Is Bridget Phillipson's tweet accurate?

@twistyizzy some headteachers at these schools are paid £300,000.

I'm sorry but they're profiting off parents who are willing to pay. Just because a charity has to reinvest doesn't mean they don't do shady things. Nearly all charity execs are on huge wages.

There are 10,320,811 school children in the UK. That's 9.7 million who aren't in independent schools. I think they should be given a fair chance. When our teachers are being put under greater and greater strain because of what the tories did to the education system, taxes will have to rise. The idea of private schools generating so much money and it not benefitting those in society who can't afford a private education is baffling.

I will always be against private schools until such time as our education system is restored. It's nothing to do with "politics of envy" or whatever line you'll trot out next.

It's because I've watched my sister, a headteacher at a state school that's been stripped further and further back, having to let some of her best teachers go due to cutbacks and needing to make redundancies. Her trust was told that they had to get rid of 10 teachers last year. They didn't get an increase in money, there was nothing to help them, that was the bare minimum to keep the schools going. That means that there's now ten classes worth of students who are in classes that are too large to be taught effectively.

While state schools have to scrape together enough money to educate their students, I will never, EVER support a system that allows the richest in society to buy their way out of it. You can say "oh we're not rich, we scrape to get by and pay the fees" but anyone with £6k+ of disposable income a year that can be put into school fees is doing a hell of a lot better than the majority of the country.

The private school we are considering has no swimming pool. Several state schools in the area do have swimming pools - we go to swimming lessons at one of them, out of hours!

Precisely

Her tweet is somewhat ironic considering she gets tax-payer funded embossed stationery, and plays hockey on a private school Astro turf.

It's ok for her to benefit from these things...

Ah you have bought into Labour lies!
The bigger outlay to schools is staff wages at 75%. With the remaining fees they then have to pay for: pensions, utilities (which as we al know have run exponentially for everyone), maintenance of buildings, equipment for kids ie books etc.
I accept a yearly increase (average 1K per year) because DDs school has great teachers and I want to ensure they are paid well enough to stay.
What I don't accept is an additional 3-4K per year in VAT when no other European country taxes education.

The IFS report is completely discredited now and Phillipson had shown her true colours as highly vindictive. They have now exempted EHCPs, military and state boarding. The last one is ridiculous, how can state boarding be exempt when parents pay same fees as day pupils in Indy schools. That just proves it is a spiteful policy against the independent sector. The maths simply doesn't add up yet Phillpson has committed it to about 9 policies, if (as predicted) it brings in less than £0.5 billion how the hell is she going to fund any of those 9 policies?

Over 50% of schools are not for profit organisations who by definition can't make a profit. Charities have to re-invest.
The guiding principle across Europe is that you don't tax education. In fact, in the EU it is illegal to do so, Greece tried and failed. There are now 3 legal challenges against the policy with more in the pipeline.

Fundamentally it is a smoke and mirrors policy to disguise the fact that Labour aren't actually going to fund state schools any better than Tories. Otherwise they wouldn't have told DfE to cut £1 billion from it's budget.

I am disgusted in the divisive language that Phillipson continues to use, she quite clearly hates the sector and doesn't give a crap about the 550,000 kids in Indy schools yet she is supposed to represent ALL kids in education. Labour refuse t discuss/engage and just ignore, delete and gaslight. Not a single education minister was at the VAT debate this week which shows how much they care (it also shows they know they can't justify this policy in any meaningful way over the standard 1 or 2 sentence script they keep parroting).
As a lifelong Labour voter I will never forgive them for this

She is saying that the expectation is on private schools to make their current fees (what they are charging now) inclusive of VAT.

So if you were paying £6000 in fees it was expected that this would become (essentially) £5000 of fees + £1000 of VAT. The schools were expected to swallow the extra cost.

Of course, they've not done this because it would mean less money for them. She's highlighting that the private schools have chosen astrotruf, pools etc. over contributing to the state.

amp.theguardian.com/education/2023/mar/12/uk-private-schools-rush-to-expand-overseas-as-profits-soar

In 2020/2021, private schools in the UK made £29 million in profit by expending their operations to overseas schools as well. That is despicable. Education is not a business. It should not be for profit.

If your school is one of those that's raising the fees instead of swallowing the cost, I'd ask yourself why - is it because they would really struggle if they lost that money, or is it because they want to put money in peoples pockets?

Our daughter is in yr9. She has a large bursary. We were already struggling, went into debt through Covid and our mortgage has been hiked by £400p/mth. Our school is increasing fees by 20%. It's lower middle earners like us not those with the 'broadest shoulders' that will feel the impact of this disproportionately. It will cause real pain to real families and labour are gleeful. We can't now have choice of a school which we would have had had we applied for yr7 entry. I've always voted labour but I will never again.

@WaterBuffalo 11%. Sheesh that's extortionate.

