Council spends £8000pa on a taxi due to VAT on private schools

[Iwishicouldflyhigh]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14403627/Labours-VAT-raid-teenage-girl-private-school-council-fund-8-000-taxi-bill.html

So now a place is being taken up in an overscribed school, a 15 year old has had her eduction severely disrupted and the local council has 8k less in the pot.

Well done Labour!!! One of many stories, i'm sure and so predictable.

To be honest they should have just home educated her till a place came up nearer ? It’s not totally clear does the child mentioned have SEN of any sort ?

I fail to see how a family with a child in private school can’t arrange their own transport somehow really they say they couldn’t afford the fee increase but I would bet anything there would have been places they could cut back if they wanted to or could have arranged transport I think this is just making a point

And the fact she gave up her job just to do a school run ? Surely she could have gone early and used wraparound care and still worked ? Something seems a bit off here it’s clearly engineered to create outrage about the fee increase .

Perhaps your outrage should be at the family who were happy to pay for private schooling but believe it’s the LA’s responsibility to bring their child to school.
A childminder to drop her or the taxi would have still left them with a significant amount of extra cash if the VAT increase was over £3k.
Maybe your rant should be aimed at those bleeding the system dry instead of Labour?

Well its short notice so I assume temporary
Although the VAT thing has been known about for ages so it seems somewhat remiss of the parents not to check out local school provision before withdrawing their daughter from her fee paying school.

There was no other way to get there. Do secondary schools even do wraparound? I wouldn’t have thought it would be needed.

LAs have to pay when the nearest available state school is more than 3 miles away. I would think it’s more common in counties with lots of rural areas.

The parents maybe don’t want to home educate, perhaps they don’t have the subject knowledge. And they shouldn’t have to.

If a council cannot provide a school place within a certain distance, the family is entitled to transport.. be it a bus pass, a fuel allowance, a school bus or a taxi.
Its law. It doesn't matter she was previously in a Private school, or she moved there, or there all schools are over a certain distance or they were in a "black hole".

I'm more surprised a more local school wasn't told to take her under Fair Access Protocol.

Also if she was pulled out of private in December at 13 why did they enrol her the year before if they couldn’t sustain a 20% increase in fees? Most schools increase their fees by at least 10% annually anyway.

I understand your rage, clearly the provision for the LA to provide transport should be means tested. You aren’t wrong.

I think it's ridiculous that we should be paying for any children to get to school. Surely getting your child to school is just part of being a parent?

Well she gave up her job so why not just home educate !

All secondary schools I know of (and it’s a lot but a diff area) have wraparound and it’s basically the library open from 730 am and after school it’s a choice of clubs or again the library open till 630pm

That article makes no sense. She’s doing Alevels. I thought free transport stopped at 16. The council are under no obligation to pay for transport. In my town every parent has to use and pay for public transport to get their kids to the only Alevel provision available.

How on earth did they afford to send their kid to private school at all if they can't stick their hand in their pocket to deal with their own transport issues?

And what does it work out to approx £70 a week they couldn’t have found anywhere at all ? Really? Why make such a bad financial decision to send a child to private school if you’re that close to the line with your finances. But I bet they won’t as this is clearly an anti Labour publicity stunt

The child is 13. The article says until end of A levels but the transport will likely stop after GCSEs as she can then apply to local sixth forms

Or couldn't we just assume that it is reasonable for people to take their children to school themselves? I don't know why we have such low expectations of poorer people. All the poorer parents I know manage to get their children to school.

Sorry misread . Daily wail was catastrophising until she finishes her Alevels from 13. Well they won’t be funding Alevel transport so it’s only 3 years.

And yes if they could afford private why not transport, utterly ridiculous.

Us that the best the Daily Wail can come up with?😂

It's a shame that the parents didn't think through properly the question of whether or not they could afford a private school for their child. The girl is only 13, so the VAT issue would certainly have been on their radar when choosing schools. She'll no doubt have to move again when a place becomes available closer to home.

Poor kid.

Only a school 25 miles away had a space? that sounds a reach.
So parents couldn't find an extra £4k per year but could afford mum giving up her job to ferry child to school?
Usual DM missing lots of info in their outrage.

I can understand a temporary solution where someone’s only school place is quite far and they are on a low income.
A couple like this who could afford school fees in the 10s of thousands should be morally and legally obligated to put their own hand in their pocket.

Nothing is quite what it seems in most Daily Mail articles.

Shame it wasn’t means tested as the mother has a company SLL clinical services you can see the accounts etc and I’m sure they would have managed

I love how in the time between December and now the wife somehow quit her job, then worked nights and at no point did the father do a few school runs.

Yawn.

When my child had a school taxi, it picked up three children and dropped them at two schools. So the cost will probably be less anyway.

(And yes I could AFFORD o take her myself. I couldn't manage to take two children to two different schools at the same time in different directions).

Daily Mail thinks the school run is wimmins' work.

Hopefully, the government will learn from this case and introduce means testing for transport in situations like this. This problem is entirely of the parents' own making so they should pay for it.