To think abolishing private schools would cost the tax payer a lot of money?!

[bumblybum]

I am not against the idea at all but there's a few things I don't understand.

How do the dc currently in private schools fit into schools in areas where all the schools are already full?
Would private schools be open to foreign dc only seeing as a lot of students at the private schools are not from the U.K. and use private schools because their company often pays for their fees or would foreign dc also be forced into state schools?
What about boarding schools for forces parents? Are there enough state boarding schools?

Do grammar schools also need deconstructing as well in order for all education to be 'fair'? I live in a grammar area and you can forget buying a house in one of the school catchment areas unless you're already a lot wealthier. Is that not a similar problem? One school has 2% of pupils eligible for pupil premium for example.

Just wondering how it would work. Do state teachers want this to happen? Many move over to private schools so I suppose if many private schools shut down it would stop some choice in where to work.

Would state schools attempt to reach the standard of facilities that private schools have or would we accept that it is better that all British dc have the 'same' even if it's worse vs some having better facilities simply down to money.
Just Monday morning day dreaming about this really!

And what do you base that on?

Schools fees have risen 23% above inflation since 2010. I doubt operating costs have risen 23% over inflation so they are charging what they think their client base will pay.

They will have the choice to pass on costs or rejig classroom sizes, additional activities etc or do a mixture.

Same as any other business.

"The no VAT isn’t because private schools are charities. (That has other tax benefits). It’s because provision of certain services, including education, is VAT exempt. "

Not all private schools claim charitable status.

I am not getting why parents should be paying taxes and donating thousands of pounds to their local comprehensives?

😉

This. I’ve had kids in both independent and state sector. Each with their pros and cons- but the ind. schools really aren’t worthy of charitable status. That’s a piss take.

I dont think the majority would fail. Some will. They are predicting 15% of the sector going just from the economic down turn.

They will be preparing for this and working out ways to mitigate.
First they dont have to pass on the full 20% as they will reclaim some vat back, second they can absorb some of it themselves, and third it might not be 20%, they might start at 5% and then every budget increase it giving lots of time.

Mitigation could be growing international markets, merging schools, increasing class sizes, reducing admin costs and supply costs.

I am concerned that Labour’s calculations seem to see this simply as a fundraiser and that no pupils would be added to the state sector (costing the state money and adding to the burden of state schools) as a result.

Their calculation appears to be very crude.

If it actually became law then the private schools would become state schools. The buildings won't disappear, the grounds won't disappear.

Some of the huge funds the schools have would still be around.

When the government brought out 'Free Schools' some private school converted to free schools, I can see the rest doing the same.

You say “not even that” as if charging VAT on fees is nothing. That is actually much more significant than losing charitable status.

Personally I agree with the loss of charitable status, but VAT on school fees is another matter, elsewhere educational services are exempt from VAT, so I don’t see on what basis they could be introduced here.

No one is talking about abolishing them so you don't need to worry.

Re VAT on fees, Private schools are a business. If a business suddenly finds itself with less customers it will adjust its prices. I don't think this will need to happen.

The rich will still afford the fees.

Maybe some schools will eventually shut. It's not going to be an overnight thing.

People will do the best by their DC so may make more sacrifices to keep them in a school they have already started but maybe more people will choose state over private at primary and secondary entry points.

More funding will have to be allocated by the government and slowly the state system will improve in those areas.

Currently some hedge fund owned private schools can make a lot of money. I'm sure these will continue with more overseas students. A British education is one of our last globally recognised "products". That's going nowhere.

Taking charitable status away is v complicated. Maybe the charity commission could actually enforce their charitable status- take 50% kids from low income homes? Let the local community use their facilities all weekend? Give any surplus away to good causes?

Was v shocked when read a thread on here from someone earning maybe £100k who got a bursary awarded

How much experience do you have with private schools? Mine is limited. But the vast majority at my DCs school would remain if they lost charitable status. Many many people have significant family funds to draw on.

For what it’s worth, I don’t agree with the schools having charitable status, but I still send DC.

We would also be able to absorb an uplift if it came to it.

I find this policy quite odd as it seems like it would make the UK even more of an outlier in Europe than it already is. In many EU countries they don't seem to have this ludicrous gap between private and state schools as there is a much closer working relationship, with private schools often heavily subsidised by the state - and charging VAT on education is illegal. Private schools might specialise in particular areas (music, sport, vocational subjects) or offer a particular type of education (Montessori, English/other foreign language medium, Steiner, Catholic, etc etc). It seems like only in the UK do we have such completely insane fees, making private schools elitist and putting them totally out of reach for most families. Rather than going further in that direction, I would prefer to see a more collaborative system that better supports genuine parental choice. We already have a fairly well-integrated private/state system when it comes to nurseries (e.g. you can choose to use your state funding towards a private nursery place if it suits your family better). Other countries seem to have managed this quite well with their school system too.

The legal shennanigans to make it possible to "remove charitable status" would be enormously complex and will take years.

Firstly, you would have to re-write the charities act such that provision of education is no longer a "good thing", or make it so that education is only a good thing if it is free to all who want it. There are huge numbers of charities that aren't private schools who provide educational services and charge money for it, and either they would have to have their charitable status removed too or you would need to come up with a watertight definition that meant that this kind of educational service which is paid for on a not-for-profit basis is OK, but that kind of educational service which is paid for on a not-for-profit basis is not OK.

