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…

Surely you're not that naive?

May be a bit of honest politics, would help but I'm not sure if the electorate has the maturity and attention span to endure it.

Labelling folk as 'apologists' just because you happen not to agree with them isn't constructive. Neither is insulting anyone who doesn't agree.

It surely follows that anyone in favour of this policy must be pro brexit (otherwise it wouldn't have been possible) - and I think we already know enough about the maturity of that electorate.

Anti brexit, pro this VAT policy.

HTH.

Well you must be pretty relieved, in hindsight, that we got brexit then.

Sorry, couldn’t resist it.

I would far rather reverse Brexit than stick with this policy, but that didn't appear to be an option that any of the major parties were offering at the last election.

So given that we seem to be stuck with the shitshow that is Brexit, we may as well try to find some positives in it.

Read the full thread for context.

@SheilaFentiman

"You would probably get on better with your argument if you didn’t condescend to those on the opposite side.

And I am a Labour voting private school parent, FWIW."

It's really hard not to condescend when you can't distinguish between fiscal policies (which absolutely should based on whether they raise money or not) and social policies (which don't need to be based on cost benefit)

Now whilst VAT on school fees is most definitely a fiscal policy, as far as I am aware neither the ban on fox hunting or the death penalty would be considered a fiscal policy?

“I would far rather reverse Brexit than stick with this policy, but that didn't appear to be an option that any of the major parties were offering at the last election.

So given that we seem to be stuck with the shitshow that is Brexit, we may as well try to find some positives in it.”

@MrsBennetsPoorNerves - in your attempt to “punish” Boris Johnson and his ilk of Etonians, you are throwing 90% of small PS schools and DCs with SEN and struggling families under the bus.

Two wrongs do not make a right. This policy is unconscionable. There is zero moral superiority in it.

I have.

@SheilaFentiman

"Anti brexit, pro this VAT policy."

Actually I see a lot of similarities between supporters of Brexit and supporters of PS VAT.

The Brexit supporters were and still are happy to support Brexit even though it has made the country economically worse off and made travelling more inconvenient. For example the Brexit voting ex pats in Spain complaining about residency restrictions.
The reaction by many Brexit supporters is that rather than admit to the mistake they see the problem in that "we did go hard enough on Brexit "

Similarly imo the VAT policy on PS will either be net zero or net slightly negative in tax revenue and that state schools will not see any benefit in standards or additional teachers.

The reaction by the left wing supporters will be that rather than admit to the mistake that the VAT policy was flawed they will instead see the problem as not being left wing enough and that the "wealthy " should be bashed harder.

It amuses me that those who are anti Brexit but pro PS VAT , criticise the former for cutting off their nose to spite their face but are equally guilty of the same thing over PS VAT.

Whether it be populism from the right or populism from the left both Brexit and PS VAT supporters are acting misplaced ideological zeal.

*@SheilaFentiman "And I am a Labour voting private school parent, FWIW."

In that case, do not drag the general public into your inner conflict of private vs state schools. Go donate to a charity to level up education, if sending your DC to PS makes you feel “guilty” in some way. Or just send them to state schools like the rest of us. There really are some truly excellent ones.

Back to the Quinn test legal case- I might be skim reading too quickly but some PPs seem to be saying that the DD in question is at a specialist SEN private school or that the exemption to VAT sought is only for private SEN schools.? That is, not sought for typical mainstream private schools where parents might send their Sen kids for smaller class sizes (as we had to do)?

I didn’t get that from the Quinn legal challenge description at all .it sounded like Quinn’s DD is at a mainstream private school to me. If this is the extent of the campaign, I would be worried it is too niche to succeed.
Getting a placement privately at a specialist Sen private school is very rare. They are around our way, anyway, completely full. They also don’t take the full range of SEN kids- many schools for autistic kids refuse to take kids with a PDA autism diagnosis for example. Can anyone closer to the campaign comment?

it seems unlikely to me that the Quinn family could afford on combined mother and grandparents incomes to send the DD to a specialist SEN school. i i can’t imagine even the most self sacrificing of grandparents living on public sector pensions could pay fees at the specialist SEN private schools. These schools can cost about 80K a year, that’s what I heard word of mouth, they don’t advertise their fees on their websites. This is fair to reflect the high staff to child ratio costs.But that’s why I couldn’t investigate them for my DD. The exorbitant fees. They are also so oversubscribed I was told by my childs school and alternative providers that all local places are filled and the waiting list via funded EHCP place would be 1-2 years.

