Thread 2: VAT on school Fees- High court challenge

[EHCPerhaps]

Following on from thread 1
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5160565-vat-on-school-fees-high-court-challenge

Background to legal challenge (not yet a case):
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13824931/amp/Single-mother-autistic-child-launches-High-Court-challenge-Labours-private-schools-VAT-raid-claiming-violates-daughters-right-education.html

Sorry to begin a new thread, OP, but your thread filled up very quickly!

I think the researcher at the IFS should have included a footnote in the report to clarify that Nuffield Foundation is entirely separate from Nuffield Health because it just is so easy to confuse the two, given the incredibly similar name.

Yes I mentioned another ECHR signatory. Can I ask exactly what your point is in this conversation? You’ve jumped from the ECHR wouldn’t rule against the policy and when I explained article 2 of protocol 1 to you, we’re now discussing telegraph readers wanting Europe to save them.

Am I allowed more than one point?

Neither of us can say what the ECHR will rule, unless you are secretly a high court judge.

Maybe they will, but it's not cut and dried at all.

But I do find it odd that the right wing press are now falling over themselves to defend these institutions when they've done nothing but try to set them alight for for the past 10 years.

That may not have any relevance to the merits of the VAT policy but it's embarrassing to watch.

EndlessLight I appreciate your technical knowledge of the very complex SEN law system, but what’s happening on the ground in terms of support to back up SEN parents from national charities, isn’t as available as you suggest.

Parents In Need have been on OOO over the summer, with an auto-reply when you request a form to apply for support.

‘Thank you for contacting Parents In Need.
Parents In Need is going on a summer break. You can request a form but it won’t be processed until September when our volunteers will resume with the work we do to support families in need of support.
Many thanks, The Parents in Need Team’

IPSEA SEND law advice line booking page has never shown me any other message than this one attached. (I am not at tribunal stage so I don’t know about that)

It’s not these organisations’ fault if they are overwhelmed or understaffed, but the outcome for parents is still that their SEN children’s needs for an education (as is legally due to them), can go unmet by the local authority with impunity. Or, the unmet needs can only remedied after months or years of expensive legal fighting. Including where parents have gathered the knowledge to represent themselves. Many parents don’t have the resources for doing that.

It’s a bleak picture for thousands of families whose kids have ongoing unmet needs. Private school is obviously just a sticking plaster patch on that problem, for a tiny, lucky, fraction of those kids. But extra taxation of their parents who are for now, only just able to afford to pay for a school place for them, feels like placing the financial burden in the wrong places.

I know exactly what is happening on the ground. I do this day in, day out. It is available. As I said, perseverance is required. Lots of charities shut down or slow down over the summer. PIN aren’t the only ones. Thankfully, it isn’t essential to get support such as funding for assessments during that specific time frame or even right now.

You were talking about assessments, representation and advice in order to appeal. Hence me mentioning IPSEA’s Tribunal helpline. You wouldn’t need funding for independent assessments if you aren’t even at the appeal stage and no-one needs representation for an appeal. IPSEA’s bookable helpline slots aren’t the only form of support IPSEA offer. For example, they also offer call in sessions 3 days a week and their courses are reasonably priced and they often have funding for those who can’t afford to pay.

Just to show there were appointments on the Tribunal helpline when I posted I have attached a screenshot.

No I’m not a secret high court judge, but I can read and I’m absolutely certain that Labour would never in a million years let this get as far as the ECHR.

Ok so you are making a point about right wing press on an unrelated thread, I’m not interested in engaging on that topic.

I wasn't asking you to engage, merely making an observation

Ok, thanks.

But in the interests of staying on the permitted course, this is an interesting thread countering Lord Pannick'a opinion

x.com/DanNeidle/status/1806732361838592115

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0kjj40zrexo

A lot of these children could be helped through bursaries.

But on another thread on here many private school parents are calling for the removal of bursaries as they don't see why their fees should fund those less able to pay.

If part of the fee is used to pay for bursaries why on earth would that part attract vat if it's effectively a donation? At that point there must be more tax efficient ways of making charitable donations.

In fact I am pretty sure that at many schools bursaries are already in a separate pot to which voluntary contributions can be made to allow gift aid to be reclaimed. I think people often gift money to schools in their will for that reason.

I know a lot of people say independent schools shouldn't be charities. But actually it does make a big difference if they are as the money all goes back into the school, to bursaries or community projects. The for profit schools just don't have the same ethos.

