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.

Do you think it would be fair if you were charged VAT on the private dentist fees, in order to pay for say 1/10th of an extra NHS dentist per town, when you’re not using the NHS dentists yourself?

By the way, that VAT wouldn’t be ring fenced so wouldn’t actually pay for any extra NHS dentists even if such dentists could be recruited, which they can’t.

Would that seem like a good policy?

You are the one that said private schools cover up the failings of state and that the government (Labour) would have to fix state if there were fewer private schools? None of what you are posting makes any sense to me - really struggling to follow your ‘logic’

“You might like to question why Labour have highlighted their cabinets’ education (‘mostly state-educated between 11-16’) on their website.”

It is part of the “spin” that they are working class supposedly, and to prove it to their voter base they are attacking private schools. It is all part of the same spin surely?
However, normally it is not acceptable to make school children your victim so that your spin machine can profit?

Yes of course. Idiotic as they are. I was responding to a PP who said ‘It's upsetting when the only significant difference between the parties is the amount of money blown on their education’ - this is what Labour have done. This will be part of their legacy, as well as victimising thousands of school children, as you say.

This Labour Government is also going for state academies trying to change the rules over teacher pay and qualifications to supposedly even the playing field but the likely outcome, is even less teachers (and especially, even less experienced teachers) in the state sector.
It is really sad that successive Governments have such low respect for the teaching profession thinking they are just bodies who can be bullied into working somewhere else (eg. Forcing private schools to go bust/make redundancies to cut costs and teachers to move). It is just not how things work in the real world.

People whose choices are curtailed lash out and do the opposite. You can only really take a slice of the pie off people when things are going well. You cannot bully people in a crisis, like the state education teacher retention crisis.

..and they’ve made it harder for parents to get their children out of the obvious chaos their ‘decolonisation of education’ program will cause.

I see it this way: as soon as top Unis run out of PS students, they'll start noticing gaps in state education and demand government to increase quality.
But of course they may start filling gaps with foreign students instead, who knows.

This is like saying I should avoid paying stamp duty by declaring myself homeless so that the LA has to house me!

You can easily avoid paying 20% VAT on fees by using a state school. I easily avoid sin taxes on tobbaco, by not smoking.

Except the quality of state school students is actually very good, and more than capable of thriving at uni. They generally do better than private school students….

Cambridge have already seen this. Hence dropped their ‘state school’ targets last year. Oxford won’t be far behind. Their reputations depend on excellence - not accepting kids with lower grades. This is all up thread somewhere I think.

But the majority of students in uni are from state schools, even at top unis? Only 30% of oxbridge are from private schools- given about 20% of sixth formers are private this means ps students are over represented but hardly dominate uni intake.

You’re forgetting the deleted ones breaking MN talk guidelines. I’ve got better things to do with my time than trawl through threads but feel free to do it yourself.

How many rimes do you have to be told that Oxford and Cambridge don’t give contextual offers?

But they used to have state school admissions targets, which they have scrapped - @Sasskitty is completely accurate

Comparing education tax to tobacco tax, tick! that’s GCSE sociology student politic bingo for me. Who said dry January Saturday nights can’t be fun?

No there isn’t a perfectly good free alternative school for thousands of the children currently in private schools.

Like other posters on these threads, no state school places at all in my area were available to meet my DC’s diagnosed special educational needs and disabilities, and social emotional and mental health needs, The wait was months to years for a place. My DC was already out of school for months and in no form of education at all. Again, this is very common among kids with SEND. I know several other families trying to hold down their jobs and manage this.

Everyone (…apart from those shamefully defending this indefensible shitshow… ) acknowledges that the SEND system is broken. Paying for a private school is one way that (only the very luckiest) can try to keep their children in education.

It’s not our fault that for years, central government has failed to fund local government to fund the needs of local children with SEND in line with their existing legal obligations. You will find multiple threads on these struggles on here .

I have voted Labour all my life to try to improve state schools. I was so happy when they won this time, hoping Labour would do something big to help schools and the NHS after 14 years of devastating Tory neglect.

