a handful of people. Although maybe it could have the beneficial effect of LAs finally realising they need to open more special schools for DC with SEN but who can e.g. take GCSEs. Because that would surely be cheaper than continuing to outsource to a more expensive private sector.

Not to mention that some of us are in Scotland where income tax is higher and there's no EHCP. And only 40 kids have what labour thinks is the equivalent 'CSP'.

But yeah, niche. SEN isn't united a lot of it is niche to another group.

If we were in England we'd definitely have gone for EHCP because we spent 5 years fighting various fights for support and failing and watching it all crumble.

And @Phineyj I agree - all the diagnosis reports emailed to the school containing personal family history, other people's diagnoses. Totally risky business. Even if you redact the history, a lot of the other sections contain private things.

Are special schools included in that 6%? (Where you need an EHCP to attend)

I imagine a large number of those parents who choose private because their child has SEN will now start pushing for an EHCP if it will save them the VAT.

Ironically this will then cost the LA the whole fees PLUS the VAT so by not allowing what the op is asking for, there may be much less £ for state education...

My own child attends the school where I teach and one point I was chasing around trying to redact a lot of very personal family information that got emailed to the general school email address... there are serious risks of being open about all this.

Completely agree @BarryCantSwim as I said, I am not reassured by labour being in, much as hopefully not tories because of dire state of funding and their no income tax commitments.

Agree - for example - how many pta meetings have you sat through where nits, snacks, trips etc the same old issues on loop - but no discussion of the terrible timelines for HT/SLT to provide input needed for professionals re SEN or any oversight of that or any other issues related to sEN.

Just at a simple school by school level few SEN parents are co-ordinated and it's often because year on year, some win support and some lose. And of course the not wanting personal details of your dc known.

But overall it means less accountability than for NT children.

I don't feel SEN parents are united, no (with honourable exceptions like the ones who came together to start SOSSEN, IPSEA, Special Needs Jungle, SEND Reform England, write books, run blogs etc).

We're isolated, feel like we have to compete for an increasingly shrinking pool of resources and there is stigma often around even admitting your child has needs.

It's also mostly mums dealing with SEN so there's a super extra layer of misogyny there too.

Just look at the judgement on this thread of people (mums) who've gone down the private route (prejudice against private education came through very clearly from our local authority also).

It's a lose lose situation all around and somehow the children get lost in it all.

i’m not purposefully trying to disagree with you other than to make the point, at my school 35% of children have SEN and that excludes a high number of EHCPs.

A number of posters seem to be missing the huge number of children who aren’t close to an EHCP but who still have additional needs and are struggling (and tbh many NT children are too due to funding).

I’m not sure how 40% of parents is not representative/a united group. All parents should be voting/lobbying for proper funding in education.

No tax on winnings. Sorry. I should have been clearer.