How's the Private School VAT increase impacting you?

[mumsthewordi]

To private fee paying ...are kids/s still in private ? Are you comfortably still able to afford and happy paying it ?

To state, how do you feel? Have you been impacted by more kids in class or would you expect that to play out this year? Or perhaps you weren't supportive ?
Do you think state schools will improve ?

Full disclosure
A struggling fee paying parent of one kid only other is at state and my oh is an amazing secondary school teacher - we are a divided household indeed at time, but we've made choices best for us.

I am only aware of one child leaving my kids prep in their 2 year groups. That is a complicated situation - vat is a only a small part of the reason for the decision. Lots joined in September in year 3.

VAT prompted the school to merge into a group with other preps and a local senior. Children now get a place at the Senior School with no entrance exams. We didn’t like the original feeder prep for lots of reasons, but it was also 20 per cent more expensive than our school anyway. But the senior school is fantastic and where we wanted our child to go there. So that is all great news for us personally.

Both DH and I were state school educated. SIL is a state school maths teacher. My kids started in state. I would not send them back until sixth form at the earliest. If their school closed (seems unlikely) we would move to home/online schooling and I would stop work. Or we would take jobs elsewhere.

By year 6, 75 per cent of the kids in the have come out of the state system at some point. None of those parents want to send their kids back.

Financially VAT isn’t an issue for us. I can only work due to the wrap around care their school provides. It isn’t available in the state system. As long as my salary is higher than the fees it works out. I am no where near that bar.

We are not one of the marginal cases but they do exist, but less so in the type of school my children attend. Disproportionally they are kids with SEN, faith or social needs.

There will be behavioural change at the margins - less two parent working families, more people deciding to have one child (given the childcare situation), more families using state or for longer etc. But I can’t see this policy having any meaningful impact on how our society functions which would impact us. Either by improving state schools, changing cultures or reducing inequality. I think the biggest impact is that by prioritising this, Labour have wasted time when they could have been making real improvements to our country.

I disagree with the principle of taxing education, healthcare and childcare but appreciate that others feel differently.

Overall it is a bit of a shrug - I am far more worried about Labour’s messaging to the economy and businesses, rising gilt rates and inflationary taxes

@durness I’ve not ‘complained about the cost’ either. What I have an issue with is putting VAT on education, and the tawdry envy-ridden way Labour have gone about it. Frankly it’s despicable with the impact felt by thousands of children. Labour don’t give a fck.

The biggest hypocrites are those who claim not to support private education on moral grounds claiming 'access to higher education on ability to pay' is not acceptable yet they pay for a property that gives access to a decent state education and/or pay for tuition so their child can access a partially selective state school.

@durness if the government decided to slap on 20% charge on the current value of your house because of its location as you 'played the game' to get the best education you could afford, you would be damn well complaining about the cost. The only reason you are not complaining is because the bill has not gone to you.

All decent parents will use their financial resources to ensure best possible outcomes for their children in one way or another. Just demonising the group who choose to pay for education instead of any other number of things they could to better the outcome is ridiculous.

@EHCPerhaps apologies, didn't mean to offend! I did mention there's a big exception for SEN, and I have, in fact, had experience with SEN students not getting what they need and it's likely my nephew will need to go private within the next few years (and we, the extended family, will need to put our hands in our pockets to pay for it) due to lack of provision. It's sickening. My point is more - I think the argument for why it will be that horrendous for SEN children is valid, however in many arguments it gets translated as ALL children having to move from private to state are going to suffer the same consequences which is not true. We're in a lovely state primary which for all intents and purposes measures up to our local private primaries (I debated which to put DS is as I'm lucky enough to afford either option - landed on state as couldn't justify £16k a year for what seemed an identical education) but back when everyone started balking about VAT in my circles with private school parents, there was a huge, prejudicial 'oh we'll have to put (non-SEN) child in the state school - it will RUIN their future' kind of vibe which really rubbed off on me the wrong way! None of them have actually moved their children, but I doubt it would have caused the negative impact they assumed in our case - the state primary here is lovely and children who naturally transfer from other areas etc adjust very quickly and well.

