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

It probably won’t happen terribly fast - not to say he law won’t change, but I’d imagine there will be quite a buffer period especially for schools without cash reserves (the majority).

Simply because no one wants kids’ in the midst of their schooling disrupted, nor a hard to manage influx into state schools.

Last time in Labour scrapped the Tories assisted places scheme (where the government paid fees for bright kids) but the kids already on it were allowed to finish their educations.

It’s sensible to try and plan OP - do you have a good state sixth form nearby for example? - but I think if you kids are already secondary level you will be ok.

Meanwhile schools will be getting shot of extras and flogging some land, so less of a swimming pools and single bedrooms arms race in future.

Labour will be more likely to invest in childcare than the Tories ever will be, and more likely to support pay rises for doctors...

There are in most industries people at the level below waiting for opportunities, then everyone shuffles up. Obviously.

Obviously there's lots of scaremongering about how all our GPs will leave.

No one wants a GP to leave their job - but honestly speaking, how many GPs send their kids to private (the vast majority do not) and of those how many will quit due to this? Willing to bet more would quit over five more years of Tory NHS mismanagement than Labour VAT on fees policy.

I'm so pleased I started this thread - so much useful information, and it's very interesting to hear what different schools are saying and planning.

Those that have upped the fees already seems VERY questionable indeed - there was an uproar at my kids' school last year when they raised the fees 8 percent following a 6 percent rise the year before.

In answer to the question about my kids' ages: they are currently year 7 and year 9, and we're planning for them to go state for sixth form (when schools we wouldn't be in catchment for now or are vastly oversubscribed grammars) open up to them. It's just a question now of whether or not we will be able to afford to get to that point 😖

Thanks again everyone.

@theduchessofspork - word on the street is that they are currently claiming that they will do it immediately. Time will tell.

Certain professions like doctors and dentists and barristers don’t mirror society: they tend to come from wealthy families and went to private schools themselves - they will figure out ways to send their kids to private schools. But it’s not them that will leave after 20-30% tax rises. It’s the children of private school teachers who will suffer.

https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2016/jan/22/medical-school-students-wealthy-backgrounds

The school that my children are signed up to have said that they will increase class sizes by 1, make some other economies and will obviously be able to reclaim VAT on some costs, so won't pass on the full cost to parents. They have also suggested parents pay in advance.

@MidnightOnceMore I think it's a bit naïve to suggest that state schools will ever, in general, be able to provide the sort of wraparound care which enables professional parents to work as many private schools do. Wraparound care, holiday care and activities on site are major reasons for me hopefully sending my children to prep school. I am a single parent with very little support and a lawyer. The wraparound at state schools near me only runs until 5, doesn't provide children with a meal, is generally low quality and there aren't enough places anyway. A reliable nanny for the hours I would want would likely be very difficult to find and as expensive as the cost of sending two children to prep school. Private school is probably the difference between me progressing my career or not. I might be immediately replaced by a junior but my firm has been recruiting for that for about 5 years and not found it.

@Notellinganyone
I'm sceptical that labour will be able to do this immediately. I think they will probably need to amend primary legislation to do it. They should consult on it because there is a lot to consider (e.g. impact on other parts of the education exemption like tutoring; whether private schools could split out sports supplies etc.; what anti-avoidance law they would include if any).

I'm also a bit sceptical that they can implement it in retrospect from the day they come into power as has been suggested. Not impossible but this approach doesn't work well for VAT because schools would either need to start charging VAT before there was a legal basis to do so and before they even knew what the law said on this (so didn't strictly know how it applied to them) or try to collect VAT from parents in retrospect once the law had been passed. There are huge practical issues with that and it would be very unusual for a VAT change to be implemented in this way (possibly unprecedented). You may get a human rights challenge on it.

