VAT on school fees - High Court Challenge.

[EverythingAllatOnceAllTheTime]

Labour’s plan to impose VAT on private school fees in January faces a High Court legal challenge over claims it breaches human rights law.

Lawyers have written to HM Treasury arguing the policy discriminates against special needs children and has threatened court action if it is not dropped.

Showtime…

Our local prep which is a charity and has approximately 20% of student with additional needs including my own DC has stated that if 4 kids left in each year group the school would collapse. Many children there have siblings in state schools and the families scrimp to put one child with needs through private school. School fees are often family’s largest cost. If someone said in 3 months’ time your largest costs, say mortgage or rent was increasing by 20% could you afford it? It appears those cheering for VAT have no experience of the average independent school giving vital help to struggling families.

@CurlewKate Just wondering if you’d had the chance to check this or you’d like me to tell you?

@EigerTheTiger "
• What proportion of RG university students come from private schools?
• What proportion of A level students go to private schools (given that you need A levels to go to university"

I can answer your first question off the top of my head-about 24%. Oxbridge is higher-around 30something I think.

The second question is more complex- there are quite a lot of private school pupils who move to state 6th forms. I'll have to get back to you on that one!

Do you always expect instant responses? 🤔

Glad you had a chance to look, I have the same data that around 23% of RG students are from private schools. Oxbridge is higher, around 31% I think.

Anyway, the proportion of A level students who are at private schools is 20%.

There really are very very few who move from private to state at A Level, and certainly not enough to change this number when you also look at how many move from state to private.

So it’s not a “tiny minority” of students at private school really is it, in the context of university places. It’s only marginally different to the actual number of students who go to RG universities.

So comparing 7% of primary school kids with 23% of university students is complete horseshit quite frankly. Not saying you’ve done this, just the general narrative and misrepresentation of what isn’t really as big an inequality as people seem to want it to be.

Interested in people’s thoughts?

We should test this theory with the pp who post this and add whatever to what they pay.

Of course there's no point where they couldn't afford it

In other countries, parents receive a REBATE from govt for sending kids privately. Here, they get shut out and most will end up moving permanently overseas where there are opportunities based on actual merit as opposed to politics.

We enjoy a particular kind of politics that will be non beneficial to everyone. A rebate would go down like a lead balloon. People couldn't handle it.

I think in reality private schools do not add that much for top achievers who were going to get A/ A stars anyway so I would expect the top unis to reflect that. DCs will have a nicer time and do more sports/music/drama in a private school and may learn more soft skills etc, but grades are determined more by inherent intelligence, especially at A level. In addition, the state sector has actually become very results focussed in the last 10 years.
Where private school and small classes add the most value is for lower and middle achievers and particularly those with SEN and emotional needs etc. or those who have trauma/been bullied.

I also believe there has actually been a shift in the type of parent who uses private schools these days and it is actually more needs based than it used to be. It is part of the reason I am personally opposed to this policy.

I do understand there are the top elite private schools, all bells and whistles, but the majority of them have substantial funds and do contribute a lot to the state sector already anyway (Eton, Westminster School etc)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Winston,_Baron_Winston

Regarding Lord Winston, I think it is very prejudiced to dismiss what he says just because he went to St Paul’s years and years ago. That pretty much proves the prejudice.

People are not defined by what school they go to. Should we define them completely by their careers as well? By what university they attended? Come on - this British obsession with what school someone went to is nuts.

@EigerTheTiger
"Interested in people’s thoughts?"

You have mine. There are too few privately educated students at Oxford and Cambridge. Outcomes would not differ according to the type of school students attended if their admission had been based on merit. That was the case until 2010 before universities started this horseshit. Then it was possible to say:

"This analysis shows that there is no significant difference between the academic performance of students at Cambridge from different school/college backgrounds. This confirms the findings of the HEFCE (2003) study, which found that, at the highest levels of ability (i.e. among those students achieving grades AAA at A Level), there was no difference in the degree performance of undergraduates from the state and independent sectors." (Geoff Parkes, Academic Performance of Undergraduate Students at Cambridge by School/College Background.)

But the universities year after year chose to make admission easier from state schools. To achieve what? An undergraduate body with poorer outcomes and a greater proportion of high scocioeconomic students than is found in private schools. Furthermore, there are head-cases drawing salaries from these universities who think that 93% of their students should be from state schools.

It would be funny, except it isn't really.

Cambridge have recently dropped their state school admissions targets. Admissions and jobs should be based on merit and results, not which school someone went to.

“Lord Winston (Lab) - View Speech - Hansard - -
My Lords, I work at Imperial College where I am a champion of the outreach group, which has grown considerably over the years. It started 50 years ago; we called it the Pimlico project. That school has benefited massively from the sort of work that we do with it, and across London we have done this continuously since.

The big problem is outside London, where what I am seeing, as the person who represents the college mostly outside London, is truly frightening: the lack of aspiration and ambition, and the number of kids who do not consider that it is worth being at school after the age of 15, let alone 16, or who are not able to do A-levels because there is not enough money to do that. There is a crisis in our schools, and it is a crisis in the state sector. It is not diminishing. I go into schools in the north-east and north-west of England. I spend much time in East Anglia, 10 or 15 miles from Cambridge, one or the great seats of learning, and it is extraordinary how great that deprivation is. I also work in the West Country and more recently in Wales, particularly in the parts that are difficult to reach in the middle of Wales on the coast. It is a five-hour journey for me, meaning I have to stay overnight. I wondered what the hell I was doing there, but when I saw the sort of things that I could stimulate, I was completely converted to realising that we are doing a useful job.

