To think that improving state schools needs people to pay an e.g. a state school tax?

[Theyhadsomehoneyandplentyofmoney]

What with the current hoo ha about VAT on private school and commentary about equality and privilege.. wouldn’t it make sense to vastly improve state schools? And in order to do so obviously the government needs more cash.

Isn’t it reasonable therefore to ask anyone using state schools, to pay a bit of tax for that, in order to improve all said schools from their (often) current dire state?

Agree.

My children are privately educated but I am really cringing at a lot of the posts on here at the moment.

(And they really aren't a good advertisement for private education as there is a real lack of rational thought or compassion in a lot of them).

The real problem with things like this is always the delta.

If Labour had proposed say a 4% rise per year to the VAT maximum of 20% over 5 years then that would not have been so disruptive and allowed a significant number of people to manage their way out of the affordability trap.

This way Labour could have continued to wage their culture war without imposing the huge disruptive change on private school parents and the schools themselves and getting the political fall out from that.

It's not as if the policy is going to raise any net money anyway.

Already pay vast amounts of tax so no, no appetite here to pay a charge to access state education. Besides we were paying a charge called private school fees, but after all the bit by on here, I think we’ll save our money for ourselves.

The government has enough money, it is wasteful, inefficient and unproductive. That is why services are rubbish.

These parents in the 'naice' area are probably the ones paying more tax already, by your logic they are more wealthy. But how about pensioners and those living in council properties in these areas, may have moved there before property prices rose. Should they pay extra? How about a widowed parent who moved there when relatively well off with 2 parents but now on 1 income they are struggling. Do we base the areas which should charge this on ofsted grade? Exams results? How about children who come into the school from outside the area due to having a specific need only that school can meet? Do they pay extra too? How about schools which are in really deprived areas but which are thriving due to excellent leadership?

I think our area would be described as nice, and our girls state school thrives because parent voluntarily put a lot of time and money into it. Not a week goes by where we aren't asked for a contribution to something or other, which is absolutely fine, we are happy (and able) to pay for our girls to have a fantastic school experience. Most parents do pay, a few can't afford to and there is no pressure on them to do so, it thrives on goodwill and acceptance that we are all different in our abilities to control the school commuinity. Make this compulsory and you risk losing the goodwill of the parents and putting those who are struggling into even greater debt.

This is likely to be posted by someone who has no idea in these senior level roles with packages like this of (1) how much pressure there can be to ensure successful delivery, (2) the extent of the consequences if something were to go wrong personally and on a company-wide scale, i.e. the 'risk level' of the role, and who the role holder is answerable to, (3) the amount of specialised experience required to perform the role effectively, and (4) the amount of complexity involved in the role and for decision making. Profits are not circumstantial, they are derived from a number of complex factors including strategy, market knowledge and many other things that it's probably pointless to outline given that so many people love to wallow in their bitterness and entitlement therefore their comprehension of such things is automatically limited (and rendering them incapable of performing in a role like this too).

Don’t hold your breath - the money will go towards academic tutoring, music lessons, tennis lessons, riding lessons, cultural enrichment, university fees, house deposits.

Countries like Ireland expect parents to put their hands in their pockets to pay for things like books, stationery. At least that stop teachers having to pay for things.

Some also pay towards GP appointments

Not this government though. They'd give the money to their mates and continue to screw the education sector over.

How much was allocated to education in the last budget?!

'then we have to pay fees for some classes. Some are for required classes. Some are for optional ones. This basically means that poorer children don’t really have the choice to take some of the more expensive classes because they have to consider the cost. How the school is allowed to charge for required classes eludes me.'

This seems the worst of all systems to me. Segregation by wealth, in class for everyone to see. And to be reminded of one's poverty on a daily basis! And denied access to drama or music simply for that reason. How miserable for some children. They're making people feel like 2nd class citizens from a very early age.

I come from an age where we FSM children were called out at the start of assembly each term and told to go to the office to deal with the paperwork. It was open season for the bullies. 🙁

We already pay tax for education. your whish to pay separately is not our problem - its not taxing education it's taxing elitism and it should be taxed. the private schools should also all loose their charitable status.

for two long the private schools have had an unfair tax position.

