To think taxing private schools...

[maddening]

I have no skin in the game, my dc is at a secondary state school. I have no strong views on private schools - although I think state should offer the same level for all dc.

However, looking at the maths I am not convinced the cost and benefits of this proposal works out - apparently vat will bring in 1.3 billion - however if the 554,000 children in private schools had to be schooled in state schools that would cost 4 billion - aibu to think this is not the win that many are led to believe? It is more divisive imo and driven by ideology.

If the private school parents are saving the state 4 billion a year then I don't have an issue with the vat personally.

I think that there could be more requirements placed on private schools in order to retain the vat free status, such as sharing facilities with local state schools and more subsidised places perhaps, or means tested vat relief for parents?

Never said I was doing badly just pointing out the previous poster’s description of private school parents is not 100% accurate. Also I have a DC in state school and have protested about many of the issues you mention. You have a very prejudiced view of private school parents.

@Underparmummy Vast majority of children and teens in state education have already been fucked about with. Did you complain about huge cuts to state education and things like Sure Start, Connexions etc Why are you only bothered about state educated children now ?

@Dibblydoodahdah is your child in a state school requiring improvement or in special measures, or one of the god damned academies ? Let’s bet it’s a grammar or outstanding comp in a leafy suburb.
How did you protest ? Did you vote for Johnson last time ?

WTAF

How the hell did you get there? You are blinkered. I have always cared about the state of state education (I wanted to use it FFS!!!). I have joined in local campaigns about funding as we suffer from a formula inequality here.

I volunteered A LOT (using annual leave to do so) at the state school we were at (until I had to move as the anxiety my eldest was suffering from had become overwhelming). I have continued to support the school.

I have no idea why I am defending myself to you BUT YOU ARE WRONG. I believe this continues to add extra pressure onto our local schools and will harm the kids there.

I will now bother to point out that I work a fuck load more than 30 hours a week. HTH.

We need more net contributors and state schools simply don't produce them at nearly the rate as private schools.

There's monetary value and real value, my husband earns about 10 X my salary protecting other people's wealth, I teach children to read. Which is more valuable to society?

I didn’t vote for Johnson (or Cameron). I’ll be completely honest with you and confirm that I have never voted Labour. I would have considered it this time apart from this VAT policy. And yes it’s a state grammar but that doesn’t mean that I am unaware of issues impacting state schools. I am a governor of a local state primary, I was state school educated myself and my brother is a deputy head at a comp.

TBH I’m not sure that grammars are the panacea that private school parents think they will be when they plan to move.

Assuming your kids get in, and the stamp duty and cost of moving works out as worth it, they will be in a school that gets amazing results because they have selected the top 1% or whatever of pupils. went to a super selective grammar and, honestly, the teaching and pastoral care was not good.

I live in a grammar school area. All that happens is that the wealthier parents pay to tutor their kids throughout primary school to make sure they get great 11+ grades to take them into the grammar school.

And even if they don't get into the grammar school, the parents pay for them to go to private school.

Meanwhile, the local state school is on its knees. Overflowing class sizes. Off the scale poor behaviour. SEN children woefully let down. Teachers leaving in droves. In some cases at DDs school, kids have a different substitute teacher every lesson.

And then let's not even get started on the 1,000s of pupils across the UK who don't have a school place because there's literally no place for them. Or those who have no access to their school because it's been closed since September 2023 due to RAAC.

So when I see comments like 'We need more net contributors and state schools simply don't produce them at nearly the rate as private schools' you can understand why I shake my head in despair.

I get it... we all want the best for our kids, but the majority of parents who send their kids to private school have NO IDEA how shockingly bad the state education is.

I don't know whether the 20% tax increase for private schools will happen but honestly... how can you expect parents who are in despair with the woeful education that their children in state schools are receiving not to vote for something that might help?

@Underparmummy actually I always worked full time in a hard job too. I’m a crit care nurse. No proper pay rise for years, worked throughout COVID, caught long covid. Also got a decent degree and numerous post grad courses. I’ve seen state schools shafted by austerity, suffered in my job because of it and my local town is now a dump. All happened under the tories. I’m just a bit frustrated when people are moaning about first world probs essentially. Haven’t got a clue about the state of the country.

