Whitehall “braced for private schools collapse” 7

[ICouldBeVioletSky]

Continuation of previous threads discussing VAT on independent school fees. The thread title is a headline from a Times article last autumn.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5237575-whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5242586-whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse-2
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5280646-whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse-3
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5301690-whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse-4
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5317397-whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse-5
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5337850-whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse-6

Whilst I believe that with private school VAT the government are using tax as a subterfuge to deliberately remove education from children - which does go against their human rights

It would be a breach of their human rights if the government was trying to deprive children of any education. However, the right to an education does not give anyone a right to a specific type of education. The government could decide to shut down all independent schools completely if they wanted and, provided they could accommodate all the displaced pupils at state schools, it would not be a breach of their human rights.

I know that there are those on the left who think that independent schools should be banned. However, this is a subject where I agree with Tony Blair. We should not ban them or try to shut them down. We should make state schools so good that there is no academic advantage to be gained by going to an independent school. The gap has already shrunk a lot, with many state schools outperforming independent schools at GCSE if results are adjusted to reflect socioeconomic background. It is a shame that the current Education Secretary seems determined to strip away some of the policies that have led to better performance by state schools.

My personal view is that VAT on independent schools is a bad policy which won't raise as much as the government claims and could end up costing more. It is a return to the politics of envy.

30% @RareGoalsVerge ? You think education is a social ill, which should be taxed like cigarettes or alcohol?

Worse for society than luxury cars (20% VAT)? Bearing in mind that cars cause 7% of all accidental deaths in the UK, significant nhs costs and reduced quality of life due to both RTAs and pollution and contribute to global warming. But private education is worse!

Those private school netball teams and orchestras must be causing some seeerious harm! 😂

And as for "fairer": sure, split school fees into the £8k per year "basic education" element the state pays for each UK child and a "luxury upgrade. But then at least have the decency to recognise that a pretty significant "quid pro quo" would be appropriate to make up for the £8k per year the parents are paying instead of taxpayers.

That saving private school parents are giving the state is much more than any VAT or reduced business rates, so let's knock that off if we're actually being "fair". And certainly not charging extra VAT on the "basic education" element which the parents are already subbing the taxpayer. Fucking disgrace

Education should never be confused as ‘luxury’ - any additional investment in education of our future workforce should be incentivised rather than taxed.

by all means tax people on the economic outcome of an excellent education (income) where relevant but education can never be so good it is considered excessively luxurious.

Very true @Labraradabrador .

In order to not be utterly exploitative, education should in fact be tax-free, and with the standard tax-payer-funded £8k education contribution given regardless of where the education is delivered.

Instead, the tax-payer subsidy is withheld, the rest comes from taxed income (generally at least higher rate) and then VAT is applied to the whole lot, including on the amount the tax-payer covers for every other child. All out of taxed income.

So a £20k education costs £39k of income. Only £12k actually goes towards the child's additional education. £15k is taken in income tax. £8k of tax-payer funding is withdrawn. £2.5k VAT on the £12k extra ecuation. Plus £1.5k VAT on the extra money parents pay to make up for the withheld tax-payer funding (fuckers).

That's £27k going directly to the government just in order to be allowed to spend an extra £12k on your child's education. (And a chunk of that £12k is going on business rates and income tax on the teacher's salaries...)

Despite as @Labraradabrador saying, that any financial benefit the child gets later in life from their education will be taxed progressively as usual.

It is so, so despicable.

Thank you all for your explanations of the legal situation around this faith school familes’ challenge, which are very helpful. I appreciate the worked examples of the tax situation too.

I guess the apparent legal hopelessness is why I hadn’t heard anything speculating on this challenge in the wider media until this result has been reported, if it was always doomed to fail.

As a parent of DC with SEND needs, looking to challenge the LA’s mendacious assertion that the DC can attend any mainstream school
-despite professional evidences to the contrary
-despite the DC very damaging actual experience of this
-despite the local area schools not yet tried stating they can’t meet the DC’s need…

..my question is where does this lack of applicable human rights leave anyone’s DC when the prevailing state education on offer aren’t accessible to them?