@durness I'd be interested to know where your argument ends?

Paying for private education is morally wrong - is paying for a tutor? How about a gymnastics class? Should I not pay for the books in my house that further DSs reading because someone else may not be able to afford it?

We live in a world where how much parents earn and are willing to pay will impact the quality of their children's lives. I've gone out of my way to ensure I have a career (and therefore income) that will enable DS to have access to lots of extra curricular activities, travel, museums, theatres etc. All of these contribute to his 'higher quality education' IMO. Should we all stop all of this in order for the world to be 'fair'?

**full disclosure DS is in State at the moment, and we're happy there. But I wouldn't debate for a second the morality of it if Private suddenly became better suited for him.

Thank you for taking the trouble to reply. There will always be silly parents assuming all state education is crap though I understand your offended feelings about that. I am a Labour voting parent who had every intention of completing a state education for my child. I just feel strongly that disruption of changing schools is bad for kids especially the routine-needing DC. We’re not in a big urban area with lots of choice.

I used to assume there would be some kind of safety net if there were SEND problems with any child but there absolutely isn’t in our area. Sorry to hear that where you are living it looks the same for your nephew.

That’s lovely you would help to support them financially to change schools if needed. We have relatives contributing to help us pay my DC fees too. We’re very lucky to have that support but it’s never a limitless situation to call on as you might agree, it still might not be enough once fees go up again and more VAT is passed on. I hope it works for your family and wish him the best.

Everyone should pay taxes appropriately for the greater good.

Er there's no-one on here who hasn't paid their income tax. Don't think you understand the topic

“VAT prompted the school to merge into a group with other preps and a local senior. Children now get a place at the Senior School with no entrance exams. We didn’t like the original feeder prep for lots of reasons, but it was also 20 per cent more expensive than our school anyway. But the senior school is fantastic and where we wanted our child to go there. So that is all great news for us personally.”

@Toansweraboutfees - near us some preps are also merging with the Senior School but my neighbours with kids in the private preps paying more than the one they merged with and essentially “saved” financially, are really annoyed that they are still paying more. So these mergers may well lead to all kinds of complicated financial issues, not least around eventual sales of the loss making preps and the real estate and staff involved.

How simplistic a view

They've got to be the right taxes and fair - we will see if this one is

“Everyone should pay taxes appropriately for the greater good.”

That assumes you believe they spend our hard earned tax money well and efficiently. Plenty of people no longer believe that to be the case. There are also plenty of tax dodgers around only declaring part of their income, lots of cash businesses and an over-stretched HMRC. Billions are tax dodged every year - those on PAYE are never a concern.
There will be millions lost to undeclared interest and those failing to submit self assessment this tax year alone.
If anything, thorough investment in HMRC would have led to more cash than these ill-thought out policies by Labour. For a start, banks should withhold 20 per cent on interest in normal accounts. Let people claim it back if they need to.

@Araminta1003 - quite possibly. Effectively the preps will end up merging if the group can’t sustain all of them.

Our prep wasn’t loss making though. And there is a history of sustaining multiple preps in the group with different ethos.

So the closure risk doesn’t feel any higher than it was before for us. But yes, fee differentials will have to justified and parents will decide what is worth more or not.

Banks should what?

https://www.gov.uk/apply-tax-free-interest-on-savings

A ton of people who have not put savings into ISA owe tax on savings due to the higher interest rates. Banks used to automatically withhold 20 per cent. That is no longer the case.
HMRC has to wait until 31.1 after the end of the tax year to receive that cash. Billions and billions right there.

@Maddy70 - but I pay tax. A large proportion of my salary is taxed, which should indeed be used appropriately to fund our state schools, our hospitals, our infrastructure...

But if I choose to send my kids to private school, and pay for this out of my net income, why should I be taxed once again? If families don't use the state system because they use private schools, it creates less strain on the (already challenged) state schools because they are not using those state schools.

My personal situation means that adding VAT to fees means that keeping my kids in private school will become unaffordable, and they will go state for sixth form - at schools that are already extremely oversubscribed. Because their current school gets much better GCSE results than the local state schools, and these sixth forms are academically selective - my kids will have a far higher chance of getting in. They have an unfair advantage. Wouldn't it be better for everyone if they were able to stay at the private school and thus free up the places for other kids? This policy makes zero sense.

