Vat Question????????

[Anoth]

Can I ask a silly question??
We have been given our school fees for 24/25 academic year now for the school my daughter attends.
My question is if labours policy comes in half way through an academic year will the schools be allowed to put the fees up for the remainder of that academic year? Eg if we start paying X amount on September and then labour get in and introduce the added vat in October. Will the fees go up in Jan of that academic year? Normally fees remain un changed for the whole of the academic year once fees have been published but I understand this is a strange situation!
Just wanted to know if I need to prepare to save more for 24/25 fees just in case or will these that are now published still remain until the end of July 25??.
Thanks!

‘However, an unqualified teacher is not necessarily a bad teacher, and a qualified teacher is not necessarily a good teacher.’

Rightho. It is a mystery then, why state schools - all over the world- want their subject teachers to have a degree in that subject area THEN learn how to teach that subject to children, while managing a class, AND understand the curriculum requirements.
Absolute mystery.
I might see if I can get hired as a maths teacher. Absolutely unqualified in it though my finance skills are pretty sharp, and apparently not being qualified to teach or having learned any techniques for teaching children whatsoever doesn’t mean I’ll be bad.
i will have to stick to the private sector still though - state schools in our county are still very behind the times and require both a degree in a maths subject and a teaching qualification before they’ll let me loose in the local secondaries.

state schools in our county are still very behind the times and require both a degree in a maths subject and a teaching qualification before they’ll let me loose in the local secondaries.

As previously mentioned, 80% of state secondaries do not require their teachers to have qualified teacher status.

I'm not sure if you are deliberately misunderstanding to be argumentative, or whether your reading comprehension is genuinely not very good.

When I talk about "qualified" I was talking about being qualified as a teacher i.e. having QTS. Indeed, in England (and possibly Wales, I'm not sure) once you have QTS, you can teach any subject.

It goes without saying that a teacher should be a specialist in the subject they teach. Please don't try to lecture me on the importance of this, the organisation I work for literally lives and breathes this as their raison d'etre.

However, what I did say is that many schools are recruiting non-specialists as a last^ resort.^ This is a fact, whether you like it or not.

Whilst you might need a maths degree to do a PGCE with the intention to teach maths, you do not need a maths degree to obtain QTS and then teach maths.

And in fact you could get hired by any academy to teach maths, whether you have QTS or not. If the schools in your county are academies, then they may have their own policies of not hiring maths teachers unless they have a maths degree and a PGCE, but they are certainly allowed^^ to hire teachers without those qualifications.

It's great if your county can stick to those policies and still recruit enough highly qualified maths teachers, but many schools do not have that luxury.

And - whilst private schools can hire unqualified teachers, why would they? I am sure the vast majority of private school teachers are qualified - not least because someone wanting to be a teacher will probably start out training and then choose state or private, or do some time in state and move private, or want to switch between the two as opportunities come up.

No doubt they are exceptions, but they will likely be of the “former England player becomes a sports teacher without a pgce” part, and a good chance that person is on staff but not teaching gcse or a level pe.

after all, private schools want good teachers because league table positions for results are key.

You are tilting at windmills with this one.

And - whilst private schools can hire unqualified teachers, why would they?

Depends on the definition of ‘unqualified’. I know one private school where most of the teachers would be considered unqualified but they follow the IB system and the teachers have international qualifications.

Ah, good point.

Quatty was insinuating that private schools dragged in any old Joe. Which would seem counterproductive to striving for good results.

In state academies teachers don't have to be qualified. You also realise that with the recruitment crisis in state schools there are PE teachers teaching GCSE maths? As 1 example. There are many more such examples.
If state school is so good then why are the many posts from state teachers on here decrying the decay in the system?

If you prefer the state sector because you think teaching is better, surely there’s no problem? You use the state sector in the knowledge and let other people pay to have their children taught by the inferior unqualified teachers in the private sector? That’s just a matter of parental choice.

You can’t have it both ways. If private schools aren’t very good for all the reasons you have mentioned in this thread, they aren’t giving an unfair advantage and we don’t need to crack down on them.

At DS private school many of his teachers have PhDs in their subjects! The head of Biology is a medical doctor with a teaching qualification. Even the TAs seem to have degrees.
Not all private schools have unqualified teachers.
DS school was founded in 1662 and it would be an awful shame if Labour managed to get rid of it. Their bursary fund alone is worth £2 million. The amount they do for charity and the local community is huge.

DS's private school has many "unqualified" teachers, meaning that for whatever reason they haven't done formal teacher training and don't have QTS.

However, all of them are subjects specialists in the subject(s) they teach - to at least degree level.

As a PP has said, you can't have it both ways: either private school children are incredibly privileged because of their excellent teaching, or they are all taught by dreadful unqualified teachers that can't teach - which is it? And if the latter, why get so bothered about it.

‘DS's private school has many "unqualified" teachers, meaning that for whatever reason they haven't done formal teacher training and don't have QTS.’

its an epidemic in private schools. Accent and connections are valued way above skill, experience and ability to teach in too many schools.

its an epidemic in private schools. Accent and connections are valued way above skill, experience and ability to teach in too many schools.

