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?

I believe that in the long term private education will become inaccessible for all but the very rich. This is just the first step.

I also believe that if all but the very rich had a reason to engage with and agitate for change and improvement of state education then this improvement would come. In the long term.

This policy isn't really about VAT it's an ideological flag in the sand. Access to great education is a fundamental human right and if you want to buy privilege then it should be paid for.

@5128gap but it’s the only Labour policy people are posting about

You already have 295 responses so apologies if this has already been said but we're already signed up to variously UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights and the first protocol of the ECHR which all require that no one in the UK is denied access to an education.

Free state education for all isn't a nice to have in a developed economy, it's an essential under a whole load of international legal agreements we signed up to under Tory governments. As a result it cannot be means-tested but must always be free at the point of access to all children.

Unless you are proposing all rate payers, i.e. all home owners, most of whom don't have children, pay your education surcharge. Which would be deranged as the people who suck it up most will be the oldest owner occupiers in top band rated properties who may have v low incomes whilst being asset rich and also not having children in education and never having had children in education. You're suggesting the 1million households in Band G and H rated households should all pay approx £1.5k extra CT pa to raise extra money for schools even though most of the households won't have children and many won't even be in the catchment area for private schools (there are literally no indy schools in the part of the country I live in, although obviously all LAs have Band A-H properties).

There may be other good reasons for raising taxes for Band G and H properties, and indeed for re-calculating CT bands generally but this is not one of them.

This may be the single stupidest thing I have read on MN.

@IFollowRivers but people will just pay for tutors or live in areas where schools are good Inequality will carry on.

Which he didn't anyway, not really. His school became private whilst he was there and he stayed (no cost). His parents certainly didn't chose to send him to private school.

Only on MN amongst a vocal few who have skin in the game. Out in the real world we're much more interested in additional NHS capacity and reduced utility bills, and for the first time in a long time feeling a cautious optimism that the most disadvantaged may become a little less so.

I feel sorry for all of the children who are in receipt of free or discounted places at such schools, whose parents will need to spend their summer holiday trying to find alternative fee free schools that have a space for their child/children. Or trying to move house to get into a better catchment area.

You honestly could not make up this s&1£ show, which has already started before the bunch of race to the bottom raging socialists have even gotten into power.

The current useless government is to blame for putting the country in this ridiculous position.

@5128gap interesting that they are going to make use of the private sector to achieve their targets. Also who is going to do all the extra work at weekends etc?

The US actually has school tax on properties that’s a line in your property tax statement, but it’s applied to the everyone regardless if they have school age DCs or not, it does rankle that my retiree in laws may have to leave the house they built and lived in for 40+ years may have to leave as it’s tripled in the last 5 years!

Careful what you wish for

This thread is hilarious.

Those with enough privilege to send their children to private school, don't want to pay 20% VAT, but want those on 20 grand a year to pay 30% tax!?

Who says that, sorry I can’t see it up the whole post?

Private schools are businesses and need to pay VAT.

They aren't and have never been charities.
They are awful! They exploit parents and children by selling some BS people fall for.

This has been coming for years. They have known the charitable status would have to go because they are businesses.
My lovely neighbour was asked to remove her son from one of these schools because his dyslexia meant he wasn't getting the grades they required! Because its more of a business than a school!!
They take in bright kids, factory farm them then chuck them out if they're not getting the grades they require to keep perpetrating this illusion of success.

All this BS about Starmer and his house and catchment is utter rubbish.

@Hiker50 sorry to disappoint you they are not losing their charitable status

Can you not move?

Dc with SEN is at an outstanding state school with small class sizes. It has better results than the closest private. It can be done.

i live near very sick elderly parents, so no I wouldn’t move. And I’m basically through, with only my youngest goign to get hit with a year of VAT in sixth form. So the impact on me will be very temporary and much smaller than people who have many years to go with more than one child.

Are people not already paying more in stamp duty to move to these better catchment areas?

Riiiiighhht…

so, instead of removing the fake ‘charity’ status from private schools we ask those who can’t afford private to pay for state schooling!

Is that you, Rishi?

They paid stamp duty once. But get years and years of service from the lovely state school.

The charity status isn’t fake if they satisfy the criteria.

The entire world literally does not levy tax on education. The EU even makes it illegal to do so.

The notion that it is an obvious step to add VAT to fees is massively disingenuous. We will become a global outlier and not in a good way.

I don’t see how this is workable? There is a large % of parents who have limited interest in investing in their child’s education. Our DC went to a state primary in an affluent area. It was VA and they were up front from the outset that there was an expectation that each family contributed £10 per month per child to fulfil the VA requirements. The equivalent of a coffee per week. We contributed significantly more because we could and it felt like the right thing to do. When the end of year accounts were published it became apparent that we were contributing more than 25% of the donations and most families weren’t contributing at all. Most people expect education, like the nhs to be free and really resent any suggestion that they should contribute financially, irrespective of how their financial input could improve outcomes.

So you wouldn't have still sent 2 dc to private school if VAT had been included at the outset?

@wlakaaf "The charity status isn’t fake if they satisfy the criteria."

The problem with that is that there are no criteria to assess a private school's charitable contribution. There are some that do make abmirable contributions. Most, however, make a token gesture, if any. Incidentally, for posters who are not aware, when the subject of bursaries comes up, most are a) minimal and b) go to people who can nearly but not quite meet the fees, not to genuinely disadvantaged families.

It’s free, because he chose that route. Those that take the private route make a different choice, that costs more. Or maybe costs less if you buy an house in an a cheaper area.

And let’s face it, not all private schools are equal in either cost or outcome. There are plenty of second or third rate provincial private schools with fees that cater for a wide range of incomes! If people can’t afford the fees when VAT is added they can either trade down or move out of the system. No one is forcing them to pay the fees, so adding a compulsory ‘levy” to those in big houses who have children at state school is nonsensical.

Though, as someone with no children in a higher council tax band property, if get a rebate of the education amount for service is not used then that’d be great. Except I don’t expect that, because that’s not how our society works.

Well the capacity to act immediately has to come from somewhere doesn't it? They have clearly decided that the priority is to save people's lives and get them out of pain, which can't wait the decades required to undo the damage in the NHS. As for the weekend work, personally I've no idea what the appetite for that is amongst staff and what the potential is to backfill roles, or how existing capacity could be reprioritised to implement the policy, as i have no specialist knowledge of the NHS. Do you?