To think that those private school parents banging on about their fees

[Thegreatergoodgerald]

Seriously have misjudged how little anyone else gives a stuff??? NHS, social care, state education, public transport, bloody potholes everywhere - that’s what matters to everyone I know.
Not whether or not VAT is added to a business.

YANBU - it’s hardly the end of the world if Clemmie or Charles end up going to a state school. We have bigger things to worry about in the U.K. right now

YABU - of course everyone cares private school parents might have to pay more

@Soukmyfalafel - but why are you so confident that the spending on your DS in a special school will not go down if the whole sector is likely under strain? I would be worried about a SEN child in a special school as the Council’s are under so much pressure financially already! I guess we just think differently and I am very risk averse.

I think it says a lot that it is all they seem to care about. Ditto for the 'Labour doesn't know what a women is' brigade (who are probably the same people). Nobody cares, bigger shit to deal with.

Lots of people care about this, from all demographics. And saying a Labour policy is going to make thinks worse is not the same as saying 'vote Tory'. I wouldn't vote for either of them if you paid me, for different reasons.

Just because YOU don't care about something, don't extrapolate it out to everyone. That might be a you issue.

Incorrect.
Over 500,000 kids in private schools
10% is 50 000 which, if they left private, would cost the state £200 million per year.
The projections are 7-10% which could take the cost up to £400 million per year

Each child in private school saves the tax payer 7-8k per year.

There can't be more funding if the money isn't there. Labour haven't promises to increase funding so the funds can only come from efficiency savings or cuts.

Market forces I guess. The cost of living crisis caused by the Tory government will have had a big effect in parents ability to pay as well as the costs of running a school. Can't blame that on labour though.

Private schools often become state schools instead of closing anyway. I know of 3 that have done that in a city I lived in until recently. All in the last 20 years, well before the current problems

Truth is we don’t know what the impact will be - the policy is poorly formulated and unclear currently. If they are upending the whole regime so exemption attaches to pupil rather than provider that’s pretty complex.
heres hoping the fat fool falls over his own feet with this and we can laugh at him. Or laugh more

There are over 600,000 children in private school. Hardly “tiny”.

Hmmm I can look it at a few ways and think it's not a good thing:

1. It costs the government more money to educate a child in the state system.
2. As has been mentioned a hundred times, the wealthier people in private schools are more likely to live in more expensive areas with great state schools that are already oversubscribed. If the parents who can afford to educate their child privately chooses to take up a place at this state school then some other (often poorer and on the edge of the catchment) kid loses out.
3. It reduces social and economic mobility for those who can't afford a house in a better catchment but can just about afford school fees. If you make the school fees unaffordable then their kid is condemned to attend the rubbish state offering.
4. Private schools offer excellent resources for the wider community. My local ones are the go to place for holiday clubs, swimming lessons and parties for kids at state schools.

So if it doesn't make a big difference to inequality by your own admission and has all of these disadvantages then I just can't see why this is great policy. The focus should be on sorting out the state system and reducing inequality amongst schools within it. I went to a very average state school and was shocked when I went to university and discovered all the extra opportunities other state school kids at better schools had enjoyed. The fact that they had been supported by the state to receive this advantage was absolutely disgusting. The same inequality persists now but the middle classes don't want to address it as they know that this would involve losing some of the advantage they have in their nice state schools. Much easier to distract everyone with the 6% of people that are paying to go private.

554000 kids are in private school as of today, 6.5% of the school age population in England. That doesn't seem insignificant to me.

Actually I can blame Labour for introducing the tax that tipped private school over the edge of affordability.

I want a party who focusses on personal responsibility but not in a harsh ‘amputate your own limbs’ kind of way. More a ‘right we can only do so much while so many are out of work and abusing their own health, so we can provide X but you need to do Y’. We can’t make a silk purse out of a pigs ear.

It does yes. We have classes of under 10 in our state school and a dedicated hub. I realise some other parents aren't as fortunate.

@JacketPotatoFoodOfTheGods

So naive, you do realise this would just force private education on mass

In the past 10 years, our school has had a big drive on updating old buildings and extending at a cost of £9 million. So I imagine that it might add up quite quickly if lots of others have done similar.

200 million is a drop in the ocean of the government budget. They spent far more than that on the ridiculous Rwanda thing. That costs 1.8 million PER PERSON.

That will be due to abolition of the assisted places scheme, thanks to the last Labour government we had the misfortune to have.
rule of thumb with Labour - if there’s a ladder up for their social inferiors they’ll kick it away. Then set fire to it

No. They are exempt from VAT because of exemption in the VAT legislation. Around half of schools don’t have charitable status now, but they don’t have to charge VAT on fees. This is what many of us find frustrating. People seem to have very strong opinions on a proposed policy when they don’t even understand the very basics of.

I don’t like it. I have kids in good state schools. I know a lot of parents who would otherwise have sent to private will be clamoring for these schools and will get them in my hook or by crook. They will be willing to put in the work to get a church reference etc. It will mean less financially well off kids or kids with parents who don’t know how to play the game , will miss out on places.

@MaryMaryVeryContrary

We are on the same page.

My nephew is one of the violent type kids for the exact reason you say. My brother just can't be bothered to parent. Openly admits it. "Let the state sort it out, not my problem"

But that's not from the education budget.
This policy makes no sense from an economical view point. The finances don't stack up.
£200 million isn't a drop in the ocean as an additional cost on top of what has already been budgeted for, the money has to come from somewhere.

This threat is very exaggerated. Only small proportion of families will leave. The majority of people will moan (and they are entitled to it by the way) but they won’t take children out of their more expensive independent school.

Well that tax wouldn't have made it unaffordable if we hadn't had totally unavoidable inflation caused by Liz Truss....
No vat on nursery fees but they've gone up by the best part of 20% since a year ago.
Our rent hasn't gone up much luckily but people with mortgages have seen huge rises too

do you believe these parent will continue to fundraise? or more likely existing funds will go to support current pupils struggling with VAT and then shrink/stop?

So why exactly do you care enough to make a thread?

Let the private school folks talk and discuss on their threads and you start your own about issues that impact on you? Like potholes.

Investigate tax dodgers properly? https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/18/hmrc-investigations-of-wealthy-tax-dodgers-halve-in-five-years

Following investigation last year Bernie Ecclestone paid more than £650 million.

I've seen both sides of this. I was educated in the state system and received a very good academic education. (I would say I was not as "well-rounded" as some of my privately educated peers when I met them at university but academically I could more than hold my own.) We send our daughter to an independent school. This was a last minute decision when we were allocated the worst primary in the area, where I had seen a TA roughly push a child while visiting parents were in the room. It was dreadful so we took a deep breath and bought our way out of the problem. We could afford to do it as we only have one child (thanks infertility). No school should be like that but they are out there. If the state sector sorted out failing schools people like us wouldn't have used private education in the first place.

The small amounts of additional funds this policy will raise once the additional cost to state education are dealt with will not make a difference to the overall quality of state education, but it will harm the education of many pupils who will have their schooling disrupted.