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.

You pay an 'insurance' for the ambulance and fire brigade. If you need it, you get back much more than you paid in. Like any insurance.

It doesn't matter that it's the state who is acting as an insurer.

Education is totally different. A specific fixed amount is paid out by the government for each individual named child.

So yes, by paying that myself (and removing the state's obligation towards my individual child), I'm subbing the government.

Your previous point claimed it was a tax on luxury. VAT isn't a luxury tax

So paying £13k tax has got nothing to do with school fees or VAT? They don't really pay £13k tax on an income of £33k do they, they have just over £12k personal allowance and then would pay 20% on the next £10k.

You are correct that schools receive funding based on the number of pupils at that school, and that by not sending your child to state school the government doesn't have to pay that money.

I wouldn't count that as subbing though.

And if you object to subbing the government, stop doing it. Use the state school place every child is entitled to.

You may be right, I don't know a lot about the tax system.

But I do know that price school is a choice, so if you don't want to pay the vat, you don't have to.

It's only the whole point if you see private education as a harm which you want to reduce, like alcohol and cigarettes.

But no, not an attack right??

Even though it will cost more money than it raises.

Not being mugged. Not being attacked?!?

Yes. It is exactly that.

And that's precisely why 8 indy schools announced their closures this week. So that's 100s of teachers + staff made redundant and kids needing school places

We like op have one in each, dd thrived in state, she is bright, competitive, autumn born, and lucked out on mainly great teachers in primary school and a really solid group of friends in secondary. I think those two things make an enormous difference. She had one year where her teacher was awful, he seemed to really dislike her, and her best friend moved away and she was a shell of herself at the end of that year. In secondary she had enormous teacher turnover and we paid for an English tutor as her teacher wasn’t very good.

DS is summer born, dyslexic, adhd (both quite mild but challenging combo of all three) had inexperienced teachers almost all the way through primary and struggles with friends. He was in bottom sets in state secondary and getting really good at entertaining his peers rather than learning so we’ve moved him to a small independent school. He’s really benefited from small classes, higher expectations and less drama. He has still experienced bullying, but school has been better at recognising it. He has now a couple of lovely friends.

Fees went up quite a lot last year, before the VAT, and school has mitigated some of the rise. I think inflation has hit us harder that the VAT really, I do feel we’re squeezed middle class, and growth of the wealth of the super wealthy irks me more than having to pay more taxes. I voted Labour knowing this was the plan. We are paying about 50% of fees from income and 50% from inheritance/savings, we would not have considered it had we not got a reasonably decent inheritance from my father.

im a state school teacher and have seen my real terms pay decline. I feel like I earn a decent wage, but inflation has hammered its value! DH wage is commission based so fluctuates, we have a joint income of £90-140k dependent on his performance. So we are definitely comfortable. We’re both state educated and our parents are very working class.

I would much rather have felt able to keep him in state, I am broadly in favour of tax rises. I would also be happy for my sons school to economise, he’s in a small school that is popular with service families, it’s not a ‘public’ school, it was one of the cheapest locally, but the gap between that and state is huge, there’s 3 in one of his options classes and 4 in maths, largest class is 14 I think, whereas largest gcse class in my state school is 34. Our buildings are in a dreadful state, we have classrooms that are never warm and others that are always hot, our toilets are constantly being vandalised everywhere looks tatty. We get about £6000 per pupil in state, I’m paying about £21k a year for private.

If those school have closed one week into the new rules around VAT, is it not pretty likely that they were in serious financial difficulty anyway?

The kids will be found state school places if that is what their parents want.

"More than 80 private schools closed every year in England on average over the last decade, but data from a government register indicates that this is a longstanding trend.

Since school closure records began in 1987, 2,583 schools have opened in England and 2,674 have shut. In the decade from 2013 to 2023, 847 schools closed – an average of nearly 85 a year.

The 2024 data, which goes up to October 6, shows that 46 schools have closed, below the average trend, with 77 opening."

https://www.schoolmanagementplus.com/bursars-finance/school-closures-due-to-churn-not-vat/#:~:text=More%20than%2080%20private%20schools,England%20and%202%2C674%20have%20shut.

I think you are preaching to the wrong poster. I am not for the policy but I find the tone of these threads increasingly nasty and militant with the usual suspects peddling the same propaganda and attacking anyone who doesn't share their views. Maybe your post's labelling of state education as a 'state benefit' is innocent or maybe it was a deliberate choice of an emotive label. I don't know but if we all stick to the facts, pedantic though that may feel to some, there is far less room for misleading. There is indeed quite a bit of playing fast and loose with the facts on here, the purpose of which seems to be to whip up support for the great cause. I do have a big issue with that. Sorry to be a pedant but hey ho.

