If you have kids in private education, what is your school planning to do re VAT?

[Ladychaise]

I have two kids at a London independent school and currently just about scrape the cost of fees. Labour’s intention to add 20percent on the fees would make it impossible to keep them there, if all that cost goes to us - it is a worrying time.

The school’s bursar is being lovely but it’s very much a ‘let’s cross that bridge when we come to it’ take on it! I get that we don’t know for certain if Labour will get in or how fast they will implement this - but surely schools should be planning for this and working out how much of the VAT, if any, will be ‘covered’ by the school?

Aware there is a lot of uncertainty but does anyone else’s school have a plan in place? Thanks so much

I saw suggestion that children with an ECHP won’t get charged VAT but that ignores the fact there isn’t a comparable plan in Scotland. What happens there when two children with similar SEN/ASN attend the same independent special school and the English pupil pays no VAT, whereas the Scottish on pays VAT?

@RespiceFinemKarma - sharp elbowed parents are very adaptable. I would know! Honestly, we would homeschool, use overseas tutors, websites, online schooling etc or move country before sending our DC to a crap school. There is no way I am sending my DC into a daily toxic environment with bullying and disruption and lack of safeguarding and teachers with mental health issues (of which there are plenty now due to the working environment). My aim for my DCs in life has always been to have a good experience and make the most of every day. Learning, exercising, happy and healthy environment is a natural part of that. What the Government forget is that most of us are now prime educators ourselves having been forced into that by the pandemic. Hence the absence figures, it is not just emotional school avoidance, it is simply that on some days they are going to do more at home. Same applies to travelling, sorry but some overseas trips are simply more educational than sitting in a school all day.

If DH and I work less because we have to educate our own DC, public finances will suffer. So the ideology will never work in the best interests of the country at large if they want us to be good little workers and pay for the rest of the country.

I do not really care about comp, grammar vs selective private schools. But I did have one DC who could do GCSE Maths in Year 5 and to put him in a class with others who can barely count (which some comps do) is simply soul destroying for him so I would never stand for that. Comp model is fine if they set and stream properly. Many do not do that and it is as depressing for the high achievers as it is for the low achievers who need far more help and attention and should be getting it.

A lot of private schools have children with all kinds of special needs - may be one route to reduce the VAT would be to ensure all children who get extra time in school exams from dyslexia etc in private schools get an ECHP if that is going to lead to an exemption worth 20% of £20k a year fees - VAT On 13 years of day schools fees would be about £52k over that period.

Vote Labour and be £100k worse off (for those with 2 children).

For those in London voter Khan out and vote Susan Hall, Tory candidate in May.

I have no idea how they are going to implement the policy regarding those with SEN. They’ve said they will exempt children with EHCPs from VAT. Most people realise the difficulty of getting EHCPs; even those with very obvious needs often wait years. I suspect that if they announce formally that EHCPs lead to a VAT exemption, there will be a mad scramble to get those plans, putting the already straining system under even more pressure. The whole policy really hasn’t been thought through properly.

It is not in private schools gift to give out EHCPs.

Labour have explicitly rejected that, no doubt because at the margins it's not hard to get an ADHD diagnosis and also because it undermines the £££ and thus undermines the business case for the whole project (as if there was a business case).

We don't need a mini-industry of questionable clinicians charging £200 for an assessment that virtually buys you an ADHD certificate so you swerve VAT. Because that's what will happen with tens of £k at stake.

Also there are loads of kids who aren't ADHD or dyslexic but have other issues. Anxiety. Bullying. Bereavement. Neglect. Or they're really bright and the state school was ignoring them. Or they're really slow and the state school couldn't cope. We don't need to waste our time creating enmity and division between "my kids' needs are more special and deserving than yours". Because that's what will happen with tens of £k at stake.

We just need not to tax education, like every other country in the world.

I know that. Parents will have to go through the same system as everyone else, which is already struggling. I’m not sure that linking the tax position of an individual to whether they have EHCP is going to help that system.

The point about EHCPs though is that a large proportion of specialist schools are independent and their fees (which can be more than £120k per year boarding) are paid by councils. These include for profoundly disabled children who work at the level of learning to follow someone across the room with their eyes. But at the other end ECHPs also sometimes result in placements in mainstream private schools (again something that can’t happen in Scotland) and again with fees paid by the council. So VAT on their fees would be paid by local councils.

Only about 25% of SEN qualify for EHC/EHCP. When you look at the most recent statistics in detail you will also note that a) over 70% of EHC is boys and b) over 41% is FSM. FSM boys are more likely to be referred by schools to get the EHC in the first place? There are also ethnicity and cultural questions in the statistics. Some cultures are less likely to engage with and accept the help.
As regards main stream independent schools I do not even think the Government has the most reliable statistics? How many people with children with SEN there actually go for a full EHC? More likely they just pay up and use private speech and language, mental health and O&T services?

This is anecdotal but in my DD’s grammar there are a number of very clever autistic girls who do have some needs but are undiagnosed. Sometimes they experience burn out just before GCSEs. SEN and school are now encouraging parents to get help sooner but some cultures do not like the process, so there is that too. A lot of parents who have the means are picking up the pieces rather than just relying on the state - I think that applies in both the private and state sector. Where schools know that the parents will fail the child because they cannot support, then obviously they will encourage a referral much sooner.

