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.

The rules are that the council pays over 3 miles, the family are entitled to the transport.

That word 'entitled' that I see virtually every day in here. Posters always saying 'you're entitled to it! Just because this family can afford it doesn't mean they should pay. Every child is entitled to a school place. Councils are paying ££££ for transport for children to schools, this is no different.

If they don't like change the rules. This is the government and councils doing. It was obvious things like this would happen. For what it's worth I'd do the same as this family.

No, children do sometimes have to move schools for unforeseeable reasons, but in this case, it seems to have been entirely foreseeable. The parents signed their child up for a private school without thinking through whether or not they could afford to keep her there. They would certainly have been aware of the VAT issue on the horizon so they either enrolled her in a private school without the most basic planning as to whether they could afford to keep her there, or they deliberately chose to sacrifice her wellbeing in order to make a political point.

You’re seriously saying you’d voluntarily pay £8,000 for a service that state is legally obliged to provide you with?

I hope that if to have any spare cash at the end of the month that you’re offering to fix the pot hole in your street or replace the broken bulb in your street lamp!

Is it any worse than what the govt have done though? Previously this family were paying for private school, reducing the burden on the state. The govt stepped in and made that unaffordable, forcing them out of the private system. Taking away their choice of education. There’s no justification for the govt’s policy other than envy and greed. No one is benefitting from it - where are the extra teachers? The breakfast clubs aren’t sufficiently funded. Private schools are closing, putting hundreds of people out of their jobs and affecting local communities.

Why shouldn’t this family point out the ridiculousness of the transport policy? Goodness knows no one is listening to any other sensible arguments.

Or they could just do what almost every other parent does and make their own arrangements to bring their teenager to school?

It’s the government’s, not the council’s fault. They have no say on the law for home-to-school transport, they just have to apply it.

Agree and the parents of these children will be even less likely to afford private as caring for severe SEN impacts jobs and can often be hereditary to some extent. . The very small MN championing the private sector don’t give a shit about these children, they just use SEN to champion their new inability to pay for a luxury all but a tiny few can afford. It’s deplorable.

Councils spend millions in school transportation every year. Cambridge County Council alone spent £25m in 2023/24.

Meaningless sensationalist headline.

Usual DM bollocks

In the FT article it states she has 2 jobs one as a nurse at a gp surgery and a second as a 111 call handler as well? The father is ex military and now in security.

£8,000 against

How will the extra money be spent?
The government estimates that the policy will raise an extra £460m in 2024/25, rising to £1.7bn by 2029/30.

Will private school fees go up for everyone?
Applying VAT does not necessarily mean fees will go up by 20%. Some private schools may decide to put up their fees more than others.
On average, the government expects fees to increase by around 10%.
The average cost of private school fees has risen by 55% since 2003, even without VAT, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tanks says.

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.

I live in a (mostly) rural county. The most recent figures I could find (without trawling through the county council's budget line by line) was £6.7m, and that was back in 2009!

Even though we have a large secondary school in the town where I live, it isn't big enough to accommodate all the secondary age children and can't be enlarged because it's bounded by a railway line, a river and privately owned land, much of which is protected by a covenant. Children that can't get places at the local school are bussed to 2 village secondaries, both over 3 miles away.

It must be even worse in the very rural areas.

They don’t want. They just want to make a point that their child is entitled to a private education and no longer getting it- ignoring that it’s because they failed to save enough for any flex in costs.

It won't be an extra 4k a year, it will be an extra 4k per term. 12k is a lot of money to find.

What?! You clearly don’t live rurally or don’t have kids!

There are literally hundreds of pupils transported every day (including my children) on a couple of dozen school buses to the local high school… most of these are entitled to home-to-school transport.

Something like quarter to half a million children get transport to school paid for by LA. About half to SEN and half not.
Costing £8000 on average per child.

This is a drop in the ocean.

What if your teen was allocated a school 25 miles away? What are YOU going to do about it? If the council can’t sort getting my child in on of the many, many nearer schools, damn right they’d be paying for transport. Regardless of views on private schooling I cannot see why that’s at all controversial.

It’s also confusing as on the Lincolnshire admission website it states that you have to apply via the portal and that schools can’t take direct applications from parents ? (Unless it’s a grammar school
and you have to arrange an entrance exam???) yet she states that the school her dd is at ‘was the only one who let them fill a form in ‘ ???

How many of those calling this family shitty and entitled would pay £8k out of their own pockets when they are quite literally entitled to the payment?
I hope you are all turning down all your benefits that you are entitled because it would be entitled to claim them. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Pretty sure it's per year.

12k VAT a year would mean school fees of 48k annually. That would make it one of the most expensive day schools in the country. You wouldn't sent your kid there if you were struggling for 4k!

Yes but it would be like cutting your own legs off to claim PIP …..

Why live so rurally that you can’t get your own children to school? Seems like a pretty basic part of parenting and not at all comparable to applying mid year and having to be further away.

Could be an academy.

In the FT it states it’s a 20k per year school
and they’d only budgeted for 7 years at that rate . I’m assuming they sent all 3 dc as well so I wonder what the other 2 are doing re schooling?

Really?

The parents were happy to pay, the increase in fees means they cannot do it anymore because of Labour’s student class warfare politics.

They are only accessing what they are entitled to, the way millions do.