If labour win the election can they introduce VAT immediately?

[londonparent321]

(For school fees) Or do they need to go through the courts which could take years /never happen?

Personally wouldnt remove my dc from a private school over a small increase.
Dc got a space at state secondary after being on waitlist.
Even a good school it is miles away from the private i went to as a child.
Where is the homework that achieves anything??
It is 99% revision.
Anything else is busywork. Weve had covering books etc.
They arent even always told about tests coming up. Then judged on the results.
We dont get test results and then reports come out (still without the actual result) but theyve taken another 2 tests since so cant improve those marks.

At my school i never ever had
Days at end of term watching movies (like state primary and secondary)
Constant disruption and children sent out daily from every lesson even 'fun' ones

The swearing and bullying
Moving sets but the content being so different

And state primary
Ok.
But there is not stretch to move a chiod from meeting expectations
Dc2 will maybe have 1 swimming lesson whole of primary school.
I conclude mainly those who are good at things it is because of outside tutors or clubs etc (maths to sport)

Where is labour or conservative plan to target any school issues??

Without the sats i dont think my dc would be anywhere near where they are.
But they dont cover writing on the same way and the school results werent great for that. Nor science or geo or history. And dc isnt doing great at those at secondary.

state have taken my dc1 who was very bright before starting school (could read cvc words etc etc) and was reading fluentl by 5y0 chapger books but has dropped back down to average. I think lack of feedback and pushing and oversight.

i guess locally any changing to state would be pushed to the not full school. (Req improvement)
However y7 admissions would be a problem likely for siblings and its unpredictable.

its disengenuous to say there are state places. Or course there should be places!
people need choice, they need to be able to move house or if there are issues.
plus 30 should be a max.
dc y6 class had 2 kids who didnt sit sats and couldnt read. As theres not full setting at secondary just maths they are expected to cope in normal classes.
plus of course the numbers with ehcp have gone up exponentially from 1 to 7 in 3 years.
however there are drs here who choose state. Maybe as their dc are bright anyway.

I don’t understand Labour on this policy at all. Actually the demographic hit will be those just able to afford private schools and making huge sacrifices to send their kids there at present. There’s as good a chance as any that some of those would be in the centrist group Labour hope will swing from the Tories to them.

Economically it just doesn’t add up. The cost of 15% (the last estimate I heard) of kids in private schools exiting into the state sector will be astronomical and far more than the tax hopes to bring in. To the pp who (gleefully) pointed out that there won’t be places for them- Labour will have to fund and provide them. We’ll see bulge years and increased class sizes. The LAs do have to make the places available, and will require funding from the government to do so- they can’t legally just turn round and say ‘you started so you have to finish’ with regard to paying for a private education.

And at what cost the upheaval for those kids forcibly moved.

It’s a mean spirited ‘if I can’t have it, no one should’, economically unsustainable policy. Shame on Labour if they go through with it.

This is frankly baloney! Most state 6th forms or colleges in Britain are not selective schools or Grammars only 5% of British students attend a Grammar school but you even if you do attend a Grammar school, you could still attend one of those schools without money, this is not an option for private. I think you'll find many state educated A level students want to attend the best unis but the admission grades are exceptionally high now due to competition with International students, if you attend Highgate School 6th form, not really a problem competing for a place with these applicants due to the advantages afforded you, if you attend Telford College it may be a different story! Then there are the prohibitive maintenance costs, even if you do manage to get into the top unis. Even the Department for Education’s own Equality Impact Assessment stated that the 2.5% increase for maintenance loans would have a negative impact for students because an increase of at least 15% would be required to keep pace with inflation. No problem if all your rent can be paid in advance or you are living of passive income from Assets your parents' own, a major problem if you parents household earnings are £63000 (which is not much in the South East) as you receive the lowest maintenance loan, your parents are probably not in a great position to help at all, especially if they have big monthly mortgage repayments and own no assets at all! This is why you are seeing articles like the one yesterday on the BBC website about Lancaster students going without food for 3 days due to COL. So no, going to uni is not just about whether you want to go and it is all a level playing field, it is no such thing!

Huge numbers of state 6th forms are highly selective.

My own child's school want a minimum of 6 GCSEs at G7-9 including English and Maths for 6th form entry (state comprehensive in London).

I looked at a few yesterday for a different thread and they were all asking for at least 6 x G6 including English and Maths.

If that's not selective, I don't know what is.

