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?

Plenty

Schools may not have to raise fees.

The VAT position is separate from charitable status, which the Labour Party have already back tracked on.

The state comp my DC attend was Requires Improvement and undersubscribed when my DC started. It's recently been regraded a Good. The primary school they went to is mostly housed in old mobile classrooms and has many children from the nearby refugee hotel moving through. I don't think either fit the bill for Mumsnet middle class loveliness really, but we've been very happy with them and DC are doing really well.

Will you also abolish homeschooling, or hiring private tutors to teach kids?

Basically, everyone is obliged to send their children to the schools the state provides? So it can make sure everyone has the education it deems fit?

The problem with this is it's a huge imposition on parental rights. We don't live in a society where parents are obliged to turn their kids over to the state to be educated. And one of the things parents can choose to do is teach their kids, or hire someone else to do so.

“I think Rachel Reeves is pretty set on it. She has been saying it for years now. If she doesn't implement it once in power it will make her look flakey.”

Agreed, she went to a comp in Bromley somewhere that wasn’t great at the time. She had amazing parents and is naturally clever, just like her sister. She probably feels sorry for parents who feel they have to send their DCs to private school as she sees no need to do so. She probably thinks she is doing them a favour removing this “middle class burden”, feeling like you have to pay private.

I hope she sends her own children to the same type of comp she went too, namely not outstanding or leafy with a true representation of the area. Let’s see.

So I think it is fine if the Labour Party implement this but they have to send their own DCs to shitty comps to show us all how it is done. Because otherwise it will end up like Partygate, one rule for them, another rule for the rest of us.

https://inews.co.uk/news/labour-private-school-tax-wealthy-poorer-children-grammars-2875633#:~:text=Labour's%20plans%20to%20charge%20VAT,in%20the%20sector%20have%20warned.

Even state grammar heads are expressing concern now.

That was an obvious consequence, to everyone other than those who support the policy
Private parents won't send their DC to the local sink comp. It is so obvious but it seems that lots of people don't have the foresight to predict that.

The ‘tax the rich’ crazed won’t care about this. It’s about revenge, not doing right by disadvantaged pupils. 12,000 will be forced to leave their bursary funded private school places, generations of grammar pupils will be forced out to make way for would-be private pupils, and houses in the catchment of any decent comprehensive will skyrocket in value.

The wealthy will ALWAYS find a way to get the best on offer for their kids. The question is do we fund them or let them fund themselves?

Yes @Another76543 - because grammars have been trying with Pupil Premium but the issue has been that despite extra funding and smaller groups and interventions they are still underachieving at GCSE. So they will also underachieve in the outstanding state comps who will raise the bar of entry for points required for Sixth Form and to study the most popular subjects as well which lead to employment directly. So the privileged kids will get the benefit again.

Likely response from the hard left will be great, another way to bash grammar schools as they are also despised.

Exactly. It’s already happening. Private primaries are already seeing an uptick in state grammar applications, from families who would previously have gone private.

@caringcarer I live in the north east and it's about £12k per year for secondary.

Salaries are lower in general up here than further south.
Council tax is also high. I don't have any peers who send their children to private school.

I have know quite a bit about this OP.

My view is that yes, Labour will impose 20% VAT on school fees in their first budget. My guess is that it will be from academic year 2024/25.

It is unlikely that your fees will actually increase by 20% though as the school will be able to recoup VAT on their expenditure which they couldn’t previously. I’d anticipate an increase of 10-15% plus any usual annual increase.

For those questioning independent SEN schools, there is an obscure piece of VAT legislation that exempts you from charging VAT to local authorities if 100% of your service is provided to LA’s.

@Meadowfinch

Economics aside, this policy was never about "taxing the rich". This is a common smokescreen that people use on MN.

The people that send their kids to Eton, Harrow etc will not be bothered by a 20% increase in fees. For them it is a rounding error. They will simply laugh at the lower earners and go about their business. This is business as usual for them.

This policy is based on the politics of envy, but it is more directed from the lower class to the aspirational middle class.

People like yourself basically. People who make sacrifices to send their kids to a school that gives them a better education (and improved life chances).

You see, you are doing what they cannot. Or more concretely, what they have chosen not to do (spending the money on other things) for their own children.

So now they are resentful (by their own actions) and not doing so well in life (cost of living) so they are now trying to bring you down to their level. It was the same with Brexit: they want to damage you because they are not doing well and you are aiming to be better than them.

Thats what it comes down to: you are aiming to be better than them and that makes them resentful.

All of the state grammars close to me are already full of dc from families who would consider private if they didn't get a place, and indeed many had back up spaces at local private schools. Their "disadvantaged pupils" numbers are a fraction of the % at the next nearest comp, showing that they already hugely favour the more financially advantaged families in the local area. Strange that the heads don't speak out more often about their ridiculous system.

@Pookerrod it can't be applied 24/25 if the election isn't until Oct 24.
Then they will have to amend current VAT rules and deal with the appeals that will follow.

because the children of the rich would be in these schools and the rich would suddenly care!

Ignorancenotokay As has been pointed out ad nauseam there are plenty of rich people with children at state school. See the many education threads on here in which posters say ‘I would NEVER send my children to private schools to mix with snobs, even though I could easily afford it”.
Don’t they care?
Do you think the rich people who had previously sent their dc to private schools are somehow superior to parents whose children are at state schools and can wave some magic wand?

And as Sam Freedman has pointed out on Twitter, any of these grammars (and all schools) could easily change their admissions rules to ring fence a % of places for disadvantaged children.

That so many don't already indicates their actual level of concern.

Awful, petty, envious people, trying to pretend otherwise by banging on about equality for all. Resentful of others who have more cash spending it on giving their children a leg up.

The point is THIS POLICY WILL HURT EVERYONE

Why do those who love the VAT plan even care about those others with more cash, giving their kids a better education? How does it affect you? If they gave their children a huge house and a lovely car, would you take that off them as well and give it to the state? What is it about education, specifically, gives people the urge to tear others down?

Being loaded and sending your kid to state shouldn't be allowed. If no rich people were allowed to use state then Grammars would be entirely for bright kids with no cash (they are not, they are already full of tight rich people's children who were tutored within an inch of thier lives to get in over those who couldn't afford to do that). When this policy goes through, the rich will start using them in their droves, essentially being handed the education they could afford to pay for, for free, by the state, allowing them to have even more privileged lives than they do already.

WIN WIN not

“The problem with this is it's a huge imposition on parental rights. We don't live in a society where parents are obliged to turn their kids over to the state to be educated. And one of the things parents can choose to do is teach their kids, or hire someone else to do so.”

If you want the law permits you to form a mini school of up to 4 pupils and you can all hire tutors together (1 Maths/Science, 1 Language/English etc). 5 and above will constitute and independent school under the Education Act (further exceptions for SEN). Might actually work out cheaper than private schools and with people working from home anyway, some may do this.

That doesn’t surprise me at all but I think there’s probably a lot of variables feeding into that statistic.

We have plenty of rich parents at our comp. House prices mean that’s the case

I honestly don’t care if people pay to use private (plus taxes for state not being used) and agree with @MyOrganisationIsCaptured

Surely he will.

If not he becomes that PM he himself gets out of his seat for inorder to slate off, the PM that says one thing then does the opposite.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn05108/

The fact the Government does not know exactly how many children are home educated is pretty shocking to me. Missing children/safeguarding etc - again, they know that home ed is on the rise.