Secondly, charities can't currently just stop being charities and keep all their assets. If you are going to stop some organisations from being charities then either they have to be dismantled and all their assets given to other charities with broadly similar aims, or again further rewriting of Charity Law will be needed to make it OK for some charities to become non-charitable enterprises whilst still keeping all their assets. That will be insanely complicated to draft law for.

All the independent schools which are SEN specialist providers who charge Local Education Authorities £80,000 per year or more to provide specialist education to children with additional needs who can't be accommodated in mainstream schools have exactly the same legal status as other independent schools - are all the legislation changes going to take into account the differences and make those schools exempt? Or are all the LEAs going to increase their budgets for these services by 20%? And there's a continuous spectrum between those schools and the more "normal" private schools that are the real targets here, e.g. nonselective small and nurturing schools with a speciality in helping kids with dyslexia or neurodiversity, where some of the pupils are publicly funded and some are self-funding.

And when it comes to VAT - VAT is only paid once on any supply chain. If schools have to start charging VAT on their fees, they are then suddenly able to reclaim the VAT they spend on buying computer equipment, sports equipment etc, so there will be less extra tax taken than you might have expected.

The law on education is currently that parents are obliged to educate their children but are not obliged to use the free state provision to do so. They can home educate, and home education can include paying for educational services. If those educational services are provided on a not-for-profit basis then those service providers can be charities. Is that going to be targeted by this change too? How will the difference be defined?

No one wants to abolish them though (although there are countries where they are banned I believe).

Labour just want to get them paying tax - so abolishing charitable status. I agree with them personally.

If they were abolished, it might cost money short term to move all the kids into public sector schools but in the long term it would be fabulous for our society and would probably make us a more wealthy nation long term. Will never happen though.

Well I hope they never do abolish private schools because it would mean less state school places for regular people who might have been lucky to send their child to a fantastic state school.

You just know the people with money (who would have sent their child to private) would swoop in and move to a house closer to the state school and that’s the opportunity gone for the lower income child who would have got the school place.

I have experience of my children going to both state and private schools. The private school that two of my children attend very much pride themselves on their charitable status. They offer their facilities on a regular basis to local state schools. This is for Sports, plays and performances. They host many large inter-school events. They have plenty of bursaries, full charitable ones, music, art and sport. Lately they have been working with Disability Scotland and other groups to provide a large Sports platform and opportunities to groups that would not otherwise have it.

My child who goes to the local state school benefits occasionally from the regular educational events that three local private schools provide.

If a school can't cut its spending back 20% whilst remaining an attractive option that raises the possibility that it wasn't all that much better than the state schools to begin with.

Corbyn hasn’t led the Labour Party for some time, haven’t you noticed?

It's a great way to make private schools even more elitist than they are - kiss goodbye to all the bursaries and sharing of facilities they do at the moment. The house price bump around the decent state school in my area is hundreds of thousands of pounds. If those people move their kids into the state school from private, kids further out will end up shipped to a worse school in a different town altogether. But at least they'll get the warm feeling inside that "the rich got screwed", I'm sure it'll be a great comfort to them.

Usual disclaimer - my kids are at state school.

sevenbyseven · Today 08:37
It's not going to happen. But imagine how great it would be if all the money people pay in school fees went into the state sector. (Also not going to happen.)

Please explain how money from school fees would go into the state sector? Would you means test parents and if they can afford to pay fees then they would have to do so even though their children are at state school?

Whatever you did to private schools, that cash will never fully flow into state. If your as loaded as the private parents near me they will no issue paying for private tutors. So even if Labour wanted to abolish private schools those children would either be moved abroad or tutored. Or both. You can not dictate how wealthy people spend their cash

But at least they'll get the warm feeling inside that "the rich got screwed", I'm sure it'll be a great comfort to them.

Setyoufree It will indeed bring enormous pleasure.

Some schools have already had to make huge cut backs @Zodfa due to the cost of living rise. For me this says that they know parents won't pay too much more. My friend has boys at a boarding school who wrote to the parents saying heating would be off a long as possible due to the cost of living crisis. They've already put the fees up by 10% as well. There's only so much you can absorb I imagine? And absorbing costs in the long term means lowering the standards which I suppose defeats the purpose of attending one?

What about the monopoly the state would have on teachers options? Is that an issue?
Could the state effectiv pay them less if there's less market available to move?

Two private schools have shut in my old area in the last decade due to not enough people being able to afford them. They're already shutting in many places. The pressure does show in these areas already. Private schools in my current area share their facilities with state schools due to the charitable status. Will these nice facilities then end for the state educated dc and what will the be replaced with? (Swimming pools being my main thought here because they're expensive to run)

And yes, I know that people leaving the private sector already head for the 'best' state schools leading to fewer lower income pupils attending them anyway. So hardly diversifying the population of all schools anyway. And as pp have said. Parents will just tutor their dc way up. Again the wealth divide then hasn't been solved anyway. I'm not sure how you can solve it. Perhaps by allowing lower income families better access to private schools instead?

It was discussed at length here:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4688874-kier-starmer-he-hates-strivers?utm_source=thread&utm_medium=share

And continued here:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4690239-keir-starmer-loves-strivers-part-2

If that helps.