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

[CurlewKate]

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

Assuming £1.6m income, which seems to be the figure quoted, is raised by VAT on fees, i'm pretty sure we will not see £1.6m reinvested into schools? Plus you cant switch on and deliver investment overnight.

The shadow education secretary was quoting this report during the mums net call this morning. I have not worked through it though believe any additional state costs will have to come off this figure. Skim reading the report it says mininal costs to state as children in education is forecasted to come down.

However that is just bums on seat with no reference to quality of teaching and acknowledges that state places to accommodate private school leavers many not be distributed accordingly to match demand!

IFS - VAT on private school fees

anyone who thinks that there will be money saved to support kids with SEN currently in schools AND all the new state schools is very naive. sen provision is patchy at best. I am actually very lucky in that DS is well supported in state but i am aware that's more luck than anything.

I'm opposed to private education for lots of reasons but I still acknowledge that the uncertainty is worrying for any parent. Everyone just tries and does their best for their kids. Some parents also rely on private education at times as their just isn't the provision available for their child with certain disabilities and needs. To gloat and goad isn't helpful.

How have I done that? I have one SEN child in a state school and doing fine despite the limited resources the school has, luckily we can pay for some extra tutoring.

Another child with anxiety at a private school (although not because of the anxiety).

I'm responding to the hand-wringing and guilt-tripping about how kids with these issues need private schools and saying; state schools are full of kids with multiple issues but their families can't afford private schools. In my child's class there are several children with complex issues.

For the many, not the few.

Just to throw this in.
Finland is largely agreed to have the best school system in the world. And, I believe, almost no private schools and the ones they do have it's illegal to take Finish state exams in.
Why do we think that is?

Surely being ironic?

Ha ha, you’ve got to be kidding.

We work all hours God sends and still can’t afford the extra VAT on school fees. So are in the process of moving house to the catchment area of an outstanding state school.

As we won’t be paying £60,000 a year on school fees, I’m planning on taking early retirement 👍.

Feels good to know that I’ll get to enjoy my kids AND no longer be paying the government £50,000+ a year in tax AND will actually get something in return for all the tax we’ve paid over the last 25 years.

I hope labour’s got deep pockets; my family alone will cost the government over £500,000 in lost tax and educating my kids 🤷

But if a load of vocal, private school parents were suddenly plunged into the state sector, a lot of fucking schools might be built PDQ.
Hahahaha and pigs might fucking fly.

The problem with many non selective state schools is the behaviour, dd wasn't able to carry out any practical chemistry lessons last year, due to kids pissing around in class, so they had to watch the teacher do the experiments...that might be okay for some kids to learn, but if you learn by doing rather than theory and watching, well that's probably chemistry written off as a career choice.

Education can never ever be fair as it stands currently (regardless of private/ selective/ standard) because dc like my dd will always fail as she's not academic. Any child with SEN or who is not naturally academic will never do as well as a child who finds academia easy.
Life's a bitch and the sooner folk come to realise that the better.
I think it's much shittier that people who can afford tutors for the grammars take the places of kids who are academically able but don't have the funds for tutoring. And yet no one gets arsey about that. In fact if you can afford a tutor send your kids to private school to free the grammars up for those who can't afford tutoring, and let kids get there on their own merits.

especially among the people who literally spend hundreds of thousands on an entire HOUSE in a good state catchment instead of paying for private school then claim to occupy a moral high ground)

These! These people annoy the piss out of me! A colleague opining away about how dreadful private schools are, how terribly divisive, not right to buy advantage blah, blah. And I’m like, hang on, didn’t you buy a house in ( one of the most expensive parts of our city) to get your kids into the best performing state school in Scotland? The bloody hypocrisy of it. In Edinburgh it was actually cheaper to send your kid to private school than buy your way into the catchment of the best performing state secondary school ( like she did).

I'm sure a number will move out to the areas with exceptional state schools and price everyone out of living near good quality schools if private education becomes unaffordable to the already squeezed middle. So increasing fees probably won't have the desired effect many are hoping it will.

This annoys me so much as well. I have a friend who is very anti-private school but can't see the irony that they moved to a 1.5 million house purely to be in a better catchment area.

