Whitehall “braced for private schools collapse” 6

[ICouldBeVioletSky]

Continuation of previous threads to discuss VAT on independent school fees.

I think the resentful links to the tiny number of state schools remaining with reasonable sporting facilities marks a new low in both tone and accuracy (as some weren’t even state schools).

Now I can see where the (thankfully, relatively few) pupils who mock state schools, complete with mockney accents, get their attitudes from.

It was an absolute joy on one of these occasions to see one of the most popular and bright Year 9 girls pipe up to say that she used to go to a state school.

A very brave and mature girl, possibly ahead of a few on here.

And talented and hard working teens do deserve to be able to develop their sporting abilities, regardless of their parents’ wallets. I wish we had more state schools like the elite sports school linked to.

I agree on good state schools, then I agree on not charging VAT which will discourage bursaries.

Wherever dc are I want the system to do well with talent. We use state so no mocking here.

@EasternStandard ,

I generally agree with you and VAT hasn’t seemed to raise much money.

And it was vindictive to make it effective immediately. No child should have to be yanked out of their school because of it.

OTOH, it is just a consumption tax. We don’t have a wealth tax and we even have the absurd CGT exemption on primary residences with no cap.

I guess an alternative would have been to just nudge the top income tax rate to 46 or 47%, which actually would have been a better revenue raiser.

But it isn’t an ‘attack on education’ or anything absurd like that. As I said previously, it just nudges its affordability a tad further up the income scale than it already is. For the majority of private school parents, it is hardly noticeable.

I agree for some it is hardly noticeable and maybe even a nice way to make a school more elite.

It still shifts more burden on to state, takes away some bursaries and does damage a sector. It would any sector.

I agree with some of what you say, but I’d be really happy if this policy was scrapped at next GE.

ETA the more elite people are probably a small minority.

What a condescending way of conflating two different 'sins' @newbutoldfather. You're not a teacher expounding to children here.

@twistyizzy has included a couple of private schools in her list. I just did a Google on state boarding schools and Windermere came up as a sponsored link - so I suspect marketing departments and late night posting are to blame for her mistake.

But there are certainly state schools which provide facilities to a small number of privileged state students which are ridiculously out of whack with all other state schools. And out of whack with what it's reasonable to ask other people to pay for, for your kids. (All state provision is paid for by taxpayers, so must be reasonable within that context)

The Royal Alexandrea and Albert has (from their website): The Equestrian Centre at the Royal Alexandra and Albert School is renowned for being a relaxed and welcoming venue with approachable and experienced staff. The Stables boast a double American barn that houses 20 horses, tack rooms, classroom, feed room, kitchen and office. There is a floodlit 40x50m outdoor sand school and a 20x30m indoor sand school. The Centre is set in the picturesque heart of Surrey within the grounds of the School.

Their website also points out that as a state boarding school, our school is exempt from the new VAT levy on school fees. Flexible boarding costs £2.1k for Junior school or £2.6k for senior school.

Lucky kids.

It's not at all a 'bad attitude' to point out that it's completely immoral for the state to fund this kind of luxury for a small number of state funded students, paid for out of the state education budget... which they claim is so strapped for cash that they must tax us an additional punishment tax on the education we pay for ourselves. 'Resentful' - yes. Justifiably.

As for you conflating that with mocking state students, that is a new low on your side 'in both tone and accuracy'. No one here has done that. You've made it up. Many of the posters here have kids in both sectors.

Completely obvious attempt to shut us up by shaming us about some heinous made up crime. Won't work.

The VAT is a heavy burden for the majority of parents in the private sector. Hence 13000 have already left and more will leave (100% certainty).

For a small minority, the VAT is just some extra money they have to pay out. How they feel about it, even if they have the money, difficult to know.

It is offensive to charge VAT on education when all other civilised countries don’t so I suspect even some rich people will take note of that and use it politically. It is a gift for a party like Reform to have a whole lot of rich people hate Labour.

For the majority of private school parents, it is hardly noticeable.

Is this fact or just opinion? I strongly suspect the latter.

Families like mine absolutely are significantly affected, because we went to the private sector because the state didn’t offer an education to our disabled children. The Tories denied my child a state education for three years. Labour are seemingly doing nothing to improve provision for children like him.

@EasternStandard ,

The majority by most people’s standards are elite. Posters here like to conflate the number of pupils with number of schools.

So, although there are a lot of tiny cheap schools, the majority of medium to large schools are, by most people’s standards, elite, and, hence, the majority of pupils.

There is some real research on this. I link one such paper.

francisgreenspersonalwebpage.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/henseke_et_al_ed_econ_2021.pdf

For the majority of private school parents, it is hardly noticeable.

