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.

Why?

Because they claim what they are entitled to?

Why shouldn’t they?

Yet another “make them eat cake” comment by a staggeringly ignorant urbanite with no idea how poor rural public transport is.

I wouldn’t be surprised if you think eggs grow on trees, and believe chicken nuggets come from chicken nuggets plants.

Private school fees rise every single year. They have risen more recently due to VAT. People who have pulled their children out due to cost probably could not afford the fees long term.

No, it's a clear obligation on the state to transport children to school if that is more than 3 miles. It's a universal obligation. Hence on some small islands there is a state-funded boat to take the children to the main island!

They could own a palace, ten holiday homes and own five Bugattis and still be entitled to a state school place and the cost of transport to it, if they can’t be provided with a space at a school close by. They were forced into the move by a Labour policy. I hope they are using the money saved from school fees and transport costs to enjoy life.

if Lincolnshire want to pay for their holiday flights, I’m sure they’d be delighted.

Tell me you're a city dweller and have no clue about lack of public transport outside big cities, without telling me that!

You do realise that lots of places don't even have a railway station, and some places aren't on direct bus routes between A and B!

My son's school was only 5 miles away from our home, but it was still an over 60 minute bus journey necessitating 3 different buses because there was no direct route, and could take up to 90 minutes in congestion or where a bus was cancelled or didn't stop! We were lucky - at least there was a bus route - some of his school friends lived in villages without a bus option at all, the first bus of the day leaving after 9am so useless for getting to school.

And no, there were no schools closer - villages and small towns tend not to have secondary schools!

All the poorer parents you know are also entitled to have their children taken to school up to 16 if there isn't a place available within 3 miles.

I think this family applied to a school they wanted, and then appealed until they got free transport. They haven’t been through the normal admission process at all.

It’s very clear they didn’t apply to nearer schools and it’s very clear they are just trying to make a political point. They had money for 2 appeals. They also were cruel to their own child making her choose her school or her home and now putting her in the public eye how they are.

We have a thing called "universal education" for 5 to 16 year olds. It includes transport if there's no school place available within 3 miles. In the village where my parents live, for example, there is free transport for all secondary pupils because there's no secondary school within that distance. Not for primary, because there's one in the village.

But they might have been able to get to the next stage of education (sixth form) and found a place in a college closer to home. As a previous poster said, the government rushed this policy through in six months which shows their mindset.

when she is fully entitled to get the free transport service that gets her to a better one?

You are only entitled to free transport to the closest school with a space.

And those rises have nothing to do with the VAT hit.

It's interesting that a school less than half the distance of the one she chose had 59 surplus places when the current year 9 were admitted for year 7. Could that perhaps be why they needed two appeals and help from the MP to get the council to fund this frankly ridiculous journey to a school that they have chosen over others.
I have no problem with parents exercising their right to choose a better school, in fact I did that myself, but if it's a parental choice to want a better school further away then they absolutely should fund the journey themselves irrespective of their financial situation.

Transport provision such as this should be regularly reviewed and the child on waiting lists for nearer schools so that it’s as temporary as possible

Or maybe they would have been able to afford the VAT had it not been for other cost of living increases. When Labour first started publicising this policy in the 2019 election, mortgage, food and fuel costs were much lower. Labour should have taken this into account when they continued with the policy for the 2024 elections. But they didn’t do any proper assessments. They ploughed along with an ideological policy without any regard to who would get harmed in the cross fire.

I expect I would choose to get it free. But I wouldn't then use that generosity as a stick to beat the Government with, or want to publicise/gloat about how much my family was costing taxpayers.

the VAT on private fees seems deeply unpleasant to me. It's a principle going back to the Elizabethan charity and poor laws that "education" is in and of itself a charitable thing, education has been for the best part of 500 years assumed to be a Good Thing. Adding VAT (and rates, too) is a big hit for the costs of private education. I disapprove of it on this alone.
It will, I'm sure, raise some funds for the govt, but any child switching to state secondary will cost the public purse too; if a child is attending a private school, the state is already up over £8,000 a year for the state education that's not being used.

It is the LAs responsibility to get children to school if they live over 3 miles away; most parents work (my work starts before school starts and finishes hours after the secondary school day ends - there are some after school clubs but these finish by 4pm. No "wrap around" care other than clubs exists.
Not the parents' or child's fault at all - the situation has arisen because of the new laws brought in very swiftly by the Labour Government!

We know nothing about this family’s circumstances other than what is in the linked articles. Maybe she failed her 11+ or lost out on where she would normally get a state space due to yr 9 being such a big birth year, and they didn’t like the alternative she was offered and so went private even though they couldn’t really afford it? There are some truly dire state schools in rural areas that people living in London or the home countries wouldn’t dream of sending their children to. A lot of people living in areas where all of the schools are good don’t appreciate quite how bad some area’s schools are and how little alternative there is, due to distances between schools and bad transport links.

So you think the school has been paying for teachers to sit in empty classrooms for the last two years just in case additional students turned up?

They wouldn't get it if the school could point to a closer school available. It can't just be a choice.

Universal education is not remotely the same as the state paying to take children to school. I imagine this will be a policy that will 100% be rolled back to the bare minimum in years to come and quite rightly.

The mother said she didn’t apply to nearer schools and that the one she now attends was the only one who invited her to fill an application in ?

But that won't require taxis. They will apply at the normal time for a local place.

People seem to be gripping on to this idea that by taking some children out of the school system they're somehow strengthening it and we should all thank them for not using the service and saving us money. Now I don't buy that. Choice is good, but it makes negligible difference to the school system from a cost point of view, especially considering fluctuating demographics. In the past 5 yrs there was an increase of around 11%, now set to drop and private school population has always been around 5/6% of total population so even if everyone did throw their toys our of the pram at being charged VAT and send their kid to state school it's not going to buckle the whole system.

But the fact is all the costs listed in the article would be covered by the VAT of 5 classmates remaining in the girls previous school.
Some people are going to stay private regardless. Why should they get a tax break on how they choose to spend their money? If they choose to leave that school and go to a state school they will likely spend the money on music tuition, days out, books and other activities that bring in VAT.
Such small proportion of the UK population are being inconvenienced by this (though obviously a percentage of the public school parents think they are, when they're not), I really don't understand how you're allowing them to whip you up into a frenzy.