@Goldenbear The vast majority of dc in unis are state educated! People who earn £63,000 have decent jobs. They have attained social mobility but still
they moan. Whether the government adjusts the maintenance contribution is another matter. So stop moving the goalposts. Dc can work to help out with costs. Especially in the holidays. Many who live in cities do have a decent uni on the doorstep. Plenty of Unis take very very few privately educated students, eg Sheffield and Liverpool. I don’t buy into this notion that private pupils nudge out everyone else. Plenty of comp educated pupils are bright and they do go to the best unis in huge numbers but you can’t say everyone should go but many can achieve well without going.

@OhCrumbsWhereNow That is because if dc get below 6, they are really going to struggle with A levels. It’s clear A levels are not for everyone and what would you do with EEE? It’s better to look for Btec or courses with a job focus. That’s nothing new but we should not expect all dc to do A levels. They were never designed for everyone so most people accept schools have to set minimum requirements for A levels but other courses are available.

You would think people would have learned from the lies and dumb assumptions that led to the Brexit vote. Charging VAT on private school fees will have so many unintended consequences, many of which have already been pointed out on this thread. The kids that will miss out the most will be the poorer kids who get pushed out of the top state schools and find themselves in bulge classes but who gives a fuck about them when you can teach those rich people who can no longer afford school fees a lesson?

Labour may as well change its party colours to purple and wear its envy politics with pride.

Totally agree.
And A levels and university are not always the right option for every child - my DD will definitely get the grades to do A levels, but it's not what she wants to do, so she's aiming at L3 extended BTECs in her specific field instead.

I know quite a lot of university educated parents whose children are looking at university and the costs and deciding that actually there are other pathways to where they want to be - apprenticeships, BTECs and other options.

It's hearkening back to the 1970s, when the parties were considerably clearer about what they would do and how they intended to pay for it.

It's not some new, unusual idea that a party that wishes to govern will say what they intend to do.

It's what all those old enough to remember the 1970s (and before) when governments tended to swap colours more frequently) take as utterly normal.

And I think it's a good thing. Yes, we all know that actual events might throw some plans off course. But that's no reason not to set out your stall. Manifesto should revert to a no-surprises setting out of well-considered set of policies that make sense as a unified ideology.

That is however substance over style.

Degree apprenticeships for 18 year olds are fiercely competitive and sometimes the degrees are from low ranked unis. Students need to look closely at what they are getting. A young person with a degree from Imperial or LSE could have significantly better life time earnings than an apprentice with a degree from a low ranking uni who could have gone to a highly selective uni. We don’t have the data yet though. Uni is much easier to get though but not necessarily the unis I just quoted! Many people don’t live where there is a wide choice of apprenticeships either.

I would also suggest those better prepared for interview and with greater confidence will do better. I rather think this will be MC students with MC parents coaching them. At uni the student gets time to choose a career and target lots of employers. And mature ready for those interviews and selection tests.

Yes because 95% of the pupils are state educated, it is disingenuous to suggest this is a level play field, even the Telegraph reported on the huge widening gap of opportunity between state and private applicants at top unis, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/13/private-schools-gap-with-state-education-rises/

https://thetab.com/uk/2021/02/11/revealed-the-unis-who-let-in-the-fewest-state-school-students-194852

Pupils in private schools more than twice as likely to achieve A* A than those in the state sector.

The evidence is data not feelings about a situation. It is a very sad situation and worrying for the stability of the economy and society!

In some cases it's Hobson's choice though isn't it due to prohibitive costs outlined above.

95% of 6th formers are not in state schools. There is no widening gap! It’s the opposite due to widening participation. Most newspapers report how private school parents think dc don’t get to the top unis now and go abroad. The Telegraph blows hot and cold on this. There are far more opportunities for state (like they are all paupers!) to go to the best unis. Only a few where it’s close to 40% private. Sheffield is 6%.

Our household income is more than £63,000 no social mobility has occurred, we (Husband and I) like many in this country are not as well off as our parents were at the same age with similar professional achievements. My Dad was an Economist and my Mum a teacher but didn't really have to work, they had a detached house in South West London at 25! We are an Architect (Associate Director level) and Privacy/info sec work and we are in a terrace house that we extended to make 3 rooms no garden. We happen to be early to mid 40s so no windfall in property. We are privileged of course but don't pretend we are all getting richer we are not or that we are living in a socially mobile age in Britain - we are not!

I can't believe you are still peddling this despite the evidence to prove otherwise.

