VAT on private school fees - will it change how you vote?

[Iwishicouldflyhigh]

Following on from the other interesting thread about whether it will be implemented, will this policy change how you vote either way?
For me - i've voted Labour and Tory over the years, but Tory for the most recent GE's. This year, i've been thinking seriously about how i'd vote at the next GE and it wasn't definitely a Tory vote - i was definitely a floating voter.
However, my children are at PS and so i will now most definitely be voting Tory (not just because how the VAT will seriously impact us - child number 3 will now not be going to the prep that we had lined up for her, she'll enter the local primary until secondary school - but how i think that it will affect schools negatively and children negatively).
I have a lot of left leaning friends who educate privately and whilst they cannot bring themselves to vote Tory, they won't vote Labour either at the next GE because of this policy.

It seems to me that this policy is only a vote loser (ie many Labour voters and 'floaters' who school privately won't vote for them at the next GE) and not a vote winner (ie i can't imagine that many Tory or 'floaters' will vote for Labour solely on this policy).

AiBU to think that Labour have really shot themselves in the foot with this idea?

A Tory government would be better for me personally.

A Labour government would be better for me professionally, although I have big concerns about their stance on gender identity issues.

But my vote matters not a jot as I live in one of the safest seats around, whose incumbent was parachuted in on the nod of a small gathering of party members when the previous MP stood down. No by-election, nothing.

I will probably spoil my ballot. Not that I am cynical about democracy or anything.

Not a hope in hell I’ll vote Tory.
I work in a school. We can’t afford to buy glue sticks for our kids. But we have been forced to buy 100s of new reading books which we really can’t afford, to replace perfectly good old ones, because the government had a rethink about which phonics scheme was approved and which wasn’t. Ours wasn’t. We’ve changed to
one that is approved (but isn’t as good in our experience so far - it comes with a script for example - we can fail OFSTED for not following the script but this allows no room to adapt for the actual children sitting in front of me) but needed all new reading books. If we don’t do this we fail OFSTED.

I will not vote for any government that operates policies like this and yet leaves us so short of money that I spend my own money buying glue sticks and colouring pencils.

Or a government who ignore the crisis of lack of teachers and instead focus on Oak
Academy. It’s going to get to the point soon where paying fees won’t make sense anyway as half the classes your child is in (whether private or state) will involve working through online stuff in a hall with 200 others while a couple of staff babysit.

I could go on. A knowledge based curriculum vs skills based? Knowledge is freely available- what the kids need now is the skills to be able to look for it, analyse it and apply it. But no, Tories decided that the best way to teach and assess is make everyone memorise everything. Ditch coursework. Add on the times tables test. Despite that not being the world these children will grow up in because they will have access to knowledge (and times tables) on their phone in a way no one ever has before.

Paying VAT fees isn’t something I agree with, even though both my kids are at state so I’ve no skin in the game, but it does not outweigh the huge damage that the Tories have done and are doing in the education system. Anyone who votes for them professing to be interested in their child’s education is deluded.

In summary, no it won’t change how I vote!

But there is no UBO so the only benefit of accumulating this money is to improve the school or reduce fees.

If the policy meant that you had to remove your SEN child from an environment where they are supported and thriving into a poorly equipped state school where they’d struggle
immensely is that not reason enough to influence how you cast your vote?

What on earth is more important than the happiness and well being of your child?

I totally agree. My concern with voting Tory is that it condemns thousands of children to continue to struggle in state schools because the funding isn’t there to support them and their parents can’t afford to do anything else. I am livid that the Tories have destroyed the system to the point where people feel paying is the only way out, because for some there then is no way out. I could not vote for people who continue to do this to children.

So why should they get to improve an already likely perfectly adequate school facilities (and then some) JUST to get the money spent? If they reduce their fees to absorb the VAT impact on parents, then they would at least appear to be having the benefit to the child/family in mind, rather than increasingly luxury for the reduced percentage of super-wealthy children who can attend the school regardless.

They also got to apply for loans during Covid and have the government pay for their first year of interest – this was not an option of state schools. The charitable status benefits are endless and all bullshit, and their charitable activities that benefit the community (as what charities exist for) is wafer thin, and that's according to a 2023 report from the Private Education Policy Forum.

Most private schools operate as charities so are not for profit. All money from fees is spent on the running of the school, with some kept as reserves. To reduce fees schools would have to cut costs elsewhere, eg, larger class sizes, less extra curricular, etc. Lots of schools are considering this and consulting with parents re this.

See my last two replies beyond this – they absolutely make profit. And their charitable status contains bout 1% charitable activity.

I will be voting Tory on the basis of this policy alone.

If it wasn't for this policy (the only one I've actually heard from Labour) then I probably wouldn't bother voting at all.

OP: Don't pin too many hopes on the Tories.

• this is a policy that Gove is in favour of, and quite a lot of the party have no ideological objection to
• as the Tory party cannot wean itself off its dreadful in-fighting and regular leadership changes, never rule out the possibility that Gove might come to the forefront (he'll be the only one left at some point)

No, because I'd never vote Labour anyway.

But if the Labour party wants to make private school even more exclusive and those who go even more the privileged few, then this policy is perfect. Because the people who will be forced to withdraw their DC are those for whom private schools fees are already a stretch. It's a fucking stupid and horrible 'politics of envy' policy, but it's catnip for traditional Labour voters (many of whom switched to the Tories at the last election, because they wanted Brexit).

I don’t care enough either way for it to affect my vote (I’m a floating voter)

On the one hand, private school is very, very often a “luxury” and should be taxed as such. However, lots of people choose private school because state provision doesn’t meet their child’s needs, by which I mean an educational need rather than the school allocated isn’t as good as the school wanted.

