High earners should be charged for state schools!

[RawCoconutMacaroon]

BBC report this morning carries the suggestion from Dr Anthony Seldon, head of the private Wellington College, that parents with a family income of £80k should pay for state school places.

WTAF? Kind of ignoring the fact that it is ONLY people on fairly high incomes who actually pay enough tax to cover the cost of their child/children's state school place (roughly £4500 per year per child). Yes of course tax is collected according to an ability to pay and then distributed so all benefit from "free" education, which is right and proper...

BUT he thinks people who are already paying a lot in tax should effectively be penalised and charged again for their child's place at state school! Although maybe he's coming from the POV that if high income parents have to pay for state school, they will be more likely to pay out for their child to go to his private school.

Interest rates, obviously. Too pissed off to type.

"Family income of £80k isn't much esp in south east - families wouldn't be able to afford bills."

Only on MN.

From someone who lives in the SE

brettgirl I realise this is moving away from the premise of the thread, but how is investing in your children ever 'dead money'?

I see it as an investment in their future. Anything that enriches my children's lives is not a waste to me.

mrbob families wouldn't be able to afford their bills when they were paying school fees on top of the fuck loads of tax and NI they're already paying.

How do you know how many people my salary supports? People have elderly relatives that need care and support, children with debilitating conditions, debts, student-fucking-millstone-loans, future pension needs to save for (because I can tell you now- a) there won't be any state pensions when my generation retires, and b) you can bet there'd be cats-bum-faces if people on £80k salaries drew state pensions ); most are not pissing it up the wall!

I take your point on the bills part but it's outrageous to say £80K isn't much! Some of us on lower salaries also have relatives who need care, disabilities ourselves, debt, student loans and to save for a pension because we are disabled and probably will never put enough into a state pension. Still, I know I am lucky to have what I do.

I have a severely disabled child so have had to become a full time carer
Tbf my partner earns less than 80k. But I still cannot see at the extra we would be able to pay school fees. We can't even afford to buy a house

On the other hand I know loads of people self employed not in paye, who have very lavish lifestyles in comparison and pay less tax. The incentive would be to become self employed and work your own books out ....from what I can see

owl- self-employed people are still subject to the law and regulation that anyone else is. You also have to pay VAT on top of tax and NI.... it's not exactly easy street!

Also- if you don't work, you don't get paid. There's no sick pay, or holiday pay, or pension contributions. No paid bank holidays- that's just a days lost business... There's no evenings or weekends you can call your own.

It does seem that those on PAYE would bear the brunt of this, as with the child benefit cuts. I know a few families who are self-employed and live very extravagantly. I can only assume they are earning well over 100k or have excellent accountants. This is not an option for those on PAYE. It does feel like there is no incentive to work harder and better yourself, as the government want the lot and you are stigmatised and made to feel that you shouldn't complain and that you're better off than most. This is not necessarily the case when families are facing rents / mortgages of well over 1k a month for a basic home, crippling child care fees, exorbitant commuter costs, ever rising bills and absolutely no social life what so ever. Well that's how it is for us anyway.

because you wouldn't get it back zak...... To invest in them again perhaps by helping them onto the property ladder. Mefeels you are being somewhat pedantic with the use of word 'dead'. All this competion over 'morals' I guess

Hang on, most freelance, self employed contractors get double, some triple what permanent skilled roles get per hour
At least in the sector my partner works
And friends in others sectors
I am nit flagging off those that choose to do this. I was merely suggesting that if people who have always been paye May reconsider whether this is still financially viable when given other options

Sorry about the auto corrections!