It’s a bleak picture for thousands of families whose kids have ongoing unmet needs. Private school is obviously just a sticking plaster patch on that problem, for a tiny, lucky, fraction of those kids. But extra taxation of their parents who are for now, only just able to afford to pay for a school place for them, feels like placing the financial burden in the wrong places.

@EHCPerhaps exactly this. There’s also - as you will know only too well but many other posters won’t - the often debilitating added strain of caring for a disabled child, and the juggling all of their appointments and everything else that goes with their disability, whilst trying to find a school that can actually meet their needs. We didn’t want anything fancy for our son. We just wanted a basic education. And the state schools available to us couldn’t provide that.

'Seriously... If there was no provision within the state school system perhaps it would fly, but there is, even if it's inadequate. Private education is a luxury, if you can't afford it with VAT then you can't afford it. Cut your cloth to suit. They're is very little sympathy for this issue outwith the 7% or 8% of the population it affects.'

This. In our city several of the comps have excellent SEN provision. Others are good, it's not as if there's no support for SEN, there very much is. Along with very good pastoral care.
I'm not sure why private parents seem to think that state schools are devoid of things like SEN, music programmes, sports etc. It's pure snobbery.

Dfriend just pulled her child from a private school ( on paper amazing) where the child was relentlessly bullied and ostracised because she joined in Year 7 and didn't go to the Prep school before, and had a different accent. Child now happily in year 8 in a large comp where she's thriving and her SEN needs are being met.

Go private, just pay the tax. Or joing the 90%+ of the population sending their children to state schools - astonishing some of us state kids even managed to get degrees and have successful careers...

Bursaries aren’t the way out of this. They’re not uniformly available and not long term or reliable enough to give children stability.

They don't tend to even give as much as half off the fees- and availability of bursaries varies from year to year depending on the size of that school’s pot/financial performance. So unless you’re talking about a very old and wealthy school, they tend to have a movable bar on how low the family income needs to be.

Bursaries are also based on income not expenditure of the family (so not easy if say you earn just over 50K as a household, but you have expenses to do with SEND) It is also risky to enrol at a private school reliant on a bursary knowing that every year your bursary is reviewed, so even in exam years another lower income family could apply and get ‘your’ child’s bursary and then your child would have to leave.

A 5% or 10% rebate on fees through scholarships is in theory available at some schools but is a reward for excellence to keep high performers at that school, with nothing to do with income. So if your child is not performing top of the year academically or they can’t get through an interview panel then that’s not an option.

Many schools are now saying they'll cut bursaries, but as much of the 'financial assistance' given to parents isn't means tested and represents maybe 5% of fees, I doubt that'll make much difference.
Several friends are in schools where their children got a 'scholarship' or 'bursary' for sport or academic ability or music etc but the reality is that got them a £1500 a year off fees of £19/20k.
That kind of 'assistance' really is more of a marketing ploy for the MC parents AND an attempt at proving the frankly laughable ' charity' status many schools have than any real attempt to help children from lower socio-economic status get a private education.

These schools are businesses, they can do what they want. Just no more tax breaks please.

Sad-face Rebecca in this article is already forking out £60k in fees! THAT's why most ordinary people don't have much sympathy for the 'plight' of families like hers. Having a spare £60k to pay for something you can have for free ( or if you prefer, have already paid for in income tax) immediately puts you in the privileged and extremely well off camp.

It’s nothing to do with snobbery. Like many private school parents I went to state school myself and I also have one DC in state and one in private. I have nothing against state schools but SEN provision is dismal in many of them.

My goddaughter’s dyslexia wasn’t even diagnosed until secondary school and she got little support even once it was diagnosed so, consequently, she didn’t pass any GCSE’s. That’s an “outstanding” state comp by the way. Whereas pupils with dyslexia as my DC’s private school are some of the highest performers at GCSE and A Levels.

Then there’s the issue of available spaces. In some parts of the country, there aren’t spaces available.

It’s easy for you to say, just pay it. Some people are already struggling to make the payments, particularly those who took their DC out of state school in desperation. I am all for extra funding in state school but it needs to come from general taxation. A penny in income tax should do it and that way everyone pays, particulary those rich parents who are using state schools.

Bursaries and scholarships are two different things. Scholarships are small token amounts whereas bursaries are means tested and can be up to the full amount of the fees. We have a number of 100% bursary pupils at my DC’s school, all of which are paid out of the fee income paid by other parents as the school as it doesn’t have any endowments.

The VAT exemption is not a tax break. Do you consider yourself having a tax break when you eat a slice of bread?! No, of course you don’t. There are many things that are VAT exempt for good reason. Education is one of them. No other European country charges VAT on education which is why complaints are now coming in from other Governments who are realising that they will have to pay VAT for the DC of embassy staff who go to the French, German, Spanish schools etc in London.

