VAT on school fees (you have to read this!)

[EverythingAllatOnceAllTheTime]

Government’s private schools VAT raid ‘could cost taxpayer £1.8bn’

Parents who are forced out of sector are likely to work less or even quit jobs, according to think tank research.

Adam Smith Institute.

@Ubertomusic
100% this

Interestingly, Labour party had significant relationship with communist USSR decades ago but still
1946-08-07-Stalin-Labour-meeting-record.docx (live.com)

And if you dig deeper a number of major donors of Labour campaign have strong relationship with Putin's Russia now.
Sorry, complete derail

I mean it took Liz Truss a couple of days to screw everyone's mortgages and nearly bankrupt everyone's pensions so you're probably right.

Are you aware of the school system in the USA and their separation of church and state? Secular schools are really not just a communist idea.

You quoted my post that wasn't just about the school system.

Hubris much?

@Ubertomusic were you aware of the horrors that attended the rollout of UC?

Or does the phrase "disrupted many lives" only matter when the relatively better off face a problem for which there appear to be a great many workarounds (because the Reds haven't sent the legions of tutors and fencing coaches and French horn teachers to the Gulag yet)?

How could I have forgotten those heady days?

When it comes to revolution, nobody does it like the wild-eyed Right.

As usual there appears to be some confusion over the meaning of the words"secular" and "atheist".

Then you wont have forgottten that Truss and her policies were replaced pretty quickly.

Meanwhile, we have four plus years of this shit.

Try doing the ‘math’.

Her policies continue to bite everyone in the arse, and will for the foreseeable.

She's still doing her best to stay relevant and shes not fussy about people she associates with to this end.

Sadly, she represents a deep seam in what passes for philosophy in the current iteration of the Tory party, which has demonstrated a consistently revolutionary attitude over the last ten years.

She's been doing the rounds of all the conservative hothead conferences in the US, bending the ears of anyone easily impressed by an English accent and a habit of disregarding reality - CPAC and the Green Dragon Coalition earlier this year. The Heritage Foundation (which sponsored Project 2025) thinks the sun shines forth from her rear end.

eaworldview.com/2024/02/liz-truss-us-far-right-uk-politics/

People who can manage on one income will be perfectly fine for the next four years. I assume since you blithely dismissed Liz Truss and her scuppering of the UK economy, your financial position is a great deal more secure than that of the vast majority of Britons.

Your mockery of American terms sits uneasily with your eagerness to lap up the right wing American dreck you're being fed.

You live in a country where a good many politicians of one particular political party fancy themselves as members of a revolutionary vanguard who will "save the west". They are close associates of similarly minded zealots (some of whom are also felons) in the US who are currently trying to get their preferred candidate elected president for the second time.

You're closer to being Puerto Rico in all but name than you believe. Also, the NHS will not exist in ten years. If it does, it won't be operating on the same basis as it is now. There will be no more "free to all at point of service" for starters.

The US does have its good points though - separation of church and state has been very good for churches.

Er.....

1. Schools open and close all the time, and private schools have had a tough time the last couple of years anyway. The fact that the school is choosing to blame only VAT does not necessarily mean that this is a truthful examination of the many reasons why a private school in a poor area may not be very sustainable.
2. If you were to post on here saying "I've found a lovely little indie with 80 pupils that I'm thinking of sending my DD to, what do you all think?" you'd get about 2,500 posts saying "Don't do it. A school that small is not financially sustainable and may close suddenly." And that has been the generally received (and largely correct) wisdom for 20 years on Mumsnet - it's not a new thing. Eighty kids is just not enough to create a long-term financial basis for running a school - it only takes a few withdrawals for the whole thing to start spiralling.

Stop worrying about the Tories - they are not the ones in power.

Take ownership and focus on the current government - which comes with privilege, responsibility and the necessary scrutiny.

Bad policy should not be heaped upon bad policy.

There will come a point - probably on 30th October, when you will probably fall silent.

Tell the 80 children and their families.

And that’s the point isn’t it? From all these posts, there is a human cost to fiscal policy. Labour seems to have forgotten that and will inherit the ‘nasty party’ label.

The point of my post was not “It’s only 80, who cares about them,” it was “A school of 80 children is likely to fold at some point anyway, regardless of VAT or not.” I am familiar with Stoke on Trent as some relative live there, and the population size able and willing to pay for private schooling is always going to be very small.

200 is generally accepted as the minimum financially sustainable size for a private school.

And I say again!

Pay the increased fee, be thankful you haven't had to pay it before or move to state school. It's really really simple

Ok, so you are negating the reason provided by the Headmaster of the school. Clear.

This is the ninth independent school to close to date.

I would be keen to hear your rationale for those schools as well as the future closures.

The statement from St Joseph’s indicates it had been in financial difficulties for some time.

In making their decision the Trustees have focused on the varied financial challenges, which the school community has faced in recent years, and the changes coming regarding independent school funding. This has been an incredibly difficult decision and one not taken lightly.

It also appears to be operating at well below capacity, which is always going to be a huge financial challenge.

Meanwhile, this week Starmer and Reeves have visited Perry Hall primary school in Orpington. You know the type of Outstanding primary state that most parents would be happy for their DC to attend. High KS2 SATS (relative to area and nationally, go look at greater depth - that is the middle class parents tutoring for nearby grammars), oversubscribed, low FSM to overall area, Outstanding Ofsted in 2023. The kind my DC also go to.

Why are they not visiting the deprived schools? One type of middle class now accepted not the other?

Hardly news that a small private school which struggles to fill its spaces has closed... it's been happening for years. And of course lettuce Liz Truss's legacy, having screwed over millions of people financially won't have helped.

The imposions VAT was clearly an element.

No it really isn’t that simple. Many local
authorities warn against children being transferred to other schools. Why do they do that if it’s so simple?

And there are not spare state school places throughout the country. In my area there are no spare places in any primary in year 5 and only one primary has space in year 6. And that’s out of 30 primary schools. I don’t know about other years as the application was only for 5 and 6.

And then there’s the children who were moved to private from state because their previous state school failed them. Do you really think it’s simple for them to return to the state sector?

And yet not the only one, as made clear by the Trustees’ statement.

“And what of the schools themselves? State schools in Surrey received almost 600 queries in the two weeks following the election; minutes from council meetings in Worcestershire, Hertfordshire and Coventry all show concern about the increased number of requests for school places and the potential need to deploy temporary bulge classes housed in Portakabins. Leicester Council closed phone lines on Tuesdays and Thursdays to work on the surge of state school applications it has received since the election.

One mother trying to get a Year 8 place for her daughter in Buckinghamshire to start this September told me there were only three places available in the entire county, all well over an hour away by public transport and one was a Sikh faith school.
Another reported that their nearest (oversubscribed) state sixth form offered places first to applicants from state schools within the city, then from certain parts of the county, so even applying in the right time frame and living a five-minute walk away wouldn’t help him. “I’ve got four times as many applications for year 7 than I’ve got space for; I just cannot take any more,” one secondary school head in the northwest told me days before the election. “

Quoting Lucy Denyer, The Independent yesterday.

Where is the funding Rachel?! We have until October for the school census - get your act in gear.

Quite so.

Lets not forget the 6,500 new teachers Labour have promised too.