Do you think labour will actually implement 20% vat on school fees?

[labpit]

We have two in Year 7 and year 10 and I am not sure what we will do if this happens. It is a certainty do you think?

Because the fact we still have a royal family completely underpins the mindset that inequality is acceptable.
What on earth would be the point of abolishing private schools whilst we are still expected to honour people who didn't earn their privilege but were born into it.

MyopicBunny yes that’s true, but Labour wanted to abolish private schools but then backtracked on that and I wondered why they backtracked.

I am not sure I like this theme that if you pay for education it means you care more about it. Plenty care but can't afford private fees. Education is important to many parents with kids in state schools.

OP sounds like you can't really afford private school anyway.

You do realise that private schools also have unruly kids right? They just grow up snorting coke instead of drinking white lightning!

But most parents will pay the extra and keep their kids in. Honestly, it’s a very very tiny proportion that couldn’t find the money - one less holiday a year, a one step down model of car, cancel the tennis club membership, fewer meals out, etc. we are talking about finding an extra couple of thousand a year. Just not having that weekend shopping trip to New York pays for that immediately.

I am 100% certain that most families will be able to find the extra money easily or with a small sacrifice.

I know loads of parents with kids in private Ed. A couple would have to think carefully about some lifestyle choices. Most could easily find the saving or wouldn’t even notice it.

@JassyRadlett i was basing that on the government website which says that secondary school populations will peak 2024/25. Just when this policy would come into effect. Massively impacting those entering state school that year if more numbers come in that would otherwise have gone private.
obviously if numbers then fall in later years, it would just be that year so badly affected. Pretty rotten for that year though.

For a start many people get help with nursery fees! Plus, it's a necessity whe a child is under school age if u need to return to work, private school is not a necessity.

Oh bore off! I know 2 scientists who went to state schools!

And surely if it’s a case of not upgrading the car etc - the state loses the VAT on that spend which is substituted by the VAT on school fees. There won’t be any more tax paid overall. So how will schools get more of the same sized pot?

"Those mid-high income families barely scraping by to put their kids into private will pull them out and spend the money on buying houses near the best state schools/grammar schools making it impossible for those on a lower income to afford to live within catchment."

What percentage of middle class families with children at fee paying schools will no longer be able to send them there because they won't be able to find an extra £7 a day to cover the cost of VAT. (working on the assumption that private schools won't be able to cut costs to absorb VAT - obviously state schools can cut costs, just not private schools with twice as many staff per child). Show us your working out - link us to the evidence you've seen on the incomes of people with children at fee paying schools.

"State schools will become oversubscribed when families pull their kids from private and the catchment areas made smaller, so only those who can afford to live very close to the good schools will be able to get in."

My children's school uses fair banding and lottery selection to address this issue, and this is one way of beginning to address the issue of social selection in state schools. This means that despite it being in a road where there's not a single property is worth less than a million quid, it still provides place for many kids from local council estates. It's not beyond the scope of the government to address selection by postcode and designing admissions policies.

"This trickle down effect will continue. It will take years, but the class & educational divide will become even bigger."

Nope - because even socially selective state schools still only have 7K per child per year. Unlike fee paying schools which are charging 15K per child per year. The biggest inequality is created by the utterly enormous differences in resources between state and private schools.

The best thing that could happen to state schools is for private schools to disappear overnight. That's never going to happen but if anything would motivate people in positions of power and influence in government and the media to improve our state schools is if their own children had to attend them, unlike at present where almost none of them do.

The utter desperation of people faced with the prospect of their children losing their ENORMOUS educational privilege and having to compete on equal educational terms with the other 93% of children in the UK....

@Trappedandunhappy how could you possibly know this about other people’s finances 😂

You really don’t have a clue.

Actually, quite a lot of people in power and the media have their kids in state schools. But they are usually the very best state schools.

You are using the phrase ‘penalise’. It’s not penalising. It’s making it more fair. We have an ancient system, set up to maintain power and wealth for those who already have it. It is a luxury and they are businesses not charities. VAT is easier to rectify than trying to change charity status.

You and I are privileged enough that we have been able to make use of private education. It might be a struggle but we are still very privileged to be in that position. The intention, I believe, isn’t as a penalty, but as something to start to make things fairer. why wouldn’t you want a more fair society?

Well, no. The 24/25 school year will start before the best guess date of an election. Then you need to legislate - probably secondary but it will still take parliamentary time. So 25/26 at the earliest.

And yep, that's the peak year. Whatever outturn you get isn't likely to be immediate and all at a single moment - like some on this thread have said, they'd get through until they're at a natural transfer point. And as you point out, the next school year is the peak for secondary schools - primaries are already declining and have been doing so since 2019.

If Labour are sensible they'll keep the DfE overall budget settlement static in real terms and year on year increase the per pupil funding. Unless the private sector does indeed collapse.

But yes, it will be interesting to see whether the 24/25 relative state and private intake changes significantly with this on the cards. Like I said, we took it into account for our 23/24 secondary starter (alongside the hit we took from Trussonomics.) Instead we give a decent chunk of what we would have spent on private on donations to our comp; we're not alone in that.