And yet private schools, when looked at as an average, get better results than state schools. How do you think that’s possible if these schools really are full of incompetent teachers? It’s really not the case. Every single one of my children’s secondary teachers are subject specialists. Even at primary level, they have subject specialists for maths, science, languages, art, sport etc.

I’m assuming you’re ignoring the fact that 80% of state schools don't have to employ teachers with QTS? Even where they are “qualified”, I’m not sure that a PE teacher teaching physics, for example, is necessarily a good thing. This is becoming an increasing problem. I posted a link above showing the figures for this in the state system.

In any case, this really has little to do with VAT. If you really do believe that private schools are inferior, crammed with useless teachers and not particularly clever children, where is the advantage? Why do we need to punish them through the VAT system?

I tend not to post on topics where I have absolutely no knowledge or experience to offer regarding the subject matter. It prevents me looking stupid and bigoted

Absolute bollocks and shows how little knowledge of private schools you have.
Every single one of DDs teachers is either MA/MSc/PhD plus QTS.
You are completely ignoring that 80% of state schools don't have to employ qualified teachers?

Absolute bollocks and shows how little knowledge of private schools you have.
Every single one of DDs teachers is either MA/MSc/PhD plus QTS.
You are completely ignoring that 80% of state schools don't have to employ qualified teachers?

It's interesting that a poster has picked up on one part of my post, and conveniently ignored the other part in order to try to make their point...

I'm a private school parent in a well-off part of the country. But I also went to a state school in one of the poorest areas of the country, and did so at a time when state schools had been run into the ground by three successive Tory governments (plus ca change...). My memories of state school are of:

Grinding poverty among a large part of the student cohort.
Crumbling buildings and infrastructure.
Class sizes of 35.
Teachers struggling with crowd control
No differentiation, ever.
Frequent teacher absences and a string of substitute teachers giving us word searches day after day to keep us occupied
Special needs left entirely unmet.
Assaults - physical and sexual, and not a teacher in sight to do anything about them. Not that they wouldn't have cared, just that there weren't enough of them.

Despite this, I initially sent my child to a state school, with no intention of going private, and only removed them from state to stop the slow-motion car-crash that was unfolding. I was obliged to do so by the 1996 education act, i.e. ensure my child receive "efficient full-time education suitable to his age, ability and aptitude, and to any special educational needs he may have".

re: "what private school parents think state schools are like" I would say in a nutshell : crumbling, overstretched, under-resourced, and as a result failing many children, despite the best efforts of many excellent and committed staff.

I'm feeling really sorry for PE teachers!

Dont get me wrong. A specialist teacher is the standard we want in all schools. Private or State.

But PE is very science and maths heavy. There loads about biology, chemistry and physics to get their degree.

I can think of worse teachers to end up doing physics

Yes absolutely, let’s get the PE teachers teaching physics. Makes sense. Perhaps RE teachers could teach Science too? They presumably know a lot about how the benevolent dictator in the sky makes the world run.

Well as i clearly said everyone should have a specialist teacher you are being a bit facetious.

but since schools are struggling to recruit a specialist teacher for every subject, i would rather a PE teacher teaching ks3 science than an RE one, because I dont think the RE degree covers science in the way a science degree (sports science) does.

People seem to think PE teacher equals the crappest teacher going.

Philosophy taught by science teachers could be interesting… DCs school has ‘guest’ teachers in their weekly Philosophy & Ethics classes and they do get other subject teachers in to debate POV incl science, tech, maths teachers.
The classes - compulsory for a pupils and through school- are usually taught by teachers with philosophy/sociology/RE backgrounds.

This thread has taken a very odd turn. There has been a huge amount in the press about schools turning to non-specialists to fill shortage subjects e.g. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-68602435 - it's great that schools in your county aren't having this problem Quatty but I thought it was widely acknowledged that there is a huge problem with teacher shortages especially in particular subjects (https://www.nfer.ac.uk/press-releases/teacher-recruitment-and-retention-crisis-shows-no-signs-of-abating-new-report-reveals/). This doesn't really seem to be relevant to the VAT on private schools Q.

‘but since schools are struggling to recruit a specialist teacher for every subject,’

I hear this, but it’s not the reality in our cities schools ( I’m in Education) and at least the teachers are taught to actually teach - always helpful.
But again, doesn’t this just mean that there’ll be lots of roles for all these apparently soon-to-be- redundant teachers to fill?
Sounds like a win-win. At least for the ones that either have a teaching qual or are prepared to get one.
There are regions where there are a surplus of teachers too - in N.Ireland it can take years for newly qualified teachers to get a permanent contract because there are so many teachers, many with further degrees in their subject area.
I know someone’s who’s entire business is based on recruiting teachers from NI into schools in England.

AND, another plus … if some private schools do cut staff or close, the standard of teachers in others will rise because it’ll become more competitive.
No more ex-military swanning into a history post because they went to Sandhurst and have the right ‘life experience’ and the right accent.