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’ve tried to drop out and stop thread diversion already. My bad for answering questions I am
asked.

VAT on school fees is a social good, this court case is simply a wedge issue, and I would be very surprised if it succeeds.

I am out.

Such a shame that your case law is so out of date @DadJoke - better go brush up.

https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng#%7B%22languageisocode%22:%5B%22ENG%22%5D,%22appno%22:%5B%2259751/15%22%5D,%22documentcollectionid2%22:%5B%22CHAMBER%22%5D,%22itemid%22:%5B%22001-204685%22%5D%7D

This case illustrates how wide the duty is for SEN, especially in primary schools. Interesting also how the court notes how finite resources should be equitably distributed.

I don't know if posters on this thread (or any of the others) know about the consultation that has apparently been going on since 29 July (when this document was posted to gov.uk), but it was just brought to my attention this evening. The public are invited to share their views:

Urgent: VAT on Private School Fees Consultation End

It has only recently come to light that H.M. Treasury has opened a consultation—created under the Labour Government—on imposing VAT on private school fees. Unfortunately, key contact information for submitting responses seems to be buried in the documents (refer to page 21 of the first PDF and page 3, item 22, of the third document linked below).

Many people remain unaware of this consultation, and the deadline for responses is this Sunday, 15th September.

This legislation will have a significant impact on private schools, their pupils, parents, and staff across our constituency. We urge you to express your opposition to this proposal and make your voice heard. Your input could influence the outcome.

Please consider sharing your view with the Government urgently. You can go directly to the Government website by clicking on the following link.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-on-private-school-fees-removing-the-charitable-rates-relief-for-private-schools The above is a consultation to VAT on school fees from the Treasury. Unfortunately it has been kept so quiet and the closing date is this weekend!

If you had a Sen child, would you be happy to wait for the state to improve and have your child have an education education that does not meet their needs in the meantime?
I have two kids with Sen and my daughter particularly was failed by the state system. Now I manage to pay for her in an independent school.
Everyone surely has the right to an education that meets their needs? If I choose to sacrifice other things so I can send my daughter to an independent school, freeing up 8k (which my taxes pay for) for another child to be state educated, why should I penalised by adding vat on top? If you believe VAT shoukd be added on education , would you be happy to pay it on nursery and university fees also? We would be an outlier if so.

Reading this on BBC, and statements by Stuart Adam, a senior economist at the IFS, his claims seem hugely biased. For example,
"most people paying school fees have simply been able to absorb these increases as they are wealthy."

BBC News - What will happen when VAT is added to private school fees? BBC News - What will happen when VAT is added to private school fees? BBC News - What will happen when VAT is added to private school fees?

Yes, shit article.

Up to now parents have all absorbed the yearly increases and not moved kids so I suppose he is right in a way. However, I think it seems likely that a further 12-20% on top of those will cause a different behaviour and so using past migration levels as a guide here is disingenuous at best.

It's literally true. Not sure what's biased about it, even if you think it's wrong. The IFS do financial analysis.

He said: “We have seen this huge rise in fees and we haven’t seen a massive shrinkage of the sector which might suggest that the price of private education going up does not drive people out in large numbers."

Anyway, we'll know if it's biased or not soon enough.

🤣 a large rise in fees spread out over your entire child’s education in a school is clearly not going to have the same effect as a large rise overnight

I was very fucked off to listen to two sniggering economists and the presenter place bets on whether private schools will lose however many kids or not today on Radio 4’s More or Less.

I’m going to complain when I can, might not manage it what with my dysregulated autistic child that I need to look after because even the fucking private school I and my family are paying my family’s savings for (such a luxury for us DadJoke!!) can’t meet her needs because it’s going to be so long to get an EHCP and alternative provision. The LA have long since given up trying to stick to the legal time frames to get the ECHNA done. There is no SEN system. So I am paying in private school.