If you're not happy paying more maybe talk to the school about their over-inflated fees -or you could put them in the state system - which has been excellent for our DDs.

But adding VAT to school fees is the correct thing to do.

I don’t mind them getting high salaries but some of them are unreasonably high. And when bankers got it all wrong I don’t remember them getting any sort of consequences, they asked state for help.

And your point is? That's your choice. if you choose to pay for private schools fees there's no reason for them to be tax-exempt.

I just think more people need to work to increase our tax revenue 🤷🏼‍♀️ rather than furthering the burden on working people

£60 billion for primary and secondary schools.

I think that the problems with a lot of state schools run far deeper than a lack of funding. Some of the best performing schools have less funding than others. Anecdotally, our local schools with the best facilities (state of the art sports facilities, recording studios etc) have the worst outcomes for children.

However, if we want meaningful increases in state school funding, it’s going to take more than the VAT on school fees which is optimistically estimated to raise 1% of the state education budget. A 1% increase in income tax, VAT, or means testing state education would raise multiples of the amount predicted from VAT on school fees.

By that logic, there’s no reason that multi millionaires can use the state system without paying a penny more in tax.

@Theyhadsomehoneyandplentyofmoney Have you got any useful suggestions on how to improve the state education system apart from your poorly thought through 'pay more tax' idea? Or was your intention just to start a goady thread.

But it goes to families quite high up the income scale. Would we not be better directing that money where it is most needed?

Child benefit could be subsidising the big mortgages for wealthier families in exclusive catchment areas that are keeping poorer kids out of the best state schools. That doesn’t make sense to me. It could also be buying expensive trainers, tennis lessons and foreign holidays. Why should some kids have that while others can’t even have their EHCPs fulfilled or otherwise access a decent education.

There is no such thing as road tax

pedantic

You asked about ways of improving state schools without throwing money at the problem, OP. Well, job one is to solve the recruitment and retention crisis.

Firstly, do something drastic about teacher workload. The best solution would be to give teachers less contact time, but you can't do that without employing more teachers to cover the shortfall. Not doable without more money, and impossible anyway atm as there simply aren't enough people who want to be teachers, even with a big bursary to train).

So... put schools back into LEA control, ditch Ofsted, get rid of league tables, ban written homework in KS3, set national guidelines for much stricter behaviour management (SLT to routinely remove troublemakers from lessons and supervise them) and stop deterring schools from excluding students, set a national limit of 2 data collection points per year (except public exam years).

Make schools stop making teachers accountable for things beyond their control. Place some of the expectation back on students (who currently know their teachers are more stressed about the results than they are). Stop expecting teachers to do lunch time interventions for students who cba to pay attention in class time.

Also, total ban on prescriptive uniform rules. Only generic e.g. navy trousers/skirt, white shirt etc. Allow trainers and whatever coloured socks. Basically stop making petty rules which waste teachers' time and piss off students. Ideally ditch uniform altogether. And I'm just getting started.

'Agreed. Where dues the money come from to do all that?'

There is only one source that can raise enough to materially impact the services provided to 10 million children, and that is general taxation. PAYE.

The top 10% already pay 60% of income tax, so it has to come from more general taxation, ie everyone.

Anything else will make a marginal difference at best or no difference at all. Which means either raising PAYE or reprioritising how we spend the money already raised.

Source: The Conservative Party, everywhere this week. It's how they're saying they'll pay for their election giveaways. Unfortunately this money wasn't available for the pandemic catch up programme for children...

Not really, as the way vehicle tax works means some pay nothing for their car. I only pay £20 myself, that's not going to fill many potholes.

Loads of other tax sources that aren't income tax - VAT is one of the more progressive ones and a 1% increase in VAT raises more than increasing the basic and higher rates of income tax by 1p each - and it's generally more progressive.

The other big money spinner is employer NICs.

If you wanted to raise more, rather than borrowing or reprioritising, there are options within the existing system even if you didn't shift to new sources.

However given the current state of public services, low comparative pay and the overall economic picture, there is a reasonable case for one-off borrowing to deal with structural issues in some cases.