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?

I recall a poster talking about a comp and it being fine as their dc were in top sets. I have no issue with that view, many parents want their dc to do well but it was an interesting point

Those who are asking for fairness how does the classroom set up work? Are you happier if it is a mix, is it important that say in secondary all levels of attention, ability and demographics are mixed? Otherwise you might get pockets of lower and higher achievement within a school

Is that what your dc have or what you’ll seek out when looking for a school?

Are people hunting around for a good mix in class

Yes that’s a good point. Should they abolish top sets? They’re like micro grammars after all aren’t they?

they'll have loads of disposable income that isn't currently attracting VAT to spend goods and services that are VAT-related.

Or they might use that extra “spare” income to pay off their mortgage more quickly, move to a bigger house, gift their children money, spend money abroad on holiday etc. None of these attract VAT. In fact, some people might increase pension contributions which would attract tax relief.

Some people might choose to keep their children in private, at least until the next natural breakpoint, but reduce spending on things like cars, clothes and eating out, which all attract VAT.

The calculations haven’t taken full account of these variables, largely because human behaviour is hard to predict.

I'm sure I read some where that that is what Labour are banking on people spending money elsewhere.

As I said up thread. We won't. We will either save it up for uni fees or put it in our pensions.

Unless labour are going to get rid of faith schools and introduce a lottery for state school place allocations the unfairness will still carry on albeit through house prices.

I send a child to private school and did agree with adding VAT as it is a luxury. But then this thread makes me wonder a little. VAT on education? Taxing education? I’m not as sure that it is right.

The IFS admit in their calculation that whether this policy makes any money is extremely hard to judge. It depends on the behavioural factors of who actually pulls their kids from private school which when it comes to their kid’s education is especially hard to judge.

It’s fairer to add VAT to school fees though than to withdraw nursery funding from higher earners. That policy 100% costs our society in tax take so it’s only reason seems to be spite related.

Ours are set in maths and games (from Y7) and science (from Y8) and mixed ability within all other classes.

The difference between what foundation and higher pupils can handle in terms of the maths already in Y7 is pretty stark and I think this is probably the best way to support those who are struggling more with numeracy while also stretching those who are more able and seeking greater challenge.

They are then in their form groups for some subjects (Music, Drama, Art, PDW), and others are mixed across the year group - so my son has different kids in his English, History, Philosophy, D&T, Spanish, Geography, Computing etc classes, it's not just his form the whole time.

From my POV this is a decent way of doing it - mixing kids up helps deal with eg if there is a bullying or behaviour issue within a particular class group, kids get exposed to a lot of different peers in the classroom, but in subjects like maths where differentiation within a classroom is more difficult (according to my son's teachers anyway) they are set to better deal with that.

And this is why behavioural modelling on this is so fraught! Some of what we're saving on school fees is going to our son's comp, but I'll happily admit that the savings we would have had to make on eg cleaner/holidays/eating out/extra-curricular etc if we'd gone private are merrily being spent on those things. 😁

What are the house prices like?

You may have allocation by parents’ income in any case

The detail of Labours education policy is that they have not COMMITTED to spend a single additional penny on education but the addition of VAT policy is envisaged to lead to 10s of thousands of kids education (currently funded by the £930m spent by private schools charitable endowments and school fees) being disrupted - primarily impacting those kids on bursaries, from those families just about affording or SEN, ECHP kids. This can only be dilutive to the state school offering with the same level of Tory resources/spending.

Not sure how that makes society in any way fairer (beyond spite on your own face) especially when you hear that charging VAT would also allow such schools to reclaim VAT on capital investment projects from the last 10 years - which will lead to further reclaims from the treasury and private schools becoming wealthier & more exclusive.

I have used tutoring to help my kids (especially in maths where they need help) a 1-2-1 much higher spend compared to private schools and would be aghast if they tried to apply tax on this or any other of the after school clubs/music lessons/university courses etc that need to be paid for

Couple of thoughts on this. 1) I can only spend each pound once. So if I give more to the government via this tax, that's £1 less that I'll be spending on other things (yes, luxuries, but) eg local restaurant etc. I guess there is a philosophical question about where in the economy that £1 is best spent. I don't trust the government to spend that extra £1 on anything that any of us will see any benefit from. Mostly dodgy contracts for friends with offshore businesses I suspect.

2. I'm currently at an age 11 junction. I am in the very lucky position of being able to choose between the local state and private. The extra fees give me pause for thought. However, if I take that state place, the child furthest away that would have had that place will now definitely get sent to an awful failing school in the next town along. So my child is just fine, they've got a place at the local school, I've saved myself fees but the government doesn't get the extra tax, last child is condemned to an awful school. How is that doing anyone any favours?