It is not “morally superior” to be pro VAT on private school fees if you actually understand how the private school sector works. Far from it.

A lot of small schools will go bust. In addition to that, they are likely to be bought by overseas private equity companies initially for their real estate value. The vultures are literally hovering and the Labour Party is entirely incompetent in understanding the consequences of this proposal.

All so they get one whine out of Jacob Rees-Moog, who is worth almost 100 million and is whingeing/trolling the Labour Party. He is probably secretly happy if he has younger sons to have less competition to get into Eton!

This policy is entirely misguided.
There is no incentive for private schools to keep charitable status if their parents have to pay VAT on school fees and they have to pay business rates. So if you want a competitive proper business run private sector, this is most definitely the way to go. But forget bursaries, sharing of facilities etc in the future. Only the biggest schools with big endowments will stay charitable because in their case it make still make sense to.

Meanwhile. Jendrick is going on about repealing the HR Act yet Reform will promise to scrap the VAT on private school fees. All parties are in a complete mess over this. Only the Lib Dem’s have a reasonable stance.

EndlessLight once again, respectfully, you can’t know the local situation for parents needing SEND support in every part of the country. The examples you’re giving are not relevant to my situation as far as I know, I don’t know what the legal tribunal that you are describing would relate to.

I wasn’t given any offer of a suitable place from my borough that I could then appeal. That’s my whole point. It would have taken me years of waiting to get that offer. My child also doesn’t have an EHCP despite my child’s state school saying it couldn’t meet my child’s needs. Our LA are telling parents that there is a shortage of educational psychologists so they can’t even stick to the legal time frames for an EHC needs assessment in our whole borough. So illegally kids are waiting months just for the first assessment. I’m not even on the lowest foothills of getting into making legal challenges.

I disagree with you that assessment reports would not be needed by parents over the summer period. Or that they are not needed quickly by parents. Whatever gives you that idea? Without professional assessments, how can parents know what kind of school their child does actually need and try to find it, or how would they know what alternative strategies might work when a school is failing to support their child’s SEN needs? Leaving it to the professionals to worry about, doesn’t seem to be working in a realistic timeframe for a lot of families.

I can’t imagine how stressed out parents are expected to know how to get their kids case up to tribunal level with a local authority and seek advice on that, when they aren’t even able to access basic phone advice from a national helpline to get started. (It’s great there are a couple of slots available nationally though for those that are that far along.)

I’m assuming you have a lot professional knowledge EndlessLight and it’s very kind of you to share it on here on MN, but you’re coming across as a bit actively unwilling to recognise that the situation may differ for different parents. Which is a part of supporting parents too. I can’t believe that I would be the first parent you hear this from?

The SEND law training courses you mention cost £65 per each stage of SEND system process, and while obviously cheaper than engaging a lawyer, if charities’ services for parents rely on parents’ capacity to take on their own legal advocacy job, and pay to be trained by the charity, that still excludes a lot of parents who just need fast, free, informed help.

It’s no criticism of oversubscribed charities to say this. If with perseverance there were free spaces and free appropriate support available for the families who need it, then why do we have a huge market in fee-charging (and totally unregulated) SEND advice and SEND legal advocates in the UK? It’s through desperation not choice, that parents feel they have to pay for these if they possibly can do so.

You've got no idea what you're talking about.

There are about 10% of kids in PS who are on 100%+ bursaries. 100%+ means that not only their fees are covered, but all other expenses, e.g. uniforms incl sport kits, trips, even chargeable parents events.

I cannot be the only parent whose child was first not autistic because they were thriving in school and then suddenly they were autistic after all? I have heard this from several people now - kids diagnosed twice, only when they have broken down do they get the diagnosis in the first place! On top of the shenanigans of schools not meeting the needs of SEND when they should be doing it, even if there is no diagnosis but it is kind of obvious that the child is not thriving. Because they are so overwhelmed and busy they do not implement interventions unless you wave a piece of paper in their face and they have to, to cover their backside.
Our second diagnosis was not because of breakdown, but because it was carried out by highly qualified professionals using slightly different criteria overseas. So is this a thing - you are autistic in the US but not in the UK type thing? You are not autistic at 10 because you are fine in cosy state primary, but then you break down during A levels and have another diagnosis, and now you are autistic? How common is this?

You're most definitely not the only one.
Won't go into details, but very similar story

I think it’s common. Autism in some situations isn’t a problem until there is a change in environment or pressures on the child.