Araminta was spot on talking about the Blairite parents with kids in private schools remembering Blair talking about education, education, education. I am one of those. I had completely missed that education is clearly not what Labour stands for now. I was expecting them to come in with a major policy plan to improve state schools. I assumed this silly VAT manifesto gimmick would be quietly shelved as it is so obviously stupid and counterproductive. I had assumed impact assessment, a Labour policy idea aimed at avoiding discrimination, would be used properly. So I feel really let down.

This policy won’t raise money for state schools, it wil cost them money. There isn’t any new help coming for state schools in general, or for kids with SEND coming out of this. Apart from maybe fewer branded uniform items and a free breakfast at school for kids who don’t need it.. so pathetic that it would be funny it it weren’t so upsetting and wasteful.

Both my kids have SEN and both in Independent schools as state cannot meet need (and have told me so). The VAT rise is a shit show and is causing severe financial stress and I don't know how long we can hang on for. And who ultimately will pay the price? The kids

They both have Foundation Year courses which select students based entirely on contextual offers.

So you are saying state doesn't need improvement after all and DC without SEN are sent to PS just for the "whole experience"?

Woooah, how did you make that leap?

you had previously claimed that if there were fewer privately educated students in uni then somehow uni’s would press the government (somehow??) to improve state? I am just pointing out the flaw(s) in your assertions - the majority of top universities admissions are state educated.

still trying to get to the bottom of your earlier assertion that private schools stand in the way of improving state.

Were you under the impression the only reason anyone sends their DC to PS is that they have a better chance of getting into Oxbridge? Have you not read any of the comments from PS parents? It’s about getting the right eduction option for the child.

Out of solidarity with other parents facing an uncertainty about their kids education I will post again that aside from the SEND education crisis, there are thousands of other kids for whom no state alternative exists locally. This is not about ‘luxury’ or whatever classist nonsense people want to punish schoolkids for.

Perhaps their parents may want for example, a minority faith group religious education: Muslim, Jewish, Quaker or Catholic for example. With no state alternative locally.
Parents may want a single sex education for their child. Many of the few remaining single-sex state schools are selective, and not every child is going to pass the exam for that. While many LAs don’t have any state single sex schools left at all.

Or parents might want a specialist skill based school around their child’s exceptional talent in sport, music or dance etc. Or parents want a school that has a specific curriculum based on other minority philosophies or values like Steiner, Waldorf etc schools. All schools without state school equivalent. Would posters rather the taxpayer paid to set up equivalents to these perfectly reasonable school choices, run by the local authority.
No?

Then maybe it’s better for the government to not whack on the full 20% VAT plus the changes to NI and business mid year.

This policy is going to make these small and often specialist private schools not just even less affordable for many current and future pupils apart from the very wealthiest (who by and large do not want to send their kids to these small, interest private schools). The combination of these policies is also going to threaten the existence of these schools at all. Many of them will close.

Which is why there are 4 legal challenges (3 x English + 1 x Scottish). At least the courts have to listen, unlike BP + Labour. This gives the hardest hit kids the chance to state their case, a chance Labour denied them because they refused to engage.

I’m sure you realise that it’s much much harder to get an A if you have been in state education your whole life, compared to private , or grammar, education.
Young people’s grades are elevated by attending private or grammar schools compared to the local bog standard comp.
It doesn’t mean the comp student is less bright, just that they are less privileged.
Private school parents need to ask themselves honestly if they really believe their child would have got such high grades had they not gone to private school. I strongly suspect the true answer is no, they wouldn’t.
My children, at state school are very bright. However they spent much of their first few years at secondary without a maths teacher - they were sat in the gym and supervised by office staff. There was little teaching done, staff were mainly trying to stop all hell breaking loose from disruptive kids. My daughter said the main aim of kids in her English class was to get a desk out of the fire door each lesson.
How is an A achieved by my daughter comparable to an A from a student at a private school who, I presume, actually received teaching during their time at secondary? My daughter is surely the higher achiever.

Plus there is a strong possibility that more legal suits could come from Yr 11 + 13 kids who face not being able to sit GCSE + A levels due to this coming in mid-year. Being forced out of your school in Yr 11 + 13 ie exam years as a direct result of government policy could be an interesting one