I didn't listen but that sounds knobbish

What is it with people? That's why we end up with really bad policy and lower education

@DadJoke
Not everyone uses the private school system for the whole of their child's education. Less well-off parents may only use it for a few years e.g. Year 9 to Year 11 or for sixth form only. 15% of sixth formers are privately educated compared to 7% across all year groups. This suggests that a big proportion of students move to private just for sixth form. These are the parents who are more likely to be priced out.
The IFS report does not consider that some people won't have experienced much inflation to fees as they are only sending their children to private school for a short time. The IFS report does not consider that some parents just won't start private school now.

Over the past 10 years our rises have been 2 or 3% each year. It has been OK to manage but 20% in one go is completely different. I am fed up of people like you telling me it will be no problem for me to pay the increase. You don’t know my bloody personal finances.

And also, where do the IFS take into account recent cost of living increases? The answer is they don’t. Many people have been able to manage increases in previous years because their rent or mortgage payments were stable. That’s not the case anymore. Private school admissions went down by 3% last year (i.e. AFTER the IFS report was published). It’s out of date and shouldn’t be relied on by the Government.

He's saying that a 20% rise over 10 years is comparable to a 20% rise - plus normal inflationary rise - in 1 year.

That's either biased, disingenuous or not-very-clear-thinking.

Average house prices have increased by 73% in the last decade without demand being affected. Do you really think we can be confident that house sales would remain strong in 2025 if the government added a 73% stamp duty on all houses from January? Or is there a possibility that the housing market might collapse?

The EHCP timescales are set out in law and can be enforced. If the LA is in breach of the timescales and the threat of JR hasn’t worked, a pre-action letter is needed. If that doesn’t work, JR proceedings themselves will.

We’ll see. A comment to the BBC does not undermine the very detailed research the IFS has done on this issue.

Kids who actually have an EHCP and can prove that they have a section I need to go to a private school can get funded, if not they can join the rest of us plebs with SEN kids in ensuring our children get the care they need in the state system,

It's possible that a sudden 73% tax on house sales wouldn't dent demand for houses, just as it's possible that a sudden 20% tax on education won't dent demand for education.

But I don't need to wait and see anything to recognise that it's a gamble, which is based on insufficient analysis.

Demonstrably ignorant and/or dishonest:

"We also use the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England data to check the validity of our assumption that private school pupils belong at the top of the SES distribution. In fact, this analysis suggests that only around 35% of private school pupils belong in the top SES quintile (a further 30% are in the second SES quintile, and a further 25% are in the middle SES quintile)." Chowdry, Crawford, Dearden, Goodman, and Vignoles. "Widening Participation" 2013.

i.e. Most were not wealthy, and one in ten were from the equivalent of POLAR4 quintiles 1 and 2; and since then, the proportion of children on means tested bursaries has increased.

There are 27 caveats on the IFS report just to be clear. It is based on tenuous modelling. The truth is no one is very sure what will happen in Jan. We can be sure that the migration is not 0% already however as pupils have moved already. This means the 1.6bln is already wrong.

Yes I agree with you there

How are private schools are subsided by the state ?

Surely the gov will know before Jan what the impact is - the schools census is at the start of Oct. There clearly are impacts of incoming VAT already being seen, and the census should give a good indication of the magnitude of the short term impact. The census data is broken down by school yr so we can also infer some medium term impact by any change to numbers starting at key stages (beginning of primary & secondary, sixth form and so on).

This has been addressed upthread. I am not setting it out again.

They aren't subsided by the state at all that I can see.

Is this for real?? do you really believe this??? can't you see that Labour set this up to start in Jan on purpose, this is exactly to be able to use October census to say that there's no impact?

It is exceptionally difficult to move kids in the middle of the year, most parents will hold off till Sep 25 or move at the next transition point. PS parents won't move their kids to whatever school (normally the least desirable one) is available now, they will try to sort out a reasonable state school place and move then. The real impact will be seen starting next Sep.