Should Private School fee payers get a tax rebate

[Pamplemousecat]

Just following on from another thread. If a child isn’t in the state system should the parents still have to pay the proportion of tax that is taken for education?

“In essence a lot of parents are forced to opt for private school”

Oh, what bollocks!

I would actually charge VAT on private school fees.

I don't think anyone could really argue it is essential spending and should be VAT exempt, can they?

And if you want charitable status, then maybe all sports resources have to be made available to the entire community, at zero or state-controlled costs, at specified periods.

I remember as a kid, when I first heard about private school I thought it would be fair if the government paid an amount equal to what state school would cost and then parents top up the rest. I don't think that anymore.

I do think private healthcare is a piss take though. If your employer is willing to pay for your healthcare and take patients away from the NHS, why should you get taxed on that? You are saving the Government money.

19% of secondary schools are below average.
13% of secondary schools are well below average.
Most parents want to send their children to good schools, if 32 % of secondary schools are failing to achieve this inevitably parents are forced to select private schools or grammar schools.

so precisely that by creaming off many of the better teacher staff

So all the teachers at private schools are excellent and state schools are stuffed with a very large number of crap ones? Rubbish.

For my kids to go to state school I would expect a decent state school to be available. I’m my area the local schools are, to put it bluntly, shit.

And no, I’m not about to dump my kids in a crap school, then help the school mask bad teaching by hiring outside tutors to fill all the gaps for my kids. Which is what I’d have to do.

I’m also not about to start believing that I can magically change the operation of those same local academies via ‘parent pressure’ since with no other option for my kids I’d be a captive bloody audience and they’re unaccountable anyway.

And I’m certainly not about to leave my kids to flounder and fail because they’re at a crap school.

Whether the government should give me my money back...well, that depends on whether they want to add VAT to my bills. My tax as given to schools is already a charitable donation so far as I’m concerned.

Bertrand we will have to go private or move, particularly if we go for a single sex school. Loads of people my way are moving for secondary. The only school we are guaranteed to get into is co-ed and absolutely nobody in our borough, across social and racial divides, wants their DC to go there (fewer than 50 children in the entire borough had it as their first choice school).

I know you don't want to believe this, or that parents should send their children to whatever school regardless, but for many it's a fact. And our DC are not some kind of social experiment.

Uk domestic health insurance plans are pretty much all designed as “top ups” to the NHS. In other countries with insurance based systems they look very different (surprisingly so). So private care in the uk is very much parasitic on state provision.
I don’t think that’s true to the same extent in education. You’re either in or out of state provision. Personally I’m out, and relieved to be so, for many different reasons,

And our DC are not some kind of social experiment

Quite. It’s very prevalent across MN to suggest that people are totally unreasonable for using private education when they’re in the privileged position of their children being in the school they wanted.

Choice when it comes to school places is a complete myth. You can express a preference, but you have no real choice.

People aren't paying tax just to educate their own children - they're paying tax so that everyone's children can be educated. So the hairdresser can read the chemical hazard warnings on the dye; so the waiter can make change from their apron; so the girl from the sink estate can be recognised as a talented engineer of the future; so anyone and everyone can access teachings on philosophy and economics that will make it clear what a narrow minded and stupid question this is.

Well said. I loved that last sentence. In one state, we all chip bits into a communal pot which pays for all sorts of services. If we start refusing this one or that one or the other, we don't have a communal pot at all anymore. Everyone will be back to their own financial resources only, which are in Britain, as we all know, extraordinarily skewed. The whole concept of a single state identity will be destroyed and we would all become nothing more than a large group of individuals fighting for survival. And a fight it will be, in a country as unequal and overpopulated as this one. As for the excuse of 'taking away rich peoples' tax breaks will overburden the state facilities', I think we'll manage once everyone starts chipping in an appropriate amount. It would be worth being slightly overburdened while we re-establish fairness anyway.

@JacquesHammer

DD’s were less than £6k a year.
DD did 9 years there

So was this in the 1990s?