Children with EHCP-funded placements in private mainstream schools have normally had state school placements fail first, often several placements.

As for FSM, it would be interesting to know what proportion of families are on FSM because SEN makes it impossible to work (especially if school placements are breaking down)

I suppose my point was that if ou have the money to litigate against the local authority and to pay for private assessments to bolster your case with the LA (ie private school parents) there may be some applying for them to save £50k VAT over 13 years, but it sounds like any exemption will just be for those children the whole of whose fees are paid by the local authority so I am barking up the wrong tree on this one as it will not be as simple as child has dyslexia or ADHD therefore no VAT on school fees.

Yes, I think a parent of a private school child with (non-severe) dyslexia would have a hard time convincing a judge that the council cannot provide sufficient support within a state school, especially if they hadn’t previously failed in that setting.

Dyslexia is an interesting one.

I have several close friends and family members with dyslexic children. It is the parents who picked up the pieces from an early age, not the schools. They read daily, bought the coloured glasses, encouraged the assessments, supplied the IPads to the schools etc so in the end these children were fine. Pretty sure that had they been born into a less supportive family the outcome would have been very different. These were good schools with some phonics support and small group intervention but the bulk of the work was done at home - practising spellings endlessly, endless reading etc etc It was a big effort for the parents and they all also used things like audio books so that the child’s understanding and comprehension could progress despite the dyslexia. Whilst we got away with short burst of reading and practising spellings once and getting full marks, they slogged endlessly.

There is no way the outcome would have been the same in a class of 30 plus without that support at home. They then also made sure the children qualified for extra time in public exams etc

Quality of schooling is only ever part of the picture.

There are lots of families with children with quite obvious SEN who, for whatever reason, haven’t been able to get an EHCP; often because of red tape and a creaking system. I’m not in agreement with a system which gives different tax treatment to different children depending on the parental ability to obtain an EHCP. It’s problems like this which the VAT proposal is going to throw up.

Yes, you see this is why I would choose to home school. Dd has dyslexia and the local grammar doesn't support SEN well at all in general - her friends who went say they don't know anyone with dyslexia or SEN. It is why I didn't put her into that environment despite her passing 11+. She is doing very well at her private school but I suspect her English would drop if she were forced into a grammar which might impact other areas if the lack of provision for dyslexia affected confidence. I know she would be miserable in the Queen Bee environment they have to deal with.

Labour have been saying the same thing for decades. So until they actual come into power and implement it - if they actually do, which is also debatable at this point anyway - most won't be publicising what they plan to do. I'd imagine most have some contingency plans but probably not yet shared very far.

It won't be uniform across schools though either, not just local areas.

Not a chance all those private school parents are going to be moving into a bottom of the league 'requires improvement' school is there?

So the catchment areas for those higher up good and outstanding schools is going to reduce, and the price of housing in those smaller catchments will be increasing again.

How do you propose the school 'cover it'? It's money that has to be paid over to HMRC, not something they have any control of

All luxury items have VAT on them

Indeed and school is not a "luxury item" but a merit good.

It's completely wrong (speaking as an economist) to compare education to fast cars and restaurants. Education delivers social benefit and, because there's a free taxpayer-funded supplier, saves the taxpayer money to concentrate where it's needed.

EHC plans have been a hot topic amongst the SEN parents group at our private school. It is a mainstream school but we have a relatively high proportion of SEN due to strong reputation supporting ‘ mild’ SEN. Many had never previously seen the point in getting an ehcp- it can take years and the outcome probably wouldn’t have specified our mainstream private, so any support specified you would pay for yourself anyways. The calculation changes if you are saving a decade of VAT on school fees. There is also some nervousness about being able to stay in private (because they were stretching already or because they worry about the sustainability of the school given falling enrolment numbers), so some see it as getting their ducks in a row in case they need to look at state options.

in any case, lots of us are adding to lengthy waitlists, but with better resourcing to help us get a positive outcome (private assessments, education consultants and lawyers are the norm).

More deadweight costs in the business case for this policy.

If you pay for private assessments etc then you're not spending money on something useful. And the people providing those assessments aren't doing anything useful. Just trying to get you around hurdles placed in your way by a government.

It has only been possible since Brexit.

I think what schools/PPs mean when they say this is that a private school would not just add the VAT on to their current fees. They would reduce their fees a bit and then add on the VAT, so that the total increase to the paying parent was less than 20%.

Schools would manage this by a combination of cost savings/cutbacks, and also savings due to them being able to reclaim their input VAT.

There is a huge hypocrisy involved with all of this. Blair sent his son to the London Oratory one of the best in the country. Guess where Starmer kids went and now go? Again, top ranking across the board.
The point is that most parents can only dream of sending their children to such good and free state schools without the headache of the eleven plus or having to pay up. Most of us would have gladly swapped with them.
At least Corbyn pretty much got divorced over not allowing his son to go to superselective grammar so personally paid for his principles. The rest of them are hypocrites.

Schools would manage this by a combination of cost savings/cutbacks, and also savings due to them being able to reclaim their input VAT.

How funny that you think most of them have capacity to do that.