To not see how the gov will make any money from taxing private schools?

[AngryHedgehog]

All the other threads seem to have descended into bunfighting over the ethics of the policy, yet I'm not really understanding how this stands to benefit the government as surely they'll be footing the bill for all the kids that move to state schools?

As a disclaimer, I don't have kids and wouldn't be able to afford to privately educate them even if I did, despite earning a half decent salary.

I'm reading that it costs around £7k per pupil per term, so it would take the VAT from around four families to fund each additional child moving to state education.

Given that this may be 4/10 kids in private education moving to state schooling, I don't see how this doesn't create a net loss as there will only be 50% more kids left in private education and there needs to be multiple times that for the VAT increase to foot the bill.

Surely I'm missing something here?

It doesn’t when the school is a selective middle class private school. Ability, attitude to education, age of parents, SEN are all likely to be much more diverse in the state school.

My original comment was “One of the reasons I sent my DC to private school is because it was (and is) far more ethnically and religiously diverse than my local state primary.” What part of that isn’t true?!

Re: diversity - non-selective state schools reflect their community. Private schools don't.

I live in London where state schools and private schools often sit shoulder to shoulder. The differences between state school and private school pupils - at least at secondary - are visible and obvious, which I find shocking. In London when you see groups of children from private schools they're generally taller, thinner and more likely to be white or south Asian than the local population. There are countries in Europe where there aren't big height and and weight differences by social class - those are the countries with less wealth inequality than the UK. Professor Tim Cole (UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health) has suggested poverty amongst working class British children is responsible for a reduction in average height growth over the past few years.

Diversity and reflecting the local community are two completely different things. My nieces go to school in an area not too far from where Lee Anderson is a MP and his attitude and beliefs are reflective of many in the local community. It’s why I have very little to do with that part if my family. My BIL is a racist pig. Don’t try to make out that they go to a diverse school because it’s a
state school. It’s insulting.

The non selective state schools represent the community around here ie 100% white working class.
Where is the diversity?

I am baffled that people are ignoring the importance of ethnic diversity in this discussion. It is hugely important for many parents.

with regards to SEN, especially mild and lacking a formal diagnosis, there is a lot in private schools. This also seems to be ignored in the race to shut down the non-Eton schools.

for many people this discussion seems to be less about what is generally adding value and more that “private schools are bad”.

we will move to state school, I will reduce my hours as I no longer need to pay school fees.

I will tutor my son extensively outside of school and also help him with every single extension. I will find either a very academic state school or at the very least a school with sets.

i will use any argumentation power at my disposal to ensure that my very intelligent- and hugely disruptive- son is in the top set. I suspect that he will be placed between two clever and quiet girls (who may not have the extensive out of school support). I am sorry in advance for the disruption and the especially for anyone sitting next to my son.

total cost to the taxpayer will be quite large for our family (no school fees with VAT, less income tax and two additional children to educate). I would have thought that the additional tax to the government from me working full time and having my son in a small school where they can focus heavily on discipline and routine would be best for everyone.

but again, this is the direction and I am at the moment mainly interested in seeing how this all will pan out.

My Prep school is massively diverse. My local excellent primary school had one Asian child in the year group, mine!! Our local excellent Comp has literally 50-60 at the most Asian kids out of a population of 1500 kids. Our private senior school I would say is around 60% British asian, Black British, Chinese, Indian, African, Middle Eastern, you name it!

The cultural and ethnic diversity blows me
away. Our local schools and where we live is a very white middle class area, house prices are high for our schools BuT our private school is more of a real world than this bubble we live in. Everyone drives a flash new car, has a big home - they make choices. We made ours, I wasn’t expected to be penalised for this.

I don’t want to work my arse off running my own business and employing people if I don’t have to.

If this comes in then screw Labour and their idiotic policies. This isn’t some Dictatorship, how dare they take away choice.

I’m with you @HooverIsAlwaysBroken and I’ll go on more holidays abroad and home my kids take their lives out of this country. As it’s behind the rest of the world. I’m proud of my relatives that have seen that and left gone to India, Dubai, Australia and Canada.

Absolutely- not saying we’re not better off than most. But I’m saying we don’t have unlimited budget- we earn a monthly salary and we can’t stretch any further!

There are disadvantaged children ( this is the teacher term used for
those children who are in receipt of certain benefits) in our prep school and they are on bursaries. Lots of private schools have this but you may not know- it’s not as high a percentage as state schools but it’s still around 10%.

If labour comes in and then Once the charity status drops and the VAT goes on to fees , bursaries are being dropped at our school as they can no longer be paid for by the school and they can’t increase all the parents fees and justify free places any more

Similar position to us! We are also that statistic looking at moving to a nicer village with a nicer school- the houses prices are high already but the influx of people moving will push house prices up. I know this has been spoken about a lot on LBC.

I’m quite looking forward to some nice holidays abroad if we move the kids. It seems like labour want us to prioritise materialistic things over education so so be it! I’ll leave work and do the school runs and take the kids to extra curricular activities … also plan to use the money we save saving for houses for the kids instead . I am aware I sound blasé about it all but we’re not going to cripple ourselves to find private education so we’ll see the benefited for moving instead .

Random articles from unknown sources that have mysteriously vanished aren't the most reliable of sources.

That's why I asked if anybody could direct me to the article you numpty. 😂

A school can't be considered diverse if it's part of an educational sector where an entire and large pupil cohort is completely missing.

I'm not convinced that mixing with the kids suffering from behavioral issues and chaotic home lives etc will infer the same benefits as mixing with those of different cultures/ethnicities etc (which is more what I think the PP was getting at).

