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.

https://ifs.org.uk/news/schools-and-colleges-facing-another-round-belt-tightening-years-spending-review

• Potential savings from falling pupil numbers outweighed by rising costs of SEN provision. With pupil numbers expected to fall by 2% between 2025 and 2027, the government could make annual savings of up to £1.2 billion by freezing spending per pupil in real terms. However, the government also projects high needs spending will grow by £2.3 billion between now and 2027 without reforms. This makes finding savings in the schools budget impossible without cutting mainstream per-pupil spending in real terms.

“Spending on colleges and sixth forms remains well below 2010 levels, and pressures are growing. “

My son has just six months to go and I cannot wait for the fees to end - I really will be cracking out the bubbly as it's been such a financial drain. I only went private because 30% of the the year above us in my son's state primary school were offered no school places when the initial allocation was done - the council had no spaces to offer. Cue massive panic - families putting their kids into private school, or leaving the area or waiting for places to come up that people had declined. Myself and other parents, on seeing this started tutoring our kids for possible private schooling. I applied to both state and private - got my 5th choice of state - absolute crap place so he went to the private school he'd got into. Hugely expensive, super-selective in London. It kills me to see the amount of money I've had to spend. With the VAT, it's now gone up to over £10K a term and I'm a single mum. It's forced me to stay in a job I hate and put all career goals I had to be put on hold (i.e. going for a job I'd actually like) as I have to keep the money coming in. If it had happened last year, I'd have to have pulled him out - it's just too much - boarding school prices for a day school with short academic terms. Everyone else I know is either on a full bursary or are utterly loaded so completely unaffected. I think I'm the poorest of the full-feeing parents - definitely in my son's large friendship group.

So basically, yea, you came to score points and aggravate people.

Lovely

So by arguing that grammar schools should be abolished, she was taking the argument that 'Access to higher quality education based on ability to pay is what’s morally wrong' to it's logical extreme, which people would more easily see was incorrect or absurd ('ad absurdum')

She isn't saying that grammar schools should close.

She's arguing that since it's absurd for grammar schools to close (which she thinks everyone will see clearly) and the argument to close grammar schools is an extension of the argument to close private schools (both are based on ability to pay) therefore the argument to close private schools must also be wrong.

That's how the 'reductio ad absurdum' logic technique works.

“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.”

@tortoise18 - I am not on the same side as you, sorry. We are in 2008 financial crash territory now with this Government and you are still making excuses for them!

And of course the VAT on education is linked to Brexit. Without Brexit, VAT on education would have been illegal. As I am anti Brexit, I am also anti VAT on education.

Eh folk, we're all just paupers - remember Marxism ?

Make friends
Or don t

At least the debate teaches us and our kids the very worst of human behaviour, without targeting the real issues and inequalities - caused by so much more than my paying private fee.

Hey ho

School drop off for us in the cold is all equal right ?

I’m not demonising. I’m one of those parents electing to go for private education. I’m just not complaining about paying for a luxury item.

The poster didn’t mention “horrors” that’s merely hyperbole.

It’s perfectly reasonable to not want to have to change schools when you’re happily ensconced with your friends and teachers.

If the Tories had brought in a policy that meant droves of state school kids had to change school you can be sure there would be outcry. And rightly so.

The claim that this is about defending privilege rather disapproval of a poorly considered policy that fails on every level - financial, social and educational - is merely a lie. You talk about honesty - but if you were honest, your position is based merely on mean-spirited resentment. The true targets of your ire - the really rich - are unaffected - and all this policy has done has entrench the very privilege you purport to decry.

Another closure just been announced. Military heavy school. Thats 4 since 1st Jan

Another closure just announced. That's 4 since 1st Jan

This is a really interesting question and a fair challenge.

Why do we have tutors? Because of a dysfunctional education system which encourages societal stratification and rewards the children of those who have the means to purchase advantage. So, yeah, I don’t like tutors either.

My cut-off is access to the state-mandated basic education, I guess. Gymnastics, theatre visits, etc.: these would ideally be accessible to all but they’re not ‘core’.

I fully understand how this position can be challenged. And I also recognise no one is going to ban private education any time soon, so it’s ideological mithering at this point. Faith schools, however, can and should be taken down as soon as poss.

A last opinion. Working hard to provide a leg-up to our kids is understandable. But the state need not make this any easier for you; your kids and those with no privileges should be enabled to have equality of opportunity as far as possible.

This Government needs to calm the financial markets and Rachel Reeves needs to resign! And they need to backtrack on the NI rises and do QE urgently. What absolute bloody idiots the lot of them. Where the heck are the grown-ups in the room?
They are distracted by the wrong stuff! Where are the real economists and financial experts? We are screwed borrowing at 4.9%.
They need to do an all nighter and sort this mess out! Look what the Swiss Government did when Credit Suisse was going bust, they bloody sorted it out over night!

