AIBU that VAT on school fees makes no economical sense?

[fuckwitery]

Trying to research what it costs the state to put a child through school each year. Figures I've found show between £6 - £8k. We pay £13k per DC per year. That's prep, so will be more for senior school. So at the mo introducing VAT on these fees would add £2,600 to the state coffers. £4k for senior school.

We, and lots of others who just about manage to pay for private schooling, will be forced to take their children out. Therefore it's a NET loss for the state?

Or am I missing something.

(carlton, you asked me to link the legal changes. I was paid to update a law or accountancy book actually including those new changes so I do know a bit about them. They probably could not find anyone else prepared to do it.A ctually now I've looked it up it was arund 2008 those changes came in I mention and then in 2011 after which I was updating the book we had a statute which didn't change the law but it changed all the section numbers of the legislation and name of the Act so no one else wanted to update the book except me as I have children to feed and school fees to pay....

If you look at wiki it says

"Prior to 2008, the law assumed that advancement of education or religion were automatically in the public interest. A "public benefit" now needs to be demonstrated."

See also www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/589796/Public_benefit_analysis_of_the_law.pdf

I remember there was a new court case about schools which came out just as the book went to press and I had to change a load more bits of it at proof stage.

"We must have diversity in the system."

Why?

Finland doesn't, and their education system is head and shoulders above ours.

If we wanted to emulate Finland’s educational success, we would have to do more than just abolish private schooling. Teaching methods are one of the most important ways in which Finland differs from England. Teaching in Finland has for years been quite traditional: textbook-led, plenty of teacher talk, whole class discussions led by the teacher, children working quietly on their own, desks facing the front from age 7, very little "group work". This has been the case despite efforts from academics like Pasi Sahlberg to make teachers switch to more 'progessive' child-centred strategies. Finnish teachers were able to largely resist this pressure because they had genuine autonomy in their classrooms. The latest move by the progressive faction has been to rewrite the national curriculum: we will see how that goes.

Cognitive psychologists suggest that this kind of teaching works best for mixed ability grouping (which is what Finland has). It reduces the cognitive demand on disadvantaged and lower ability students, and helps them catch up on the knowledge they haven't learned at home. It is Finland's success with this group that has created their high PISA scores - they don't have the long trail of underachievers that we have.

However, in this country, this kind of teaching has for the last 40 years been rubbished by teacher trainers and the educational establishment generally, and would (until very recently) have been likely to get a “fail” from Ofsted.

Freedom is important to decide what's best for you and your children.
I believe we must have diversity, allow home education, state and faith etc.
I don't want to live in a state organised dictatorship, where there are no choices.

Choices always push up quality.

Op - you could take your kids out of prep school, send them to the local primary instead. And then with the money you save you'll be able to afford the extra vat on the school fees when they go to senior school!

Thanks for that. We sent DCs private because all the local village schools closed and became one super humongous primary with 5 intakes of 30 at reception. It went into emergency measures and 3 sets of heads and board of governors within a year.

My DS would not have coped there at all. DD would have been fine probably but am not sending them to different schools.

I fact we may well do the opposite and keep them at prep (assuming labour doesn't get in ) and send them to the very good state secondary.

It's not all bloody black and white you know.

"Choices always push up quality."

For those most able to exercise choice it does.

For those least able to exercise choice it is very damaging.

After all, would any child choose to attend a failing school? Or a school which has a disproportionate number of difficult kids?

Choice is an illusion for many. The majority of children aren't church goers, or especially clever, or wealthy enough to afford private schools. Realistically what choice do they have?

Also, Finland does provide the option of choice. Their system allows the equivalent of our 'free schools', which are state-funded at the same level as the standard state schools, but follow a particular ethos and approach: primarily Montessori and Steiner.

"My DS would not have coped there at all. "

Did you spend any time at the school before coming to that conclusion?

I have a child with ASD who I worried wouldn't cope at his big inner London primary. Of course you work out that in any school there will be sensitive children and those with special needs, and most cope ok. Is your son at a special school?

Kesstrell, are Finnish children organised into schools along class, gender, income, religion and ethnic lines as they usually are in the U.K?

I am actually really shocked that private school fees don't currently have VAT added.

We pay VAT on virtually everything we purchase. Why should school fees be any different?

Choice pushes up quality for everyone.
If no one has a choice, then there is no effort needed to improve what you are offering.

After all, you can't choose to go elsewhere!

Choice does not push up quality for all if some of the choices are only available to a vanishingly small % of the cohort.

I just tried to find but failed an article I read at the weekend by a US teacher who moved to Finland (his wife if Finnish) and has just written a book about Finnish schools where chidlren start aged about 6 ot 7.It was very interesting. He said teachers work short hours and always take breaks. There is a 15 minute break every hour.

He most children are the same, not really any low income families, virtually no immigrants, not much poverty, no one struggling with a foreign language spoken at home which has quite an impact.

.I just found the same man writing on a blog about the same thing as I read in the newspaper or similar taughtbyfinland.com/appreciating-u-s-teachers/

Otherwise some chikdren who go to a new state school must cost quite in excess of private school fees?

