To not sign friends petition about school fees ?

[Whereforartthoudave]

Or more to the point tell her why I’m not?

friend grp - 3 families out of 9 send their kids to private school. One dad has decided to start a petition re Private schools losing their charity status - as in it’s not fair if they do. His DW has sent it round this morning.

Stupidly rather than just ignore it - when she said will you sign, I said, sorry no - Private schools are businesses not charities so I agree with the proposed change.

Now she wants to know WHY exactly.

YANBU - ignore it and don’t get into a bun fight over private versus state school. I’m not judging their choices but I don’t think the schools should have tax breaks.

YABU - tell her why. The why being I don’t agree with private schools at all, but her money her choice. And think it’s laughable that they have charity status when the majority ( and this is backed up by actual stats) do virtually nothing to earn it.

‘But i suppose the savvy schools will make their in-house cleaners, groundsmen etc redundant and then use VAT charging external companies for those services - they they wouldn't have to pay for pensions, holidays etc etc.’

Many already outsource, but yes of course. Or do they actually need an Olympic size swimming pool and the cost of running it? Or the horses? One school near us has a zoo. I’d bet quite a lot of money on them being able to give kids a decent standard of education even if they decided not to run a private zoo…

@Whereforartthoudave i asked that question to @BlurredEdges who said that I shouldn’t then be using state education. that’s apparently unfair for me to do so.

not expecting anyone to care if i can’t afford private education any more. But I’m not expecting to be blamed as for using state education when I can no longer afford private

No. Everyone getting invested in the same schools isn’t going to happen. And if it did, you would simply see different treatment for politician and media kids.

No charity should have tax breaks.

What I’d like to know is, what’s going to happen when these children come out of private schools, where will they go. State schools are fit to burst and with all these new houses going up everywhere, where will everyone fit, they’re certainly not building the infrastructure for all these children, you don’t see new schools popping up everywhere!
I say keep private schools as they are, if you want to pay for them then so be it!

Thanks for putting a % figure on the discrimination.

It’s over regulated.

I’d love to see the position where people set up their own local private schools.

In the slums of India, such school outperform State. James Tooley “The Beautiful Tree”.

Deregulate and there would be plenty of demand here too.

B

LoveCherryTree

Privately educated kids would easily get absorbed into our city schools
let alone the surrounding area. You wouldn’t even notice. We have nearly 40 large state schools and 3 private.

The changes would be long overdue.

Really interesting to read the comments on this thread. As a privately educated parent of two children currently attending prep school, I really wonder how a potential 20% uplift in fees will pan out.

In the 80s and 90s, my self employed parents worked really hard to send all four of us to local independent day schools. It was just about manageable - but that was with a very ordinary home life! I shared a bedroom, wore handmedowns and we went camping!

Anecdotally, I know of many grandparents now paying school fees. I know many will really struggle if faced with higher fees.
It’s now only really possible on a City income ..

If I could be absolutely sure that any funds raised and would be ringfenced solely to improve the state education system; I’d agree that it would be a good thing. But I just can’t see that happening.

Unsure if there would be a great exodus though. Living here in Hampshire, I’m not
entirely confident in Hampshire County Council’s financial state! Certainly, friends with children in the state sector have 30 pupils in their class.
https://www.advertiserandtimes.co.uk/news/county-council-in-bankruptcy-warning-amid-plea-for-governmen-9285024/

Oh it is so great that schools in your city area would absorb the excess! 40 schools!

I am in a rural area. We have 1 indy and 3 state senior schools.

"Now she wants to know WHY exactly."

But she already KNOWS why, because you told her - "when she said will you sign, I said, sorry no - Private schools are businesses not charities so I agree with the proposed change."

So, she's just trying to guilt you into signing her self-serving petition. My answer would remain 'no'.

Now she wants to know WHY exactly

You've told her why, exactly.

If your friend had a private education, it didn't do much for her levels of reading comprehension.

How about

“Hi friend,

Sorry we can’t support your petition but we don’t believe in private schools and would find them too much of a stretch financially anyway (which is why we send our DC to state schools).

Look forward to catching up soon.

