To be completely shocked by this - Bridget can’t tell us the impact of the government’s VAT on Education?

[Sasskitty]

Bridget Phillipson dodges question on impact of private school tax raid

As parents and schools complain of chaos, Ms Phillipson refuses to spell out details of the assessment made by the department for education

Bridget Phillipson failed to spell out the full impact of the government’s private school VAT raid, dodging the question when asked about the possible implications for special education schools.

While she said the government has “looked at all of the potential impacts”, her answer failed to provide any real detail on the expected consequences.

It comes as parents and schools complain about the implications of the tax raid, which came into force on New Year’s Day and is expected to raise £1.5bn for the Treasury.

YABU - Bridget Phillipson has it all in hand. She just didn’t feel like answering the pesky question. The point is to piss rich people off. Leave Labour alone, they want nothing but erm oh I’m not sure.

YANBU - Phillipson clearly has no idea what the impact of VAT on Education will be. Nor does she really care as long as she’s seen to be punishing those horrible rich people. Or even better (it seems) the not really rich ones just trying to improve the education of their children as the available state schools were not suitable.

https://apple.news/AO7fcmrzuRaik4stLaPQxwA

(sorry paywall but there’s not much more in the article)

PS. I’ve removed the poll tally, no one needs to see real data. Do they?

That sounds a typically rational approach. Judge a policy on how "irritated" you get on mumsnet.

I bet that's Bridget Philipson's secret approach too. Devise a policy based on how much you don't like the people who use a particular type of education.

That makes no sense. VAT has just been implemented, the impacts of it will become increasingly clear. It is not yesterday’s news? The whole point of a new policy is you observe the impact it has. Where I am sitting at the moment, State Sixth forms have had a lot of applications and there have been mergers between some preps and secondary private schools.
Fees seem to have gone up a lot in the last few years. It is a tax on the parents, not the schools as they are only absorbing small amounts. The fact that parents are being taxed (that is how it has played out) means they are more incentivised to take their kids out and use state education. The schools have not absorbed the extra cost, as initially indicated by the Government. I suppose many just cannot because of the business rates and NI changes and pension costs as well.

I still do not understand the rationale of the policy. It cannot be to raise money as the money amount is quite small in the overall budget. Was it intended somehow to make private schools more efficient? Or to curtail private education? I do not think the policy makes themselves have a consistent view on why this was implemented.

@Hoppingabout going by her X posts it would seem so

Mind you quite a few of Labour's policies fit that criteria

For some reason you must have missed "I still don't think it is a great idea" . That is quite distinct from having depleted levels of sympathy for some due to the attitudes displayed on these threads.

‘feels like there's a target on our backs and the hurt it's causing me/my DC is some kind of social retribution.’

now this privileged people trying to turn themselves into victims somehow REALLY gets on my tits!

Just wait til your children get out in the real world and realise that private school is far from the golden ticket it used to be … for getting into uni, for grad schemes, for jobs.

@AgathaPanthus - do you think people will just get used to the £1200 extra shown as VAT on their school bills at the start of every term? Or are they going to get angry every single time? It is quite a large amount and I think for the top very expensive schools it is thousands, like £3500 every term just staring in their face.
I guess if you are a real millionaire you are not going to care, but for everyone else is it not just a constant reminder?

Well, they do have a choice.

Of course they do. They could hand the taxpayer a huge bill instead.

Sorry, is it a golden ticket or isn't it? I am always confused how people can be so scathing of the fact private schools get better results, convince themselves the kids have it "easy" and yet the teaching is also worse than everywhere else.

My kids will come out with some GCSE's, probably better than they would have got with me home schooling them or being tormented at our local grammar surrounded by bullies. The fact some of us have to pay a lot to get the basic right of education because of SEN or ND or the simple fact some areas have terrible provisions and sinks schools seems to be being ignored in the discussion. We should all be hurling our kids at whatever there is and not complaining, obviously.

Quite. My younger son knows he has a privileged education, even though according to a few MNers all private schools are shit. He has many friends at local state schools due to a shared hobby. He is, I would like to think, a nice young man who doesn’t think he’s better than anyone else and certainly doesn’t expect preferential treatment in life.