Oh yes! Failed free schools have been a bit of a disaster in this respect: www.theguardian.com/education/2017/apr/26/mps-condemn-free-schools-policy-as-incoherent-and-wasteful

I think teachers need more support from parents in the state sector than I think they currently do. This would improve the standard of teaching all around and stop the need for people to choose to go private.

Thanks mini yes I did. And he was enrolled. We pulled after the third head and board of governors in less than a year.

No he's not at a special school - what difference does that make? I chose a school I thought would best suit my DCs needs at the time.

"Choice pushes up quality for everyone.
If no one has a choice, then there is no effort needed to improve what you are offering."

How?

If a child is a) not a church goer (so no access to Church schools), b) not rich or clever (no access to private sector through normal route or through a subsidised place c) not particularly academic (so no access to grammar schools), in what sense do they have choice?

Schools choose children, not the other way around.

And even using the argument that choice creates a market which encourages competition, the end result is winners and losers. Some schools will fill all their places and other schools will go to the wall. The schools which go to the wall are those whose students are invariably drawn from the least advantaged groups in society. In what sense is it tolerable to have a school system which is DESIGNED to create schools which will fail?

The element of choice in our school system is largely illusory, and where it does operate it increases inequality of provision, which is immoral.

"I remember there was a new court case about schools which came out just as the book went to press and I had to change a load more bits of it at proof stage."

I couldn't think of a new law, and your response to me suggests that you didn't mean one either, but were referring to various actions by the Charity Commision in the early 2000s.

And I suspect that what you mean here is the tribunal which found inter alia that the provision of bursaries could not be considered either necessary or sufficient in considering if a school was fulfilling its charitable function.

"We pay VAT on virtually everything we purchase. Why should school fees be any different?"

Because the EU says so.

"To aid attainment, we will introduce free school meals for all primary school children, paid for by removing the VAT exemption on private
school fees."

No mention of how that interfaces with Brexit. It can easily be changed for the successor regime, but that won't come in to effect for about 2 years. VAT continues until we leave. Will VAT successor really be ready by March 19, or will there be an enabling measure allowing 'VAT' to continue as it is after that point, with changes coming later as new systems bed in. There's enough to get done with Brexit anyhow, and it's likely that anything that can be left until a bit later will be left. Better a delay than bad changes.

It does however attest to his commitment to Brexit. Even though he can't introduce it straight away, he couldn't introduce it at all without leaving.

"No he's not at a special school - what difference does that make?"

I'm wondering if your child has special needs which would make it difficult for him to cope in mainstream school. You did imply that he would struggle in an environment which the vast majority of well-supported children (particularly those with a spare 13K a year sloshing around to spend on tutoring and 'value adding' activities) are ok in.

I'm sorry but some of you need to live in the real world. Oh no, I can't afford my specialist dance school. Meanwhile, there are kids being fed from food banks.

Get a grip and think of the greater good.

When referring to special schools, posters don't mean dance schools.

They mean those which deal with serious and complex additional needs. Now, there's a heck of a lot of disablism on MN, but I didn't expect to find it in a thread where the need for those schools (currently using the same VAT exemption of fees) has been mentioned multiple times. And dance schools not at all.

I'm sorry but some of you need to live in the real world. Oh no, I can't afford my specialist dance school. Meanwhile, there are kids being fed from food banks. Get a grip and think of the greater good.

But this policy doesn't have anything to do with food banks. It is proposed so as to allow those 7-11 year olds who don't currently qualify for free school meals to get them. I don't think that's a major funding priority and it has some pretty doubtful research behind it as mentioned above. Or is your argument that no one can object to anything unless they are destitute as there are always people worse off than them?

Suddenly increasing the cost of private education by 20% would price a lot of people out and that is going to have a detrimental impact on those children. Being uprooted from your school is never pleasant and can be really disruptive for children who are happy and settled. The fact that the parents chose to pay probably means that people won't have any sympathy for them but it doesn't lessen the impact on the children themselves. It would also put an additional cost on the state system which is already creaking and the VAT wouldn't offset that additional cost as it is being spent on school dinners.

So it doesn't seem the greatest policy in the world to me, but as others have said it can't be put into effect till we leave anyway, even if Labour get in, which looks unlikely.

Idealogically, I could support VAT on school fees. They are after all a luxury item.

However, economically I agree with you OP that it probably wouldn't achieve anything. Money doesn't magically appear from nowhere. If people are paying VAT on school fees, it just means they have less money to spend on other goods (and therefore less VAT paid elsewhere).

Some individuals won't have a choice.

But that's not the point, is it? The existence of different schools means, not that everyone gets a full menu of choices, but by looking at what they do and how they do it, the system can be levelled up (as far as possible). For example, what is it about RC schools that when they are demographically matched to other schools (so comparing like for like in terms of proxy markers for deprivation and other barriers to accessing the curriculum) that means they have lower rates of exclusions?

If they are made uniform, there is no possibility of learning from the best. Or showing that a government initiative is (unexpectedly one hopes) causing lower performance against those which have the freedom to do it differently.

troll there were people up thread who were talking about soecialist dance schools, so please read the thread before getting your knickers in a twist and accusing me of disablism.