YANBU OP.

Have you noticed also, now that the public are all gung-ho at the general principle of targeting these people in this situation, some are starting to go rogue and wanting to target those other people in that other situation?

In the past couple of days, I've seen a thread about banning private school kids from grammar schools, and lately a thread about banning foreign-nationality kids from grammar schools.

Yep, this!
Attacks against any "other" group/section of society.

It’s so depressing this is where we’re at with policy

How dare you suggest that all lower income families have kids with behaviour issues and chaotic lives. In the PE school that we used there was a boy of Chinese origin who was exceptionally cruel (e.g. deliberately pushing another child from a height) and another boy (naice middle class boy) that would defy the teachers instructions and run out of the school. This was primary stages.

Money and privilege doesn’t equal better behaviour or better parenting regardless of ethnicity. Boris is a prime example!!

People from other cultures or ethnicities aren’t there for your child’s education. And mixing with people with less privilege is absolutely valuable. It’s taught my DC just how lucky they are and social skills to mix with anyone.

How dare you suggest that all lower income families have kids with behaviour issues and chaotic lives.

It is well established that higher incidence SEBD is associated with deprivation

How dare you suggest that all lower income families have kids with behaviour issues and chaotic lives.

Just as well I didn't suggest that.

Of course not all lower income families have chaotic lives. I don't know why you'd draw that conclusion.

However, I'm yet to hear of a private school requiring a metal detector at the gates or regularly going into lockdown due to violence etc. You may not like it but reality doesn't care about political correctness.

Ahhh I do love how the private school parents are covering themselves in glory on each of these threads.

No, there won't be an influx of children from private schools to state schools, the vast majority of parents will simply adjust their budgets and swallow the very modest increase in fees.

No, there won't be a big hike in house prices in catchment areas for nicer schools, the people who use private schools live in the nice areas of town anyway, their kids could go there if they wanted them to.

No, you won't leave the country, people actually very rarely do this and a huge number who do are back within a couple of years.

It seems a common misconception that middle class people on 'decent' salaries are absolutely rolling in cash.

Some are, but I know many that aren't. This is because people tend to adjust their lifestyle to their income. Granted, most aren't struggling to put food on the table but they could conceivably not have thousands extra lying around if they have a hefty mortgage and money tied up in investments.

My sister is like this. Husband on six figure salary and she herself must earn at least £40k despite only working three days a week as she's pretty senior in her job.

However, they've got an enormous cottage in an expensive village and are haemorraging money adding an extension and glass ceiling etc, which has dragged on and on with spiralling costs. They keep having to put it on hold due to the expense.

Yes, boohoo poor them. They're living a life of luxury, yet their cashflow isn't great, and with three young kids in private education there's a good chance they'll just put them in the local state school. They've got assets should they fall on genuine hard times (sister has a rental property as well as their expensive house) but they won't be selling properties etc to pay school fees.

And of course many overstretch themselves to keep up with the Joneses. It's odd that people on here seem to believe that middle class people are rolling in cash whilst also simultaneously harping on about expensive cars on finance and 'living beyond their means' etc.

It's either one or the other. You can't by definition be living beyond your means if you're rolling in spare money.

You know what I’m saying and why.

This is clearly incorrect. People make decisions based on taxes and finances all the time.

I completely agree that in the short-term, most families will tighten their belts and swallow the rise in fees rather than disrupt their children's schooling. I also agree that in general, this will therefore not result in councils being flooded with applications, particularly combined with demographic changes. Additionally, I agree that we're not likely to see that much effect on house prices, because moving house is an expensive and slow process.

But the devil is in the detail:

What do we mean by "most"? Estimates vary wildly and seem to depend entirely on the political bias of the estimator. The tipping point where the measure ceases to generate any extra money also seems to depend entirely on political bias.

What do we mean by "tightening belts"? In the specific context of the wealthy private school families being targeted by this measure, the belt-tightening would reduce their VATable expenditure on non-essentials. I guess that's VAT we don't want to collect.

What do we mean by "in the short-term"? I'd be interested to know if anybody was predicting a particular flurry of movement in the coming weeks! Apart from urgent situations, doesn't it make sense for children to move schools at natural break points? So you'd see kids not moving to private at (e.g.) Yr3, Yr7, Yr9. And you'd see kids moving to state at Yr7, Yr12. This may mean parents having to wait a year or two.

What do we mean by "flooded with applications"? The distribution of school-age children and schools is not uniform throughout the country, or even within local areas. It's not exactly helpful to tell people in Yorkshire that schools are empty in parts of London. Where I live, school places are like gold dust and local children at normal entry points have been offered places practically on the other side of the city.

What do we mean by "house prices"? Again, it's all about very local situations as above. The previous city we lived in, there was a leafy naice area with 2 schools within a couple of miles of each other. One rated outstanding, the other not. It was amazing to look at house price difference within 1 street of each other, based entirely on the priority area for the outstanding school. Certainly it was the kind of house price differential to exclude all but the most wealthy. The city we live in now has exactly the same situation.

Bottom line to me is that the OP is correct - we do not know whether this measure will actually generate the projected VAT bonanza and how much the net financial/cost benefit will be. Even the most optimistic projections seem to put the figure at around 1% of the education budget. Not to mention that obviously this bonanza isn't going to be ring-fenced for showering on schools.

It would be more honest and admirable to say that this is an ideological measure for signposting what is morally right and wrong. Meanwhile, the general principle that "sinful groups" (private school kids, foreign kids) can be excluded from perceived "desirable" resources (grammar schools) has been firmly established in the public mind.