To think only the super rich will be able to afford private schools?

[donniedarko89]

I live in a fairly affluent area, full of private schools. We are comfortable, not wealthy, and considered private for secondary eventually (and who knows, with the cost of living crisis), while enriching the state primary's offer with lots of extra clubs and activities. Noticing that more and more families are doing the same, even high-earners who would in the past have gone private by default. Are private schools going to become only for the ultra rich, especially if the fees spike up with a Labour government?

I would have no use

Whoops, sorry. I meant to type....if state education was at least adequate for ALL, not just those who are able to cope pastorally and academically in the current set up , then there would be an argument for saying we should do more to inhibit the inequality private education brings. These threads always assume that everyone chooses private for the status, to not rub shoulders with "oiks" to get their kid ahead of everyone else's. There are many of us who have screwed our finances to afford it because the state provision simply is not there to meet the needs of our children and vat on fees will not change that.

There's a few families around us who send their kids to private school. Think their grandparents pay tbh. The money has already been put aside. The actual families aren't rich.

I agree with you and we are in this same position too - but I also agree that having the resources to go private in these circumstances is still a position of privilege, despite it not feeling like a luxury.

We aren't wealthy, our household wealth puts us about in the 4th "quintile" ie in the 60-80% block if the population was divided into 5 blocks in order of wealth. Paying out private fees is manageable because we live a lifestyle as if we were in the 2nd quintile (ie the 20%-40% block.

But kids who are just as needy as our DC and are just as failed by the inadequate state system but whose families were already in the first, second or third quintile to start off with do not have that option. They must stay in the inadequate and failing state provision or (more likely) drop out of education altogether.

So despite our sacrifices of the comfortable lifestyle we could have been having feeling like a necessity, I do see that it's really a privilege.

I am not totally opposed to VAT being added but I would hope for some nuance in how it's applied. eg perhaps only apply VAT to the proportion of the fees that are in excess of the average per-head funding that goes to state school pupils, and perhaps have a system where individual schools can apply for a status which allows them to charge only 5% vat rather than 20%. To qualify, they would need to be audited to demonstrate they are genuinely non-profit-making, with no excessive salaries and no excessive spending on luxury provisions like golf courses and other high-end sporting facilities, and a minimum proportion of the full-fees money going into significant bursaries that are only accessible by those in the lowest 2 quintiles of wealth, just proving a decent and adequately funded education at cost-price. Then the top end of the luxury market can still be taxed at full rate while the more modest end can be somewhat shielded, and schools have an incentive to proudly choose and advertise that they are doing their best to be affordable, and are actively striving not to be a bastion of elite privilege.

Maybe it’s not a bad thing and if kids who in the past would have gone to privates now have to attend state maybe it will help drive standards up across the board? Though guess there is the argument it will just further burden the state sector?

Only something like around 7 per cent of children are private anyway! So 93 %are state or grammar school. Private education is for wealthy people. Some parents will make sacrifices for sure.but these will be not having new cars or holidays,not going without food or heating!

I don't hate private schools, but honestly in the grand scheme of things my concern is more for people struggling to feed, clothe and house their children than those struggling to send them to a posh school. Yes, there are private special schools, but given the state pay for that provision and you only get that if your child is assessed as needing it I consider them to be different. I think blanket tax breaks for private education should be scrapped and replaced with a system like the tax free child care system up with a max rebate set as equivalent to what you get for a regular state school education. I do think it should be managed via that awful, clunky HMRC website just like tax free child care. If it good enough for me, it is good enough for thee. I suspect this wouldn't affect the no frills prep schools, but might possibly affect the high end schools like Eton. However those ones have massive endowments that they can dip into. Oh and these education 'vouchers' can only be spent at Ofsted approved establishments and only available if at least one parent is tax domiciled in the UK.

What is with all the private school the threads?!

Most people don’t give a stuff about whether wealthy people either have to pay more for private school or may have to stop using them.

93% of kids go to state schools -
and we all turn out okay. Some of us even get great educations, have great jobs, go to university, play music, play sport,
Make important lifelong friendships… just like the rich kids.

And despite all the claims that nurses kids and bus drivers kids are going to private schools on scholarships ( they're not), or it’s the ONLY choice in certain areas ( it’s not) or the state sector will be over run ( it won’t) or state schools are awful ( they’re not)

So please please - give it a rest about the ‘rising costs’ of private schools. And yes they should have their FAKE charity stays removed too.
Most people don’t care. Not when they’re worried about the cost of living, fuel costs, whether their kids will ever be able to afford their own homes one day.

Keeps the riff raff out.

I don't know about Germany and France, but in the Netherlands faith-based schools are classified as private schools. They're in no way comparable to British private schools though (not least because they are free to attend). They're just like Church of England schools. Private schools of the type you get in the UK don't really exist in the Netherlands, even the royals mostly send their kids to state schools.

