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.

So if a space in a closer school turned up two months before their GCSEs they would be expected to move?

Well neither would I but when the education secretary posts inflammatory comments on Facebook and deletes any comments questioning this policy or about the impact it is having on some schools/children, this is what you get as a response.

Doesn't matter where the parents applied, if there is a place available closer to home, transport funding isn't available.

They wouldn’t have received funding if there had been a state school alternative nearby. ‘My posho kid doesn’t want to go to the sink comprehensive’ wouldn’t have been taken into account if the sink comprehensive had places and the only option would have been to home educate. Children with special needs are taking places which are far from suitable just because they are what had been offered. Funding transport on taxis isn’t a great look for a council and they will avoid it where they can.

The family decision to publicise their case and show images of their daughter is political but the cruelty caused is entirely the fault of the Labour government and its ideological campaign against private education. The family are not at fault for claiming what is rightfully theirs to claim.

The only school she applied to was oversubscribed yet she didn’t apply to others to be on their waiting list ?

Why only the mum? It mentions both parents, why is the father absolved of all responsibility?

The policy is decades old (in the same form). However, you might well be right. It's already nearly impossible for parents to escape the benefits trap - the maximum income set by universal credit - and moves to make this harder will no doubt always be popular. It's already the case that a parent earning well over £100,000 would be better off working 25 hours a week on minimum wage if she has children under 5.

Universal education is not universal if it is not accessible to all. Would you be happy with a massive school campus in Berwick which all parents were expected to take their children to everyday whether they live in London, Wareham or Keswick?

The transport was rejected twice so it seems like they pushed and pushed until they found any sort of loophole the could!

Well he isn’t the one parading her around the media to be fair.

There's no "loophole" that I'm aware of. Either a place is available locally, or it isn't. Councils will often turn down expensive applications (for all sorts of things) and hope there won't be an appeal!

It isn’t generosity, all children are entitled to a state school education.

All I’ve seen mentioned of him in the FT article is that he is ex military and now works in security

I’m talking about the travel. And yes, all children are entitled to it if they qualify. That doesn’t make it admirable for relatively well-off parents to benefit from those policies and then complain.

The Tory government already removed the right for free transport if the nearest school is over 3 miles away for post-16 education, whilst at the same time making post-16 education compulsory… Where we live, parents have the option to pay for a place on the school bus if there are any spare after they have been allocated to the lower years but they can lose that if a new child joins, get the bus that goes twice per week and returns 3 hours later, or rearrange their work hours to drive their child.

Father isn’t featured as he works in Iraq for al etehad security

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.

but that money has already been spent on new teachers and breakfast clubs surely? It hasn’t been earmarked for taxis

Yep. He left the military before the child was born.

Not sure why the articles had to even comment on his 23 years in the army? Not really relevant at all!

For those complaining about transport costs, saying parents should pay/don’t live rurally/surely there’s a public bus or train etc, when my DC were GSCE age (not that long ago) our village with 3 double-intake primary schools ( so 180 children in each year group) had NO secondary school within 3 miles. Nearest one was in another village (not close by). No direct public bus services to the nearest school nor any walkable paths (country roads). Every child used buses provided free by the LEA.

Using some peoples logic, farmers should give up farming when they have children and move house, half the households in our village should have never moved there/should have moved house once we had children, given up our jobs to get them to/from school or should pay for transport.

I just find it strange they have ended up at a school where there’s a link to the services and why the father’s military past was relevant in the article? It’s all extremely strange .

She gave up her existing job but replaced it by working nights. So she's claiming for help from the state out of spite really, yes she might be entitled to the help but if you've changed your job to facilitate the school runs....surely it makes sense to do them

I wonder if the current school has a priority clause in its admissions criteria due to military bases situated in Lincolnshire, and the family has been able to use the father being ex-military to get their daughter a place and use that to claim eligibility for free transport.

An impossible ask for many parents of children with SN who often don't have the option of keeping the journey short or may have children at several schools in different directions.

Or maybe it’s just to show, in true Daily Mail style, that the father is a “patriot”.