If you are anti private school are you also anti tutoring?

[WWGD]

Putting aside the obvious - that a tutor is about £2k a year and private school about £25k a year…

My kids are state educated. Many of our friends are surprised by this as they go private, but our objection is political as much as financial. We just don’t believe it is right to buy that level of privilege and opportunity. We’d also rather spend that money on holidays etc.

dd has asked for a tutor in subjects she is struggling with. I have arranged this. But this too is buying privilege and opportunity. Though not the networking and prestige.

I am comfortable with my decisions. I am just wondering whether people who are anti private school for political reasons also think tutoring is beyond the pale?

I was going to put this in aibu but actually am interested in people’s views rather than being flamed.

Yes it is. What about the parents who can’t afford to tutor privately?

Our experience is not up to date, as my children are in their 30s now, but back when we made the decision to send our son to a fee-paying school to which he'd won an academic scholarship covering a percentage of the fees, we were looking for a school with teachers who were appropriately qualified in the subjects they were teaching, no problems with discipline, good facilities for all subjects, a broad-based curriculum including strong teaching in science and languages and good extra-curricular opportunities. If we had stuck with the very poor school the LEA was able to offer, our son would have had very little of that and as a quiet, nerdy boy who enjoyed learning would probably have had a target on his back from day 1. No regrets about our decision at all. He is not working in some elite, overpaid City job. He does something socially worthwhile and enjoyed his education. Money well spent.

I'm not anti private school but I am anti state subsidising the sector.

Private tutoring is fine - we've engaged the services of a tutor in the past.

How do you think the state is subsidising private schools?

As I've said before, I'm an EOTAS Tutor. I am paid for by the LA and not by the parents. Quite a lot of the children I work with are LAC so don't have parents sadly.

i’m not anti private school (my boys go to a private school but we don’t pay any fees), and I don’t have any objections to people paying for a tutor if their children are struggling in a particular subject, but what I am against is people paying for a tutor in order to get into the best free / private selective schools. It’s such a shame - I see it with my boys school, people go mad with tutors for their kids to get in (it is very selective and very popular), and then a few years in, those same children are towards the bottom of the class because they aren’t as clever as the children who got in (like my two) without any tutoring. I feel that’s taking places away from other children who may be cleverer than the tutored kids, but their parents can’t afford a tutor!

VAT exemption and charity status was the state subsidising private schools.

No other luxury purchase is VAT free or has charity backing. - it was an aberration which has now thankfully been corrected.

That's not a subsidy, though, is it. The government chooses what to tax, constrained by EU law in the past. Until recently, the government chose not to add VAT to education costs and not to challenge the charity status of the fee-paying schools registered as charities, some of which date back to the Middle Ages. (A lot of fee-paying schools aren't registered charities so would pay corporation tax if they made a profit, which many don't.) The not for profit enterprises ploughing any surplus back into the running of the school and maintaining/updating/extending the buildings have legitimately been considered charities for centuries. The government still doesn't put VAT on purchase of books, healthy food and other things that give children a leg up.

I wonder how much tax they're getting from tutors. How many are declaring all the income they make from tutoring?

@amigafan2003
Do you think tutoring should be liable for VAT?

There are countries (e.g. Australia) where the state actually does subsidise private schools. There is funding attached to pupils rather than to schools. (The state then further tops up the state schools.) This is clearly not the same thing as keeping something untaxed which had always been untaxed.

I actually quite like this model, the main reasons being it means a third to a half of kids are in the private sector so it isn't nearly as elitist as private school is here, and some have very low fees so are accessible to, say, working class people who have a few grand to spend but not five figures a year.

I am curious: if you think spending £2.5k on tutoring is okay but £25k on private school is not: if you could get a place in a £2.5k a year private school, let's say it's broadly similar to a standard state school in demographics, facilities etc, but doesn't have the bottom 10% of troublemaker students because the school expels them, and it doesn't have the bottom 10% of impoverished students as £2.5k would be really beyond their reach. So a fairly socially diverse school but not the full 100% range.

A) would you be interested in sending your child to this school?
B) are you morally opposed to the existence of this school?

I think there can be some hypocrisy around it. I prefer people who pay for private school, and are not apologetic about it, compared to certain members of my family who claim to be left-wing, and are members of the Labour Party, but moved house to get their children into the best state school locally and every child was tutored through GCSE’s and A levels.

