Private school fees - act now for SEND!

[BellesAndGraces]

The King’s Speech is scheduled for this Wednesday (17th July) and it will be followed by 4 days of debating Labour’s proposed legislation in Parliament, including the introduction of VAT on private school fees.

If you have a child with special educational needs or a disability and send them to a private school because your local state school was unable to meet their needs but do not have an EHCP I would strongly suggest that you write to your MP and tell them why you send your child to a private school and how the charging of VAT on private school fees will affect you. Ask your MP to stand up in Parliament and ask the government whether it is willing to expand the exception they have agreed to make for children with EHCPs to cover all children who attend private school in order to meet their SEND. If you share your story and circumstances with your MP you will be providing them with a case study they can refer to in Parliament about how charging VAT on private school fees will affect those of their constituents who are already dealing with the challenges that having a child with SEND can bring.

You can find out who your MP is and their email address here: https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP

Also I’d be really interested in the numbers here, we know already that only 6% of kids attend a private school. Those with really serious SEN can get an EHCP (totally agree it’s a fight but it can be done especially if you can afford a solicitor). So this leaves an absolutely minuscule proportion of people who have a degree of SEN but not serious enough for an EHCP, and whose parents can’t now afford the VAT (which technically should really have been being paid all along).

Compared to the vast numbers of kids in the state sector who don’t have a qualified teacher, whose school is falling apart or who can’t go to school at all because their needs are not catered for at all this is an absolute niche issue.

My children absolutely fall into this category and I am going into more and more debt to keep them at the school that can cater to their needs and support their mental health. I would hope it goes without saying that I would absolutely love for the state system to be adequate but it isn't and the key point is that this policy will not change that in ANY way. Not one. There will be children negatively affected and none positively - the mythical 6500 maths teachers?? I am a teacher. I know the sector from the inside and this will not help. I am perfectly capable of writing more than one email so will happily contact my MP on this issue and ALSO the far wider and more challenging issue of all the reasons why the state system and CAMHS and the intersection of the two are fucked and letting down thousands of kids. I'd actually be less opposed to the VAT if it was being channelled into that.

The SEND system is broken. I will campaign to improve it for the majority not for the minority.

we need a system whereby no parent is having spend a fortune on school fees or lawyers just to get an education. That automatically puts those who have parents who can’t do that at a disadvantage.

But a lot of these private places are being funded by cash-strapped local authorities at the expense of parents with SEND children who cannot afford the lawyers to force the LA to send their child private. Our LA is millions overspent because of this and now has pulled back on issuing EHCPs for this reason. Its scandalous.

nah, thank you. Do you just consider private school Send issues because it affects you? Send affects everyone. Lobby your MP for better general provision and funding instead.

Better send funding is a far better idea for campaigning. If your child doesn't have a ehcp then they cannot have needs that require a private education, you are choosing it

I won't be signing any such petition. This is petitioning for a cause that benefits the more priviledged few. It's totally wrong.

My DC has SEN and we pay for schooling. Not private but online - after fighting for years for an ECHP I just didn't have any fight left in me to make every single teacher actually implement it.

If I write to my MP it will be to address SEN provision for ALL kids. I am not sure if our fees will increase or not, but I won't be against it if they do. I realise I've been privileged to have a choice of education for my DC, and that there are far too many kids who don't have that.

I'd like MPs to help kids with SEN whose families can't afford to opt out of failing systems.
I pay for education, therapy, medication, therapeutic activities etc. It.means my child isn't suicidal and can learn. But that should be the baseline for all kids, not just in families lucky enough be able to choose to pay for it.

And that's not even before we start thinking about children living in hostels, who are hungry, who don't have a bed.

I'd feel like a bit of a twat asking my MP to ignore those and worry about the lucky few losing a tax break.

Ha! No.

However, I will email my local labour MP to express my total support for adding VAT to ALL private school fees. Thanks for the reminder!

Most people are capable of holding more than one truth at the same time. It is possible to agree that children who attend private school because state schools do not have adequate SEND provision should not have to pay VAT whilst also believing that state schools should be better funded.

SEND provision in state schools is dire - we have personal experience of this because we had to remove our children from the state system and put them into private schools because they were failing our children! This isn’t some hypothetical point for us, it is our actual experience. Writing to your MP as I have suggested does not mean you cannot also write about the very poor SEND provision in state schools - it is implicit for me anyway as I would not have sent my disabled private school if her needs were properly catered for in our local state school. The headteacher at our local school even acknowledged that her school was not the school for a child with my DC’s disability - she was not discriminating against her, she was just being honest in a time when most people are too scared of the consequences of acknowledging the truth.

The PPs making flippant comments about just applying for an EHCP have clearly never tried to apply for one before and I sincerely hope that they never have to.

How do you know she isn't campaigning for all children with SEND. A lot of SEND parents do. Weird comment.

I also have experience of state schools failing my child.
I also have experience of fighting for an ECHP. For years. And then teachers not following it.
I have experience of watching my child be failed by their school. And falling apart.

And I still think that if you are contacting your MP it should be to fight for the many children, not just your own.

I have been through the EHCP system. You absolutely would not do it unless you had to. For one thing you have to write thousands of words about what a mess your child is, which is thoroughly depressing. For another thing it is a huge amount of work. For me it's been like a second job (unpaid of course).

If children's needs are met early on, it's often possible to avoid higher levels of provision.

The current system forces parents to send kids to unsuitable schools to let them fail, to gather evidence that a different school is needed. At that point sometimes the child can't attend.