VAT on fees will be largely used at disadvantaged students per IFS report. There is no whole investment/upgrade across the school spectrum which is being implied by having VAT on fees?

"6. Combining estimated tax revenues and extra public spending needs, our view is that it would be reasonable to assume a net gain to the public finances of £1.3–1.5 billion per year in the medium to long run as a result of removing tax exemptions from private schools. This would allow for about a 2% increase in state school spending in England, which Labour has proposed would be targeted at disadvantaged students."

100%, you Brits sure love a race to the bottom.

Yes me too.

Sadly I think everyone will lose except for the very monied (and foreigners who I think will be exempt from the VAT?) since with less competition for the better private schools their children will presumably have a slightly better chance of gaining a place at one of the better private schools.

Personally, I don't think VAT on private schools will ever happen (it is fraught with too many difficulties/issues) but if it does then I suspect all that it will achieve will be even greater social inequality.

As far as i can see, it's a home goal for labour.
I've pretty much voted Tory all my voting life, but i'm actually fed up with them and myself and DP had decided that if all remained equal, we'd vote Labour this time, until this was announced.

I have a lot of Labour voting friends whose kids go to private school and they are either going to vote Tory or not vote at all.

Are many people going to vote Labour PURELY on this proposed policy? No one that i've spoken to.

In other words, it's a vote loser and not a vote winner.

Just stop buying avocados, takeaway coffee and paying for Netflix?

Whenever genuinely struggling people complain about unfair rent increases and struggling to pay their bills it’s what they’re told.

It is tone deaf to people who have been struggling to feed their families and using food banks to now complain about what is a luxury not a need.

My kids are at state school so I've no skin in this game but a lot of private schools do coproduction work with the local state sector. What will happen if those schools can no longer get pupils in and have to close?

And you really think that will happen??

Interesting point. I was 100% behind Labour until this. I hate the Tories and never have or will vote for them but this is the Brexit NHS bus all over again. A policy intended to rile up a certain demographic of voters but actually the detail doesn't work in practice.

It’s problematic.

On the one hand it may well generate income for the government as Ultimately the big-middle name private schools will still be popular and full even if largely from oversees.

It will however cause a significant influx of kids into state schooling which I suspect will all be targeted at the best outstanding ofsted schools. This will have a knock on effect on the housing markets as middle class parents move to catchment areas and will no doubt force quite a few lower income parents out of ‘good’ school areas.

I suspect if this goes ahead there will be an even stronger atmosphere of outstanding schools being inaccessible to low income kids.

@ChocolateyBiccy the vat or the reinvestment or both? i think best case is that there is reinvestment for the disadvantaged. Every other school child state or ex-fee paying will have to make do with the existing educational infrastructure.

VAT on Fees is not the silver bullet for education that the policy is implying.

There are only about 7% of British school children in private education. That’s a tiny amount and won’t really affect schools if some of those pupils end up in state schools. Some parents will move to expensive areas to get their children into the best state schools but again it’s tiny numbers spread through out the country. Some parents may give up work as they don’t have to pay fees anymore. Good for them probably a much better life actually spending time with the family. MN always makes me think there’s loads of children in private school as their parents are all on here but really it’s very few.

I do feel for children that may have to move schools but children have to move schools all the time for many different reasons.

I really feel for parents of SEN children who have decided the only option for them is private school as state schools do not meet the needs of their children. I hope that state schools will get more funding for these children’s and they will not be forgotten.

@Usernamehell "Do you think that justifies starting this nasty thread?"

Why is it nasty? It's said to people struggling financially on here all the time. And by conservative politicians. "Cut back" "Get a better job" "Eat lentils" "Feed your family for a tenner a week." "Give up the internet." How come it's sensible advice then but suddenly nasty if it's said to privileged people?

Of course and there are a hell of a lot who can't cope who in those state school who miss massive amounts of schooling through ebsa or whose parents have removed them to home school. I don't want to have to resort to home schooling.
Absolutely I would support policy to fund schools adequately. I would support a Finnish model of education where class sizes average 19. There are other ways to raise tax revenue. You could improve state schools first and then gradually implement this tax.