20% vat on fees

[namechangedforthisone35]

IF Labour get in and IF the 20% does get added to fees, how many private school pupils will be moved to state? I have three kids (one not school aged yet) and in private school. One of many reasons because I didn't want them in a class of 30. I couldn't afford the vat increase so would have to move them but then that class of 30 becomes, what, 40?! In an already strained and unresourced system?!

Wwyd?

Y - I'd have to move kids to state
N - I'll pay the vat

Still nothing then.

You really can look it up for yourself, it’s actually faster than just adding sarky comments.

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/17/10-things-we-learned-from-the-uk-natcon-conference

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/15/low-birthrate-is-uk-top-priority-tory-mp-tells-rightwing-conference-miriam-cates

The falling birth rate is a real fact though, and labelling it as a ring wing obsession is unhelpful. Besides, far left wing ideology, for example, Stalin, were also obsessed with birth rates.
UK for a long time was an outlier and had a healthy birth rate compared to other European countries. We should try and understand why that has changed. I do not think it is incorrect to say that it has nothing to do with negativity. The 90s and Blair Government were good for the UK overall and people were positive and the country was doing well. It is a tried and tested formula. Blair would not have done to private schools what Starmer’s manifesto is proposing. The Assisted Places scheme was very different, numbers had exploded and it was financed by Government and had been a Thatcherite brain child and an anomaly. It is such a cliche to go on and on about where someone has gone to school and place undue emphasis on it. It is very strange that every politician in this country has to disclose their schooling. Quite unheard of in other countries and totally unnecessary. It is more of the toxic black and white thinking of this camp vs that camp. In fact, poststructuralism was meant to break that kind of too basic thinking down. Sadly, I believe Brexit was a catalyst for black and white and people have fallen into that trap. It is quite evident on this thread.

Isn't a falling birth rate a good thing?

It is one way that the horrific effects of climate change might be mitigated and additionally think of how many fewer children the state will have to educate. With the advent of AI there will be fewer jobs anyway, as things like gambling in banks is entirely done by machines.

@jgw1 - well that discussion merits a whole other thread.

The point of this discussion is that the OP works at a private school, has 3 children and can’t afford the VAT increase.

I really believe very strongly we should not be penalising her by potentially affecting her livelihood, we should not be penalising her children and she sounds exactly like the squeezed middle who we absolutely need as a society and should be supporting.

Why not blame the under resourced system and 13 years of austerity and cuts to services under the Tories, instead of Labour?

Having recently done some work in a middling private school, i doubt very much whether it will deter parents sending their kids their in most cases, fees have increased by far more than 20% in recent years, numbers have gone UP.

The private sector should have seen this coming and offered more bursaries etc etc.

All this moaning by the wealthy because they are scared they'll have to pay the true costs of their children's education!

Meanwhile in the real world, almost 200k children will be homeless this Xmas, due to the Tories and their failure to build affordable for rent housing, yet at the same time, bringing in plans that have frightened off BTL landlords.

This is the kind of bat-crap crazy thinking we're dealing with these days. I understand you're clearly partisan, but try to take the red-blue glasses off for a second and think about what you're saying.

The reason numbers in private schools have held while the fee's have increased so much is because of falling standards in the state sector, there-by increasing the value of a private education. Even then, it is less that schools fee's have increased in real terms and more that state schools have had real-terms cuts due to the government printing money like it's going out of fashion. It's why it's so frustrating when media interview a politician about funding services and accept the b.s answer of "this government are spending more than ever before on X". The cuts are through inflation.

The true cost of a private education is what the current fee's are now (actually, less because around 10% of what parents pay get redistributed in bursaries). Why would adding a tax to education - something not done in other educational sectors in the uk, nor in most economies around the world, and actually illegal under EU regs - be the "true cost"? It isn't. It's 20% more than the true cost.

Everyone lives in the real world. Finding others less fortunate than the O.P does not invalidate or provide any counter-balance to the grievance they've raised. We don't tell victims of robbery to buck-up because some people don't have property in the first place. This is the fallacy of relative privation.

I wonder whether some people don't really understand how higher-pay type jobs work, and that's why they don't understand the consequence to the country of those workers being dis-incentivised from continuing to work, or choosing to leave the country.