The government benefits handsomely from stamp duty on property sales in good catchment areas, don’t forget.

Is it so abhorrent to you that there are excellent state schools? Do you need grammar schools to be closed just because you can't access them? This stance sounds like the real politics of envy.

What?

I can’t discuss this with you, if that’s how you’re interpreting what I said. There’s really, little point.

Well this got heated very quickly

It's funny I was expecting less judgement and just a genuine interest in "how's it going for your."

So next question - why does this rile people up so much ?

Because it's about money. And that's always controversial.

People who send their kids to private school - GENERALLY (I'm aware there are many exceptions) - earn lots of money, already pay almost half on taxes, likely also have private health cover/don't rely on benefits, and feel like this is just another way of getting shafted out of their money.

People who don't earn enough to comprehend sending their kids, have been fed a lie that anyone able to afford private school is Uber wealthy. I think there's a belief if you have less, that everyone who earns more are evil billionaires actively stripping the country of any spare cash in working class pockets. The media also does a great job of portraying this and stirring the pot. So the mentality is 'well, they have SO MUCH MONEY OF COURSE THEY CAN AFFORD MORE!' Without acknowledging that they're actually contributing a lot already.

I wouldn’t have given it a second thought except I have a SEN child who is currently thriving at his private pre-school. The state schools in the area aren’t very good for SEN and oversubscribed…hell they’re not even good enough for typically developing children. I’m seriously considering paying for him to carry on there but it’s a lot of money for us especially if you add the VAT, and it irks me that I voted Labour and now they’re fucking me over. If they made it so state schools were up to par then it wouldn’t be so much of a divide between the have’s and have nots.

The flip side of it being about money is it being about having wasted money. Which is why there's a fair degree of arseholery about state grammars or living in good catchment or, somehow, Keir Starmer being a hypocrite for sending his kids to their normal-not-great local schools.

It won't - or shouldn't - bother the really rich at all, and I'm not talking about about SEND parents, but a nagging feeling you've spent £300k per kid for little or no value added (as it were) will probably get the hackles up. The psychological effect of having spent all that will also mean a huge defensiveness over the school you've spent it on, to the point where the 20% VAT is the issue, not the 50% they themselves have put on fees over the past half dozen years (if they're in the fee arms race) or whether they are in fact viable businesses at all (if they are, like many other schools down the years, folding).

Add to that completely ad hominem Facebook uncle-style party political posting and yes, it's going to rile people up, particularly people who relentlessly post on these threads, have absolute tunnel vision, and assume the rest of the country shares their concerns.

In short, it's the internet.

I dont question your right to choose to send a child to a private school.

But I don’t believe a single person who tries to justify it by saying it saves money for state schools because they do so. You send your child to private school because you feel the local state school isn’t good enough for your child, that’s the bottom line.

“nagging feeling you've spent £300k per kid for little or no value added (as it were) will probably get the hackles up.”

No @tortoise18 - I do not think it is that. All the private school parents I know seem very happy with the private schools they spent their money on and the teacher salaries they supported. If anything, they claim kids never get time at school back and it was well worth the money.

The nagging feeling comes from working your arse of on PAYE, contributing massively to the economy and feeling like a complete numpty for doing so when successive Governments piss your hard earned cash up the wall on vanity projects like the Rwanda scheme, Brexit lies and now this VAT on education that won’t improve state schools. They know it will not, they lied about it all along and they are willing to throw children’s lives under the bus. It is the realisation that this country has become a horse no longer worth flogging in its current state that riles most successful people up, whether they are using state or private education.
It is going on holiday to eg Spain or elsewhere and realising that their quality of life is now superior to ours and wondering what the heck has actually happened.

And I cannot be the only one who is embarrassed that we are the only country desperate enough to tax education at 20 per cent!
And whenever someone brings up Greece, remember that was a country in a huge debt crisis and what the fuck are Labour thinking doing something similar to a country in that dire position at the time?