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.

The state school was more than 'good enough' for both my children but sadly did not offer wraparound care - no breakfast club or afternoon wraparound. They did have activity clubs but spaces were not guaranteed. I met with the head to discuss this and they had no intention to start one because there was no demand - this was before WFH became common practice from COVID. The alternative state school had a first come first served allocation for wraparound so again, not guaranteed.

I am a doctor and was not yet a consultant when DC1 started school. Dropping to PT hours would have halted progression and I did not find a reliable childminder so private ended up being our option.

So actually, it is not the bottom line and it would be better if posters did not assume they can speak for everyone

@Araminta1003 "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 ... 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."

Well, I can feel like that too without being bothered by something as marginal as VAT on private school fees. And I'd tend to blame the previous government for 99% of it, rather than the inheritors of their mess.

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.

I've seen this attempted gotcha a few times, and I find it really strange.

No one is saying that to 'justify' our schooling choice. We're pointing out that it's a consequence. Which it is. We're pointing out that our choice saves you money, and us changing our choice will cost you.

Using 'that's not why they do it' as a supposed gotcha shows a fundamentally different value system to mine. Do you really think the actual consequences matter less than the whether the motivation is pure?

To me, motivation matters a bit (mainly because it predicts future choices) but real-life consequences matter much, much more.

I don't really care whether Billy Burglar has given up his life of crime due to a new-found respect for other people (unlikely) or whether he doesn't want to go back to jail.

I just don't want him to burgle my house.

I don't care whether you've chosen to work as a plumber instead of having a life on benefits because you want to contribute to society (unlikely) or whether it's because you calculate you can live in a nicer house and go on holidays.

I just want my taxes to be lower due to having more financially contributing members of society, and I want to be able to get my shower fixed.

I don't care whether someone is sending their kids to private school because they want to save the state money (unlikely) or whether it's because they want their kid to have a great education and a happy life.

I just want my taxes to be lower because I don't have to pay for their kids education or travel costs to an out-of-county school, and I want to get a pension in 20 years time because more kids are successful, and contributing to society instead of long-term sick with anxiety

So how should it be interpreted? Why should grammars have to be closed but private schools are fine? I genuinely don't understand any logic for that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum

These are the real tough issues aren't they , so frustrating
Doing our best
Working hard

And it's never hard enough

@Tiredalwaystired - the government allocates about 7.5k per state school child per annum. If kids go to private school, that DOES saves money for the state school, because those kids aren’t there!

Our taxes rightly go to funding state education, but private school parents are being taxed twice. In some other countries you are even get a tax rebate if you don’t use state schools. I disagree with that - we should all pay taxes for the greater societal good - but adding VAT to private education here is a stupid, stupid policy.

I think it riles people up because a group of parents are being forced to recognise they not quite so different to those who use state school since a small increase has rendered the service unaffordable. People get used to a level of status and losing it is always painful.

Is that why you're personally getting riled up? Interesting.

Of course, we can each only speak for ourselves.

I get riled up because of the sheer, unnecessary stupidity of the policy. It will harm some people with no benefit to anyone. And I suspect that is by design, not accident.

It won't really harm me, but the malicious intent is there - against me and my DC.

Malicious intent from those I financially support. That does really, really rile me.

There really isn't. Totally paranoid victimhood. None of it is about you.

I know the saying 'don't assume malice when incompetence will explain it'.

But I've heard too much to believe that now.

Or rather, I think there's a mix.

I'm not OK with that.

You are perfectly entitled to be riled up @strawberrybubblegum No other country apart from Greece has done this to this extent! You should be riled up and angry and those in charge should be made to pay for their mistakes if it transpires, as predicted, to be an utter failure.
Forget the apologists, they just do not want their Party to be held to account. It is embarrassing. This party, like the last one, will eventually be forced to u-turn on pretty much everything and will be paying for their incompetence through lost votes.

My neighbours are both consultant doctors and have 3 DCs in private schools on academic scholarships, after state primary. They are really riled up and fed up. They were riled up about Brexit, they have Covid trauma being put on Covid wards and now this. I have every sympathy for them, 1 of their DC has autism but is very academic, if placed in the right environment. The utter two will have to join state Sixth Form in due course now. This policy splits families up and the worst part, is the gaslighting and lack of honesty about the whole thing.

No I'm unaffected by it. We will pay the VAT (its only 20%) just like we do on most of the other things we buy.

So no logic? Just malicious intent then?

What riles me up is a stream of anecdotes that think they're apocalyptic but reek of privilege.

What is actually happening here? Firstly, private schools have got so expensive that even a couple of consultants can't afford to send their kids there after a bit of flex. Look to the schools for that.

Secondly, the horrors of going to state sixth form and "splitting the family up". In what way does that split the family up? Do the siblings in different year groups hang out with each other throughout the school day? They're very unusual siblings if so. So that's what's kind of riling, the straw-clutching arguments and non-sequiturs summoned up to, at heart, defend privilege. Defending privilege is a natural action but at least be honest about it.

I understand why people directly affected are “riled up.” They are a minority who have been targeted. The targets are their children.

What I don’t understand are the posters hanging around on these threads goading them page after page, thread after thread. It’s hard to believe there isn’t malicious glee.

The posters who write, “yawn.” Why are they on the thread? If they truly don’t care, why don’t they just leave people to commiserate? There are many threads of woe, on a variety of topics. I don’t open the ones that bore me.

@tortoise18 - they are twins! And the older one just 1 year older and it is difficult for parents to have to choose to pay for one child and not the others! But you go ahead.

If you actually want to get riled up today, head over to the financial markets, the FTSE 250, the beating the pound is getting - all as a direct result of policies implemented by the Labour Party. Costing us billions and billions. Let’s hope we do not end up like Greece, in every way possible.

No, as the wikipedia page says "an argument form which has been used throughout history in both formal mathematical and philosophical reasoning, as well as in debate."

It's a way of helping people think more clearly.

It's a debate, not a trauma group. This is the education section, not the private education section, which does exist and where no doubt there are threads full of "commiserations", which is fine. But don't expect to be on a general education forum and get the idea that your view in this debate is generally representative without feedback.

We're probably not on different sides on the economy and certainly not on Brexit, and yes that's a better subject to get riled about than this basically minor issue which has very little to do with either of those things.

I think the most damaging thing for children who will need to move schools is to have it presented as a catastrophe. Children move schools all the time. Even if it’s not what you planned you can still have a great life.

We have left our private school but would have done anyway as DC didn't want to stay for sixth form and is now at a selective state sixth form. We would have paid the VAT if they had wanted to stay. So I am saving 27k pa and paying most of that into my pension and claiming 40% tax relief from the govt. The rest is going on a foreign holiday. So my money is no longer circulating in the UK economy and the government is out of pocket in having to fund my DC and contribute to my pension funds. The numbers never stacked up on this for labour, it was purely ideological. I feel for the families who have had to leave and kids that have been forced out of their school based on a hatred of private education by this government. Judging by the state the economy is heading this will (hopefully) be a one term government as they appear economically incompetent.

But more pertinently still no reply to my specific question of why private schools are okay but grammars are not. Funny that.