If you're worried about rising private school fees..

[CurlewKate]

... why not just get a better paid job? It apparently works for poor people.

It is a tricky balance and they do need to be careful re unintended consequences. For the very rich it’ll make very little difference. Once someone is paying £40k plus in fees, they’re just not in the scraping by for fees bucket and there is no point pretending they are. But, that experience will be very different to the lower end private schools. The parents that will be priced out will be the upper middle class who are still pretty wealthy. Those kids will be fine in state as most likely they’ll get tutoring, may move to a better catchment etc.

No, it will be used by schools to pay for the additional resources they will need to educate the children currently educated in small private schools. All those sneery people with massive chips on their shoulders will get to feel smug for a little while until they realise they can’t get their DC into the local good state school because all the ex private school parents have moved into the catchment area.

Ah that old chestnut "there's no munny wahhh".

Just tax the rich like every other developed country with a decent state education does.

And yes if you don't like it, leave.

Why are the wealthy so often repellent?

And this is a prime example of why the country has gone to shit. Not the brightest electorate. Huge sound bites with no understanding and critical thinking at all.

ONS have stated we now have the highest state dependency on record. The majority of adults take out more than they put in. The higher earners who fund everyone else are leaving slow handclap who is paying for everything?

You do realise that in every other developed country with a decent state education - they don’t have such a economically inactive population?

The highest earners in this country already pay high rates of tax (already defined by reports as harming state funding). Problem is, this country has so many lower tax payers (or not at all) in comparison. Don’t let an uneducated rant get in the way of fiscal fact though.

@MintJulia if you're still around. There was a child that sounds a bit like yours at my ds's school-there was some arrangement made for her to be taught maths at the nearest University. I don't know the details- but it's certainly worth investigating if you need it.

And if people do are you happy to take over their tax burden?

Not the smartest bunch.

The whole thing at the moment is a sort of panicked threat - "raise our school fees and we'll fucking destroy your schools, peasants!"

So far I've heard that making VAT payable on this luxury will

• destabilise and distress a generation of children
• force house prices astronomically high
• cause mass unemployment for teachers
• end all charitable donation and support of local businesses
• destroy the chances of all children with SEN
• lead to mass unemployment as parents leave their jobs to homeschool rather than sending their children to a state school
• lead to derelict school buildings and/or greedy developers buying up all the land
• lead the whole country into a huge economic deficit

Who knew that the extra 5 grand spent on Hugo's exclusive no-povvos infant school was the last bulwark between Mighty Albion and the Apocalypse?

Every day's a school day on here.

People who say those things are nasty, as are you.

It's not taxing education, private schools are NOT charities

Well they are, by law. That’s not changing.

@Pebbles16 well according to Labour today, yes they are. They are scrapping the removal of charitable status.

@twistyizzy and @EasternStandard well they are at the moment. But they shouldn't be. I cannot think of one charitable thing they do. Occasionally a bare minimum: for example Dulwich College used to 'allow' my husband's school to use their nets once a month.

It's such a shame you can't respond without ad hominem attacks.

Private school education can't be up to much after all.

Tax the rich and the state sector can easily accommodate a few hundred thousand more kids alongside the 10 million it already educates.

I’d be embarrassed by that remark. Showing your true colours.

This is what bothers me about it (as a parent of two state school kids). The policy will do nothing to actually address social mobility, little to materially improve state education over the remaining school years for my kids and nothing at all about the old boy network which still has a great deal of influence over internships, careers, etc.

The truly rich who send their kids to the very top schools will be utterly unaffected by this.

That's a great argument to abolish private schools completely.

I went to a state school. Quite good actually, it taught me how to critically think. I even learnt economics. They should really bring that back.

They really should

Again, this discussion is not actually about how clever you are compared to everyone else, or how stupid you would like to believe I am.

By all means go off but I don't think I'll bother responding unless it's a useful point of debate.

Labour willl apply 20% VAT on private school fees if it wins the general election, but it will not scrap tax exemptions associated with charity status

Sensible and inevitable given changing charity law is really hard and charging VAT doesn't require it

@Begsthequestion how would that work though? Would you ban home schooling?

What if a parent who was home schooling got together with some other parents doing the same to home school as a group?

What if that group decided they didn't quite have the expertise to teach some subjects and hired some tutors to help?

What if it all got a bit much to host at home so they hired a space to do it in instead? Starts to sound like a private school.

It's very hard to ban people from spending their money on things that are legal and ridiculous to suggest that educating kids outside of state school should become illegal.

Do you understand what a debate is? People highlighting the potential issues here and you say “waaaaaah tax the rich or leave.”

You haven’t thought that through and so expect to be challenged on it.

You missed the post that asked you about tax burden. If the minority who are now funding the state leave - what are you going to do? Are you going to pick up the marginal tax rates of 70-100%. How will it work? We already have a colossal state burden which we are getting into debt for. Where is the money coming from? Enlighten me.

Private schools might not have been quite so vulnerable if they had taken seriously the requirement to actually do something charitable for their charitable status. Just a thought.