The Irony.. PM's donation was for ‘son to study for GCSEs’

Everybody (incl non parents ) pay for state schools through their taxes already so they are definitely not free.

It's hypocritical but no different from parents whose kids go to state schools for free and want parents who already pay private school tuition to also pay VAT on top.

How about state school parents paying to improve state schools because, after all, it's their kids who go to these schools.

I'd rather the focus is on providing more SEN support for those children who cannot manage in a mainstream secondary but for whom there is no available alternative. My daughter is getting a second chance at GCSEs, she's technically year 12 but not at college, because the LA could not provide a suitable education for her to do her GCSEs at 16.

If VAT on private schools means more funding for state education, then good. Private schools are not charitable institutions. I agree introducing it with short notice is harsh, but the schools don't have to pass all that cost on to the parents.

As a labour activist who campaigned for our new local MP I am incredibly disappointed by the donations our PM and ministers have taken. To take 100k in donations whilst refusing to lift the 2 child benefit cap and removing the winter fuel allowance from pensioners is hypocrisy in the extreme. The private school fees policy is just dog whistle politics and won't solve the problems in the state system. I had hoped for better from this government and won't be campaigning again.

The fact is that during the late 90s and early 2000s there was a baby boom. We are at the end of that now and actually there is a lot of capacity in the state system. You just have to google it and it's all there. The extra capacity needed for private school students is available.
The row about Starmer is different. It's whether you agree or not that a party that pledged to end corruption and cronyism should behave in a different way to their predecessors. It looks bad. The £4m donation from a shady hedge fund is also quite shocking.
Children have to cope with exams while their families are homeless and study in bedsits. My DS1 had to revise while the house next door had building work going on from 8am until 8pm. But I don't have a rich friend with a penthouse so like everyone else, just had to suck it up.

@BIossomtoes You need to be on a reasonably high income to be able to afford a private nursery. I earn a decent wage but I live in London and if I go back to work after mat leave (with two children in nursery) I would only break even.

Re university, university attendance is much more common among the middle and upper classes, there is a reason for that. It is not just about a person’s ability to get in to university but their ability to afford it and the associated costs, and their appetite for taking on that amount in of debt if they’re from a lower socioeconomic background and the lack of financial security that affords (ie no bank of mum and dad).

Small socialist brain but large capitalist pockets..

oh I did!

yes but you'd pay for it yourself.

This is a moot point when the needle won't significantly move on kids keeping their private school places.

bloopy

absolutely, which is one of the reasons i don’t agree with that particular policy

Maths doesn't care about motivation though.

The fact remains that if there were suddenly no private schools the government would have to find an extra £4.5billion to educate private school children in state schools. So those who are arguing against the very existence of private schools have to square this fact with their ideology.

Fair point eastern 🙂

Well. Quite.

So many comments

saying it saves the taxpayer is a fact

saying its doing the taxpayer a favour is the bit i don’t like, when people say why they picked private education i doubt the the ‘i would like to save the taxpayer £8k’ is in the top 10 reasons

You quoted

whilst saving the taxpayer £8k a year

That doesn't use the phrase doing a favour

Another little bit of maths for you.

615,000 children in private education in the UK.

615,000 x £7460 = £4,535,680,000

That's how much money parents who send their DC to private school are saving the government every year. Four and a half billion pounds.

The wanting to shield his son I get however someone in his position would have surely had a few options, line perhaps paying for it yourself, moving in with family? Thousands of children have their exams interrupted or are carers so their life is never 'normal'.

Remember he is a multi millionaire. As others have said 'do as I say, but as I do' and btw you've worked hard and have a bit left over so we'll tax the arse off you at the same time.

I know its a fact, doesn’t change my mind about the whole ‘doing you a favour’ comments

Well to be honest the same applies. The school should offset VAT, apply bursaries to those who are really struggling, and offer a payment plan to help with continuity. If a parent was affording 22k, then presumably when they move to a state sixth form, paying the delta over 2 years would be much more achievable. Annoying for them but they'd go from paying 1.8k a month to about 183, without any bursary or offset.

Year 9 I think they would stand a good chance of finding a state school that does the more standard 2 Year GCSE. Which is crap for them I'm sure. But the kier thing was about the gcse year specifically.

Exactly - I am to the left of KS and have never liked him much, but held my nose and voted for him despite the weasly pandering to the right wing tabloids because I hoped he’d at least fund public services better than the Tories did.

I wasn’t expecting miracles, but I was not expecting his snout to be in the trough within the first month. No, he isn’t as bad as Boris, but neither are any other Tory MPs - Boris was a grabby outlier even in his own party.

All the press is covering it including The Guardian which is not 'right wing press'. That's what happens when you're in power. No point using the same sort of attacks to get into power and then complaining when you're in the firing line.

And yet, that's exactly what parents are doing when they remove their DC from a state school and send them private. The government spends £7,460 per child, per year for education so for every DC that goes private, that's the amount the government is saving every year by not having to educate them.

As james o Brian says the media mainly right wing press which is near everything is influencing this and stuff that really isn't a problem like a photographer is par for the role for rayner etc. It's designed to get uou pissed off. Plus you say you wanted better and it's not about starmer being a messiah yet they have barely got started and it's unrealistic how these posts seem on a daily basis. We haven't had election for many years in July which means it's a slow start and what is happening is he doesn't have control on his communications which be needs he's not playing smart politics which is what he needs he's ironically being to truthful he declared stuff which is jow uou have found out bh the way not hidden It like the tories do