@jellyfrizz I don't think you're understanding that without net contributors there would be no money for teachers or roads or the NHS. You cannot have anything without net contributors.

You do know that correlation does not mean causation right? That the children who go to private school have massive advantages in life that they would still have if they went to state school and would more than likely still do very well in life. And the most privileged will continue to go to private school anyway. Any increase in fees being just a minor annoyance to their families. I also find it hard to believe that the 6% who go to private school contribute more than the 94% that don't.

@Iscreamtea I completely disagree that a bright privileged child will 'do well anywhere'. If that were the case an awful lot of us could be saving rather enormous sums of money. State education is currently failing masses of children from all different backgrounds because the fundamentals are missing. SEN isn't anywhere near being adequately being supported, disruption is rife and some subjects even at GCSE/A level don't have properly qualified teaching staff. The staff they do have are leaving in droves. Privately educated students add to the economy disproportionately. 60% of doctors, 70% of judges, 65% of CEOs are all privately educated and all are net contributors. We should be widening access in the short term and raising the bar of state education in the long term. We need proper taxation to make classes smaller and more manageable. We need proper SEN provision. We need teachers that aren't so stressed they are jumping ship en masse. Labour needs more people net contributing to make all that happen not less.

Today's school children are not likely to become net contributers in the next 5 years though are they? And those jobs (and salaries) won't cease to exist because a small number of children are taken out of private school.

this makes interesting reading...

https://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i632

1 Disadvantaged pupils less likely to apply
UK secondary school pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely than other pupils to apply to study medicine and are less likely to be accepted when they do. A study from the University of Dundee published in January 2016 showed that more than a fifth of all medical school applicants lived in the most affluent areas of the country.1

2 The most affluent social groups are over-represented
Data from the Medical Schools Council show that students from the most advantaged backgrounds make up 29% of those starting medical school.2 The council’s Selecting for Excellence group, which was set up in 2013 to widen participation in medicine, says that this compares with 1% of students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.

3 Pupils from private schools are over-represented
Figures from the Higher Education Statistics Authority show that a quarter of medical students in the first year of their first degree have had a private school education, despite these schools educating just 7% of pupils across the UK.3 From 2007-08 to 2011-12 the proportion of medical students who had been privately educated fell by one percentage point.

4 Private school students perform less well
Students from private and grammar schools perform less well at medical school than students from non-selective schools. Research published in BMC Medicine of the first year exam results of 4811 students at 12 UK medical schools found that students from grammar and private schools did less well than those who were educated at non-selective schools.4

5 Trainees from private schools are less likely to become GPs
Junior doctors who attended private schools are less likely to enter general practice training than those from state schools. A report published by the Centre for Health Economics report in December 2015 showed that trainees from better-off socioeconomic backgrounds were “less likely to be based in general practice than in any other specialty.”5

@Lighteningkip
Yes - the most nonsensical thing about this policy to me is that the Labour government has looked at private schools, observed that they are generally doing better than state schools and then thought up ways to attack them.

It’s like looking at Cambridge university, seeing that it and its students are very successful and then creating policy which aims to bring it down a level in response.

Our private schools have amongst them some of the best schools in the world. If anything the state should be trying to expand access to the private sector or learn from it in the state sector.

How can education overall possibly be improved by attacking schools which become too successful at educating children.

Labour is stuck in the mindset that education should be entirely about ensuring equality and has therefore completely lost sight of the “education” part of it (which private schools tend to do well). The focus on equality seems to lead to the view that every child should receive the same education which obviously doesn’t work for children who don’t fit the mould in some way e.g due to SEN or being extremely bright.

This is also interesting, while private school students are disproportionately represented in the top jobs, there are still plenty of state educated people in top positions too. I won't argue that state schools aren't in dire need of investment and reform, I'm a secondary school TA, I see it every day, but you can't just write off all state school students as future drains on the resources of this country. Don't forget also, as became very clear during the pandemic, that lot of essential work is done by poorly paid people. Money isn't the only contribution people can make to society.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/elitism-in-britain-2019

Britain’s most influential people are over 5 times more likely to have been to a fee-paying school than the general population. Just 7% of British people are privately educated, compared to two-fifths (39%) of those in top positions.