No, not an attack. An extra tax, an optional one at that.
That's all.

But none of that discrepancy is the fault of indy schools/parents. Any VAT revenue isn't hypothecated and there are further budget cuts coming.
Labour aren't promising to increase per pupil funding, which is the only way of actually improving conditions in state schools. Instead they are tinkering around the edges using this highly divisive and damaging policy.

@MrsSchrute - Labour have not given parents a genuine choice by applying this mid year and also applying it, where the vast majority of children in the private sector have missed the usual standard admissions processes for Reception, Year 7 and Sixth Form.
This tax should have been applied with plenty of notices and only applicable for new starters into the usual transition years. It should also have exempted all children with SEND.

Barring the above, these parents are not given a choice and it is a simple ambush. Hence why there are so many complaints!

It's unlikely that they have an income of £22k - on which they pay only £2k in income tax and use the rest for school fees - because most people need some money to live. School fees come after that. 40% is a typical marginal tax rate for private school parents.

So they pay they pay £31.5k income tax on a salary of eg £100k.

Which they could reduce to £67k (by working less, or putting it in pension). They would then pay only £17.5k income tax.

They would pay £20k less school fees.
And £13k less tax

Marginal income tax can actually be up to 60% for people earning between £100k and £125k - which means the tax loss is even worse - but 40% is a reasonable assumption.

I agree that applying it mid year was not the best approach, Sept 2025 would have been much fairer.
I think they gave lots of notice that this was coming though.

A tax which will raise no money.

So has no purpose... except as an attack.

But they are aiming to increase the number of teachers, which is desperately needed, recruiting teachers is so incredibly difficult at the moment, in my school we are down a science teacher, maths teacher, pe teacher and have been unable to recruit a computer science teacher, it’s small school so this has a huge impact, kids are not only in large classes they are regularly in classes being taught by supply teachers. It’s not unusual to have 50 kids being taught together in the hall. Change needs to happen and private education is a luxury item and as such taxing it doesn’t feel unreasonable. The vast majority of parents don’t have any option other than state education.

End of July 24-Jan ie 5 months is not a long time! Oh and when Reeves also said in October that VAT wouldn't be applied until Sept 25 but then later changed her mind!
Not when they are taking 3 years to introduce an increase on vapes. Labour think indy schools are more damaging than vapes

@MrsSchrute - the only people who have been given notice are those with children starting Reception, Year 7 and Sixth Form because they knew from July 2024 that VAT would be payable. The rest cannot get a decent state school place in accordance with a normal intake so they are deterred from moving their kids and ambushed by the Government.
The Government full well knows that private schools will empty out in these years especially Reception and Year 7 and if that happens by next September, it is pretty much evidence that this was bad faith action on behalf of Labour. Not sure what the consequences would be as it seems, most politicians get off Scott free for the harms they cause.

44000 left teaching last year and they can't even hit current recruitment levels, yet alone an additional 6500 teachers! That's why they have gone silent on this area and are focusing on Early Years now instead. When did you last hear them talking about these mythical 6500 teachers?

No-one is denying the crisis in state sector but:
1- VAT won't go anywhere near solving it
2- it isn't the fault of indy sector that state has been massively underfunded
3 - this policy just pits state against indy. It doesn't anything to address the issues in state

What makes it difficult for you to recruit that science teacher, maths teacher, pe teacher and and computer science teacher?

Will the VAT on private schools change that difficulty?

The only mechanism I can see would be if low school numbers are prevent you getting them, and you're hoping those will be bolstered by private students. How many extra students would you need to get those 4 extra teachers? How many students do you have currently? And what else will you have to fund if your student numbers increase by that percentage?

So will it really make any difference...?

The UK could get away with sub par state education only thanks to it's well established PS system. And it is not fair either for many more DC in state sector.
If there're no PS or very few left, the govt will have to do smth to further improve quality of education in state schools and it is a good thing.
And even not using PS while being in a higher tax bracket I feel being mugged on every step.
They should put our huge taxes to better use in NHS, education, transport atc.

More funding for more teachers would make a difference, the missed recruitment targets have had an impact and I’m at a school which for many reasons has always struggled more than others in recruitment (we are outside public transport systems, close to areas that have London weighting but are on national pay scale, we don’t have 6th forms in our county, which puts off some teachers).

There is a national teacher shortage and that is starting to bite. Realistically improving pay and conditions to make it more attractive to graduates is what’s needed and this was what the government stated it was aiming to do by taxing private education.