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?

We have baked it into our calculations since the last election (this policy has been around for a while). However, what we didn’t bake in is rampant food and fuel inflation, our mortgage going up by £600 per month, our house and car insurance doubling….I could go on. The problem is that this 20% will be on top of a lot of other increases. It will be an increase too much for some people.

Call me 'old-fashioned' but I thought that was what taxes were for - to raise funds for public services.

You carry on being patronising.

What a nuanced argument.

If they've an inch of awareness, they'll know that any such survey will be hopelessly unreliable and totally unusable for business forecasting.

The main unknown is how much the survey will over report likelihood of leaving. There are significant motivators for parents to overstate their propensity to leave at this point in a school's decision-making cycle.

And yes those schools (and the ISC) are definitely, definitely not using their surveys for campaigning purposes. Definitely not.

Personally I don't know anyone who is going to remove children if / when the 20% increase occurs. But, if you have children in a big school that's an extra £10k a year and most people will notice that.

But it is going to happen so I don't see the point in moaning. You plan/budget for it or remove your children. No one has any sympathy for private schools kids forced to go to state school and to be honest if that is the worst that happens to your children, it really isn't too bad.

Have you read the underlying paper? The headline is slightly misleading and state/independent wasn't the focus on the research. To the extent that it does cover state/independent, it shows that students from independent schools are much more likely to get high A-level results than those from state but that state school students obtain higher degree results than independent school students who have the same prior attainment. It's old data and is of the same era as the HEFCE research I posted above which showed that indendent school students are more likely to get a good degree overall but for given prior attainment state students did better.

Or they recognise that high degrees of stratification between education types isn't ideal.

Many or most of those systems that eg give per-pupil funding to private schools have their faith schools in the private sector. Britain's deal with the devil went a different way.

Send some schools an email and let them know you’re more aware and can do better than those they’re paying.

Your consultancy knowledge is too good for here, you may as well get some ££ out of it.

I refer you to my comments upthread about modelling this one...

(I do get paid pretty well for my expertise, as it happens... there are sectors that pay a lot better than education!)

Great. Enjoy

Thanks! Appreciate the good wishes.

The real reason that privately educated people are over represented in the medical profession is that most people can't afford the university fees (and the rest of what goes with it) for a 5-6 year long course which you can't easily get jobs around assuming that you are allowed to with all the work placements.

Not economics by the way but wealth generation and maintenance. They accidentally let a state educated poor person into the city trading arena and he did extremely well (millions) and learned a lot. He now does accessible videos to help us state educated heathens learn about how wealth gets generated and maintained and freezes normal people out of the chance to do the same in anything but exceptional circumstances.

But you already know everything so no need for you to watch. Nothing more for you to learn except some basic manners.

If you are interested in understanding why this happens you just have to look at the stories on these threads. The parents who are most likely to be in this situation are those who never planned to use private education but who turned to it in desperation when their children were deeply unhappy or failed in the state system. There are lots of stories of this kind on here and they're often children with SEN. They are then in a much more precarious financial situation than parents who've planned for it and also more desperate because they can see the difference the school has made for the child so are terrified of losing that. These are the parents and children who'll really suffer if this is brought in.

If Labour really are interested in making decent policy and not creating a culture war then they will do some research first and if they do bring it in they'll do it in a way that allows schools to plan and children to complete that stage of educaiton without distruption. The way that they are going about it at the moment looks as if the policy is for political gain and they are unconcerned about the children who might be affected.

If it does come.in assuming 2025 ds will be in year 10 and DD in year 6.

We will see ds through to the end of year 11 and he will then go to the outstanding 6th form at the local school.

Dd won't go private she will go to the outstanding state school that ds will go to for 6th form.

We can't afford an extra £800 on top of 2 sets of fees.

To fund the £400 month for ds' fees we will probably just stop the cleaner and make do.

We will probably put more earnings into pensions which will save a lot of tax (particularly the 60% tax).

So from our family alone that will be less tax and two more students being a 'burden on the state'.

We live very close to the outstanding state school so can't pretty much guarantee getting in, this will just push a child who lives further away out.

it is what it is.

I do not believe it is an envy vote many people simply do not agree that private schools should hold charitable status. Labour won’t go that far but the financial breaks will no longer be quite so generous

as for fees schools will have to budget as all schools are for many reasons life is going to be difficult for some time and that has to be shared across the population as much as possible this is just one way

Sorry but I don’t think disruption is something the government should have to worry about. If parents are silly enough to overstretch themselves it’s on them.

But that’s the same for everyone. Everyone has seen massive increases in their outgoings and most haven’t seen the same in their incomings. So most people are worse off now than they were a couple of years ago. At least your choice is one of state versus private education rather than food or heating.

I’m not having a dig. I know it’s heart breaking if you feel you aren’t giving your kids the best (we moved and chose the local state rather than private which was further away and even when it was a choice it was a hard decision) but VAT on fees is just the fair thing to do. I always felt uncomfortable about the charity status. It always felt like privilege piled on top of privilege.

We have to get more money into the public pot because the health, wellbeing and prospects of those who aren’t as privileged as us are plummeting. We have many challenges ahead. We have to pull together and we will all have to make sacrifices.

Sorry but I don’t think disruption is something the government should have to worry about. If parents are silly enough to overstretch themselves it’s on them.

It’s not even my dc but all this is so depressing. Agree with you @Mia85

Hopefully!

The disruption is for the government to worry about when they need to find and fund school places for this that leave.

As some one said up thread I think a lot of people will see their children through the stage of their education but there will be less of an uptake at the different stages e.g. end of primary into state secondary I stead of private.

That will take a while to work through the system.

@Mia85 thank you for posting that. I've explained my kids' situation several times on this thread and others and it just gets ignored. I read endless snarky comments about "poor Freddie will have to rough it with plebs" and "88% of state schools are good or outstanding so its fine". Absolutely zero understanding of what the private sector can offer kids like mine and what will happen to them if I simply cannot stretch things any more. Except I will find a way because I will have to. I'll pay off debt for decades to keep them where they are.

Simply put OP you can't afford to privately educate your children, despite your own private education and all the success you assumed it would bring.

You'll need to pull the older child out for sixth form. If you're paying two sets of fees now you should be able to manage one set from 12-16 even if the fees are increased to include VAT.

Cut your cloth.

But I never said that it wasn’t the same for everybody. You asked why private school parents decided to send their DC to private school when they couldn’t afford a 20% increase. I gave you a perfectly reasonable answer. I wasn’t asking you to feel sorry for me or my DC.

My DS won’t be moving to state. It would cost us at least £150k to move to the same size house near a decent state school. I was told by a friend who has taught at our catchment comp to not send my DC there as it’s so bad. I’m not confident that they would be able to keep DS safe and I fear he would end up like me, his mental health destroyed and a suicide attempt by 16…we will borrow the money but not all families will be able to do that.

Charity status has nothing to do with VAT and I don’t feel uncomfortable about it. My DS’ indie has helped to turn around a failing state school amongst many other things.

This policy is going to raise hardly anything, Labour haven’t shown any proper costings and it will make life very miserable for some children, particulary those with SEN who can’t cope with a large mainstream comp. I know of one local private school that has many such pupils. There is nothing elite about it and it’s under real risk of closing if this policy goes ahead.

And if it’s the same for everybody why were you querying in the first place why private school parents couldn’t afford the 20%?!