OP x”

you sound like someone who does not understand the facts. So probably best not to sign on that basis. Try reading this to get a better view: https://www.edsk.org/publications/vat-on-private-school-fees/

I didn’t use to be against private schools, I was educated at one myself, but my experience with them for my own children has changed my view completely. I initially thought that it was sour grapes on my part, none of the 3 local schools we applied to offered him a place. He is a bright kid but has AuDHD and so needs a bit of extra support. We thought the smaller scale of the private schools and smaller class sizes would suit him as they would be less overwhelming and staff would have more time for him - he doesn’t need and has never had 1-2-1.
So to be turned down by these schools, with them quoting stupid things such as “we think he’d struggle with having to move classrooms and with our busy campus) when the alternative is an 8-form entry mainstream state school that is several times bigger, just showed me that these are profit-driven business who absolutely don’t deserve charitable status.
My son is only 3.5 weeks into his new state secondary, but already he has met with the SEN team to tell them how they can help support him (he doesn’t have an EHCP but is on SEN register), been given intervention sessions for SaLT and been highlighted by the Head of IT as having special aptitude for computing and invited to coding sessions and differentiated work. I have been blown away by their support for him so far and this is an under-resourced state school who have been so welcoming to him. So I’d quite happily explain to anyone who’d listen why I don’t want to sign a petition for private schools to retain their charitable status and if it forces more kids into the state system then the government will have to put more money into the system which may generate better facilities for the existing schools, or some nice shiny new schools, all perfectly possible under Labour.

It has nothing to do with charitable status. It is because there is no VAT on education (tax still not allowed on education in the EU) This covers schools, universities, after school clubs, music lessons, tutors etc. Loads of private schools don’t have charitable status anyway.

My eldest son went to a private school and I am DEFINITELY not wealthy. His school had charity status. 87% of pupils were on some sort of bursary so it's not fair to say all parents who send their children to private school are wealthy. It's simply not true.

I actually disagree and think anything with educational benefit should be a charity and VAT exempt from private schools to nurseries and extra curricular sports training.

Now she wants to know WHY exactly

Turn it around. Tell her that you want to know why private schools should be registered charities in the first place.

There's nothing stopping a private school from operating a separate charitable fund specifically to provide bursaries and scholarships, but the school itself doesn't need to be a charity at all.

However if the school is a charity, it can't just stop being one. he charity has to be wound up in accordance with the Charity Commission standards. This is a very important safeguard - charitably owned assets cannot just be converted into private property (owned by a business or an individual)

So if Labour proposes a mechanism which allows schools to change status without having to follow the normal procedures for charities, then I think many would leap at it. That mechanism would of course have to avoid disruption to all other charities which have the Provision of Education as one of their legally defined aims.

And it would yield a few hundred per pupil per term (based on different handling of things such as VAT), which is likely to be easily absorbed.

VAT on fees (which is nothing to do with UK charitable status, but legacy of EU VAT rules which prevents taxation on fees for nurseries/pre-schools, schools and universities) would of course yield much more, depending on what rate they chose to set it at and would affect all institutions, not just the schools who are charities.

Exactly this. Not everyone is extremely wealthy, some people sacrifice to send their children to private schools so suddenly you may have loads more children fighting for underfunded schools which will have no teachers left because they are stressed out, overworked and underpaid.

That's good for you. We have one state school 11-16 and one private school 11-18. State sixth form provision is already out of town, a minimum of 1 hour 5 minutes on public transport and usually more. In the rush hour it takes my DC over 1 hr 45 minutes each way to reach college. The local state school would be unlikely to simply absorb another school. Not everyone lives in a city and the logistics in other parts of the country are not as straight forward as you suggest.

Luckily, there was a huge baby boom in 2009-11, followed by a dramatic drop in the birth rate.

State schools receive funding per pupil, and are all facing horrendous financial cliffs as the number of pupils shrinks year by year.

This would be very helpful indeed.

But not all would drop out. Some who couldn’t afford it, the same as everybody else who can’t afford it. Many private schools are actually quite small. Scaremongering that schools
will be over run when actually only 4% of children are even in private schools anyway is ridiculous.