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.

You simply can't conclude that. If there was a closer place available, the Council wouldn't have lost.

@Burnoutforever The problem is that the LEA can't clarify without revealing the family's address, or any additional needs the child might have. Which obviously they can't do.

Surely they could say for example ‘the family did not meet criteria due to a closer place being available and the application was rejected on those grounds. At appeal stage exceptional circumstances came to light ‘

I think you’re being a little short sighted.
What impact do you think it will have on state schools and pupils attending state schools (those with SEN in particular) when more and more families can’t afford to continue sending their children to private school?

Also, which people do you think are going to be unable to afford the rises? The super rich or those who prioritise private school over holidays and other luxuries and have already cut back and compromised as much as possible already?

My kids go to state school. I went to state school. I taught in state schools.

But I’ll never begrudge parents wanting the best they can provide for their children

Which would be a very silly thing to do - as you could have had the tap water and still have £2 in your pocket to buy a packet of pork scratchings as well.

This is more like they've given the beggar £2 and then demanded enough tap water and ice to fill a paddling pool because they're pissed off that the pub's put up the price of the Diet Coke.

That will come as news to many! It's a touchingly naive view of the quality of LA decision-making.
Take ECHP decisions by local authorities. 98% of appeals against these decisions are allowed by the tribunal. That means only 2% of the refusals are upheld as lawful.

i was referring to transport applications

I pay for my SEN child to attend private mainstream as state mainstream was horrific for them. We can afford the VAT but a lot of the people scraping the money together for private are the SEN parents. Didn’t factor in the need for private, but it was that or giving up work and home educating. This will hit the SEN kids in private hardest.

This thread seems to highlight that some people think it’s not an issue that there are no local school alternatives for children displaced during the school year due to the VAT introduction.

I do. These are kids at the end of the day and their schooling and treatment should matter. Even if they are ‘privileged’.

A brexiteer I presume?

Not this crap again. Tax on education is not adopted elsewhere. The UK will very much be the outlier because education should not be taxed in a progressive country.

This is Expensive for the local council along with the additional £8210 for education.
That’s over £16,000 extra per year. !

Yes, EU law agrees with you.

@Burnoutforever it isn’t uncommon for LAs to unlawfully refuse transport. So much so, there is even a charity, SENTAS, focusing on transport problems.

But that’s if you’re making a choice to home school, not because the council cannot offer a school place. The onus is on the local authority to provide education, which is why they have on this occasion agreed to provide transport costs.

@AlleycatMarie if parents EHE, the LA does not have or provide provision. The vast majority of provision for EHE’ed DC is funded by the parents.

In a very small minority of cases a small minority of LAs will give a small personal budget to a very small minority of DC with EHCPs who EHE. It isn’t common at all. EOTAS/EOTIS is different, the child’s education remains the responsibility of the LA, but that isn’t EHE.

Some colleges offer a basic provision for EHE’ed KS4 pupils but it nowhere covers the whole the cost of EHE. This is usually funded by the ESFA.

As I have already stated, there are reasons an appeal could have been lost by the LA, that have nothing to do with a closer place being available. LCC’s own guidance for appeal is if you think home to school transport has been unfairly not provided, according to the law or LCC’s policy.

LCC’s policy allows for provision of home to school transport in situations where the school is not the closest one with spaces. It’s actually quite a generous policy.

Whilst I think people are right to ensure policies are correctly followed, I also think this family are arseholes.

It’s just very difficult to work out when there’s so much information missing and so many holes in the families story

There'd be more alternatives were it not for the private school parents that are attempting to clog up the system with applying for places, doing tours after delaying to fit it into their busy diaries, then asking assorted questions before eventually accepting places and then not turning up for them - because they're doing it solely to disrupt the normal in year application processes, not because they actually need a state school place for their child.

That place those parents have been offered in good faith that cannot be withdrawn until they say they're EHE, staying where they are or the school and LA has completed a CME case as a result should have gone to somebody who actually needed a place. Like somebody who has just entered the care system, who has moved home to flee domestic violence, who is being bullied at their current school or who has needs that could be met by the school with a place, were it not for the vexatious applications getting in the way.

If that’s what the girl is entitled to then so be it. My son has SEN and gets transport provided for him to get and from school because that is what he is entitled to. I’m still very much in favour of VAT on private school fees.

I will say the bit in the article about her mother working nights in order to get her to and from school didn’t pull at my heart strings as working odd/annoying hours around your kids needs isn’t unusual and many parents do it. Hell, I do it. It’s just what you do to keep ticking along as a family isn’t it?

Yeah, it's interesting.

On threads where kids have to go to a far away school due to SEN, the idea that parents ought to pay for transport seems to be overwhelmingly rejected. Or that they should drive them, or change work arrangements to do so.

The fact that she was in private school and isn't now is not relevant from what I can see. The whole tax is on the basis that supposedly private education is a luxury, and we want to make it more difficult for people to access in order to level the playing field.

So it has worked, this child is now in public school - why wouldn't the parents get all the same provision for transport as anyone else?

Why aren't there hordes of privately educated children in the Fair Access Panel lists, then?

But it sounds as if she applied direct and then presented the LA with a fait accompli. If she had asked the LA to use the Fair Access Protocol and/or appealed for a place at a nearer school, I'm sure she would have got one.

Yes, I totally agree. But the whole point in this case is that the parents have not elected to home educate; they have elected to take the education on offer which has led to the LA paying to ensure their child can attend.

Are they managed that way outside the standard admissions round in Year 6/7?