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.

Even the school they are at said they were full and there was a long waiting list yet she managed to apply for that one 🤔

In some ways so do I. She has been wrenched from her school and has lost all her privacy. This is partly due to the government (quite a lot) and also her family (publicity). But her family aren’t cheating the system, they are using the system. You seem to think that they shouldn’t because they are relatively well off and have used private schools. That’s not how it works. They are entitled to use the system in the same way as a low income family.

@BustopherPonsonbyJones "You seem to dislike this poor girl just because she’s been to a private school. "

What an extraordinary thing to say. But it does fit in with all the accusations of spite and envy which the pro private school lobby end up resorting to.

Then your problem is with the school. Shock, horror that a parent forced out from using independent school of choice puts child’s name on waiting list. How very dare they!

Unfortunately, I can see no other reason from their statements. Finding their sad faces annoying doesn’t cut it.

This is the DAILY MAIL. Politically biased slant.

The DM tried to ‘make’ a piece about my school, it was nothing like what was really happening. Even though we were following process they changed it to put a slant on the narrative, to suit their own views and that of their readers.

@BustopherPonsonbyJones "
Unfortunately, I can see no other reason from their statements. Finding their sad faces annoying doesn’t cut it."

You really don't see why a woman manipulating the system for her own advantage might be a source of annoyance? It has to be because the poster personally dislikes a 13 year old child? Whom they have never met?

Not their problem. The schools and councils need to get application procedures sorted.

But their position of eligibility for travel costs, although legal due to the criteria wasn’t a place they got to via the correct process . They circumnavigated the system to gain that eligibility.

Then it's the system that needs to change. We really can't blame people for doing their best for their kids, especially when it involves wanting them to have a school place after they've already had to leave one school they were settled at.

I think anyone doing something for the good of their child is not worth my ire.

I save that for our shitty politicians who do nothing to improve shit schools.

Firstly, you don’t know that is true. Secondly, if that is allowed, then they are entitled to do so. The system needs fixing,

Not sure being immortalized in the daily mail can possibly for the good of any child. But whatever. Most parents prefer not to guilt trip and publicly embarrass their DC. Different priorities I guess.

Well, she’s in the state school of her choice and her transport costs are being met, so their priorities seem to have had some positive impact. I’m happy for them as their child had her education disrupted with the implementation of VAT on fees.

She was already at the chosen school, with the free transport. The media is just for attention. Good parents wouldn't do that....

@TizerorFizz But - If the school do refuse or accept a child directly, they must provide the details of the child to the Local Authority. If a school is contacted by the parent/carer and they are unable to offer a place to a child without a school place, the parent/carer must be advised to contact the school admission team who will co-ordinate a central in-year admission application.

So - if she contacted the schools directly and they told her that they had no places, they should have signposted her back to the LEA to co-ordinate an in year admission.

It's also slightly complicated by the fact that the child had a school place until Easter, and the parent was looking to move in December.

She wasn’t at her chosen school - that was the private school she couldn’t afford due to VAT. She was clearly making the point that for her daughter the outcome of imposing VAT on private schools fees was increased costs to the taxpayer.

Sorry, chosen state school, for the pedants unable to grasp the point.

I agree. But I still don’t have a problem with them getting a state school education and claiming their transport costs. I also think it is worth publicising the negative effects of Labour’s policy on VAT although I personally wouldn’t have used the child’s image to do so.

I don't have a problem with it either. Neither does the LA as far as we know. What I do have a problem with is the faux victim act, plastering her kid all over the internet and failing to acknowledge that these are the risks they took enrolling their child in a school they could barely afford with no contingency at all.

So - if she contacted the schools directly and they told her that they had no places, they should have signposted her back to the LEA to co-ordinate an in year admission.

That would have been for the LEA to direct. But adding pupils to full schools at some point requires the appointment of additional staff. This would be more expensive than a taxi. Also if this girl is rural then transport might have been required to any school so a closer school would still have taxi costs. The marginal costs of the school she is at might not be as much as couple of thousand

Hardly a pedantic point when the point of the article is the cost to the taxpayer of not being able to attend her preferred school.

It's really sad a family would willing move their child to another school just so they can be in the DM.

I think more likely they wanted to move her and wanted to try and make a point re VAT.

If the rules are the council need to fund a taxi, then there's the rules.

Feel sad for her being ferried around by a taxi driver and not one of her parents, or travelling in with her new classmates, but that's what the parents have chosen to do.

Unless something devastating has recently happened to them financially (like ill health meaning they aren't able to work) then there's parents were pretty foolish to think they could afford private school when it's been very clear that Labour were planning to close that VAT tax loophole.

I'm sure the kid will enjoy her new school.

I wander when Labour are going to close the tax loophole on children’s clothes and shoes or on basic food stuffs. So many people exploiting those loopholes every day!

If their daughter is now in Year 9, it would have been a reasonable assumption that the policy would take a minimum of 12 months to implement, if not two years. This would take them to Year 11, a natural break. The policy was rushed through. I don’t think they chose to move their child, VAT forced the decision upon them. The people who are making a political point are the Labour Party who rushed a policy through in under a year and in the middle of an academic school year.