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!

'means I now have a high paying job and so can afford to send my DC private - they are similar to me but by your standards they're automatically less intelligent. '

Your children could well be the brightest of the bunch, who knows. That wasn't my point. I was disagreeing with the poster who thinks private school kids are somehow more suited to the top unis - clearly Bullshit.

I'm well aware of the people who allow their own imposter syndrome choose a different path for their children. Some of us high earners ( a lot) still choose state schools because we don't look up to the private sector and value the richness of a normal education

Only 70,000 children board in private schools in the UK, and many of those will be flexi or occasional boarders who spend a few nights a week at school to have better access to the great extracurricular life of the school, but will obviously have a strong sense of home with their parents.

Plus 5000 kids board in state boarding schools. I have no idea how much flex those typically have.

Why are you conflating private schools with boarding?

According to the BBC this morning, private school admissions for year 7 were already down by 4.6% this September. This number will likely increase next year after the VAT change has come into effect. BBC News - Private schools say early signs of pupils leaving - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy5y0w6xg43o

Well, yes it was inevitable, right? With the declining child birth rate this move from private to state is really going to help many schools from closure.

The writing has been on the wall for a long-time for many private schools, with their fees increasing at well above inflation for years and years.

Some of us look back at our state school experience with despair as it resulted in the breakdown of our mental health and some of us are still suffering today. And I’m not saying that all private schools are perfect, I am saying that different children need different things. That’s why I have one in private and one in state. There was nothing enriching about my state school experience and it didn’t introduce me to a wide range of people as some suggest on here.

As for boarding schools, hardly any are full boarding nowadays. My DC is a day student at a school which offers boarding and those who do board tend to do it for one to three nights per week.

Schools closing will help many schools from closure, interesting..interesting..I never considered it from that point of view before.

There you go a 20% tax will do that to any sector. Damage it, closures etc

'Why are you conflating private schools with boarding?'

Because the vast majority of boarding schools are private... private school parents getting the hump because people mention boarding, or their high fees ( preVAT) or their expensive uniforms or the fact that the average fees put the schools well out of the reach of the majority of families in the UK, or the fact that the majority of private pupils come from the top 10% of earners is ridiculous.
Because it's all true.

STATE schools from closure. We have had several primaries in our LA close/merge because of low entry... an influx of pupils to schools well below capacity is a good thing.

the vast majority of boarding schools are private

Yes, but the vast majority of private schools are not boarding.

So starting to go down a rabbit hole of how damaging boarding schools are is an attempt to get the moral high ground a bit pointless.

You cannot generalise. Many studies have found that helicopter parenting increases a child’s anxiety, harming them socially and mentally into their adult life. You might find the book “The Anxious Generation” an interesting read. I know children at state schools whose parents keep a check on all their school apps. Parents are constantly updated with rewards and sanctions, notified of homework due dates etc. Parents are monitoring these apps daily, and keeping a tight check on their children rather than letting them arrange their own workload. The children aren’t given the opportunity to manage their school life themselves. Compare this with boarding schools where children have, to a large extent, to manage their own workload. This stands them in much better stead for adult life where they won’t be hand held. My children aren’t boarders (they have many friends who love boarding life), but they are very much left to manage their own workload and daily activities.

And once again: there's absolutely nothing to stop the government from keeping the same total education funding for a shrinking number of pupils. Which would allow schools to keep exactly the same provision, just for fewer students. Hence improving the experience for those existing students.

The government sets the per pupil funding formula. They can change it.

They don't need children moving across from private in order to keep the total funding the same.

Around 0.5-1% of children board, compared with 6-7% of those attending private schools. The vast majority of those at private school do not board, and many of those boarding will be do so on a flexi basis anyway. It’s clear you have some kind of strange obsession with boarding pupils, but many parents (and children) are more than happy with their boarding experience. Families are free to make their own choices.

Whereas the county that I live in featured in a news article on BBC London news last light discussing the number of new primary schools that had opened last month alone because of population increase. So where I live an influx of new pupils is not a good thing.

Exactly this

It’s such warped thinking. The gov can uplift state payment

Falling rolls is the opportunity to do so

Ah I see now, makes so much more sense. I don’t know why I was associating Governments closing schools for ideological reasons as a worrying thing now. Maybe Labour could also do something similar with books, possibly we could tax people reading Hardy Potter £2k per book per year and then more people would read the Comnunist manifesto (which hasn’t done so well in sales since the 1930s).

If my kids were in private schools year 9 and above and hoping to do law or politics at uni, I would be getting them to start a claim against the Government under this https://www.unicef.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/unicef-convention-rights-child-uncrc.pdf

Would be a great experience for them potentially and very embarrassing for the government. Surprised a few Westminster/Eton/Winchester/St Paul’s/City girls etc are not doing this already?

I just heard the headline on this what a farce, with the usual oh it could be something else

You’d think people are dim enough to believe a 20% tax won’t have an impact on a sector

Yes, it takes some real special mental gymnastics to argue that the cost to the state of educating additional pupils will lead to an uplift in funds available to spend per head rather than a reduction.

Excellent idea!! It’s so much more productive than my daughter and friends current idea of dressing up as Rachel Reeves for halloween to scare parents and pensioners.

I read somewhere there is a real shortage of maths (and other specialist) teachers in state schools - maybe the poster who stated this is a causality of that shortage?
(didn't mean @Mrsbabbecho)

I include Starmer in the dim failure to think on this given his pre GE belief

‘there is 'no evidence' private schools will have to close’

How is he such a wally on thinking things through.

I see a few other policies he’s had to use the ‘we are pragmatic’ line because well they’re realising the policies are failures

He should do it with his precious private school nonsense

@Mrsbabbecho ,

‘Yes, it takes some real special mental gymnastics to argue that the cost to the state of educating additional pupils will lead to an uplift in funds available to spend per head rather than a reduction.’

No, it takes some reasonable assumptions and a knowledge of mathematical modelling as an economist.

But, like all economics, the model does depend on the inputs. It will take a year or two to definitively find out.

‘According to the BBC this morning, private school admissions for year 7 were already down by 4.6% this September. This number will likely increase next year after the VAT change has come into effect. BBC News - Private schools say early signs of pupils leaving - BBC News’

It doesn’t take much googling to see that uk births dropped from 813,000 to 779,000 in the relevant year, a fall of 4.2%. Fewer births means fewer children!

People jump on the private school lobby group’s news without doing much simple analysis.

The overall fall is 1.7%, which is again (mostly) accounted for by demographics.

Now that doesn’t mean it won’t change going forward, as VAT hasn’t even come in yet, but private schooling has been remarkably price inelastic to date, with demand increasing despite huge real increases of private fees over decades.

In the schools I know, they will remain oversubscribed. They will just reach deeper down into the tail to fill the places, and accept more pupils with more profound SEN.

I doubt that year was the only year with a fall in births, if so maybe look at what happened to make it stand out so much.

If other years had similar falls in birth rate and private has remained steady then it’s not stacking up