The thought of my elder son having a golden ticket via his privileged education is making me chuckle. I’ve spent part of this afternoon looking at options for him at the local autism day centre to hopefully run alongside a supported apprenticeship at our nearest SEN provision. That’s dependent on our LA being prepared to fund either. He will never live fully independently. That’s one hell of a golden ticket.

Choices?

• use state, but not at transition point so do not get a genuine choice
• move to a cheaper private school - for some, quit boarding and do day school instead etc
• move abroad completely as if you are going to go through upheaval, you may as well go the full mile
• use whatever state option is offered and tutor
• quit work and homeschool instead
• wait until the next state transition point - may have to move house for catchment
• pursue an EHCP with all your might and lawyers
• and I think for many of the privileged people who can afford it, the choice is curtail some other benefit you are giving society like topping up the bursary fund and charitable work
• up your hours/look for promotion - I think that is the one they might have been hoping for but not sure it will be top of everyone’s list. Far from it!

the kind of people who’d move to Dubai or some other expat shit hole rather than. Lose a tax break… not particularly going to be missed TBH.

How do you plan to make up for the lost taxes from such people?

A lot of low taxpayers appear keen to see people who pay £100k+ tax every year leave the country. Talk about turkeys voting for Christmas.

That type of person is probably deluded enough to believe they will get the high paid job instead. Economic illiteracy is a dangerous one, for all of us. Yet here we have a policy targeted exactly at such people put forward by those who have had the best education themselves. All rather tragic.

I’m in the highest tax band - lots of us stay here. You have to be a special kind of greedy to think Dubai is a good lifestyle choice.
It really is a type who wants to live in the UAE or even thinks it’s a glamorous holiday of some kind.

You are totally missing the point. As you are in the top rate tax band you are earning at least 125k after pension contributions. That means you pay tax and NI of at least 46k pa. That is around 13 times more tax than someone earning 25k pays. Earn 200k and you pay 24 times more tax than someone on 25k. You also need to factor in that the higher earner claims no child benefit, is not eligible for 30 funded hours childcare nor tax free childcare etc.

Why on earth would anyone want higher earners to leave the country? They will invariably have a portable job meaning not only is the personal tax lost to the UK but there isn’t a job vacancy for anyone else to step into.

People need to understand that our tax system is propped up by a relatively small number of people without whom the rest would be in deep trouble financially.

Agreed. And once they are gone it will be very hard to get them back even when Labour are out in five years time. Still, at least we will have the vast increase in unskilled immigration that the ONS forecast in those five years to replace the millionaires and add to the bill. Only the deranged are chirpy about that.

Losing 1 x higher rate tax payer means you have to have 100s of lower earners to replace them.
Why do you think Reeves had to soften the nom dom tax? Because the result of it was to drive away the highest contributers to our tax income. It isn't economically sustainable to have a country whereby the majority pay no, or very little, income tax.

I'm not sure that particular PP is open to persuasion on that (or any other) reasonable point.

“I’m in the highest tax band - lots of us stay here. You have to be a special kind of greedy to think Dubai is a good lifestyle choice.
It really is a type who wants to live in the UAE or even thinks it’s a glamorous holiday of some kind.”

You are completely out of date. There is a brain drain of young talented people happening because they cannot afford to stay, pay high taxes and buy a house. So they go elsewhere to save for a deposit. Some never come back! It is those who are self made who are leaving because they do not have the bank of mum and dad to fall back on for a housing deposit.
Every single young person needs to be retained and valued!

With the NI changes and the graduate recruitment cycle getting tough we may lose thousands of really talented young people we have massively invested in as a society. It is completely nuts what is happening all around us.

At some point, you have to hope that politicians realise that our young and talented people are the country’s biggest asset.

Meanwhile Labour's leveling down of education continues

https://www.ft.com/content/aca9722c-27f7-44f6-9c67-81a33629a481

First, Latin programmes in state schools, then language and computer hubs and now maths programmes.

Doesn’t quite tally with the AI ambition does it? Computing and Maths are key to the next generation and languages are an enabler. They clearly simply expect middle class parents to fund tutors out of their own pockets and the rest of the population to just sink.