At least my phone managed not to call anyone a tosser or worse, you should all be grateful :o

Wouldn't get it back? You use your education every day of your life- seems a pretty sound investment to me. It's like saying money spent on heating is dead money- well, it makes my life bearable.

owl- yes, the rate is more- but there's no job security (one can be escorted off the premises at any point), no guarantee of income, one has to find one's own work, pay tax and NI (like any PAYE employee), VAT, no sick pay, holiday pay, bank holidays, other lovely perks that many highly-paid roles attract such as gym, company car, secretarial assistance, etc. Trust me, many people think that contractors have a cushy life, some do I'm sure, but most do not. Also in some industries, once you get to a certain age that's it, you're unemployable. In some industries if you've worked for a particular company, you may not work for their rivals etc etc etc.

But as I say to PAYE employees- if you think it's easy, you're welcome to become self-employed. I'm not scared of a little competition!

Owllady

I think the 80k isn't much stemmed from assumptions that those on 80k would probably have children in independent schools. Well we are not on 80k but with independent school charging around 10k per child I cannot sed how parents with more than 2 dc even on 80k could afford a private education.
But of course people with high earning s are not allowed to moan about these crazy ideas. If they do they are told they have mismanaged their finances.

15k per annum for private schools in my area and we have 3 children so that would cost an arm and a leg! Could sell a kidney thinking about it

I live in a village where there is one senior school and two primary and just about everyone in the village goes to them (unless they go to the private school)

It's not so much that people in high demand catchment areas would be charged but that they have once again picked a quite arbitrary figure out the air to use.

It's high enough that it is/seems like a lot of money, but not quite enough to pay for a private school for a number of children and vaguely have the standard of living you expect at 80k

It would also depend on how much they were going to charge for state schools, and people up thread are completely right, demands made on the school and teachers by "paying customers" would go up

If we were paying would we have our pick of schools?

Just read the article (bit late)

Over 80k and you pay a percentage with those on over 200k paying full whack

That would soon come down though, 70k then 60k with your percentage getting higher and higher

happyon, were you replying to me?

Since I said that the obvious solution was "a) improve the less good schools, thus narrowing the gap", I'm not sure on what grounds you're disagreeing? The point of defined catchment areas and then a lottery system within those areas (assuming more children than places at school) would be to increase social diversity at schools and improve standards across the board.

I think you may have mixed me up with another poster, I certainly didn't say anything about any efforts to improve poorly-performing schools being lovely but impractical. I wouldn't, I volunteered as a school governor years before DC were born because I want to 'do my bit' to improve the standard of education for all, not just my own DC.

I'm not sure a lottery is the way forward either, but it seems a lot fairer than Seldon's scheme!

I hope this idea never comes to anything.

Someone up thread said that if you earn 80k and can't afford private school it's because of poor budgeting.

DH earns that. I'm a SAHM . Our mortgage is 140k so not huge considering we live a 40 min commute from London. DH's train season ticket costs a small fortune. We don't have a flash car, we go camping or or have cheap UK holidays unless we have saved for 3 years for a big one like we did last year. We budget very carefully indeed. No luxuries at all really but I'd still consider us to be fairly well off. I read enough on here to know how lucky we are.

But there is absolutely no room in our finances to pay for private education.

But there is absolutely no room in our finances to pay for private education.

Many people could pay for private education if they really had to though e.g. I personally would work more hours (full time instead of part time) to increase our income so my children could go to a private school if we had to pay for their state education anyway. I'm not saying everyone would/should but I am sure I'm not the only one. Overall the numbers going to private schools would increase.

We are similar angel although dh earns nearer 70k. Accept we are fortunate but if these proposals come in it won't be long before they catch us. 13.5 for 3dc. Bit different to losing 188 pm child benefit.

What a silly idea. For most people to whom this would apply they would simply say ok, pay to send my kids to the ok (or rubbish) local state school, choice of which I have no control over, or pay a bit more to send them to the independent school of my choice, according to ethos, location, and personal preference. Apart from the people just caught out paying the least, most people would choose independent of their choice I am sure.

So what happens to the people who have fluctuations in their earnings? A bonus one year and not the next, for example.

This system will create even less choice, and you'll end up with very poor state schools in deprived areas, with no social mobility.

It's truly a terrible idea.