There absolutely are kids in private schools whose needs would merit an EHCP but they don't need one (as long as they stay in the private system) because their needs are met.

Just like there are people paying for private healthcare who don't appear in the waiting list statistics because they didn't seek NHS treatment.

So write to your MP and make all those points!

This is incredibly sad. We are talking about the life chances of disabled children, not whether rich people should get non-dom status or have to pay extra SDLT on their second homes.
It goes without saying that all children should have access to decent state schools and you have no idea what I or other posters with children with SEN or a disability have been doing to campaign for that or how many letters we have already written to MPs, councillors, newspapers or anyone who will listen. I can only guess that it’s probably more than you have ever written.

Trust me when I say that there are many children with SEN in private schools right now that you would not want in your child’s class of 30+ with one teacher because that teacher’s attention would almost certainly be monopolised by those children. Yes, let’s campaign for better SEN provision for state schools but let’s not pretend that that will happen any time soon whilst in the meantime you will have lots of kids re-entering a state system that cannot currently support them because their parents can’t stretch to cover the VAT on their fees.

The PPs making flippant comments about just applying for an EHCP have clearly never tried to apply for one before and I sincerely hope that they never have to.

I have and that's why I made the comment. I don't think you should be resorting to having to spend your money and go through this worry of VAT, when really the LA should be meeting your child's needs. If you spent your money on legal fees instead it may save you money in the long run. My council conceded before tribunal in the end and if your case is clear cut you probably won't need representation anyway. It was a suggestion.

It's shit having to fight I know and it is exhausting working and dealing with your child's needs too, but I think if we all concentrate on the private school debate we are missing the point - you shouldn't be worrying about this in the first place if the LA was doing their job according to the law.

My son has complex needs though, and yes he is still in mainstream and it took about 14 months to go through the process to tribunal to get him school place, but we did get there in the end. I appreciate it can be harder for HF children though as it is more difficult to evidence their needs if they are doing well academically.

We are just about to move my DC ( ASD and ADHD) to a private school. Terrible timing. We have been told by the current school that they would qualify for an ECHP but could not bring ourselves to go through the process of applying for one after the stress of getting a diagnosis.
What we will be doing is applying for DLA and carers allowance. We hope that this will cover some of the VAT. Never would have applied for this if it wasn't for the new policy.
My DC could not cope in a mainstream school which is overwhelmed by many kids with special needs.

I have a child with learning difficulties but no EHCP. The state system failed her repeatedly but we were fortunate enough to be able to jump ship and go private. This is a luxury and I agree that that luxury should be taxed because not everyone can afford to do what we did. I believe that before we went private and I still believe it now.

I feel angry that the state system is so underfunded that even though my child attracted Pupil
Premium funding due to being a previously looked after child they could still not afford to provide the help she needed.

The state system had no problem spending my son's pupil premium money on extra tutoring to make sure he got level 9s instead of level 8s because that made their stats look good. They just can't afford to spend money on the ones who are really struggling due to learning difficulties.

Yes - we are talking about the life chances of ALL disabled children.

You are talking about the life chances of the small % of this country's children with SEN which are a) at private school and b) cannot afford the VAT rise.

You are assuming that most posters have no lived experience, despite many telling you that they have. You are assuming that the rest of us are not fighting or campaigning or speaking out every chance we get. You are ignoring all the parents with SEN children who disagree with you.

Why should people pay more for a SEN education that their child is not being offered by the state because another parent can’t afford it? Yes all SEN kids should get a decent education but that’s not a reason to charge VAT for children who are SEN and whose parents had to go private because it wasn’t offered .

@coupdetonnerre just so you know I am a school SEN governor at my local school, with 2 of my 4 kids having ECHPs for which I have successfully applied and now have to spend hours engaging with schools and the county council to try to ensure they are complied with (I.e. fight tooth and nail for the basics). I have also campaigned for equal access to education for many SEN kids including helping and directing others to resources. So I think I actually do quite a bit, yes it had been quite a struggle alongside Covid and working full time as well as multiple lengthy hospital stays for one of my kids- thanks for asking!

My comment was actually aimed at you criticising other people for not doing enough- it’s perfectly acceptable to critique the basic tenet of this thread- to galvanise affluent parents to bother their MPs about this niche issue whilst ignoring the needs of the majority who will benefit from this policy by increasing funding in the state sector. You can criticise that from whatever perspective you want without having to be a full placard waving protestor.

Safety valve? Utter crock of shit that is. Let's reduce spending by pretending SEND doesn't exist. Lovely Tory policy there.

We need more special schools built. Sadly all political parties won't acknowledge this, why would they if they are expensive. Nothing on any manifestos about this. It's an utter mess. My LA asked the D of E for funding to build two SS and it got declined. There is over 200 children waiting for a specialist place in my LA (so have been through an EHCP process and meet the threshold to need one). That's about the capacity of two maintained special schools. Clever, clever D of E. 🙄I hope it changes after the election, but I doubt it because the economy is a pile of shit too.

I literally emailed my new Labour MP an hour after his seat was called, so I have already let him know my issues. 😂I will be like a wasp round this man. I hate being that parent, but you have to be.

In a nutshell.

Why should those who can afford to pay privately for something the state should be paying for but isn’t be taxed? Especially when it’s a suitable education for a disabled child?

what an awful person you must be to want to punish disabled kids because you’re jealous their parents can afford to pay to stop the state failing them. It’s quite possible to care about SEN kids whose parents can afford private school and those who can’t if you’re a decent human.