I think there are many factors. My highest income friends don't send their dc to private schools - they travel, renovate and own more than one house. But several middle income friends, with less than 1/2 the income of my wealthier friends, do. A few reasons - most of them only have 1 dc and have private schools in their areas that are either not more than what they were paying in child care for their dc when they were 1/2 and those smaller schools provide many extras they'd pay for anyway in community, for example swim lessons, wrap around care etc. Or, they were able to get 50% bursaries making the smaller private school only marginally more than wrap around care in a state school. Some of these friends also have access to free childcare in the holidays with grandparents, so they aren't trying to afford that, their money goes on education.

While there are many ultra wealthy at the top schools, I think there's also many middle income parents at smaller private schools who sacrifice hugely to make it possible for their children to have that education. My one friend who receives the 50% bursary for her daughter is a band 7 NHS worker (tho was band 6 when she started sending dd to private school) and never holidays, lives very minimally with regards to consumerism, lives in a sweet small 2 bed house and runs a very small car. Most of her colleagues have a partner's income on top of their band 7 salary and say they can't afford private education and assume she has lots of money. In truth they spend in very different areas - date night, weekends away, holidays abroad, bigger and newer cars.

Having said all that, the cost of living crisis is real and there's no doubt things are getting more and more expensive. That's bound to impact families, especially those with more than one child.

They really aren't only used by the ultra wealthy

All I hope for is that the standards for state school increase, less children face living in substandard housing (damp/mould) or parents being forced to spend too high a % of income on property that is too small for the family. We need less child poverty so children and parents can be able to eat well balanced meals not forced to go without or relying on food banks. And for the top universities to take more children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

my oldest got into Newcastle uni doing a popular course even tho came from state schools in deprived areas and I was a single mum and having to work as much as could to support us all. He’s got a part time job and highest level of student loan but is surrounded by students from private school background whose parents throwing money at them meaning they can buy any book, have lasted devices which they can study from and pay for best student accommodation. It really fustrates me however I do feel he’s lucky and as he’s hardworking he can take the opportunity to better himself and be a role model for his sisters to achieve too.

@Wakeywake
If parents work in education / civil derby or most medical roles then no one has a pay rise for years

@Poopoolittlekitten you say "93% go to state and we all turn out ok". No, we don't. Plenty of my peers didn't and if you spend 5 minutes on some of the Facebook support groups for kids with SeN, EBSA etc you'll see what you've said is absolutely not true. There is still an absolute unwillingness to accept that it's not actually all about outcomes but about the actual experience at school and that state is not a perfectly acceptable alternative that people are bring snobby about.

VAT simply does not work like that.

It makes you really fucking rich though 😂.
I know not one person who has a spare £12k every year.

1 hour a week? Don't make me laugh. I know people who tutor their dc every day. 2 hours a night. Private day school tends to finish later and require some kind of commute so going to a local school, home by 4, tutor 4:30-6:30. Very common.

@CuriousMoo People will always spend to give their dc as much as possible. If not private schools then private tutors. You can't legislate against advantage

No, you really can. You just wouldn't like that.
How? How would you criminalise tutoring? How would you criminalise living in a wealthy area or enrichment holidays. It is impossible to legislate against advantage. Instead of barbed insults perhaps you could describe this legislation you speak of.

VAT can be made to work however they wsnt it to. They are going to have to do some definitions anyway to make it clear what is being targeted as currently anything that is classified as "education" is vat-free and there's a vast array of things people pay for which are education and which aren't supposed to be targeted. Assuming that they don't want to deem all education of any sort as a "luxury" even if it's only a couple of hours a week, there will need to be some wording to describe the difference. If that's going to be needed anyway then there's no reason there shouldn't be 3 tiers rather than 2.

p.s. I saw someone say on another thread - they are currently able to put VAT on biscuits differentially on the basis of precisely how much chocolate is on them. They can cope with creating a system that similarly differentiates between "luxury" and "non-luxury" education.

Yes that’s right and I think it’s the same in Germany from speaking to German SIL. France has more private schools but I believe they are mostly catholic and and much cheaper.

My main point is that these countries fund their state education properly (not perfect before people come at me with links).

I genuinely don’t understand why the Conservatives (even in their current mess) underfund state education. These kids are the future tax payers, surely an educated population is a very good thing for the UK.

@pfftt communism is the legislation she is talking about. Basically creating an equal state by denying basic liberties. So don’t pussy foot around @CuriousMoo , just come out with it.

Bang on.

They are already for the ultra wealthy in most peoples eyes. A tiny tiny fraction of the population can afford them.

There are privately run schools which are state funded (equal funding to the state run schools). From what I’ve read, 70% of schools are private schools which are partly state funded. Parents are often asked to make contributions. Fully private schools also exist though.

https://eurydice.eacea.ec.europa.eu/national-education-systems/netherlands/organisation-private-education#:~:text=Privately%20run%20schools%20are%20according,parties%2C%20including%20pupils%20or%20students.

The Netherlands has much more choice in their system - parents choose where they want to send their child. The Netherlands also splits children at the age of around 12 into different types of school, so the more academic children go to different schools. It’s a much more tailored approach which, arguably, if the UK had would mean that a lot of parents wouldn’t feel the need to use the private sector.

This sounds like a great system to me and many UK private school parents would probably be perfectly happy with that tailored system which tailors the education for different needs and abilities. I wonder how many UK parents would actually be happy with a system which requests parental contributions and splits children based on ability though.