We are not going to do anything to deal with the massive problem that we have in some of our state sector—not all of it, but where it is poor and diminished there is some urgency. As for the idea that somehow levelling down by taking money from the private schools is going to make a difference, it cannot possibly. The sort of money that is involved is trivial compared with what is needed. Unfortunately, my Government, which I absolutely support, have to recognise that we need to think of much more sensitive ways of dealing with what is in fact needed.

What we are doing with the outreach at Imperial is using the private schools. To take one example, Peterborough is a pretty poor area. Lots of state schools there are not doing very well. We focused on Oundle, which is in the centre up there. Oundle has been amazing. I have visited Oundle maybe seven times in the last 10 years, maybe more. Other members of the college have gone there too. They have connected with the state sector and made a huge difference to the state schools in that collaboration. Those sorts of collaborations are what we should have done in the health service under Tony Blair’s Government, bringing the private sector into the health service, but he felt that the party would never stand for it. We now have another opportunity with education; we have to consider how we can manage that. The attitude of damning the private sector, with all the objections that we have heard—and I agree with them completely; they are really serious—needs to change.

It is all very well to talk about a manifesto commitment. Everybody can believe in their party, but nobody on either side of this Chamber can believe in everything that the party believes; that is madness. Here, we have to think again and recognise that we have to do something about it.”

Lord Winston is a polymath, a modern Da Vinci type. For doubters, go look up what he had to say on gender reassignment surgery etc. He is well worth listening to for all of you with your own personal traumas, in particular.

Oh the perfect world where we didn’t have to stretch ourselves and go without to give our DD a private education, because the local schools in our area (Northwest), couldn’t support her needs.

It certainly wasn’t comfortable, at times it was bloody scary, we couldn’t ’comfortably afford it’

The alternatives? I guess we’ll never know will we? She herself says she dreads to think what road she would have taken in the state system - she attended the local state for her last GCSE year after Covid - interestingly, she was placed in the higher sets than many of her peers she left behind in Year 2, when she couldn’t read and struggled with the noise/disruption in her state primary - would that have been the case if she had stayed? Who knows?

What I do know, is has done well to go to her first choice Uni. It may not be a high academic course, but she’s been supported and worked hard.

it’s also given her an extremely strong work ethic, she went away to work all summer and saved a couple of thousand pounds towards her living costs, her school gave her the confidence to do that, not one of her state school peers did anything like that, most didn’t work.

I’d say it was worth it, but the extra VAT if it had come into play, may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

im taking it you’ve never pushed it a little by way of affording something? Lucky you.

@Another76543

Their 2020-21 to 2024-25 "Access and Participation Plan" includes "Ambitious and challenging targets on admissions which will further diversify the University’s intake by school type."

Do you have something that indicates otherwise?

@Paddlinglikehell
I wanted to respond to the post you quoted but then decided it's so stupid there's no chance pp can understand.
Inflation at the peak of COL was mere 11%, not 20% - why all this fuss? Child benefit is only £26 per week - if people can't afford kids without it they couldn't afford them in first place? the same logic, right?

This entire debate it pointless - anti PS brigade will continue no matter what facts say. The outcomes will become clear in a few years time when it's going to be too late for our kids.

Post by @EigerTheTiger is spot on, but these facts contradict party line, so let's pretend all these 80% of state A-level kids who get 80% of RG places just switched from PS after Y11, it's more convenient this way.

Meanwhile Oxbridge is losing it's appeal and many super clever kids are choosing US or EU instead, they are too bright to flog dead horse.

Interestingly (and I think some posters mentioned this on MN), some top businesses, at least in London, decided to go for blind graduate recruitment and removed Unis/schools from application forms. They were shocked to see that PS kids got majority of places no matter which Unis they went too.

Cambridge University to scrap state school targets https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-68545303

“The university said it was working on a new access plan that would take a wider range of factors into account.”

They already are - and if you are who I think you are, that's down to you, who first told me they existed. <3

It's often easier to get good results at good schools though.

Yes, but there are some good state schools. A lot of state grammars get much better results than some private schools. Looking at school type alone is too narrow.

Brilliant Parents in Need is a fantastic charity.

I think I am the person you think I am . I have a DS1 with EOTAS slightly younger than your DS. Since last ‘speaking’ to you, I now have DS3 with EOTIS (yes, I had one of those judges) following a successful appeal earlier in the year.

I have literally read 5 judgements now where they get picky over EOTAS/EOTIS - I think it's turned into a pet peeve!

So glad to hear that. Lots changed here as well - will PM you!

PIN are funding the EP (amazing Dr JL agreed to do it for their rates, because she is an angel) and the OT and SLT agreed for the same rates, so this child should get what she needs. Bloody well will if I have anything to do with it. And that EP is down to you, because you told me they existed.

Anyone else reading about this, who cares about SEN kids whose parents can't pay school fees, and can't afford reports for Tribunal either: please, please, please bung a little at this truly incredible charity? It's one of the most valuable things you can do for an SEN child. In a painfully broken system, good evidence is essential... and expensive. A little girl in Kent has better life chances because of them, and she is one of a large number. They help families who don't have the money to force better support.

I didn't say we should only look at school types.

Jealousy is not a good look.

@KittyBeebee "Jealousy is not a good look"

Please can we have some sort of moratorium on the jealousy thing. It's REALLY not a good look and suggests that you don't have anything thoughtful to say about the subject.