So was this in the 1990s?

No. She left in 2018.

caroloro

The point that I was making about scrimping and saving to send a child/children to private school was that you are already in a privileged position to be able to do this.

Scrimping and saving implies that money is tight, if you have enough for private school fees money is not tight

I have chosen to spend money on education where my peers have made other choices and had “more” than me in material terms. I am sadly not at that income level where school fees are a matter of indifference. I do not consider myself to be scrimping. Im making choices about what I spend surplus cash on and I’m very happy with that.

All I ask is that the choice not be taken from me on the unproven thesis that will somehow make things better for people who are, for reasons I cannot wholly understand, deemed more deserving than me, because less well off.
Or to put it more simply, fuck the fuck off and let me get on with it. There are worse problems in the world than people who try to do the best for their kids.

They're not more deserving. They are equally deserving, and naturally disadvantaged. There are many who could do better by their kids and can't be arsed, yes. There are many more who could do better by their kids if this country had not been systematically removing all the resources with which to do so for years.

Each one of us is responsible for the fact that we, as a country, need to have foodbanks! That's down to each one of us, including you

Not sure how. Only those who voted Tory (and Libdem in 2010, which I did) are responsible for austerity and foodbanks.

I love these types of questions. Love a good debate

The OP wasn’t suggesting it should be so. Just asking a question. The op may even not have children

obviously not

For those enjoying the idea of private schools losing charitable status you do realise that the state system will be inundated with former private pupils then unable to afford the fees

Even if every single privately educated child in the UK began attending state school, classes would gain 2 children each on average.

“For those enjoying the idea of private schools losing charitable status”

I’m not enjoying it exactly. It’s just the right thing to happen.

Educating people who can’t afford private education, especially the most poor, has wider benefits for society as a whole including reduced crime / higher tax contributions as a society etc. So no it shouldn’t be discounted

Or perhaps enforced closure of private schools that way we can all be the same. It would be fairer but I’m not sure it would work.

Why wouldn't it work?

What @grasspigeon said sums it up perfectly.

We all benefit from an educated workforce, whether directly or indirectly. So we should all contribute to it.

No - Private education is personal choice. We all pay taxes which fund schools - you don't get to pick & choose which bit you pay/don't pay

The original Q shows just how daft people are - that they don't realise that the point of education being funded through taxes is so it is accessible and free at point of access to all - that it's not a method of each paying for what we have personally consumed.

It's such a poorly thought through idea, because the natural conclusion is only those with children in state schools should pay and everyone should pay exactly what it costs to educate their own children.....seeming to be oblivious that very many couldn't afford to do this.

If you are fortunate to have the choice to fund private health or education for yourself, you pay your share of taxes towards the provision for everyone and accept that your good fortune to access an alternative has to be paid for on top. You accept that not everyone has this good fortune and if you want to feel some kind of justification for what is essentially an unfair system, you can feel pleased that you're not accessing and using up the state provision, leaving a bit more for others.......but certainly not to feel you deserve a refund of your taxes.

And regarding the impact of removing the special tax status of independent schools - yes, it will mean some close down and some parents can no longer afford the fees. There will be extra children in the state system, drawing on those limited resources.....but in all liklihood (and I do t have figures to support this) the government might save more through not giving tax breaks, than it costs to add those extra children. It would cause some disruption and issues in the shorter term in particular, but it would be workable. Why it doesn't happen though and is unlikely to, is because parties fear it would be politically damaging because it would be unpopular with influential chunks of the population.

Independnet schools will never welcome a removal of their special tax status ..... Of course not, but if it ever happens, it can hardly be seen as a huge surprise or impossible to justify can it?? Those schools might keep banging on about the public benefit they offer if bursaries and access to their facilities for the community, but essentially they are receiving huge subsidies which benefit the already well off and wealth is being distributed towards them. So if it ends, there won't be a good case for complaint and they won't get much sympathy from everyone else who uses the state system.