to suggest that every single parent with a child at private school apply for a state school place asap?

[sarjd]

let's see how that works.

Because it makes for an interesting story in an otherwise boring election where the two main parties land broadly the same on most topics.

"They will fight it all the way and cause distractions and legal cases and waste valuable Council time and Parliament time etc - that is the whole point"

They won't. The extra money spent doing this will be more than the VAT increase.

If bills go up people need to earn more to pay those bills.

If you need to pay a bill after you’ve paid tax then the earnings required to pay that bill will be
the bill + tax + ni = the gross earnings required to pay it.

Obviously.

@Araminta1003 so you are really saying that all of the scaremongering by some parents of private school pupils might scare off international university students? Yes it might. It is why baseless scaremongering is not a good thing - it has consequences.
The answer is not to change the policy, but for parents to behave responsibly and stop lying.

@YourPinkDog - you think it is a handful of same posters spending hours on MN whingeing?
Did you think the same was the case when we had all the Brexit threads and all the Covid schools threads?

I am just not sure. I am quite worried about this. Rich influential people have a lot of power and usually, it is the weaker people in society that get hurt. I do not think they will just go away and pay up. I think they will change their behaviour.

What I think @YourPinkDog is that we need a really responsible, mature and fiscally prudent Government to restore confidence in our country and the pound. And I do not think this kind of dog whistle irrational policy contributes to that in any shape or form. So yes, I am worried about it.

In fact the baseless scaremongering that our own press does all the time is bad for the country. But then I believe in freedom of speech. So what exactly is the answer.

@IAmNotASheep

"If bills go up people need to earn more to pay those bills."

That is an assumption you are making which isn't accurate, you'll find the overwhelming majority of PE parents will not need to earn more to pay these bills, they will reallocate discretionary spending. Especially as the increase is a small % of their income.

Obviously.

@Araminta1003 the threat to go to court and spend lots of time lobbying will take a lot of time. So yes I wonder how these parents who always claim to work very long hours, will manage to find the time.

And if I sent my DCs to private school, I would be cringing in embarrassment at some of my fellow parents and their reaction to this.

@YourPinkDog - I think because it is about their children and there are a lot of lawyers, they might actually do it. Especially if the DCs have SEN. I think people go a bit batshit when it is their children and they can.

It's hardly hatred and singling out lol those parents choose to blow thousands on private school for their kids when the kids would of been perfectly fine going to a normal school like everyone else. It's a luxury item so why shouldn't you pay vat on it?
It's not hatred to be concerned with the UK's shit job of controlling immigration either, guess you call any criticism of anything hatred though

@Araminta1003 Then they are stupid. It is £69 a week. They will spend way more money fighting it in court. And they will lose and make themselves look ridiculous.

Any anyone who openly supports this and is a business owner will get destroyed in the press. Very easy to feature individuals living in multi million pound homes, paying their staff NMW, and fighting in court over an extra £69 a week.
It is almost a call to class war.

@Menopausalprincess "This policy is really poor, but people like it because of a certain schadenfreude about pushing ‘privileged’ kids into failing schools."

That is not true and says more about you than other people.

And the harder rich people fight this policy will their ridiculous claims, the more it ties Labour into keeping the policy. It makes it almost impossible for them to drop.
If these rich parents had an ounce of intelligence they would have kept this fight off social media and out of the papers and lobbied quietly. That is the only way to win a fight like this.

@YourPinkDog - it won’t be rich people in mansions fighting it. It will groups of parents with kids with SEN who have been failed by the state sector and the Council who have delayed their EHCPs and where the Councils have not stuck to the timetable laid out in the law.

@Araminta1003 There are lots of SEN pupils in state schools and being home educated. Very few have the option for private education, unless paid for by LA. But yes they might win it for specialist SEN schools, but not for mainstream private schools.

@Araminta1003

It won't. Sorry.

But that is the point @YourPinkDog - there are a whole lot of angry parents of state school SEN children who have been pushed out and now a whole lot of angry private school parents with children with SEN so you are getting them all together and now they have some successful lawyers amongst them too (and disability discrimination laws) so what is going to happen?
I guess it is a good thing if they all collectively get together and fight for their children’s needs. But let’s not assume this won’t lead to the taxpayer footing the bill. Of course we will. And I guess we should have not been failing these children earlier. So we will need to fund a whole more SEN schools urgently and fund the council EHCP departments urgently as well. But we need cash for that. And the VAT won’t do it.

You know parents of SEN children at state schools and home educating have already been fighting? It is the Tory government cuts that have been the issue. But the private school parents have not given a shit, and they still will not if they get their vat exception.

@Araminta1003 what even is there to argue at this point? It's literally a luxury item these parents chose to spend thousands so their kids won't be surrounded by peasants (you see people pretty much admitting this on Mumsnet all the time) but reality is 93% of children go to normal school and almost all turn out fine 🙂 I promise us peasants aren't that bad.
Everyone already pays vat on things more important than private school so what is there to even moan about? I'm not even a labour voter but this is a good policy can't deny it 🤷🏻‍♀️

Now, now, they were reading to the poor children in their spare time.

@Araminta1003 SEN is broken in this country and is an entirely separate issue. My understanding is that those with a EHCP will be exempt from VAT - so I doubt what your saying will happen.

All I will say is don't anybody count their chickens just yet. Remember the Maggie/Neil Kinnock election, when good old Neil was a shoo-in, already packing to move into number 10 and he got absolutely trounced!!