To have though of a fairer way to fund state education than VAT on private?

[wlakaaf]

State schools are in desperate need of funding.

Money needs raising.

Instead of sticking 20% onto private fees - when those people are already paying 100% of the costs for educating their child, how about this:

Parents of children currently in state schools ought to contribute to their education on a means tested basis. There would be no argument over means, it would be a simple reference to the council tax band of the house you live in. We have bands A-H. I would propose that people in band A-F pay nothing. People in band G pay a fixed charge per year and people in band H pay a higher fixed charge per year.

Keir Starmer has used money to buy a massively expensive house, worth in the region of £2m, in the very tight catchment of a lovely state primary. This is buying privilege, same as buying private education. So why does he get away without paying?

@Kellykukoo We can all acknowledge the unavoidable truth - that the UK government can no longer afford to provide good quality education for free to everyone.

I keep hearing that we can no longer provide free healthcare for all but this is the first time I have heard this about education.

How have we been so brainwashed as to believe we deserve so little?
Education spending rates are more to do with policy and the need to win voters with tax cuts than actual financial limitation.

@wlakaaf I sincerely hope you did not enjoy a private education yourself.

If so and I was your parents, I would be asking for my money back.

There are plenty of us parents out there with DC who have SEN with absolutely no option but to send our children to a state school that can't meet need. Our local secondary is a good school but it can't cope with the 100+ children with significant need according to their EHCP, as it has 2300 other children to educate.

But as our children have a statutory right to education and we don't have a spare few thousand to throw at private education the school and our DC have to rub along as best they can. Even with the bullying and the daily messages from my DD asking to come home, we have no choice. If we moved her, the same issues would be there at any school. The whole wide eyed 'But what can I do, my DC has SEN so I had to send them to private school' is so disingenuous and is sticking right in my craw. You got a choice. Thousands of us don't. You pay for the privilege of that choice.

You should definitely tell more people this, cos it makes me wonder why people are so upset about the existence of private schools since it makes no difference to future outcomes. Let people waste their money if they like on private school, through you other people will learn not to worry about that!

@IhateSPSS and is it going to get better if children with SEND currently in private are now going to move to state because parents can no longer afford fees? The small amount of SEND funding will be spread even more thinly

Labour last time (not fucking it up and letting standards go further down the bog).

Record levels of literacy and numeracy in schools.
Young people achieving some of the best ever results at 14, 16, and 18
Funding for every pupil in England doubled.
Over 36,000 more teachers in England and 274,000 more support staff and teaching assistants.
Free fruit for most four to six-year-olds at school.
Record number of students in higher education.

Oh I still think they benefit people. I was a real swot and had parents who read to me etc. Plus they are largely about who you know aren't they? I just think it's mad people waste so much cash on them.

This could also be the start of VAT being charged on other educational establishments like universities.

You're just embarrassing yourself now Rishi ...

I doubt it-we need graduates to teach our kids and work in our hospitals etc etc-it’s not a luxury and there’s no state alternative.

Meanwhile, on multiple other threads on this subject, posters are complaining about Keir Starmer having attended private school.

He can't win.

Well, he can according to the polls.

Education is not a luxury. Choosing to pay £thousands so your kids can be educated in a private school which is unaffordable and inaccessible to the vast majority of the population is absolutely a luxury.

Private schools are businesses

this proposal has been known about for some time

they have had time to prepare to cut their budgets so less is passed on to parents

Education is a human right, not a means tested benefit. The greed and entitlement of the rich never fails to disgust me.

No thanks. My rented home is band G because it was built after a certain date and is wheelchair accessible. The huge Victorian villas opposite are Band C.

They already pay tax at higher rates.
How about getting some of the layabouts who have never had a job to start contributing instead of sitting on their arses with their hand out?

@crumblingschools the issue being discussed here isn't about the paucity or spread of SEN funding though is it?

OP is putting forward the argument that Labours plans for adding VAT to a business (private schools) is unfair and loosely argued that the influences for her choice was in part bullying and SEN issues. Fine, people with resources can choose to educate their DC via private school, taking their DC out of the cohort who are educated at the cost of the state...but the very act of having choice and privilege means you pay for it. You can't have the resources to fly Emirates business class on a plane, then endlessly complain about paying extra for the privileges, because 'Poor me I had no choice but to fly for business/work I don't see why I need to pay to be comfortable, raise the prices of flying for everyone to make my choice fairer' without looking faintly ridiculous.

Yes I’ll be done. That doesn’t mean that I’ll cease to give a shit about a stupid policy. You don’t see this shit in the rest of the world.

There's brainwashed and then there's denial.

I feel that analogy isn't quite right. A better analogy might be this;

Op has paid for BOTH and Economy and business class ticket (by paying her taxes she is entitled to a state school place) but she's chosen to use only the Business class ticket. However, in addition to the increased cost of business class, the airline owner now wants to charge an additional premium for Business class while keeping the cost of Economy class the same

The 20% proposed would be VAT, not an increase in fees. So the schools wouldn't be getting any more income as it goes direct directly to the government.

Private education is a privilege that some parents choose as they believe it will give their children an advantage. This should have always been taxed. They are definitely not making this choice as some kind of service to reduce the burden on the state.

As past posters have said these schools are businesses and not charities and therefore VAT should be applicable.

State education is free, if the fees are genuinely unaffordable for some, but if you'd rather take state education off less wealthy families than have your precious children in a state school, I have no sympathy.

Private schools are privately owned businesses. They shouldn't have been able to avoid charging VAT in the first place. If anything it should be backdated as well (though obviously they'll never do this).

The govt can spend the collected VAT on anything they want, not just state education, they've chosen to say they will do that.

It's annoying for all us businesses that provide education services but actually have to pay our taxes and don't have all the loopholes and pass GO cards that private schools and universities have. And for that matter, all businesses in general that pay VAT and don't get a free pass.

There has also been a historical loophole where millionaires and billionaires have bought or invested in private schools for their own tax avoidance purposes.

The schools can choose to absorb the VAT into their fees if they wanted to. So take it up with them.

Standards have not declined because of these policies.

They have declined because of decades of under-funding of Education in the 70s and 80s and early 90s by Thatcher and Major.

They have declined because of the state of school buildings- through underfunding and cancellation of Building Schools for the Future by Cameron.

They have declined because of the enforcement by Michael Gove of a ludicrous knowledge heavy, overly academic curriculum in all subjects, for all students, assessed by ridiculously complicated exams which overlay marking schemes based on skills and not the knowledge, whatever the ability and aptitude of the children.

They have declined because of the terrible situation schools find themselves in from an, imposed by this government, complex, unsuitable assessment system for SEN, where schools are forced to meet the needs of SEN children who require very specialist help that no longer exists on the necessary scale because of funding cuts by this government.

They have declined because it suited Tories to force the situation from 2010 onwards as State schools had begun to very successfully raise standards under the last Labour government by diversifying the curriculum to include significant numbers of vocational courses, and to allow children to sit the same GCSE courses that Independent school children sit. This Tory government immediately cut the numbers of vocational courses, changed the content and assessment of them and said the IGCSE courses used by Independent schools would no longer be allowed to count in Government Performance Tables for State schools.

State education in this country has been grossly underfunded for the last 14 years. The destruction of what had been built between 1996-2010 is disgraceful. Most children, as most attend State schools, are being horribly disadvantaged and that should not be allowed. No one should be able to gain advantage in education or healthcare by buying that advantage at the expense of others.