My kids' private school is passing on the full amount. This is in addition to an 11% increase beginning of this year. Two other private schools in our town have closed recently and the only other one is super expensive. If our private school loses any children they know they will get enough other students to make up the numbers and they don't care about individual students.

I'd love to take out dd but she was miserable in her old state school and I know that the change and disruption now would be too stressful. I know we are privileged to have been able so far to afford it but I don't think we will manage now.

I voted for Labour and I don't theoretically disagree with this policy. All kids should have the right to a decent free education but I think the way they are going about it will do little to raise more money for state schools and it will cause a lot of stress and disruption to kids currently in private school. Having to suddenly leave and join a state school after reception is very, very different to joining a state school at reception. For starters most people get thr school of their choice at reception but it is almost impossible to get in after reception. About half of the kids in dd's school are there because they couldn't cope in their old state school, were bullied or have additional needs but don't qualify for an ehcp. A lot of the others are not white and worry about racism in state schools. Our local secondary is notorious for it. But I guess for a lot of people the more hurt they can cause to private school kids the better. Since their parents were able to afford the fees (but possibly like us couldn't afford to move to an area with a better state school) they deserve all this stress and disruption.

And while I'm being bitter and self pitying anyway: of course it's ok for Keir Starmer to protect his son from any disruption. That is human and totally acceptable.

Well who knows? Now it's begun I guess any government can whack VAT on whatever they want.

Well, I realise you're being facetious but gym is subsidised for people who need to access a gym for health reasons, and alcohol is taxed in Scotland so yes, we're always trying to use govt to nudge people. Sugar tax, free bike scheme etc.

The point is, that you should NEVER tax education and if you agree with doing so, for whatever spurious reason, you in fact don't care about kids education as much as you think you do.

How far does that go then? Should teachers salaries be exempt from income tax because 'education should NEVER be taxed'? What about other forms of self-improvement - should gym memberships not be taxed? Driving lessons?

Hands up, I have no skin in this particular game. I do, however care about society and people not exactly like myself.

I speak as a working class person who, most likely, would not be able to afford private school fees.

Am I supposed to not give a shit about families affected by this, merely because those families are quite likely middle/upper class and have more money than I do. Am I supposed to cheer the government and say, "yeah, stick it to the rich bastards". I can't do it. It's mean, spiteful and smacks of class envy. For a start, I fail to see how making slightly wealthier parents poorer benefits anyone else.

Also, isn't this VAT on school fees moving a private education even farther away from less advantaged families. I thought politicians of all persuasions were keen on the "levelling up" of opportunity.

Is taxing the relatively low percentage enjoying a private education really going to do a lot toward funding much for the majority in state schools.

I'm sorry but all I see is hypocrisy. Plenty of those politicians avail themselves of the advantages born out of associations with private schooling. They seem to be attacking their own and falsely claiming it will benefit disadvantaged state school pupils, when the additional revenue will likely never get near a stare provider's budget. Is it really just a tax grab to swell treasury coffers.

Yes I'm not sure it comes as a big surprise that if you are paying 24k a year that the school has more money to spend on their kids.

The point is, that you should NEVER tax education and if you agree with doing so, for whatever spurious reason, you in fact don't care about kids education as much as you think you do.

The tories are not contesting this because they know when they get back in in the next 10 years they will have a free pass to add VAT to university fees and nursery fees.

Well yes because the budget comes from the fees that parents pay.

Our schools dishwasher is broken so the children are using paper plates. A parent at the school could fix it but he isn't enhanced CRB checked. The world has gone mad.

That’s correct. Business rates are not insubstantial for many schools. That’s on top of the VAT impact.

Furthermore (correct me if I'm wrong) the government are also changing business rates for independent schools, thus increasing the expenditure further. It therefore seems extra disingenuous for the government to make out that the increase is only due to VAT.

And no discussion of staff reductions from labour whatsoever...the unions otoh well aware.

Two schools in Edinburgh have announced consolidations that will result in job losses already.

Exactly. They expect them to cut costs to reduce fees, but they don’t want things like bursaries or community use of facilities to be cut. That pretty much leave staff costs as the main way of cutting costs.

It's all a mess as calling them businesses is again not accurate and spin - my dcs one is a charity and 9 percent of kids on bursaries.

So they want them to be businesses, take away charity status but also keep bursaries, community engagement and sharing resources with state.

This is a Jekyll and Hyde policy.

It's an odd remark smacks of jealousy.

To be fair to you, that explanation from the government is dreadful! Saying they “don’t have to reflect the VAT increase in the amount fee payers are charged” is extremely misleading. They have to charge 20% on whatever fee level they have. A better explanation would be to say “we expect schools to reduce their fee level to mitigate the effect of the 20% VAT”.

I’m not sure how they expect schools to cut fees by 20%. Their staff costs are around 80% of their expenditure. So, they either need to get rid of pretty much all other expenditure (impossible, given energy bills etc), or cuts will have to be made to staff costs (redundancies/pay cuts). They are being dishonest in saying that schools can choose not to pass on the VAT.