Why is everyone so sure it's this 15-20% that would tip the balance and mean huge swathes of families would pull their DC out and divert to state provision?

Every single year fees go up by at least 5% and that's a compound interest, so in each DC time in school what you pay at the end is a lot more than it was at the start.

What's the modelling that says it's this increase that will be definitive? Is there some universal income band among few paying parents or something?

We know quite a lot of people paying for education. None of them would have to move their DC if this happened. They all send multiple kids to private school, AND go skiing annually AND have holidays to places like Dubai, AND live in large properties. Several have rental portfolios and 2 families have sahms. They all have newish cars, and all the DC do expensive extra curricular activities outside of school. They might be annoyed if they had to pay more but that would be as bad as it got.

Sure, for some people it would be a line in the sand but no one is worried about what percentage of people could afford it if it were 15-20% cheaper right now are they? That isn't the cohort that is overwhelming the state schools for some reason?

It's just facts isn't it. If it's more expensive, some more people are priced out. But I'm not sure that there's any modelling that pivots around this exact 15-20% (and how could there be because some schools charge twice as much as others!)

I have many friends who use private Ed. We did for a number of years and got to know many of the parents. I saw the cars in the car park. Visited the houses. Got offered time in the holiday homes. Heard about all the holidays and weekend trips. Heard about the beauty treatments and spa weekends. Went out for nights where bottles of champagne were ordered without even a thought. Saw the diamond encrusted watches. Heard about choices about whether or not to buy a third home, about the contacts being made and the doors that opened (experienced that myself) and I work with kids and parents from all walks of life.

There were cars on the school run that literally cost more than my (lovely) house. There were watches that cost more than my car.

Those without the massive wealth (the professionals with high incomes but may be less wealth) could still downsize their house or downgrade their car. Or ask family for help.

Exactly.

I had forgotten that many of the mums didn’t work. A little part time job would pay the extra if they were really desperate!

The most successful state schools in the country still only get 7K per year per child, and have half number of teachers per child as your average private school. The top comprehensive in the UK has 36% of children on free school meals. The figure for private schools is too low to be measured and only 1% of all bursaries awarded are full bursaries.

And BTW - I think you're probably very, very wrong about people in positions of power in the media using state schools. Including those people who see themselves as being on the left of the political spectrum.

It's kind of ridiculous to suggest that there's any sort of social parity between even the 'best' (whatever that means) state schools and private schools.

"Why is everyone so sure it's this 15-20% that would tip the balance and mean huge swathes of families would pull their DC out and divert to state provision?"

F*ck knows. There's something incredibly unedifying about seeing parents with kids at private schools refusing to consider that private schools could cut costs in the way that state schools have had to do. Also failing to acknowlege that swingeing increases in fees between 2010 and 2020 had zero impact on the number of pupils at fee paying schools.

And BTW - I think you're probably very, very wrong about people in positions of power in the media using state schools. Including those people who see themselves as being on the left of the political spectrum.

I’d like to know which schools high level media people send/sent their children to.
There was an article sometime ago pointing out how many Guardian and BBC employees went to private school but that was their parents’ choice, so it would be interesting to know what they opted for.
Lynn Barbour and Polly Toynbee sent their children - for some of the education, at least - to fee-paying schools which was pretty hypocritical.

The research has been done that even if lots of kids flood the state sector the country will still make money out of putting VAT on school fees.

when a company registers for VAT it can reclaim vat paid on services over the past 3 years and goods bought and still in use bought over the past year. This is as the thinking is that these expenses were made in the course of a business that makes vatable supplies. It does not follow that if vat is added to school fees all VAT on past spend can be recovered though. Some of that spend was incurred in the making of exempt supplies and therefore cannot be recovered in full,

I think vat should be added as it is a luxury, though I feel for the substantial number of kids whose parents scrimp and save for them to go to private school purely because the state school is inadequate.

The indiscipline and large classes can make state school overwhelming for kids with ASD who are perfectly able to cope in a mainstream private school which is able to have stricter discipline and smaller classes. Will these kids be offered an expensive specialise ASD education when the parents can no longer afford private? Letting the parents pay a VAT-free private fee would be much cheaper for the state.

And so so many school bullies have ‘a challenging home life’ and therefore are allowed to run wild, being endlessly physically violent in state schools.

"Lynn Barbour and Polly Toynbee sent their children - for some of the education, at least - to fee-paying schools which was pretty hypocritical." Yup, and most luvvie actors, and of course Diane Abbott.

Nothing more depressing than the hypocrisy of some on the left when it comes to this issue. It's bloody gross.

If you think that state school per-pupil funding will increase by a penny as a result of that, you are very mistaken

"Will these kids be offered an expensive specialise ASD education when the parents can no longer afford private?"

We should support a tax policy which addresses the issue of inadequate SEN provision in state schools, by facilitating middle class parents to afford a means of side stepping it, and therefore assist the government in ignoring the problem?

"If you think that state school per-pupil funding will increase by a penny as a result of that, you are very mistaken"

So you think fee paying schools will find a way of dodging this tax?