I'm not against private schools in general, if you can afford it then so be it. However I am anti then idea that it is better education. Ok smaller class sizes and better extra curricular options yes. But the quality of teachers isn't any better to state school (actually I would say state school teachers have to be better to teach disadvantaged and disengaged students with minimal funding and resources but that's a different thread). Also I've heard of some horrendous behaviour issues, disengaged students, drugs problems etc etc from people I know who work in private schools, coupled with pushy parents who think it is up to the teachers to get their little lazy darlings through with top grades because they are paying.
I am against selective schooling and the 11+ (however huge hypocrite here had their own child dwcide to sit the 11+ and pass however the grades they got would have been achieved anywhere due to their own work ethics and actually could have been better somewhere else due to some poor teaching/expectation they would teach themselves/parents would pay for tutors) l.
Tutoring I see as different and I have seen parents who have made sacrifices to pay for a tutor to help a struggling child. So yes there is a level of privilege being able to afford that but not the same as private school.

I realise my own believes are a little bit mixed and I am a huge hypocrite for sending my own child to grammar when I am anti them but that was their choice and I always said I'd let my child take the lead in the secondary school they wanted so I had to stand by this

There are hundreds of private school where this isn’t the case either. I know a whole heap of people who went to private school and aren’t that “type” either.

I think this is where the problem is. People hear private school and think Eton or Fettes. The reality is, the number of private schools which do give you a network or you can trade on the name is a tiny percentage. For the vast majority of them, it’s no different, except in the cost, to buying an advantage for your child through tutoring.

VAT is already payable if the tutoring service you use is a business OR an sole trader tutors turnover exceeds 90k per year.

Having a tutor is definitely not the same as private school. Crack on and get a tutor if it helps your children. No different then them having music lessons etc.

Lots of tutors are around who will never get 90k though.

A private day school is basically giving a series of tutorials ( just not extra special private ones) within the framework of the school day.

It’s weird you think the two are mutually exclusive. Isn’t it good advice to choose a house where the schools are good if you can? Estate agents make it part of their marketing. Are you supposed to live in an area with a terrible school just to prove your socialist credentials, regardless of how it might impact your children? Your child singularly isn’t going to improve the school. The system is broken and there are many ways to try and fix it, without risking your children’s education, no matter how much money you have.

If your child has the potential to do better with extra tutoring, are you saying the child shouldn’t get that if it is affordable, just because the parents are politically left wing?

Presumably you’d want them to give up what I presume are white collar jobs and go to work on a factory floor? Can’t have them being financially more advantaged than anyone else.

I’m left wing, although tend to favour Lib Dem more than Labour. But right now, I’m behind the Labour government in their endeavours to turn this country around. I’ll be ok with Reeves if she decides I’m one of the people she thinks should be targeted and I end up paying more tax, if it means fewer people living in poverty. I’d be happy to see my tax going towards better education, particularly for disabled children. I have a disabled child and am able to buy advantages for her. Am I supposed not to, because some parents can’t?

Education apart from private schools comtinues to be vat exempt. So profit making tuition or educational services such as Explore learning will not have to charge VAT.

Great! You don’t need to wait and see what Reeves does. You can start making voluntary payments to the gvt now! Right now! Go for it, and well done you 👏🏻👏🏻

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/voluntary-payments-donations-to-government

I think this is similar to the voucher system that happens in some areas of the states and I am very, very opposed to. I ‘personally’ wouldn’t send my children to this imaginary school as I still feel very passionate about the benefits of a fully accessible for all education model. Am aware it’s literally impossible to smooth out all inequities but purposefully ringfencing my children away from some of their friends by choice wouldn’t work for me. But in reality, any of the private schools near me are 10x that cost so not an option for most.

Genuinely...how much do you think a tutor costs ph?!!! I'm clearly underselling myself with 22 years' primary teaching experience under my belt! 😆 😂 😆 😂

We had a choice for gcse English tuition. One charged £35 but was a retired primary school teacher. The one we chose charged £45 but had lots of experience teaching gcse and a level English. What do you charge and what level is your tuition?

That old 🌰. Yawn 😴

Yeah, no problem with that.