For some jobs, it doesn't really matter too much who does it in terms of what gets done. The job might need some training, and you may
pay a bit more in order to attract good people and retain them after investing in their training. But nonetheless once you've trained that person up, it doesn't really matter whether they're eg a brilliant train driver or just an acceptable one (so long as you can get rid of actually unsafe ones). The brilliant driver can still only drive one train, with a set number of passengers. So even the most brilliant train driver can't demand more money than an average one - since you don't really care whether you have the best train driver or the 2nd best train driver. And you can always train another: it will cost, but there are lots of people available who are capable of learning to drive a train well enough.

jgw1's argument holds for this type of job.

Then you get the kind of job that pays the big bucks. These are the jobs where the individual's performance makes a genuine difference to the profit made by the company. Strong performers in management, law, IT etc can be many times more productive than weaker ones - and can also make others around them more productive too (which multiplies up the benefit they bring).

In this case, if the best performer makes the company £x more than the second best performer, it makes sense for the company to offer an extra £x-1 pay to get the best performer instead of the second best performer. That's why these jobs pay lots.

If the best performer decides to go part-time or move to another company, the company will make £x less money. They will have to pay the replacement £x less to reflect that. If the top performer moves abroad, then the country creates £x less value and the state receives less tax (both less income tax for the replacement and less corporation tax on the extra profit the company would have made).

By definition, for these types of jobs you can't just give the job to someone else for the same money and get the same value out of them (otherwise you already would have)

makes sense for the company to pay up to £x-1 to get the best performer.

Obviously, they will pay less if they can get away with it!

Usually it will be the lower of £x and £y
where

£x is how much extra profit they make by employing the person

and £y is how much extra profit a different company could make by employing that person instead and so is willing to offer them

@strawberrybubblegum fear not I know exactly how the kind of talent you describe works.

Here's a good example.

I am a company executive with responsibility for compliance and fraud in a big company. I have a particularly effective senior investigator and so we reward them with bonuses for the many successful cases they have identified and investigated, saving the company millions each year. I get a bonus as well for managing the investigator and since the company is making more money the shareholders are happy and in time the chief executive gets a damehood for services to industry.

Trebles all round as they say.

All this talk about classes of 30
… the reality is that our kids, state secondaries, are in classes of 12-20 depending on the subject although their form class - which they’re in for registration is 27.

Unusual for a state secondary. Around here classes are 30-35 until you hit GCSE and then some classes (not maths/English/sciences) drop to 25 ish

‘Unusual for a state secondary. ‘

BS.

"Classes of 12-20"

BS.

Just because you don't believe me and I don't believe you doesn't mean either of us are wrong! We only speak about our own experiences.

Private schools aren’t charities, so the sooner they stop getting tax breaks that they aren’t entitled to, the better.

My DDs’ secondary is fully subscribed and classes are 24.

we supplement with extra curricular activities and subject tutor when needed.

Lots of private schools aren’t charities at the moment. Those that are have to meet certain conditions. In any case, even the Labour Party have already said that they’re not going to strip schools of charitable status.

Read the room. I know people who use private schools who don’t believe that the tax breaks are fair.

It's not a "tax break".

There's currently no VAT on ANY school education, just as there's no VAT on ANY medical treatment nor ANY financial services such as insurance or commissions on pensions, nor any VAT on printed books or newspapers, nor food (unless it's catering).

Lots of things don't carry VAT. That doesn't mean that people buying a frozen chicken are getting a "tax break" or people buying The Daily Mirror are getting a tax break.

Exactly

It’s a tax break. Private schools should be paying Business rates. They aren’t charities and should pay the appropriate taxes, rates AND VAT should be charged in fees.

Some are charities.
I hope you also agree that private tutors and sports clubs should then also charge VAT?

Exactly. For example, university students aren’t getting a “tax break” by not having VAT added on their fees. Those needing surgery aren’t getting a “tax break” by not having VAT added to private healthcare. None of us are getting a “tax break” by buying a loaf of bread with no VAT added.

And university fees, private healthcare, air fares, private nurseries, care home fees……..

Yep. Some people are just obsessed with dragging all education provision down to the lowest common denominator rather than improving state education.