I don’t think education should be taxed on principle but I’m a fence sitter as what many parents are actually paying for is choice, childcare and the social privileges of an exclusive environment, which is a luxury. The actual education is available in the state sector.

Im also not a believer in private education being accessible to anyone who “works hard and sacrifices”. I find the talk of 10 year old cars and cheap holidays irritating as a person who works hard and drives a 14yo car and has a cheap holiday only every few years. You have to have at least a spare £15k a year per child for a private secondary. That’s not achievable by driving a car 5 years older than the car you would have already been driving for people with the average household income of around £32k. People on average wages with no inherited wealth and no family subbing them and with average, non scholarship worthy dc, are already excluded from private education, VAT or not. You have to be a high earner to make those sort of choices.

There is a broader issue with VAT and I think the whole system needs an overhaul. Why do people think it’s going to be impossible for a school to turn a profit with 20% VAT, but are happy for innumerable small businesses to be saddled with 20% of their turnover going directly to the government before they even begin to deduct their other expenses. The average household is paying nearly £6K a year in VAT, and proportionally, poorer households pay a higher amount of their income in VAT than wealthier ones. VAT started out as 8% and has risen to 20%. I’m not sure the school fees issue would be causing so much upset if it was 8% and not 20%. That alongside all the weirdness (you pay it on a hot pie, but not a pie that is hot because it’s just come out of the oven, you pay it on a takeaway toasted sandwich, but not on the same sandwich untoasted, you pay in on chocolate chip shortbread, but not plain shortbread or millionaire shortbread, you pay it on ice cream but not on milkshake) and the “threshold” set at a completely weird £85k for absolutely no reason meaning a business which turns over £84k in rateable goods pays £0 VAT while one turning over £86k in rateable goods pays £17200 VAT and ends up with £68800 for taking £1000 over the threshold. Frankly this just encourages criminality in businesses not far over the threshold and makes compliant businesses less competitive. Sensible VAT reform would swing my vote more than almost every other issue (probably beaten only by women’s rights).

I think the op can see Gove is less likely than this policy under Starmer

I'm historically a labour voter, but won't be voting for them in this election because of this stupid, ill-thought out policy.

There's no way I could bring myself to vote Tory though, not after what 14 years of Tory rule has done to the UK (particularly Brexit and the NHS)...so I will vote Lib Dem or Green.

Don’t know about Lib Dem but Green Policy is VAT on school fees AND removal of charitable status.

Glad to see that so many people are in favour of this policy and will be voting for the politics of fairness 👍

It is, undeniably, shit for the few parents who will have to make cutbacks or changes to their lifestyle due to government policies. It's been more shit for more people under the Tories though, so sorry but you'll have to suck it up

R to year 13 is 14 years, so skip R to y4 and go in for Y5 to y13 OR just skip prep altogether. I can’t see it’s a huge problem.

As an aside, Labour expect to raise £1.7 billion from this policy.

To put this in the context of current events, that might just cover the taxpayer cost of the Post Office Scandal (a multi party f**k up).

Sadly the state system can’t take any more pressure, they can’t take more kids, where parents go to state as private becomes out of reach.

it’s a myth that everyone is loaded who sends their kids private and can easily afford it and there is no way the state infrastructure can be upgraded quickly enough to take an influx of more kids who would otherwise have went private.

this isn’t about wealthy folks paying more. This is about the vast majority being in the middle who will now send their kids to state and state can’t take them, so the kids in state now, getting screwed/

I'll be voting for whichever party is the second moat popular in my town, to try and up their numbers. I live in a very tory voting area, so anyone with the chance to remove them has my vote.

I don't have an opinion either way about the vat. I don't have any friends with kids in private school and I believe it would cost more than my annual salary after tax to send my own kids, so that is just fantasy. I do like the idea of choice, as the state system is so utterly unsuitable for my children, but we are stuck until we win the lottery I guess.

Cannot comprehend why the government keep banging on about attendance, when they have strangled funding, made the curriculum incredibly dull and secondaries more akin to prisons with no talking, skirt length measurements, isolation booths etc. Who on earth would want to go there?!

The Green’s view is about as relevant as that held by the Monster Raving Loony Party.

We've had 3 go through independent schools and the last one has 2 years left (6th form). I will not vote Tory because of Brexit and the current state of the U.K. However, I'm not at all inspired by Labour and don't think they will improve anything particularly. They are hypocrites as well. They didn't take a stand on Brexit and don't seem to take a stand on anything, as far as I can see. This VAT on private schools is just another cheap slogan - it won't improve education on a national level. We live in a LD constituency, so I suppose I'll have to vote LD, but they're a total wash out as well.

It would be the politics of fairness if there wasn't a vast inequality within educational provision in this country. This policy does not remove it, it just moves the inequality elsewhere in the system. Better the system and make it so a good state education is accessible for all and there would be no need for private schools.

Can be if you have a company transfer - as part of their package I am sure.
How do you think the British embassies handle tuition fees for people who work for us abroad?

This policy is inconsequential to how i'd vote.

More concerned about Brexit, Health, Education, the Environment, Housing and Low pay (leading to the huge rise in in work benefits) than the wealthy and VAT on school fees.

Lets face it, if you can put 2 kids through private, you re hardly struggling, thats around 35k p.a net plus all the rest of the things that go with private schooling, so approx an additional salary of £50k per year or over twice the national min wage.

Increases in school fees are meaningless to 95% of the population.