For me this is a matter of principle, you don’t tax Education, it is madness. And I want to get closer to the EU and at least explore the CU/single market to increase our productivity and for security reasons given what is currently going in the world.

My DCs now have 3 nationalities and we are strongly encouraging the younger 2 to study for almost free in Europe. I don’t see a future here for them anymore. They are state educated but this kind of higher rate income tax bashing won’t work for them long term, coupled with the huge uni fees and debts they would have. I am not willing to condemn them to 70 per cent marginal tax rates because they can go elsewhere and have a better quality of life.

If Labour need cash they need to introduce inheritance taxes for all. Many many people are leaving hundreds of thousands in housing wealth tax free to their descendants. They are failing to tax assets and wealth and are bashing higher earners.

This absolutely is an attack on children and education and hard working families. And it is unforgivable especially given we have just been through Covid and have a cost of living crisis as well. And we haven’t even gotten to the teachers in the private sector. I think they are hoping to recruit them back into state due to the shortage but many will tutor the homeschooling lot which is also growing exponentially where I live at least. Nobody from the private sector is going to send their DCs to failing comps with FSM rates above 40 per cent. They will leave the country, move house or home school, it is obvious. Nobody will sacrifice their own DCs happiness if they can help it. And besides it isn’t those families job to look after the poorer kids. They have already paid taxes to do just that which the Tories have failed to do. Child poverty absolutely is a huge issue but other children are not responsible for poor children, it is the adults and those in charge to blame who have mismanaged our taxes to ridiculous levels.

Yep, like I said upthread, we need widespread admissions reform in England.

They're not too bad in our immediate bit of the borough - this is a comp that is on the up (came out of RI about 7 years ago, got an amazing new head in 2020.) It's an area where traditionally a lot of families moved house in Y3 to get their kid into the juniors that's a guaranteed feeder for the very desirable secondary the other side of the borough boundary. There is a very desirable (and larger than the boys' equivalent) girls' school that seems to be going off the boil a bit, and some Catholic schools with good reputations.

So ours is much more mixed, and geographically takes in one or two big council estates as well as more affluent areas. More boys than girls, persistent absence is higher than the borough average, and FSM eligibility is also higher than the borough average. It's got a dedicated SEN provision that got extra funding about 8 years ago, so the SEN intake is very high for the borough (and it's about twice the average for mainstream secondaries in England).

That was the way my school did it and I can tell you that as a quiet, hard working academic pupil it was a total nightmare. Hated my favourite lessons such as English and History being ruined by idiotic behaviour and bullies. And that was at an outstanding comp!

Ah, that's a shame. DS (high prior attainment) seems to be loving it so far and particularly likes that he doesn't get stuck with the same kids all the time so at least where there is disruption there's variety and it's not always the same kids. So far he's really thriving, but it's early days.

As some one who was horribly bullied at my private school and in with the same group of girls (including my bullies) in almost all my classes, I think I would have welcomed the respite but the grass is always greener, right?

Didn’t you contemplate using private?

How did you go from that to wanting biggest mix possible in classes?

As for reform on admissions going by public consultation and voting preferences here they’d sooner elbow you onto the road than give up school system as it is

Tax the rich type slogans might work on human spite level, but voting for complete reform where buying a house means nothing well good luck on that one

Nobody budgets for a 17.5% raise, on top of the usual annual increase. It's not irresponsible not to imagine that a government would be an stupid.

"Nobody from the private sector is going to send their DCs to failing comps with FSM rates above 40 per cent."

I suspect a lot of people here think the definition of a 'good' school is invariably one with low numbers of disadvantaged children. But there are schools near me judged 'good' or 'outstanding' where half of the children are on FSM. My children's primary was one of them.

If a school has a good progress 8 score and is judged by OFSTED to be a good school, then on what grounds would someone like Araminta1003 judge it as a 'terrible school' and see it as completely unsuitable for their child? Because they can't contemplate their child mixing with large numbers of very poor children?

I've covered this upthread. Yes we did, went through various selection processes, tutoring, the works. Breezed through private school entrance exams, didn't get through the super selective grammar.

We did the sums. We looked at inflation, interest rates, mortgage, Labour policy commitments, fee rise projections, and the need for contingency, across two kids. We had a choice between me changing jobs (probably fairly easy to do) but being a great deal less available for both our kids, less ability to take part in clubs etc after school, a lot longer in wraparound care for our youngest, and a mother who was fairly stressed and miserable. And we decided it would be the wrong option for us based on the choices we had.