If you actually read what the BMJ article is saying it actually suggests the opposite. The privately educated kids don't do so well. They are over represented in medical school despite this.

The over representation of private school pupils in certain professions such as law and in govt is absolutely not a reflection of greater ability and that's the real issue which needs addressing

I think most state schools would churn out students with good grades if their students came from privileged backgrounds, selected by academic ability, and had the same level of funding as private schools. I don't think they would have much to learn from private schools as you think. You underestimate the skill and dedication of staff in the state sector.

All Labour are doing is stopping subsidising people's privilege by taking away a tax break. It will negatively impact a tiny number of children and hopefully, have a positive impact for many more. Private education is a luxury and a privilege and there's no good reasons why the taxes I pay on my barely above minimum wage job as a TA in the state sector (btw as a family we are still net contributers despite being state educated thanks to DH's job and other income but I know other TAs who are single parents), should be subsidising other people's privilege.

All that will be achieved is that private education will become even more of a privilege for the very rich, widening the gap. Many middle class families who have just about managed to pay the fees will no longer do so - many existing ones may muddle along for the remainder of their children's schooling, but more won't decide to choose private schools to start with. Creating a huge problem for many councils who count on a large portion of families going private and won't have enough state school places to satisfy demand.

@Iscreamtea

If you look at the study the BMJ article refers to it says that a student with AAA from a selective school on average performs equally to a student with AAB from a poorly performing non-selective school.

I said private schools generally do a good job at educating their pupils. If anything the fact that they appear to do less well at university in the context of their prior attainment suggests that their school helped them to fulfil their potential in terms of the grades they got and the state school didn’t.

But you have to be careful with these stats because the difference in performance is small (and there are conflicting studies on this anyway and the ones which say private school students underperform are over-reported). It doesn’t mean that private school students perform badly at university overall or that if you if you admitted 93% state school students they would perform as well as the current cohort (a state school student with ABB probably doesn’t outperform your AAA independent school pupil at university according to this study and there are many many independent school pupils with AAA relative to the state sector).

It does suggest that it might be appropriate to offer AAB contextual offers to pupils at certain schools because those pupils are likely to perform equally to independent/ grammar school students with AAA grades at university.

Actually, it's the other way around. Parents who pay for their children's education without receiving a penny of state funding already subsidise your children's education through their taxes (as they should do, if they earn more). The state sector will feel the pinch when this changes.
People seem to forget that school fees are already paid out of taxed income, and that children in private school receive no tax funding for their education whatsoever.

Personally I think the system in Ireland is far better. Every child gets the same amount of state funding, regardless of what school they attend. Parents can choose to top this up if they feel that a private school better meets their child's needs. Meaning that fees are much more affordable than in the UK, and within reach of many more families.

I no longer have a child in private school so no skin in the game, but will be amused to see the fall-out of this badly though-through policy. It still would never, ever induce me to vote for the Tories though.

From the perspective of those who can't afford it now, it really doesn't matter where the cut off is for who can afford it in the future. In the nicest possible way, why should we care? Am I supposed to be upset that someone now can't afford something that I was never able to afford anyway? It's like asking me to be upset that a family can't afford their trip to Disney this year.

People complaining about not being able to afford a luxury are just coming across as selfish. And the desperate attempts to pretend that they are worried about the impact on state education are just laughable. If you care about state education then what are you doing to improve the dire state it is in now? Because voting Conservative really hasn't done much to help has it?

The number of children that end up moving from private to state will be a drop in a vast ocean. It won't make any significant impact.

I would not vote for it -I do not believe that those problems are due to private schools and those kids that are educated in PS etc and don’t find it is fair to push the blame on them and their parents - expect those parents to pay extra tax on top what they already pay-it also would create much more divide -I d even go the way to suggest government to do exactly opposite -create a tax rebate for those that send to PS as it saves them money and relieves the pressure from state school system as well as will enable a lot more people to be able to afford PS and those that can’t will benefit from smaller class sizes and less crowded oversubscribed state schools