Those schools almost always aren’t paid for by parents directly because of the huge cost so councils fund them, only for the very very highest needs (tho cherrypicked) kids. So it’s not a child’s needs based private market, like anything provided privately. It’s a meeting of need only at the remit that is set by the private provider. It’s only existing as a market because the state doesn’t offer any services to plug the gaps, parents have to look to private providers. And so the state is funding a profit making private system, due to lack of state provision.

Those parents who can’t find a suitable affordable private specialist school or for whom all schools are inherently unsuitable due to DC’s innate needs or previous traumatic school experiences, have to fight their local authority with their kids out of school for up to a few years to fund tutors to come to the home- EOTAS. Very expensive solution also, and for some of those kids this could have been avoided if they could have experienced a funded SEND system that worked in accordance with existing law in the UK.

Meanwhile the parents can’t work to look after their kids at home all day and have a child out of education while they wait for council provision. And so what are the economics of that? Meaning another family has to avoidably live on benefits.

So back to the around 80K yearly specialist schools. For context Eton costs 63K. The highest single outlay I have to pay st the moment is the 20K private school fees each year plus lunches transport and incidentals. (DC is obviously not going on the fucking ski trip!.we participate in private school at the absolute cheapest minimum level we can)
We are already interest only on the mortgage. We moved house to find an ‘affordable’ private school. I literally don’t know what else I can do.

in the meantime there are literal lies in this government document: https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2024/09/06/vat-private-schools-everything-you-need-to-know/

They’re ending a ‘tax break’…

I'm not sure reading these threads. There are Labour supporters who will back the policy even if it fails to do what it is meant to - raise funds for extra teachers and other

Even if it costs the taxpayers more

Then again mn is particularly pro Labour, outside this site likely more criticism.

In fact you can see it with polls and comment outside pro Labour threads how Starmer and co are doing

This, exactly.

I’m curious to know what state school parents think about Labour’s (apparent) lack of plans to raise the full sum needed to improve state schools. There doesn’t seem to be any plan at all other than to raise a maximum of £1.6bn by taxing parents who don’t use state schools. By Labour’s own admission, this is a tiny portion of the overall sum required. It would fund half a teacher per school - if they can even find another 6,500 people willing to train as teachers. Where are the other plans?

It baffles me you are baffled. In the context of the whole world - you are in the minority as most countries, including the whole of Europe, do not charge vat on private school fees. In fact many 1st world countries go the other way and actually give private school parents a tax rebate for not accessing the government school system.

I am both a state school and a private school parent (for sen needs). What I want to know is when I pulled my daughter out of a government school and this meant the government no longer needed to spend £7/8k a year on her education - why did the government not keep this £7/8k a year in the government school system.
Some countries give private school parents tax rebates for not accessing the government school system - I am not asking for that - but as a tax payer I think the least the government could do is put the money they are saving from private school parents not accessing the free education system back into the government school system. Makes sense to me because they would have had to allocate the money there anyway if we had all kept our kids in government school.

I completely agree. We are only in the private school system due to DS1’s SEN, so are probably there for a similar reason to you.

@CatkinToadflax

You see it doesn't actually matter that the figures don't add up because just like Brexit it doesn't matter if the policy works or not.

It's all about ideological zeal and whether left or right when your policies don't work out then the supporters rather than admit the policies were wrong they double down and instead argue that the policies failed because they weren't left wing or right wing enough.

Just look at the Conservative new party leader election and how the candidates are saying that the Conservatives lost the election because they weren't right wing enough.

Tbf Reform split that vote. However getting both sets of voters to agree may be hard

In terms of where parties go Germany is a good example of how a particular party winning regional elections can shift all parties on policy that may appear right

I agree on doubling down though. If this really does fail to bring in anything, or actually costs then I doubt the same pp will admit it was a failure for children's education. But it will be the case

I don't believe I'm throwing anyone under the bus. I just don't think it's a tragedy if people have to go to state schools. Most children - including most children with SEN - do go to state schools.

The majority of children at private schools don't have SEN in any case, so let's not make it all about that. And if a child has specific needs that can only be met through a private school, then it should be possible to get an EHCP that states this. And yes, I know that takes time, but parents with genuine concerns will have seen this coming and will have planned accordingly.

So while I absolutely agree that two wrongs don't make a right, I just don't see it as wrong to ask privileged families to pay tax on their luxury purchases.

It really isn't about punishing Boris and his cronies. It is about creating a fairer society. The children with wealthy and supportive parents are not the ones that I'm worried about.

https://www.ascl.org.uk/ASCL/media/ASCL/News/Press%20releases/The-COVID-19-pandemic-may-be-a-thing-of-the-past.pdf

State schools urgently need more funding! This generation of DCs deserve it, across the board.

There are massive issues due to the pandemic. The state is failing this generation.