Yea the wrap around thing is so true. Theoretically what my daughters school is as good as what’s offered at the prep I work in. It opens the same time and runs til 6pm. Bur the ‘tea’ is toast and fruit (at my school it’s soup, or sandwiches, or baked beans, always salad and so on and plenty of fruit and a piece of cake). Plus the state option is actually £7 per day more! Biggest issue is it’s full 🙄🙄🙄 that never happens at my prep.

my DH is a teacher at a large private boarding school. he wouldn't go back to state education teaching if that closes or they made him redundant. Not sure what their schools plan is but they have apparently said that if the 20% VAT comes in and they carry on as they are, they will be running at a deficit so I assume some fee increases would be included in their plan.

I live in a grammar school area. People move into this area to try and get their children into the grammar schools and this increases house prices in our area. The same people also tutor their children for several years in order to get into the grammar schools. If Labour put VAT on school fees, this will fuel house prices and tutoring resulting in greater inequality. The very wealthy and highly endowed schools in the South of England will continue, with bursaries reduced and potentially more overseas students - making them even more exclusive.

They will be losing my vote because of this policy

Most sensible post on here.

I doubt whether the amounts of money generated from this will make much diff to state education. But some of the apocalyptic predictions here are a bit daft. It will be phased in, fees have gone up year on year for a generation anyway, and I don’t think it would kill some of these schools to get a bit more frugal with things like OTT facilities. As for “private school kids will take grammar school places away from disadvantaged kids” — pull the other one! Middle class parents of the sort for whom private education would be a stretch will seldom opt to go for private school if grammar is available, so there isn’t going to be some big switch, and hardly any disadvantaged kids get into grammar school anyway.

I think prep schools will see significant declines (although it’s hard to know how much of that would have happened anyway, with declining birthrates and COL etc.). But secondary numbers might remain quite similar - a lot of parents will use state primary, save for secondary, and use state sixth forms, as the 11-16 age group tends to be the one where disruptive behavior in schools is the biggest cause for concern.

We know that private school pupils are over represented in the professions and in university generally. What I was saying was that the majority of current doctors don't have children in private schools.

On the thread there are claims both that:
-it is a big tax change that will bring about significant change for many families; and simultaneously
-it will be possible for schools to avoid paying the VAT so it will raise no money and is therefore a pointless change.

I don't think it can be both of these at the same time.

Is the policy wrong in principle? There's very little discussion of that on threads like these. The intention is to use the money raised from the VAT change to pay for more teachers in the state system.

Current polling suggests fewer than 20% of voters oppose the policy. Presumably most of that group wouldn't vote Labour with or without this policy. Politically speaking, it is not an easy policy for the Tories to campaign against without sounding like they are out of touch with 'ordinary voters'.

You're right that it could be hard for the Tories to campaign against it, but at the moment it looks like there's a lot of unintended consequences to what Labour are proposing.Unless another angle has changed I think it will also end up affecting other things that are education such as swimming lessons, music tuition, sports coaching tutoring etc.

They're only taking this angle because they've kneejerked considered charity status and that turned out to be more complex than they thought.

Labour haven't thought this through and they're playing the politics of envy game here. State education isn't falling apart at the seams because some professional couples on middle to high salaries send their children to a moderately priced local day school.

What Labour actually need to be doing is going after the big problems, not trying to play the working and middle classes off against each other.

State education isn't falling apart at the seams because some professional couples on middle to high salaries send their children to a moderately priced local day school.

Yes.
There’s an odd paradox on mumsnet:
Private school parents and their children are snobbish, entitled idiots - to the extent threads are started by people whose children are terrified of going to certain universities as they may have to mix with poshos - and yet these very parents would be the saviours of state schools were they obliged to use them.

Yes.
There’s an odd paradox on mumsnet:
Private school parents and their children are snobbish, entitled idiots - to the extent threads are started by people whose children are terrified of going to certain universities as they may have to mix with poshos - and yet these very parents would be the saviours of state schools were they obliged to use them

There's a lot of odd paradoxes on Mumsnet.

