To ask if anyone is clued up on the challenge this week to VAT on school fees?

[feesss]

we went to look round a school this morning and we obviously asked about VAT and the lady showing us round said there has been a challenge this week so it may not happen? Is anyone aware of this? I can’t see much online about it?

We did, we were told we were lying or using SEN to promote our own privilege

£10.7bn on SEN and this policy will mean more is needed. I can't believe people bought it

At the end of the day this was a manifesto promise and Labour just got elected with a thumping majority. It's hardly Thatcher and the miners. Outside of a vocal minority, no-one cares. The only time I have any contact with people who send their children to private school is getting splashed by a speeding Range Rover when I'm walking to the village infants so frankly I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

That lack of interest doesn't help it stop being a very poor policy with damaging outcomes. Already shown below.

Highly irresponsible of whomever was showing you around to mention the court case as a realistic prospect of changing the inevitability of VAT being applied.

Not if their job depends on getting sales subscriptions ....

I don’t think there’s any shame in not caring about issues around education until they affect your own kids. It’s probably how most people feel.

Do they have number plates that read "private school parent"? Genuinely how do you know which school someone sends their kids to as they drive past?
There are way more Range Rovers at the local state secondary school Vs DDs indy school. Most popular cars at the Indy are Skodas or Volkswagens.

Which school would you assume we use based on my 10 Yr old Kia?

Ds walks to school

You would really confuse them

@WhosPink I don't need you to lose sleep over my kids thanks, but it would be nice if so many people didn't assume they are deserving of spite and sneers because their unmet MH and SEN needs mean I'm in massive debt to put them in private school and I'm hugely stressed about how to see them through. A "tiny minority" is irrelevant until you're part of it.

Oh and my car is an 11 year old Skoda that cost 8k.

That I'm still paying off over 5 years.

Our village prep car park is wall to wall with Range Rovers and Teslas. Maybe it depends where you live?

I think it must.

Ours is full of muddy farm landrovers, and battered hatchbacks.

Think we must live in the same village.

Of course it does and wealth will also be represented in state schools. To make sweeping assumptions based on a car is lazy. But hey Labour capitalised on that sort of thinking during the election and carried that on into government.
Sadly, many people including posters on MN bought into it. Always much easier to blame 1 section of society than to come up with meaningful policies for the majority.

This. No amount of weeping and wailing on SM is going to make a difference. So plan for VAT and plan for fees rising between 5-10 % each year too.
Colleaguepulled her kids from private because the extras were around £4/£5k per kid - they used school mini bus played sport and needed a bit of extra tutoring- and the fees rose by between 7-12 % every year which they had foreseen.
Kids now thriving in state schools and she says she’s a lot less stressed over money - was about to pull a load out of their pensions to cover fees when they sat down and realised that would be mad.

I work opp a large prep in our town and if Inmake the mistake of going around school run time can hardly get down the road for all the giant Range Rovers and SUV blocking the road dropping off offspring…

This. No amount of weeping and wailing on SM is going to make a difference.

Well it might - but possibly not the difference intended 😀

Which tax rises are you looking forward to paying?

Whatever's due really. I pay my taxes. They buy me civilisation.

If MN were even vaguely representative of the UK (it isn't) then just 1% of the effort put into whinging, whining and banging on here about tax would boost the UKs productivity 100%

I can’t understand how the challenge could win. I don’t actually agree with vat on fees part of the reason being that there’s a lot of parents of Sen kids that choose private school over fighting for an ehcp for support in mainstream or specialist which is what the challenge is about. However those parents are still at a massive advantage to parents of Sen kids who cannot pay and have to go through the tribunal system to get ehcp and support, and even those parents are still at an advantage to parents who do not have the capability to understand Sen law and go to tribunal/fight the la. I don’t understand how you can say it’s discrimination when the vast majority of disabled children don’t have the opportunity anyway and there is an alternative system for people to use to get their child support in education.

it also makes me slightly cross that people haven’t given two hoots about Sen for years and it’s underfunding, which is why many parents have had to go down the private route, but now when they are seeing it might be useful to them suddenly they are saying it’s discriminatory

Of course it would. The people paying are already propping up the tax burden

Mn pp though always happy to take more from someone else

I can’t understand how the challenge could win.

Some lawyers have already won ....