You assume that it is the same distribution of bright, high achieving school children in both sectors. That’s the mistake.

I think the comparison upthread with elderly care is quite a good one. That is similarly a sector where there is a free option available, which includes a huge variation in quality (just as state education has some great schools and great teachers, so state care has some great care homes and great staff). But it also has chronic problems of underfunding and some very poor provision, as well as having a high threshold for appropriate levels of care (a bit like the challenges faced by children with SEN needs trying to access a suitable learning environment).

In this context, a lot of elderly people (and sometimes their children - rather like grandparents helping out with school fees) choose to use the money they've earnt to pay for private care - whether because they want a nicer standard of care (a care home with a nice garden or a wider range of activities etc, or carers who come in for more than 15 minutes twice a day), or because they want to access care before they've reached the needs threshold imposed by the state.

Yet I don't see an appetite for slapping VAT on private care home fees in order to increase funding for state social care, or elderly people criticised for buying an unfair luxury that other people can't afford.

Why not?

@gogogary unfortunately I think if you give it time it will happen.

Sme people already love to hate the elderly and believe they all hoard wealth and had an easier ride than younger people. And you only have to look at some of the early comments on this thread to see how spiteful people can be, and how some people don’t care what the outcome is, so long as a demographic they hate suffers.

So it will come.

gogogary same applies for private healthcare.

I think it’s because private schools are more visible - people see the schools and their pupils around and the signs of the knock on advantages eg that we have a disproportionately private educated government. By contrast private medical care and elder care is largely invisible. Plus people are more bothered by things that affect children than sick or old people.

I think the reason elderly care is a particularly close comparison is because it's something that costs a lot of money on a regular (but ultimately temporary) basis, whereas private healthcare is often accessed on an ad hoc basis, and the costs are not necessarily high for a one off minor thing.

Land tax or wealth tax does at first glance seem like a good option to genuinely re-distribute wealth (since asset acquisition becomes a wealth spiral) whilst not discouraging income-generating innovation and work (unlike high income tax) and whilst also encouraging economy-boosting spending (unlike sales tax). What's not to like?!

Unfortunately, it doesn't work.

Very wealthy people are generally also very mobile. Here's an article talking about the impact of France's wealth tax, which they got rid of after finding that it cost the state twice as much in revenue as it raised.
https://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/education/2021/02/11/lessons-from-history-france-s-wealth-tax-did-more-harm-than-good/

it led to an exodus of France’s richest. More than 12,000 millionaires left France in 2016, according to research group New World Wealth. In total, they say the country experienced a net outflow of more than 60,000 millionaires between 2000 and 2016. When these people left, France lost not only the revenue generated from the wealth tax, but all the others too, including income tax and VAT.

French economist Eric Pichet estimated that the ISF ended up costing France almost twice as much revenue as it generated. In a paper published in 2008, he concluded that the ISF caused an annual fiscal shortfall of €7bn and had probably reduced gross domestic product (GDP) growth by 0.2 per cent a year

The article concludes that higher taxes and the flight of a cohort of France’s richest helped to reduce inequality, but left France worse off.

Some posters might suggest that reducing inequality is worth the economic hit, due to the increased social cohesion that usually correlates with lower income inequality.

BUT the same posters will still complain about our ever-reducing standard of living. And won't see that longer NHS waiting lists, under-resourced schools, insufficient funding for social security and elder care are a direct result of these kind of idealistic but counter-productive economic policies.

Note that the 7 billion euros annual shortfall the wealth tax cost France is about 5% of our Education spending.

Thanks for this, a good example of tax impacting behaviour

So if this isnabkut excluding vat on education then to do it fairly that will have to extend to private nurseries and universites. This will cause more pain for everyone and is a real risk. This is nothing more than envy

Paying for school when there free education is available is a choice. There is no choice about paying for university or nursery.

Plus it benefits society to have people educated to degree level and parents who are able to work. Private education does not benefit society.

@Hughs my children are better educated than they would have been in state - surely that is a net positive for society? Maybe something we should be aiming to expand access to?

and nursery / university is very much a choice. Many parents make arrangements to eliminate or minimise the use of expensive nursery placements. Only about half of graduates go to university - many go into work or apprenticeships instead.

personally I don’t think any of the above should be VATable, but your argument around ‘choice’ is pretty weak. I would also point out that state education is not ‘free’ - we pay for it with our taxes, whether we use it or not.