To wonder if Private School parents think we can’t read?

[Captainmycaptains]

Work/volunteer in Education so following the whole VAT debate.

SM is full of private parent groups ‘organising’ to get the proposed VAT on fees cancelled - fine you would, wouldn’t you esp.if you’re used to getting your own way.

They’re advocating hassling local schools, councils, demanding stats and figures that don’t exist, wiring to MPs - telling people to ‘claim’ their state place to ‘disrupt’ the ‘system’ while also saying ‘ Obvs we won’t be taking Charlotte and Hugo out of school, we’ll find the money’ etc strive harder, getting granny to chip in’ but this might make the council ‘panic’.

Do they think that people in support of the VAT aren’t seeing/hearing/reading all of these plans???

the funniest one yet is the poster who said ‘ well going to claim our state school places then! See how they like that! We’ll going holiday, pay the mortgage down, shop at Waitrose and save £700k in the process, ha!’
I. no you aren’t 2. Okay - go for it! Who on earth would think £700k is worth it?? Behave like a normal person then…

YANBU - yeah, they’re noisy as expected but the rest of us are as think/ concerned as they seem to think. Also - it’s too late for Sept - waiting lists only…

YABU - applying for school places you have no intention of using is daft, and of course everyone can see what they’re trying to do.

There is a huge retention problem in the mil at the moment, and cea already does not cover all the fees and we still have to heavily budget to provide uniforms and pay for the mandatory 'extras'.

We are also hearing rumours from knowledgeable sources that cea will not increase to cover the whole extra. And to be honest, even if it does where do you think that comes from? It comes from MOD budgets funded by taxes so is effectively robbing Peter to pay Paul.

It's not just officers who use CEA - my husband and I are on 'normal' wages and actively go without to manage. Other ranks (not officers) also generally have less control over their postings - if we're told to go somewhere there's not a lot we can do about it.

Again the glee about children having to leave their place of education and their friends is quite sickening. I'm not naive, I know it might happen and I know they'll be fine, just like they were on the 6 moves they managed whilst in primary school. But it does get harder.

oh that is absolutely not true. Dozens and dozens of comments on these threads over the last few months mocking "poor little Tarquin having to slum it with the plebs". I absolutely will be crying a river for the lovely, sweet kids I teach in an Indie who are here because state has failed them and this is a refuge from the vicious and violent bullying they came from and / or lack of SEN support. Not all Private schools are Eton; the vast majority are not and outside of the SE especially, parents are not all on six figure salaries driving BMW and Land Rovers. I absolutely believe that ALL kids should have the kind of pastoral and SEN support my school provides but this is not going to achieve that, nor come anywhere close. It would take 10 x the supposed 1.5b this is meant to raise to properly resource and fund provision in schools and CAMHS to address the relevant issues but that's far too hard and would involve criticising the parenting of the violent thugs and raising general taxation on ALL which would be deeply unpopular, so it won't happen. This is an easy grab, a vote winner and the only "losers" are a few thousand deeply vulnerable kids but they're names are Hugo and Charlotte so who cares?

RTFT

@BibbleandSqwauk I have only seen those kind of posts in reply to comments from posters complaining how awful it would be if their child had to go to a state school. That kind of comment deserves to be mocked.

purplecaterpillar · Today 17:00
Nobody is being gleeful. We are just not crying a river for them

Not true at all. Just like the last thread I read, the bitter resentment and glee is massive.

I won't celebrate the joy at unsettling children from their friends, Sen kids without EHCPs not being able to access correct support, dealing with change etc.

My children go to private school. My youngest would of been lost in the state school system and that's not a place I want him to be in.

I have a child at private school but I’m not protesting - I want a change of government. I hate this whole ‘us and them’ attitude whatever direction it’s coming from - private school parents making a big public fuss, and also people taking strange glee in the possibility of kids having to move school and being ‘taken down a peg’. For what it’s worth I think it would be fairer to tax wealth at source - the richest aren’t really going to be affected by a rise in school fees, so by hitting those who aren’t rich but are stretching to cover school fees, the policy will just widen inequality still further.

I completely agree. It’s destroying our country and it’s infectious, it’s awful.

Inequality has widened massively in this country. Are you really expecting people not to notice? And if they do to simply accept it?

“So some of the defence budget will be spent on school breakfast clubs?“

@Sloejelly - I think it is mainly maths teachers now to fund the next generation of super military coders! To hack the Russians back…

@Porcuine20 You are my kind of person! Tax the wealthier more (we can discuss where that boundary ought to be but I would definitely fall into any definition), and own your privilege if you have rather than bleating. And yes, attacks from 'below' on children in privilege aren't acceptable either. Like you I feel a proper wealth tax would be a better, surer, and more lucrative route.

Fact is too that schools have had a year already to think about this measure, and may well get a couple more. Like any business they ought to be thinking of ways of not passing on costs to customers.

Compare this with the introduction of the two child limit for child benefit - that came with far less warning, and impacted families who really couldn't pivot.