Eg. Parents who choose state = good, fair, care about inequality Vs parents who choose private = pushy, very wealthy, don't care about inequality, the source of all inequality in the state sector, probably a Tory or champagne socialist

But then you realise that there's probably a lot of parents choosing private and have low mortgages or rent because they've chosen to live in an affordable area Vs state school parents who are paying through the roof to have the right house in catchment. Then add in that the wealthy parents who top up and spend on education are probably helping the state school be excellent!

There's a dominant, or loud, view on MN that it's acceptable to spend a huge amount of money on opportunities for your child, including buying in catchment, music tutoring, prep for 11+, lots of expensive enrichments, GCSE tutors, sports coaching etc, but the second someone chooses to spend money on private fees so their child can access all of that within the school day they're an evil Tory who hates poor people.

Embarrassingly I had a very black and white view of this topic but it's a lot more complicated than I first thought.

@theduchessofspork - wish I could be as optimistic. If you talk to those heads who go to HMC meetings and who are in contact with shadow ministers and MPS the feedback is far less upbeat. Many schools don’t have land to flog and are operating on narrow margins and most areas of the UK don’t have grammar schools.

I have one kid in Y9 private school. We will just eat the increase in fees if it goes up. The main worry would be if the school went out of business before GCSEs as it is a very small specialist school. I don't disagree in principle with charging VAT on private education but I think the transition could be really rough. I'd like to see some kind of policy that grandfathered through those who were on exam pathways - maybe means tested?
The ideal situation for me would be massive reform for education in general.

No thank you, I do not want another massive reform in state education. That will cost a bomb and put even more teachers off from teaching. What we need is better 16-18 pathways for those who do not want to go the academic/university route. You do not need everyone to go to university and come out with huge debt they cannot repay. You need young people to learn skills to a great standard, be independent and get paid. If everyone gets a fair wage then trade jobs etc are for more attractive. The worst is pushing children into highly academic pathways that do not pay off for them long term and leave them in debt. I think we are going to see far fewer young people choosing university education.
I vote Labour but their Education policies tend to be rubbish.

“If you talk to those heads who go to HMC meetings and who are in contact with shadow ministers and MPS the feedback is far less upbeat. Many schools don’t have land to flog and are operating on narrow margins and most areas of the UK don’t have grammar schools.”

I have heard the same and I expect a lot of private schools will go bust and people will lose their jobs and charitable estates will be tied up in a legal nightmare for years.

Yeah this whole ‘sell off land’ and ‘stop massive new building projects’ thing only applies to the huge public schools, where the fees are already sky high and parents will be able to suck up the increase (Eton, Abingdon). Smaller schools including many preps don’t have land to sell and don’t spend money building swimming pools and theatres. The fees are cheaper to reflect the lack of land/facilities (my school is about £13k per year) so currently more accessible - but parents scraping by to afford these (which many are - it’s like just continuing to pay for nursery in terms of cost) won’t be able to easily suck up the extra 20%.

I do think it is wrong in principle to require VAT to be added. Education, whoever you are educating, is for good which is why English law has always had educatoin as one of the categories of being charitable for its own sake.

I would support a £5000 per child voucher any parent could use at a state of private school or ability to set school fees off against your tax bill.

I agree that educating is a public benefit.

But my experience of private education (having experienced both) is that huge swathes of the experience are actually luxurious and not just about pure education at all.

So I think it's reasonable to have a review of this.

I understood smaller schools were looking to amalgamate or merge - as state schools have been required to do - in order to cut overheads?

It is not the politics of envy. That is one common Tory attack line, and maybe you are a supporter of theirs, but what it actually is, IMO, is the politics of prioritising the majority and state.

The very small minority who go to private school are entitled to do so. But they are not the priority of the state - the state's job is to education those who attend the state's schools.

State education is falling apart at the seams because the government in power has deliberately underfunded it. Any reversal of that is in the interests of the whole nation.

State education is falling apart at the seams because the government in power has deliberately underfunded it. Any reversal of that is in the interests of the whole nation.

Exactly. I want the entire generation of children to be well educated. That's what's best for the country.