What complete nonsense. At what income level do you think £4k per child per year is hardly noticeable? And what proportion of private school parents are above that income level. You claim to use figures and logic: do a few calculations on net income levels and apply the tiniest bit of analysis to what you find.

To get you started, here is a graph which shows that 50% of private school parents are below the 90th income decile. In the UK, the average household income for the top 10% is approximately £70,900 per year

@tortoise18 @Newbutoldfather
It is irrelevant in my opinion to discuss what the top independent schools offer. The people who can afford to send their children to these schools are more likely to be able to afford the VAT rise. If they cannot, then they will send their children to cheaper private schools.
The people who are affected are the people who are just about affording the cheaper private schools. They will be now be forced out by the VAT rise. They may actually live in a modest house in a not particularly expensive area and the local state school is so bad that they have ended up paying for a few years of private school.
@Newbutoldfather You refer to a brave Year 9 at your school saying she went to a state school before. At my son's school this is just the norm because it is one of the cheaper private schools. Many many students in his year went to state school before. This shows the difference between the type of private school you work at and the norm across the country. Do you work in London or the South East by any chance? Not everywhere is like London or the South East. Many private schools outside London and the South East are cheaper and serve a different clientele. There is also a big difference in the performance of London state schools and other places in the country, which means there are more pressing reasons to send your child to private school other than facilities e.g. to avoid behaviour issues, constant cover teachers, bullying etc.

Many can’t afford private, this tax makes it more elite.

That’s not a good thing either.

@strawberrybubblegumhas put up figures to question how many wouldn’t mind at all.

More students than Labour anticipated have moved across already.

There isn’t really anything left to promote this policy. I hope it’s a four / five year thing then scrapped.

YY re the comment from newbutoldfather referencing the “brave Year 9” admitting that they used to go to a state school, as if that’s incredibly unusual. I find that comment utterly bewildering. There are many in ours that came from state - my child is one of the many!

@strawberrybubblegum ,

I am far from convinced that pie chart is remotely accurate. It is one guy who has chosen to ‘represent’ data and I am not sure it is correct at all. I will check properly later.

And it is not just about income, but about wealth. Many wealthy prefer capital gains to income, or leave dividends in a company.

I post again a relevant paper showing the very strong correlation between housing wealth and private schooling.

francisgreenspersonalwebpage.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/henseke_et_al_ed_econ_2021.pdf

Even in London, as regards some of the very expensive secondary private school, it is a myth they all go to preps before. Many go to state primary and then private secondary and the floodgates to go back into State Sixth Form have most definitely been opened now.

So what now your argument is that VAT on private schools is a back door to taxing wealth including housing wealth?
Francis Green is anti private schools, everyone knows that. Just as biased as any other link.
You cannot control how private school parents will behave as a group, following this tax. Those advocating for it, are just aiming at the parent group, and have completely neglected all the staff working there and all the kids with SEND. That is unforgivable and not at all “left” or kind or moral. It is the opposite. They have taken their one world view and aimed incorrectly.

@Araminta1003 ,

‘So what now your argument is that VAT on private schools is a back door to taxing wealth including housing wealth?
Francis Green is anti private schools, everyone knows that’

It is just a consumption tax that will hit the wealthy. It is not a back door to anything. It is what it is.

And the paper I referenced discusses its data sources at length and is properly referenced. It has been cited many times by actual academics. It is totally different to the random pie chart on someone’s blog.

If the agreement is that it doesn’t raise much money, and state doesn’t improve I don’t see why you’d have the policy at all.

It just has downsides which is why so few do it anyway.

I’m not sure what the relevance of your first question is? Any university where interviewing takes place and/or applications are individually considered by academics rather than administered centrally (in which case it’s pretty much always grades based) is relevant to this discussion. That’s not just Oxford and Cambridge, though people are so obsessed with Oxbridge that they tend to be the only ones scrutinised. And as I explained in a separate post, it doesn’t matter all that much in these universities where academics (in my view, mostly quite rightly) retain control over admissions at the individual level what the stated policy of the university is or what the centralised portion of the admissions system does to assess applicants according to background. What matters most is whether those academics are under institutional pressure to admit fewer private school students (at Oxbridge they definitely are, it varies at other universities) and/or are ideologically opposed to private schooling. In those cases, candidates who are at private schools for A Levels (but not the rest of their school careers) sometimes are judged more harshly because admitting tutors are actively trying to keep the number of private school admissions down. Those for whom the issue is ideological may also look for reasons to exclude students who moved to state school for A Level, but those who are just massaging the figures will not make any such adjustment, because their goal is simply to ensure that when their admissions stats come out they look like they’ve taken a ‘good’ proportion of state school students. For some, the students who move for A Level are a real win: all the advantages of a fuller education without a bunch of tut tutting from left wing newspapers and colleagues!
My guess as to why moving to a comprehensive appears to impose a disadvantage is that in many cases those students didn’t get in to selective state schools or were massaged out by the private schools after GCSE to protect their A Level grade and university admissions stats. In other words, they were not performing at a high level anyway.
I actually agree with you that sometimes the system, and indeed the individual academics in charge of admissions, is earnestly attempting to adjust for educational and familial advantage in order to pick out raw talent rather than bought polish. In practice, though, this is incredibly hard to do, and the various metrics provided and approaches used end up being extremely blunt instruments. And at least as often what’s happening is straightforward discrimination. From a university excellence perspective I think this whole social engineering attempt is a disaster, frankly. The reality is that we’ll educated students simply are better students who have the knowledge and the skills to learn more quickly. Universities end up spending a lot of time and money trying to help students who theoretically are academically as capable but come from less educationally advantaged backgrounds, and it doesn’t always pay off. Some students simply end up feeling stressed and out if their depth while the university offers them more and more help and increasing mitigations. It’s not a happy picture.