We didn't hate the school. I was really nervous as I'd absolutely hated the other comp we looked at, but this one has pockets of real brilliance, areas that need significant work too, areas that still really worry for me. And the head is seriously impressive.

And DS loved it. It didn't have the wow factor of some of the private schools with amazing facilities (though tbh there were one or two that weren't that impressive) but after the open day and the tour day he preferred it to our nearest private option. He confessed later that he was relieved he hadn't got into the superselective because he'd have felt obliged to go there but he loves his school and has really thrown himself into school life.

Did I want the "biggest mix possible"? TBH we didn't have a great deal of choice, the options available to us were the options available to us. In some ways it's not a bad thing, I particularly like that the school has such a strong ethos on SEN and I know a couple of kids in higher years who have been so well supported there.

If I'd had a daughter I daresay we might have gone for the "safe" option, though I did surprise myself during the whole process how open I was to thinking differently about schools I'd previously said "never for my child" about.

I agree that there are a lot of sharp elbows resisting admissions reform, but I won't stop campaigning for it! Our own experience has underlined what I already thought about just how fucked up it is.

Apologies if I've missed a response to my question, but I still haven't seen ANY response to this, from the '20% of people will have to take their children out of private school' voices:

My suggestion was that private schools could significantly cut costs to accommodate the VAT imposition by having fewer teachers. Salaries are always the biggest cost for any school. At present they have twice as many teachers per child as the state school average. And that's despite the fact that their pupil cohort tends to be far far less academically diverse than your average state school cohort.

"Do you have any thoughts on why this obvious way of cutting costs is being doggedly ignored by parents on this thread with children at fee paying schools, who know that state schools have had to cut costs over a decade of austerity, but for some reason seem to feel this isn't reasonable for private schools, whose fees have increased rapidly over the same period of time."

Posters seem to be ignoring this point. Why?

I suspect a lot of people here think the definition of a 'good' school is invariably one with low numbers of disadvantaged children. But there are schools near me judged 'good' or 'outstanding' where half of the children are on FSM. My children's primary was one of them.

A “Good” school in my book is one which teaches effectively and where pupils achieve good outcomes. The number of disadvantaged children isn’t a consideration of mine at all. Our local primary has a far lower than average FSM number, far lower than average SEN pupils etc. At reception level/Y1, assessments show above average levels of ability. It is OFSTED rated “good”. However, by the end of year 6, pupils are achieving far below national average in the SATS measures. I wouldn’t say that’s “good”.

We’ve used a variety of schools and none of my views come from feeling others are getting something they shouldn’t but I find going from nearly private to campaigning for admission reform really elastic - ie values wise

Not having a go just musing on how you went from one to the other presumably with same politics in place

We had quite a few choices but maybe I’d feel differently if it was the one we didn’t want. But isn’t it just wanting that school to be bumped up. Ie just a personal motivation like anyone else

Because lots in the state sector (see the many threads on Mumsnet from teachers and parents) agree that many of the problems are because of large class sizes and lack of teachers. Many parents choose to pay for education so their children get more attention in a smaller class, and are taught by specialist teachers. Cutting staff numbers will lower standards. Why would we want to cut standards? We should be increasing standards in state schools, not dragging private schools to the same level under the illusion of “fairness”.

Because part of the reason for choosing private school is smaller class sizes. Increasing class sizes dies away with a main reason for paying school fees. Many parents choose private because their DC can't cope in mainstream large state schools with classes of 30+. Lots of SEN kids without an EHCP as an example.
I can't see why you can't understand why that would be an issue.

I've been campaigning for admissions reform since before I had children at school, and have had two children at state primaries. It is a deeply perverse system that needs serious reform to even out some of the massive distortions that are caused by the admissions system - which includes leaving some parents feeling like private is their only option. Ideally reform would leave fewer parents in that situation.

But I'm also human. I was privately educated in another country so I have the double whammy of not being familiar with the English system and not having much experience of state education. I hear what my peers say about certain schools, or whole school systems. I have two boys in an area where good state options are strongly skewed towards girls, where we have faith schools and feeder primaries with minuscule catchments. And like everyone, I can want a system to change and still want an outcome for my child. So we looked at all our options. If the admissions system meant that our local options were truly dire, we might have come to a different conclusion.

So be as rude about my values as you like. I'm sorry I don't fit in a neat ideologically-rigid bubble for you, and that I don't feed the narrative you are clearly so keen to try to make sure everyone fits into on this issue. I've tried to engage with you constructively and in good faith, it's a pity that your own values don't allow you to reciprocate that.

@JassyRadlett so where did your DC go to school in the end?