To ask if anyone is clued up on the challenge this week to VAT on school fees?

Collectively, private schools offer approx 160k kids (out of a total number of kids at PS of 620k) some kind of scholarship or bursary (means tested annually) with 40k kids educated entirely free of charge. Thats approximately £930million pa of charitable giving on education alone - collectively the largest charitable donors in the UK (& frankly no other uk charity even comes close)
Couple this with extensive outreach programmes: school partnerships, community use of facilities, programmes with elderly & disabled charities etc overseen by a board of governers, adhering to their charitable charters & in line with rules dicated by the independent charity commission, it would be very very hard to contend that many of these schools do not fully comply with every aspect of being worthy charities.

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From someone who can’t even spell possess? Hilarious

Yes it takes special comprehension skills to understand, that you possess in abundance. It’s now about how successful the school is in delivering education or how big a budget it has that makes it a business. Gotcha! Nuffield health better watch out.

By corporate model, you mean marketing, more executive structure via various heads and lots more admin staff and PE teachers than in state schools?

Again, most of the huge capex spend in many schools is funded by donations. That is an actual fact. If you have been to all these schools like we did doing music and music camps you will have seen all the Donation Plaques with lists and lists of Chinese, Russian and Middle Eastern donors. And how exactly is that direct foreign investment going to harm the UK? It does not.

Its fine, your ‘robustness’ says more about you than me. You really can’t comprehend that an entity can be run like a business without declaring a profit? You cannot have been anywhere near the wealthy schools I was talking about. I have. Huge capital projects, expensive marketing and PR machines that would put many corporates to shame. Not exclusive to the large boarding schools either. Some London and HC day schools follow the same type of corporate model. Of course many schools don’t have those budgets but that doesn’t mean they conform to being charities in the true sense of the word.

The sensible way would have been to up regulation via the Charities Commission and find a solution that benefits all, including local state schools.

A lot of big building projects in the richest private schools were almost entirely funded by donations from existing rich parents and alumni rather than fee income. The same as refurbishments in eg a Cambridge College. A lot of it is funded via donations and a drive to get those in. That being a charitable donation is tax free and grossed up and a lot of people will leave money to these schools and colleges in their will (again inheritance tax free).
Plenty of people also leave money to NHS and cancer charities etc. There is a huge culture of charitable giving and donations in England. The charities sector fulfils a lot of need that Government fails to deliver! If an entity is constituted as a charity, it is a charity legally speaking and it is up to the regulator aka the Charities Commission to deal with that.
If the Labour Party wanted more from private schools they should have demanded more regulatory fees from private schools to the Commission and more oversight.
Big building projects create jobs and taxes are paid on all jobs as in private schools these won’t be cash in hand, they will be tendered like for churches. Taxes are paid in abundance by private schools via PAYE etc already.

They may or may not be a charity, but they're certainly not a business. No one is taking a dividend.

I'm afraid that if you come up with nonsense arguments then the responses you receive will be correspondingly robust.

They wanted to remove charitable status as well at one point in which case corporation tax would be due on surpluses as you say, however it was scrapped pre election however I think this was more of a case of the issue being complex rather than it being something they didn’t want to do, I wouldn’t be suprised if the suggestion comes up again in time

The schools that are charities don’t have owners or shareholders that’s why they are known as not for profit as they don’t make distributable profits. They are governed by unpaid trustees who perform a similar role to governors in a state school and will then pay staff including a head and bursar to run the school day to day.

a school can be run as a profit making business and have shareholders thst it pays dividends to but then couldn’t be a charity and would be subject to corporation tax on its surplus

I have no words. If you think there are parallels between a true charity like the RNLI and private schools, it is not even worth engaging with you. And besides, your posts are just rude.

Utter bollocks. You may as well say that the RNLI is a business because proceeds from the shops are invested in new lifeboats.

There are no shareholders, no one is making money off of the back of it. Education is the sole aim, not profit.

reinvested? as in bursaries, staff and investing in new facilities to further the education they provide? almost like a nonprofit really. What do the shareholders or owners make of these businesses that never make a profit?
I guess we can add the term ‘business’ to ‘our children’, ‘working people’ and ‘woman’ on the WTF list.

See above

State schools don’t have state of the art theatres like the ones I’m taking about. They don’t have Olympic standard swimming pools. We are talking different level here.

Oh for goodness sake, they don’t declare profits. Any surplus after costs is reinvested because they can’t declare a profit. So they build assets instead. It’s really not that complex.

Disingenuous to believe otherwise?

Really? Surely Labour would be going after corporation tax on these huge profits if that was the case wouldn’t they? Not letting them keep charitable status.

A non-profit is not a business. You're the one being disingenuous.

@BotanicalGreen I'm also.in the NE. Most of the indies up here are nothing like that. What they have going for them is small classes, hugely engaged parents and actually very often more "ordinary" kids from relatively modest backgrounds. Parents can afford the fees because house prices / mortgages are lower than. Home Counties. But not necessarily an extra 20% 🙄

No idea about Berkshire as I'm NE England.
Many state schools have brilliant facilities too. That's the issue with the policy, it treats all indy schools as homogenous.
It's like when Phillipson mocked astro pitches without engaging her brain to realise that many state schools also have these.

Oh come on, there are many schools like this. Looking at Berkshire, there are more like this than you can shake a stick at!

I was only gently mocking your outrage. Of course not!

1 school yes. That doesn't mean all schools

It’s naive to believe they are not run like businesses. The charitable status is just a legacy legal status. It doesn’t mean they are run like charities. Not for profit means money is reinvested in facilities. Our nearest school has a state of the art theatre and an Olympic scale swimming pool. Surely you know this!

Like you are saying they are all businesses. Legally they are charities/not for profit. Up to you if you believe otherwise.
Disingenuous is a laugh considering all of Labour soundbites and downright lies