Okay… so what exactly are the sacrifices made for a private school eduction (feel free to scroll past if you don’t want to read another public school one 😉)

[vote4whoeveryouwant]

Yes, know another private school one. But I keep reading about people making huge sacrifices so their children can go to private school but I’d be genuinely interested to know what these are?

I earn pretty well but we only holiday alternate years, don’t have a car and haven’t done anything to our decrepit house for years simply because we don’t have enough leftover after outgoings and all the boring stuff.

My DD has dyslexia and we did look into private school for her as she really struggles but it no matter what way we tried to rework our finances there was no way we could make it work.

DH and I earn £160k a year between us. It’s the same kind of salary all of my friends who send to state earn. My brother and sil probably earn £250k. The sacrifices I made are in comparison to them not people who can’t afford private at all.

Eg my car is 20 years old. My house is much, much smaller, I go on one holiday a year rather than four / five.

I also know nurses and carers who have also made sacrifices to send their kids to my DS’ school. Their sacrifices are much, much more pronounced than mine. Eg choosing to houseshare instead of rent a whole house, only letting kids have more than one meal a day, no holidays at all, working overtime / two or even three jobs. I know a family of carers to spend every spare penny on their son’s private school because none of the local state schools are good for kids who pass for black - the dad actually has to work a second job to pay the bills.

You are in exactly the same situation as us. I'm so sick of the narrative where apparently we make no sacrifices because someone else doesn't have a roof over the head. Yes I feel huge empathy for that person but I don't think we should as a society be aiming for the bottom and that's exactly what this policy wants. If someone else can't have it, neither can you. I can't have the 6 bed new build in the street next to me that is for sale (could if I wasn't paying school fees) but I don't rally against the person that will buy it and demonise them for their aspirational house choices because someone else is making do in a 2 bed semi.

The thing is one person's "sacrifice" is the rest of us is just ordinary living. Every other year holiday, older shared car, house in need of refurb is just what families with middling incomes do to manage, there's certainly nothing left for fees.

My dd went to a specialist state boarding so sliding scale fees, the £4K a year was tough to find, family income of £70k though mostly him (other dc has an so I couldn't work much)

Our school has announced a 6.5% fee rise, with VAT to come. In addition fees have risen by 22.5% since 2021. This is unsustainable

But nobody is saying you can't have it. They're just saying that you should pay tax on it like any other luxury purchase.

If you chose to spend your money on other things instead, you'd pay tax on those too.

It really isn't about aiming for the bottom, it's about those with the deepest pockets paying more so that we don't end up with people who have no roof over their heads.

Empathy for those who are less fortunate is great but it doesn't actually house people or put food on their tables.

I work in the NHS. Colleagues are making the sacrifices described on here everyday just to survive, rather than pay for school fees

There are parts of the world where what you see in the NHS is a luxury. Surely we are not suggesting colleagues in the NHS shouldn't then complain or demand better?

It is perfectly OK to lament paying more or having a lower lifestyle than you would like or are accustomed to due to changes beyond your control. The world would not be better if we all suddenly start using food banks. We should be demanding better all round

If you chose to spend your money on other things instead, you'd pay tax on those too.

That’s the point; you wouldn’t necessarily pay tax on other spending decisions. Giving your child a hefty house deposit wouldn’t attract tax. Paying all of their university fees wouldn’t attract tax. Spending thousands on a foreign holiday wouldn’t attract UK tax (there’d be a small amount of APD), pension contributions would attract tax relief. Spending money on a property would attract tax at a far lower rate than VAT and your main residence would be CGT free.

As examples:

Purchasing a house would not have VAT only stamp duty which is much less than VAT. And selling it at profit would incur no tax at all.

£30k holiday to Barbados or Maldives would have no VAT.

Dressing your children in Burberry and Gucci would have no VAT.

Fair enough. Perhaps that's where the next Lablur government should look then to help plug the hole in public finances...more tax on all of the other luxuries that people might choose to spend their money on.

I have not sent my kids to private school. I do have a holiday every year, but even if I gave that up I wouldn't be able to afford it. Also I would have to have had children who don't have a disability. Private schools require parents to foot the bill of extra provision if your child has ehcp. That would be paying someone's wages on top of school fees. Perhaps if government required private schools to fund SEN at no additional cost to parents, that would save the state money and create a fairer system.

Buying caviar, expensive coffee pods or spending a fortune on a decorated cake wouldn’t attract VAT either. A first class flight to Australia would attract air passenger duty of around £200; not even close to the equivalent VAT. Giving your child £50k to clear their university debts wouldn’t attract a tax penalty. An expensive piece of antique furniture would have no VAT.

Hate to really push this pedantic point but given that I don’t live in the fairy land that others do I feel I must continue to point out - if they can’t afford those things anyway then they are in no way ‘sacrificing’ them. You cannot sacrifice something that you have no chance of having.