This is right. This policy will not affect the genuinely very wealthy one bit. Generational Etonians buying access to a social network (mostly a myth anyway) are not going to be priced out by VAT. It will mostly affect families scrabbling to send their bullied or SEND kids to a school where they can access education without suffering sensory overload from larger classes or getting beaten up or socially excluded. The reality is that privilege comes in lots of forms, and being confident, physically capable, and able to cope with large groups and noisy rooms is one form of privilege that means those children blessed with it can thrive in busy, relatively poorly run state schools. I think the VAT policy in its existing form is absolutely gross. Governments should seek to widen access to better and more varied forms of education to maximise the number of children thriving, not shut down as many possibilities for as many people as possible so that as many as possible struggle.

@RoseAndGeraniumyes you’ve said it well.

OTOH, it is just a consumption tax. We don’t have a wealth tax and we even have the absurd CGT exemption on primary residences with no cap.

It's a consumption tax, but with a difference. That if people choose not to buy, then the state must instead fork out £8k per year for their child.

The first £8k of fees is a direct subsidy from us to the state.

In order for a 20% tax on the remainder of the fees to be higher than the £8k parents are subsidising the state already, fees would need to be £48k.

Even St Paul's 'only' charge £30k for day fees. 20% VAT on the amount above state school subsidy (ie charging VAT on the part of education not every UK child is getting) would come to £4.4k. Significantly less than the £8k the parents are already subsidising the state.

You could argue that boarding takes fees above that 'net gain to the government' level. But even hotels have a long term rate, where from day 29 onwards, VAT is not charged on the accommodation, but meals, drinks, and other services remain VATable. And of course, excluding state boarding makes a mockery of the argument for VAT on boarding.

It's completely obvious that there is no reasonable justification for taxing private education, and it's purely a punitive, ideological tax. Which will harm children. Fuckers.

I'd be OK with getting rid of the CGT exemption on primary residences, BTW. So long as it applied to all primary residences, and didn't become yet another way to tax people in the expensive SE more.

And so long as it was sophisticated enough to discount inflation. Capital gains is lower than income tax to allow for that - but care would need to be taken that it genuinely did, even when inflation was high.

And obviously stamp duty would need to go. You can't keep the extra tax in top. That would remove the serious restrictions on moving in the SE where stamp duty is so high and takes no account of how long you've had the house.

It would also stop the fudging where landlords can avoid cgt by claiming a property to be their main residence for a short time.

And it would hopefully cool the property market. The disparity in housing cost across the UK is an incredibly difficult challenge, which harms everyone.

So I'm OK with a cgt so long as it is on all property, is discounted against inflation, and replaces stamp duty.

I just did the calculation on our own house purchases. The stamp duty we paid on our current house was 60% of what we would have paid with a 20% CGT on the inflation-adjusted increase on our previous house.

And we now can't move again for another 15 years, or else we'll have to pay the same again.

People like me in the SE are already paying that tax. Just no other bugger is.

I agree with @strawberrybubblegumsome are missing the increased state burden element.

Just on the Oxbridge thing, I know it is still an obsession on MN, but in the real world, a lot of the London kids are more focussed on eg Imperial now and a lot of the public school kids were focussed US way. The latter probably has changed dramatically with Trump’s antics. However, in our grammar school it is Imperial that is the most sought after right now, definitely not Cambridge. You see when they stop taking eg Etonians it eventually somehow becomes less desirable and now Imperial is beating Cambridge, in the league tables. It is just the way things work here. A lot of private and grammar kids now think that Oxbridge is woke, whatever that means and are actively avoiding it, even if they have the grades. The private school kids even top performers who cannot make US are also often preferring Durham, Edinburgh and Bristol etc. - once employers stop giving jobs to those straight out of Oxbridge doing the extra amount of work becomes pointless. And the kids see that straight away.