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.

Maybe they could have got their pony Jojo to take her to school? Or sold it to pay the fee increase ?

Since when are a nurse and someone working in security considered rich? Maybe they sold the story to the DM to raise funds for VAT for their other DCs school fees? Is that possible? If the father worked in the army they obviously buy into working for the Government and so does a nurse?
Why they are being painted as rich is beyond me.

The councils need to get their act together and offer all children, whether previously in private schools or not, state education which every child is entitled to. If there is a bottleneck due to academies, then the DFE needs to sort this out urgently.

I kind of get why they moved her before they absolutely had to (easter) given she's in Year 9 now. Presumably she has to choose her options plus there would be no guarantee that there would be any places available at easter given that there was only one available 25 miles away in December. What if there still weren't any places at easter... or start of year 10. No-one in their right mind would willingly change their DC's school at this stage and mid Year 9 infinitely better than start of Year 10.

This is one of those "don't hate the player, hate the game" situations. The parents are entitled to a state school place and transport if the school is over a certain distance. No one should feel in any way obliged to home school their DC. Should transport be means tested? Possibly but there are arguments against it given that cost isn't the only factor in determining whether parents can get a DC to a school or not.

If they're not rich, even more reason to be sensible about what they can afford. Why would a bog standard nurse and security guard think they could afford an expensive private school?

No, I don't think a child should be moved mid GCSEs. For a child in this scenario, the transport would be required for less than two years in total, so the council should suck it up.

But the child in the article is 13, so won't have started GCSEs yet. If a place becomes available for her in a local school before starting her GCSEs, then I think she should be moved. Yes, it's disruptive but it isn't in her interests to do such a long commute every day in any case.

Sorry it worked before

Try this (through a paywall remover)

Or the relevant bit of the article:

VAT on school fees: ‘We have had to make the decision to pull her out’

Sarah Lambert is still battling to find a state school place for her 13-year-old daughter from January, when the Labour government rolls out the introduction of <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.is/o/uckAq/www.ft.com/content/452e7d35-bedf-4309-81ee-9ee3bdc45f24" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">value added tax on private school fees.
Already stretched to their financial limits, Lambert and her husband are unable to afford the increase to daughter Nicole’s new private school fees and have no choice but to remove her from the school in the new year.
Their daughter is one of the 3,000 private school pupils ministers expect to move to the state system before the end of the 2024-25 academic year, as a result of the move to apply a 20 per cent VAT charge to independent education and boarding schools.
Ministers argue that applying the levy on these schools will raise £1.5bn for investment in state schools, including recruiting 6,500 teachers. But they face a backlash from both parents and private schools, who fear it will make fees unaffordable for much larger numbers of students and have questioned the ethics of taxing education.
At no point did we even think that a luxury tax of 20 per cent could be added to education. It has blindsided us
Sarah Lambert
“We have had to make the decision to pull her out as our school has had to add 15 per cent to her £20,000 a year fees,” says Lambert. The mother of three works two jobs as a nurse practitioner in a GP surgery where the family lives in Lincolnshire, and as a 111 call handler. Her husband, Will, who spent 23 years serving in the British Army, now works in security.
“When we signed Nicole up for private education we did it on a seven-year trajectory, accounting for growth [and] inflation as much as we could,” she says. “At no point did we even think that a luxury tax of 20 per cent could be added to education. It has blindsided us.”
The couple are among thousands of parents wondering if they will be able to find the extra several thousand pounds a year to cover the higher fees coming into force. Their anxiety has been heightened by the largest tax-raising Budget in living memory last month, which included big tax rises for wealthier people.

Sarah Lambert: ‘At no point did we even think that a luxury tax of 20 per cent could be added to education’ © Fabio De Paola/FT
“Nicole doesn’t have a school to go to yet as we have been unable to secure her a place,” Lambert says. “I just feel sick, no one wants to have to take their child out of a school they’re thriving in.”

Nooooooo! Don't sell Jojo!

Multiple boroughs have no space in the years where it is needed.

Not at all. I've known plasterers and and a small shop manager send their child to a private school when they've been bullied or led astray in a crap comp. They can't really afford to, but can't afford not to.

Lots of private schools aren't for the Russian oligarchs - especially out in the regions. Our nearest (the only one in our area) is a kind of specialist school for kids with "troubles" such as bullying, gangs etc., and is a chance for them to walk away from a bad environment to turn their lives around -it's not particularly academic, more of a "safe haven" where kids who want to achieve can flourish in a safer environment but only if they really want to! By all accounts, it's remarkably good at doing it and charges nowhere near the kind of charges that are banded about social media - it's expensive but not tens of thousands per term.

Then we have all the genuinely "special needs" schools for various mental and physical disabilities where the local authorities can't provide the care and education that they need and deserve. Again, "normal" parents scrimp and save to put their kids into such schools.

We really need to challenge the narrative that private schools are only for the mega rich. Maybe that's the case in London/SE with wealthy foreigners etc., but really isn't the case out in the regions.

I think if you can barely afford to suck up a 15% fee increase you can't afford to send your kids to private school anyway.

All those posters thinking a child should not be entitled to the same education as other children because her parents once paid for private school. Which other children do you think should not be entitled to an education?

Oh and they have other ponies to sell too!!!!!

Seems like they have stables ???!

So children with horses shouldn’t be entitled to a state education? What about other animals?

You are aware that many, many private parents are struggling already, before the VAT increase? It’s far more likely that they can’t afford it than they are ‘making a point’

Parents don't pay for special needs schools,private or otherwise, they can cost an eye watering amount

My point is they were selling one horse for more than the fee increase ? They have assets yet are not prepared to pay to get their child to school and told her to pick leaving her school or moving house !

No @MrsBennetsPoorNerves - this child cannot be moved agsin before GCSEs and the Council will just have to pay up. This will be repeated up and down the country and I hope that private school lobby group (can’t remember the name) is documenting every case so that when we eventually have a public inquiry the data will be readily available.

I am sick and tired of successive Governments implementing policies they full well know are purely populist and are going to cost us millions and millions (Rwanda springs to mind). I want accountability and grown up politics. This is unforgivable.

I agree
One of my DCs job is transport assistant for a large, known company, to collect and take 5 children to School, and home again later.
As far as I know the LA pay for this (the children's transport) but Son's pay is from the company.

As I said above, perhaps the policy of not moving children before GCSEs needs looking at.

Maybe don’t cry poverty and say a 15% increase in the private school fees you chose to take on is so unaffordable that you need to quit your job (!!!) to drive your DD to another school.

Those of you scraping information from elsewhere are doxxing and that is illegal. The scraping together of information isn’t. It’s the other offences committed with the intended use. For example to shame or harass. Just a FYI.

All children for whom the nearest available school is more than three miles away are entitled to transport (1.5 miles for under 8s). There is no requirement to say you mustn’t have a horse.