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!

That's why I said 'some or all of it' in my original post.

No child in Scotland has an EHCP so how would that work?

OK but it's a letter from 6 years ago in response to an idea that was briefly floated. It's not an indication that schools have planned not to pass the increase on in relation to this proposal. I'd be very surprised if many schools were willing to make that kind of commitment,

"mild non-EHCP SEN" is definitely an area of concern. And it's not just SEN (diagnosable but mild) it's other needs like anxiety, victim of bullying, bereavement, whatever...plenty of families who might have been content with state but their kids struggled for whatever reason.

Put those kids back in state schools and (1) it's a distraction, in contrast to the total myth that all private school children are perfect assets to every classroom (2) it's a major cost to the welfare of that child (3) it's a further incentive for M or D to take time off work, no longer needing to earn school fees, in order to provide better wraparound support.

my personal perspective: my oldest would have coped in a reasonable state school. My youngest shows signs of mild ADD and through her primary years has needed extra attention and reassurance from time to time. I wouldn't be confident she'd have thrived in a state school environment; I'd figure she'd have taken up undue time in a larger classroom and done no good to any of the other kids.

Again, not talking about all of it. We'll see anyway.

Well here is his letter on the Labour plans https://www.colfes.com/news/headmaster-richard-russell-in-the-times-11/

Cutting costs by 20% is a pretty big ask. And since the schools aren't profit-making, it is cutting costs.

Unless they pre-emptively cut bursaries right down and made a raft of staff redundancies now - before the law even comes in - the costs won't drop in time. Some schools with a healthy war chest may be able to cover it for a short time.

But they have to decide whether they should.

The more they reduce their provision, the less extra education we get as a proportion of the 10s of thousands of pounds we are giving the government.

On fees of £18k, if the school reduce the provision from £18k of education to £15k of education to absorb the £3k VAT, parents go from:

• giving the government £27K in order to double the amount spent on DD's education
• to giving the government £23K in order to increase the education DD gets by 50%

Ie going from 8k state provision to £16k private provision or £13k private provision respectively. Assuming 2k of the fees cover wraparound and extracurricular activities I'd otherwise pay for elsewhere.

Note - it's not the government doubling or increasing my DD's education. This is tens of thousand of pounds I pay the government directly in extra taxes and subsidising DD's education entitlement - just so that I'm allowed to pay for extra education for her.

It pretty soon becomes not worthwhile. Why on earth would I give the government 10s of thousands of pounds, to only be allowed to actually improve my DD's education fractionally.

In the most extreme case, where a private school reduced fees to £8k to match state school funding, parents would be giving the government £9k tax (£7.5k income tax + £1.5k vat) for the privilege of the kid having the same amount spent on their education as they would get in state (£8k). The difference is, they'd be paying that £8k themselves instead of the government paying it... in addition to the £9k direct tax they would just be handing over to the government for the privilege.

But yeah, private school is a tax break. If you think so you can't do maths

Page 8.

Gotta keep saying it. Some will understand, others won't. Private schools and parents earning fees are the golden goose for the public finances.

Short+Term+Thinking.pdf (squarespace.com)

state schools get no where near £8k per child per year where I live half that figured and you’d be closer

Average funding for state schools is about £7.5K per pupil per year.

That’s a national average it’s not that everywhere, like I said half the £8k and you’d be nearer to the figure in my area for basic pupil funding not adding on sen

The average per pupil funding figure includes SEN funding and all parts of a school's income that are not directly related to the number of pupils. It also includes that part of the school's funding that is top sliced by the LA.

And do you think fees don't have to cover those things too?? (switch LA expenses to Consortium expenses) Some private schools will have a lower level of SEN than average, but some may have more, especially mild SEN (I'm excluding those private schools which specifically cater for higher needs, since they will have much higher fees).

I don't think that is right unless you are talking about primaries which do get less. But yes, some of it is top-sliced for various services.

No idea why you've responded to me in this way. If you look at my post you will see that I was answering a poster who was comparing the national average per pupil funding with the basic per pupil funding in her area. I was not commenting on what independent schools have to cover.

this is Leicestershire funding for last year, it’s not quite as bad as half £8k but it’s significantly lower, there are quite a number of schools on the minimum amount too

https://democracy.leics.gov.uk/documents/s166641/Appendix%20A%20-%202022-23%20School%20Funding%20Formula.pdf

It's obviously not enough. Was just commenting on the idea of it being half that because that is clearly lower than the minimum funding level, which I think applies all over the country.

‘Lots of schools have said they won't pass it on (some or all of it) to parents though (ie they will reduce fee's so the price effectively won't go up)’

good, they should be rather than all this misdirection aimed elsewhere. They don’t HAVE to do anything but I suspect many will continue to gouge parents

It's the Labour Party who are planning to gouge parents, not the schools.

Do you actually understand the numbers?

We did this yesterday. To death. Please could you read the following sub-thread before getting excited about "lots of schools" absorbing the VAT where "lots" = 3, 1 of which seems to be some years out-of-date;

against 95% of schools (~2,375 schools by my estimation) indicating they will pass VAT onto parents, and 78% of schools indicating they will pass on more than 10pc (presumably plus inflation)

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5048799-vat-question?reply=134905492&utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

I read the comments saying that per-pupil funding is lower than the widely-publisher £7.5k figure - and outlining the different non-pupil-specific costs which are rolled into that average - as implying that these are costs which state education has to cover (from the education budget, usually expressed as a per-student average) and private schools don't (from their income, usually expressed as per-student average fees for a specific school).

If your intention was just to clarify, then I apologise.

You've kind of missed the point I was trying to make (probably because I didn't word it very well).

In response to @strawberrybubblegum saying '
If the government impose VAT, then the schools will have to charge it. I'm not sure what's contentious about that or what you'd expect the school to do differently.'

What I meant was, no the schools don't 'have' to charge it, and there are a few (at least) that I've read about that dont plan to charge all or some of it.

They do have to charge it - it's the law.

They can choose to drop their fees by 20% so that parents have the same overall cost. But then they will have to reduce costs by 20%. Which means reducing the education they are providing.

Which means that what parents get for the same cost is 20% less. Shrinkflation in education if you like, but not due to inflation, due to the government grabbing that 20% for themselves.

On top of us already having paid tens of thousands of income tax for the extra hours we work to pay for education instead of the government paying.

Including income tax on the 3k VAT. So that £3k VAT is actually £3k VAT plus £2k extra income tax minimum.