To want the private school people to shut up noq

[Rescuereivers]

i am a parent with a private school
child in secondary school, and state primary child.

I mean I get it that your kids will suffer if you pull them out. But why did you not factor in a rise in costs and make damn sure you could afford it first? Cause state school is not THAT bad, and if it is in your area, there are places you can move to. if you could only just scrape by with the fees when you put them in, well that’s just reckless, and your fault not Labours.

And if your child has SEN then that’s awful, but it’s awful for parents in state schools with SEN kids too.

Please stop with the whining, cause state and private school parents alike are both heartily sick of hearing you moan.

(and you really sound like a Conservative HQ bot employed to put scare tactics on. You’ve gone over the top and it’s beginning to backfire).

I know the provision of education is largely VAT exempt, but charitable status has guaranteed that the private schools who enjoy it have benefitted from other tax breaks too, notably on donations and business rates.

Their charitable status has deprived the public purse of millions of pounds over the years, that could have been spent providing opportunities to people with much less inherent privilege.

Introducing VAT now helps to rebalance historic inequality. There is a connection between the two things.

Are you for real? State schools may be free at the point of use but they are not free. They are paid for by governments who get the money from people like the parents of school children, who pay multiple taxes including income tax, national insurance - and VA flipping T on almost everything they buy!

Some are.

Except they didn’t. You can afford to educate privately so you did - but you expect families who use food banks to pay for their children’s education because of YOUR choice? Selfish and weird

Children in private education are not costing the taxpayer a penny. Just because something doesn’t have VAT added doesn’t mean there’s a “cost” to the taxpayer. There’s no “cost” to the taxpayer when we buy a VAT free loaf of bread. My children cost the taxpayer £0. If I moved them to state, it would cost the taxpayer around £8k per child per year. That £8k is available to be spent by the taxpayer on other things at the moment.

I was responding to a poster who thinks that parents of state educated children should start paying for their child’s education even when they’re living in poverty, I stress of taxing private school fees.

Which is just a shitbag viewpoint IMO.

What bothers me is the huge amount of moaning now, when there was not a peep in all the time that fees were increasing massively under the Tories. If this is the last straw for people, perhaps they should be blaming the ones who piled on all the other straws.

Bit mean OP. I hope you don't have a change in circumstance which means you have to pull your kid out of PS. I also hope that if that does happen to you, there isn't someone there to call you 'reckless and whingy'

I don't see that many post from parents saying they can't afford the increase. I think most of them just want to reduce the liability if possible and people who can't afford private school getting all grumpy about them not wanting to pay.

The OP. IS paying school fees.

There’s a few private school parents that I know who wouldn’t send their children to state school due to the wearing of jumpers not blazers- I kid you not! They have been rather smug in the way they talk about their children being in classes of 8 blah blah blah! This 20% rise will piss on some poor (ahem) smug people’s bonfires

I have had DC in private school for ten years and we have never had an increase of more than 5% apart from this year.

State schools desperately need investment but I don’t believe education should be subject to VAT.
It should come from income tax imo, so that everyone is investing in our children. I know many wealthy people
who are using excellent state schools (super selective grammars, faith schools, high performing comprehensives in excellent, prohibitively expensive catchment areas). Yes, they are already paying in to the system but I think they should be paying a little more.
To your point, those who can’t afford would not be impacted if this was for higher rate tax payers only

@ShanghaiDiva Exactly the same situation as us. Our youngest is in Yr 13, so this won't affect us, but our calculations were assuming 5% annual increase (but costed with 10% as worst case - and obviously the option to have pulled them at a natural end point after GCSEs if necessary). As it happens, up until about 2 or 3 years ago, the increase was around 3% average, so all in all I won on my calculations.

I most certainly would have had to take up a state school sixth form place (at our local outstanding college that we live less than a mile from (distance from home second criteria after LAC in this borough assuming entry requirements met, hence bumping another further away pupil) if 20% VAT had been introduced at that point.

I’m moaning about this policy, not because it’s going to cost me more, but because I don’t think it will raise money overall and is actually likely to cause harm to the state sector.

I’m disappointed to see Keir Starmer, who had seemed pretty sensible, espousing a policy that (IMO) doesn’t make financial sense and is purely a political dog whistle to appease the hard left.

I don’t expect people to have any sympathy with private school parents. I do expect them to examine the desperately thin reasoning and assumptions behind the policy.

They do…through their taxes (if they pay tax) so privately educating parents pay for a service they’re not using and then extra on top for the private education.
Same as the NHS, it’s not free, it’s paid for via taxes rather than at point of contact.
My children are in the state system, I work in the state system. I’d send them private if I could afford it.

OP I agree. The many threads and comments against vat on private schools that are full of hyperbole, have increased my support of vat.

I’m very bored of reading how shitty state schools are (my dc go to state school and I’m okay with that but on here I’m letting them down).

state schools get lower grades because their cohort includes lower ability pupils. While state school isn’t ideal for some dc, especially SEN (although I’ve seen pretty poor independent school Sen cover so it’s not always the answer), lots of dc do brilliantly if they have good values and a good work ethic.

Hopefully you have been happy with all the increases too. Inflation, mortgages and essential energy services. So glad you are doing well and happy with your choices. However, this is still a democratic country and private school parents are not shutting up anytime soon. Backfired? You wish.

If anything it has reconfirmed how mean and resented people are in this country. I do not want my kids anywhere near yours it seems like an epidemic of hate. Thankfully the world is rounded.

How do you know this person has changed their username?

I think that IRL it’s not something that most voters or people in general really care about but because this is a parenting website it feels like it’s a huge deal to people and it’s just not.

Although I get why it is if you’re effected.

That's very unlikely to be legal - VAT is on the goods or services not determined by who is buying them. So unless a child with SEN is receiving a substantially different service from other children it is clear discrimination to have differences in VAT between the two children.