I'm sorry but you're proving the point I'm trying to make about it being a race to the bottom. Just because many people in our society can't afford school fees, it doesn't mean we should demonise those who can.

Of course not. There is nothing wrong with being in the privileged position of being able to make choices.

I think the pp was simply suggesting that those of us who are lucky enough to be able to make choices would be well advised to take off our martyr badges and to stop referring to those choices as "sacrifices".

It's crass and insensitive.

Perfectly put @Shortfatsuit . Whilst I don't at all agree with private education I do believe it's a valid choice people make; indeed I have lovely friends who made the choice and we all get along just fine. I just wish people would own their choice rather than acting like victims.

I agree that the term 'sacrifice' isn't helpful and personally I would use the term 'compromise'. I make compromises regarding our lifestyle to pay school fees. I absolutely own the fact that I do this. I just don't feel personally responsible for the condition of state education and don't think I should be taxed twice for it. We need to use private education in the way we use private health care - if anything it should be made easier to opt in to private education to reduce the burden on the state sector and widen access. The same people who are gleeful about VAT being added are the same people who say it's too expensive and inaccessible to most.

You’re right, empathy doesn’t feed or house those less fortunate. Neither will VAT on education though, so it really is just an exercise in levelling down .
It makes private education less accessible to those that can only just afford it and decreases the availability in good schools in more affluent areas when those that would have been in independents choose the state sector instead.

The point seems to be that there's a lifestyle that people with a £40kpa household income live, and there's a lifestyle that people with a £70kpa household income can live if they don't choose to pay £30k ish on school fees, and there's also a lifestyle that people with a £100kpa household income can live if they don't choose to pay £30k ish on school fees, and so it goes on. Of course each step up the ladder is nicer than the one below

The people with a £70kpa household income who are paying £30kpa on school fees can survive fine - of course they can, their lifestyle is basically the same as the lifestyle of the family with £40kpa household income, but there's a lot that they have given up that they could have afforded without the fees.

Using "sacrifice" to describe this decision does feel like entitlement though.

If family A have a household income of £40kpa, family B have a household income of £70kpa and family C have a household income of £100kpa I can see how family A might well feel reasonably offended to hear family B describing it as a "sacrifice" to have to life as family A live anyway, in order to afford the fees. Meanwhile family C have given up just as much to "slum it" on a £70kpa lifestyle but they can still afford all the things that family B can't because of school fees and which family A are never going to have.

It's only ever going to be actually "fair" if we have a socialist uprising and send all the rich to siberian gulags. Even then the fairness can only be achieved by making sure everyone only has the absolute minimum. If we accept that there will be richer and poorer people we have to accept that there will always be someone richer than us.

The word "sacrifice" implies that the richer people have an intrinsic right to the higher level of lifestyle that they are selflessly giving up. Such rights do not fundamentally accrue to anyone.

Private schools require parents to foot the bill of extra provision if your child has ehcp.

If an independent school is named in an EHCP, the LA is responsible for the fees and the SEN provision. Parents do not have to foot the bill.

I think what is meant here is when parents choose to use private schools when their kids have an EHCP without that school being named. In that case any 1:1 and therapy would have to be funded by the parents. The LEA don’t mix funds usually.

I have listened to people here talking about why there should be no VAT on private schools. I find it bemusing. In terms of sacrifice people who have disabled adult kids up and down the country are having to fund their kids living expenses so that they can stay in education at aged 18 to 25 because unless you are savvy enough to realise that you have to have them declared unfit to work before the next course commences you can’t get benefits. Luckily I realised and got that sorted. Many are sacrificing keeping their adult kids in say life skills and paying for their lives until these kids are aged 25 whilst your kids go to university and then get well paid jobs. I know a woman she has no pension or much money as she home schooled here son who is still in pre university education now aged 21 and he has no income not even a student loan. Her husband can barely work and she has cancer. She is still funding his as he does not qualify for benefits.

I didn’t hear a big mums net furore when those rules changed and parents suddenly found themselves having to pay for food clothing and all expenses for their adult SEN kids aged 23 or 25 year olds so that they could continue to learn how to work out discounts on shopping or catch a bus. Honestly the transport budget for SEN kids has been slashed pretty much everywhere so parents have to sacrifice to send their kids to SEN schools. So there will be pretty little sympathy coming from people whose kids are in the higher needs SEN category who regularly have to pay huge expenses.

That isn’t what that poster posted, though, and would apply to parents making their own arrangements whether the child had an EHCP or not.

Sometimes some LAs will come to an agreement whereby the parents fund the fees and the LA fund the SEN support, even when the legal threshold for naming the independent school in I on its own isn’t met, but LAs don’t have to.

From the September following the young person’s 19th birthday, if they remain in non-advanced full-time education, it is sometimes possible to claim UC even if LCW/LCWRA isn’t established prior to the start of the course. See more in Contact’s booklet here.