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.

There will be private school in rural places that may well go bust where there are no close alternatives for miles and miles, where - if the Government were organised- they should really be planning now, to turn such private schools into state schools. I bet they are not even planning for that and that that exact scenario is going to happen somewhere due to the VAT on school fees.

I'm not so much outraged at this, as aghast that parents would plan so poorly.
This ought to be a lesson not to stretch yourself to the hilt for private school, lest it lead to your DC experiencing this disruption. Live within your means people.

If the VAT alone is £12k per year, we're looking at fees of £60k. Would you not expect at least a little forward planning from people if they were committing to an investment on that scale? So surely, they would have anticipated the VAT rise and factored that into their planning?

If people don't feel the need to plan around such a significant investment, I can only assume that they're rich enough to consider £60k per year to be small change. In which case, finding an extra £12k a year shouldn't be an issue.

I mean if you sign up to anything and think the cost if going to be the same for 7 years you’re a total moron.

It states including academies

Or perhaps they expected a local state school place to be available in the event that they needed to use it? Hardly the families fault that there isn’t.

Of course it's their fault. Why would anyone think schools have spare spaces sitting around just in case? Don't be so daft.

If this family have 2 other DC, will they have the right to attend the same far away state school (sibling priority) and get the same transport there? Would make sense. I suspect if the state school is good, this family may well end up doing that. We may well find that lots of ex private school parents will end up gaming the system to their advantage. All reasonably foreseeable. Not sure what the Government can do about that as it is their legal right? It seems to me that there is a lot of anger about this VAT policy so people may not act rationally and may well be exhausting every legal right they have at their disposal. It is really something that should have been planned for and foreseen.

The mental gymnastics you have to go through to come out with this being the fault of VAT tax is hilarious.

Okay….so what do you expect them to do?They accepted the nearest place that was available to them and then utilised the funding available to get their child to school. As thousands do every day 🤷‍♀️

Ok, so you really don’t live rurally do you!

School buses transport the majority of children to high schools in large swathes of the country… we’re literally talking hundreds of thousands of children.

Perhaps there’s an argument there should be some means-testing for this, even though it would disadvantage me personally, but to require every parent to drop their kids off would create complete traffic carnage, and do massive damage to the economy by taking out loads of middle aged parents from the workforce as they’d all be glorified taxi drivers.

Farmers? Should they move away from rural areas because it is 'basic parenting' not to live rurally? How would that work exactly?
Should no one live in the Highlands?

my parents gave me a choice leave private school or move house

headline from a times article.

emotionally Abusive parents.

Farmers have children…….

Not everyone who lives in the countryside does so because it’s pretty.

If VAT hadn’t risen, this situation wouldn’t have arisen, full stop…. so the mental gymnastics here is all yours!

Well, I don't know. It's strange to be so invested in education that you pay for private school fees and yet you fail to plan ahead regarding affordability or do any research about the likely availability of local state schools.

We’re talking about private taxis not busses.

I don’t think people are objecting to LA’s enabling children getting to school if it is not something their parents can afford or facilitate. They are objecting to public resources being used to subsidise wealthy adults who should and can get their child to school.

The vast majority of people in the UK are against VAT exemption for private education. Both in principle and because it is unaffordable. The decision is not going to change.

I am not sure I agree with means testing the obligation or offer to get someone to school when there isn’t a place locally. But it is not mental gymnastics to suggest that it should be up for debate.

The DM and its supporters are usually against universal benefits and pro means testing. So well done them for giving the chancellor another avenue to follow.

Frankly it’s a stunt by these parents. Who will presumably do the school run when the spotlight is removed. Their antics won’t reverse the decision on VAT and they might just have found a new case for means testing. Which is usually a more expensive avenue than universal benefits.

All this does for me is question even further “choice” in education. Better to make/ plan for all schools to be good enough and with the right capacity. Schools just need to be good. Stop wasting money on selection and choice.

Sounds like it would have arisen sooner or later. How were they going to afford the usual fee increases over the years? They overstretched, nobodies fault but their own.

Plenty of schools also use Private Taxis. Usually of a particular local firm. Maybe they are CRB checked? You wouldn't want your child to be in a taxi with a random unchecked driver.

Quite

I'm sorry, the only person I feel for is the kid here. Nothing adds up - they can't afford the price increase, so pull their child out of private school but are now so hard up they can't find transport themselves - even though they now must have a few thousand per term they are saving.

Mad, they shouldn't be getting council funding.

Lincolnshire council is overwhelmingly Conservative and it is the local authorities role to provide education. You’ve made a Tory failure Labours problem?

Doesn't matter. If you are entitled to claim support for something, it doesn't make you shitty to do so. In this case though, it is being turned into a moral judgement because this family are perceived as wealthy because they had a child in private school.

Typical Daily Fail trying to cause outrage and, in this case, succeeding. It looks as though there was little choice in the matter if no school nearer. It's not going to hurt you, leave it alone and be glad the girl can get to and from school.