We are going to have to raise taxes in the near future. Just look at the declining revenues from petrol and diesel sales with increase in EVs. Massive hole in the coffers!

“Inequality has widened massively in this country. Are you really expecting people not to notice? And if they do to simply accept it?“

No we shouldn’t accept it. But incentivising a whole lot of rich and higher rate tax payers to leave for Dubai is hardly going to help the nation or our budget. It’s pointless. Just like they can’t get to non doms without an internationally coordinated taxation effort, oh wait. We have a tendency to remove ourselves from things like the EU rather than work with them!
And whilst some may feel good for a split second that some kids in boaters got stuffed, if it leads to precisely nowhere in terms of extra cash or equality and throws even more disabled kids under the bus, then how is that a win.
Inequality has grown all over the world since the tech boom and Covid. We aren’t the only ones with this problem. We have to deal with it in a mature way, this ain’t the way forward towards equality, it seems to me it does the opposite.

Completely true. Plenty of people haven't expressed glee, just exasperation at some ps parents who say that state school parents are gleeful/jealous/just too lazy/not hard working enough

And again - do you think state school parents can't read? Or count? Anyone expressing glee is in a tiny minority

Edited because I quoted the wrong post so my post made no sense.

@Araminta1003 I was not discussing how to reduce inequality, simply responding to your comment about hating the them and us attitude.
Personally I think your feeling comes from a position of privilege. I think there is a them and us in reality.

And that really is the problem.

Its unfortunate if this thread has given the impression that some feel state school parents aren’t working hard enough etc because that really isn’t true or fair. The more accurate point is that private education in this country is already eyeing-wateringly expensive and already stretches a goodly proportion of the parents who can think about affording it. Making it more expensive is only going to widen the gap and carve a deeper gap between the majority and the even smaller number who can have the benefit of it. It’s almost an exercise in shaping an elitist minority under the guise of dismantling it.

there are people I don’t mind pointing and laughing at over this. The other day someone did the ‘first they came for the…’ poem about it which was INCREDIBLE.

I haven’t seen people gleeful about it as a concept. I have seen people (including me) flabbergasted at how batshit private school parents have gone about it. sometimes being told to pull yourself together is good I think, and I def think the amount of wailing and threatening about it from the private school side (not all of you!) has driven a bunch of people (including me) towards a… harsher or at least more pisstaking stance than they otherwise would’ve had.

im also pretty sure a lot of it is conservative trolls trying to turn it into another ULEZ and I don’t mind ragging on trolls

I can totally understand why for some parents the idea of their kid going back to a state sector that has traumatised them would be deeply alarming. Loads of state schools are amazing, loads of kids do brilliant them but let's not pretend that that is universal. Far, far from it.

I've said this before, a real leveller would be a random or SATS based allocation of schools to break up the postcode lottery and ensure an even spread of demographics across an LA with transport provided as needed. If kids of wealthy, aspirational parents are so necessary to raise state standards, as some argue, let's spread them out to avoid the "leafy comp" and "sink school" dichotomy.

I suspect they dropped the idea when they eventually realised that only half of schools have charitable status, and the removal of the status wouldn’t affect the VAT position anyway.

“Oh @Araminta - Starmer's was an odd case, and you surely know it. His school switched while he was already there as a state pupil. Even the Telegraph doesn't turn the knife, saying 'His attendance at Reigate Grammar School would prove controversial in later life. It would have become a comprehensive school had it not been for a directive issued by Margaret Thatcher as education secretary, and instead went private, though boys who were already at the school, including Sir Keir, did not have to pay.' Neither he nor his parents chose fee paying. The grammar system was in place across the country, and he got a place on merit.”

@charitynamechange - it is relevant though because Starmer professes to be the son of a toolmaker? And an NHS nurse who is devoting his life to service.
His parents were not so left principled as to remove him from a private school and uproot his education and him emotionally.
Yet he is happy to throw some disabled children and their parents under a bus?

Kids don’t choose their education - it’s their parents who do. They are blameless in all of this. Starmer also said at interview he would not go private in health care for a relative. It’s clearly not true. So what are we meant to think of him, privately educated and his wife, privately educated at a posh private North London girls” school? And using excellent state London schools for his own DC.

Non of it makes any sense to me! At least give all the SeN kids and military families a VAT exemption and potentially some NHS in deprived areas too. Why would that be so bad?
Please could some of those who think this policy is a good idea explain why there cannot be reasonable exemptions?

@Horseebooks · Today 18:34
there are people I don’t mind pointing and laughing at over this. The other day someone did the ‘first they came for the…’ poem about it which was INCREDIBLE.

That poster then went on to say “I'm sorry but presenting the wealthiest people in the country as some sort of threatened minority is tasteless at best” so you obviously didn’t read the post properly. He/she was being sarcastic.

This 2019 article is worth reading

www.theguardian.com/education/2019/jan/13/public-schools-david-kynaston-francis-green-engines-of-privilege

I should imagine that in order to minimise the impact as much as possible one of the first things to go will be bursaries. Again widening the gap further. Either close all of them or leave them be. This policy just doesn’t make sense to me.