@durness - why would your ideology trump mine? We loved our church primary school - it was a very supportive community. And guess what, the church does for free what Government often has to fund social services to do The whole point of a free democracy is freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I have no interest in your mono one way think of doing things “your way”. You do you and let everyone else do what they want.

So it’s morally wrong but you’re doing it anyway, so you don’t think it’s that wrong. Isn’t that stance just hedging your position to ward off criticism?

Where do stand on paying for university?

I don't think it is. These are all our opinions surely? Personally I grew up very close to a private faith school (attended the attached church) and it was horrifically run, safeguarding was an actual joke, a teacher not qualified in the UK taught the incorrect curriculum at GSCE for a full term and nothing was done except urge parents to hire external tutors... I could go on. In my opinion and experience, faith schools are far too trusting and far too lax in some issues and they need more oversight than they have. But again, we're all entitled to our opinions.

@LittleRedRidingHoody - ours is a state church school and couldn’t be better really. I realise we are immensely privileged to have had this.

“A last opinion. Working hard to provide a leg-up to our kids is understandable. But the state need not make this any easier for you; your kids and those with no privileges should be enabled to have equality of opportunity as far as possible.”

@durness - privilege is far too complex to define in the 21st century and is certainly not limited in any shape or form, to economic privilege. Social and cultural capital, increasingly there is “mental health privilege” as a recognised concept.
Rich multi generational abusive family - not privileged, in my opinion, in a true sense.
Once you add in race, disability (which as you will note from these threads are increasingly recognised), sexism, gender etc these questions are so multi-faceted no State can level the opportunity, especially not in an ever changing global world.
Whenever the State tries to address one facet of “privilege”, you will ultimately cause distortions.
Lots of recent research points to the fact that having both parents in a stable relationship is now considered an immense privilege, for example.

Free education, free healthcare, early years access and SEND support/mental health support - that is where the state needs to do better. Kids do not universally get adequate access to the basics in the UK anymore, in terms of pure physical & mental health needs. We have to sort that first as well. It is not easy to parent in the 21st century, people seem to need more help.

Please don't tell me who my own "ire" is directed at. I have plenty of privilege, and I'll admit to it. I have no chip.on my shoulder, in a meritocracy, with some people having earned even more. If I do have any "ire" it's at people who won't admit to theirs and paint themselves as victims.

(ps whether because of standards, closures or just the roofs falling in, "droves" of state school kids have had to change schools due to Tory underfunding for a decade and a half. Some even went to private. Lack of awareness of that displays your oblivious privilege once again, but did you join that outcry?)

I love you! 😂

Yes yes I know how it works. The trouble is with the poster's track record of baseless assertions, it is perfectly feasible that the comments were serious. I guess we'll never know.

It seems to be emoji-based for the most part.

Thank you for sharing Araminta
I’m getting really worried by the way this IFS report you linked to and other newspaper reports phrases the ‘skyrocketing’ ‘spiraling’ etc costs of state support for SEND. Luke Sibieta of IFS, is saying it’s either reform these needs (ie don’t pay for them) or cut per pupil funding in schools. which any government person like his old flatmate best man BFF the government minister will know is a massive vote loser. It’s a false alternative though because kids with SEND are easily dismissed by ableism. He could just as equally have said, fund SEND kids with what they need and let’s cut some other area of spending.

Starmer’s government are already talking about dismantling the 2014 SEND reforms rather than funding these kids education as intended. As reported a while ago in the FT: Keir Starmer looks at sweeping reforms to special education needs https://archive.is/Pw2eP

I am really scared for what all this means in terms of educational support for kids with SEND for the future. ‘Reforms’ isn’t quite the right word here when it’s actually meaning solely financially motivated massive cuts. Theres not going to be any consideration of the child’s best interests.

Nobody knows why there are more SEND DC of school age than there used to be. Possibly more girls needs are being recognised or maybe the school environment has been changing in ways that are less inclusive to SEND over the years. But we are where we are and people need to stop speaking in this dehumanising way about those kids with SEND needing an education.

Would the government and taxpayers really rather that today’s kids with SEND are left to go on to lead under educated, more isolated, more underemployed, less independent, less productive, less fulfilled and less happy adult lives than they could have done?

The current statistics for employment for adults with autism are awful. We are already wasting an opportunity to do things for today’s kids differently. Making it yet worse still, by cutting support even further, is a horrifying prospect.

Still, looking for something positive to say, in the IFS report there’s some good news for parents of under 5s, the one age group that do get an increase in funding.

@strawberrybubblegum
What type of school did you go to ?

Don't try to pigeon-hole me: I've been an autodidact for many decades now