Mine literally can’t physically enter; remain in or be in a calm fit state to learn anything in the noisy busy spaces of the large/standard size schools that the LA has proposed. Result is huge dysregulation quickly resulting in total non attendance. The LA simply says, their view remains that any mainstream will do.

Home education is not an option for us. A very small quiet school is. But the state doesn’t offer that. only the private sector does.

So I do have a new found appreciation of the feelings and case of the parents who want a specific religious education because socially and culturally they feel their child can’t access any other kind. Presumably the DC would be highly isolated among their community by having to attend a non faith specific school.

If the prevailing state mainstream offer does not work for your child needs such that they would struggle to learn there. ( which must include social needs surely in law if not spiritual/moral ) then legally what do parents do?

It seems inconsistent that the state provides religious or SEND specialist schools, implying some acceptance of differences being fair enough to be met. But then if even that specificity isn’t enough, it’s just tough luck. Even though the end result is exactly the same, a child who can’t go to school.

If a child absolutely can’t go to a school because it’s not religious enough, then I would expect the faith group in question to come up with its own solution - they could open a VA school and agree to comply with Ofsted inspections. Or charitably fund a private school with low or no fees from tithes or similar.

I do have sympathy with the SEND issue though and think children who can’t attend large mainstreams should absolutely recieve funded other provision.

This case was always pretty vexatious. The QCs must have seen the private school parents coming a mile off , happily telling them that the had a chance of success, whilst knowing they had none. How can something that most of the population cannot access be any part of a human right?!

I am also convinced that the judiciary are happy to carry out the will of the government in this type of political case.

(A big example was HMRC vs Ingenious Media, a (legal) tax avoidance scheme. Despite this scheme being structured in a similar way to many agricultural land purchase schemes, which had never been challenged and HMRC failing in any number of ways, being time barred for one, they still won at every level in court.)

But, back to the main thrust of this thread, the state should provide every child with suitable education. Private SEN schools are so profitable that they are now mostly owned by private equity companies. This often seems to happen when the private sector provides but bills the government. The government paid £2 bio of schools fees for children with EHCs in 2022-2023.

The solution isn’t increasing this hugely expensive provision but the state investing in suitable schools. Failing that they should be strongly regulated if they accept any state paid pupils. I suspect that would bring fees down significantly, maybe more than the VAT increase.

There do seem to be a lot of deserving parents on this thread that seem to need EHCs but somehow aren’t able to get one. I really feel for them, but the issue is the lack of EHCs, not VAT.

I agree that it seems odd that these schools and parents were encouraged to take this appeal to court. They were never going to win.

The argument that destroys this policy is the economic one, the counter argument being the ideological one. It depends on which side you come down.

Our income has moved around wildly in the last two years so 3 x kids at private school has seemed v complicated with that VAT. Income is better, eldest off to state sixth form and we have decided that youngest will go to private secondary school(we gamed local system and have been offered place at good state secondary). The clincher for me is the attack on home ed and academies and the fact that 'no coat' Bridget is in charge, I do not trust a curriculum and educational plan run by the current bunch of clowns. A lowest common denominator plain grey one size fits all is very different to what I think school should be.

This is an article by a parent who values a small school for their child, that they pay for, and talking about the impact of closures of other small private schools meaning that class sizes massively grow.
Also mentions the predictable effects on high performing state schools being oversubscribed. Filling up with kids whose parents could have (but fur VAT) afforded private. Is that fair?
I’m still so furious about this policy. its been really bad for some kids and the benefit of it just doesn’t seem tangible anywhere.

I haven’t rtft for a while but hopefully with Starmer going Phillipson will follow. A terrible policy that will be attached to both of them.

Agreed, but who will replace them? What party or prospective education Minister actually does have a decent vision for education, state and private, to vote for?
Universities are also fucked.. just this whole silence around education in general politically.

I would like to see someone informed campaign with a rescue plan on the whole lot of it. Starmer and Phillipson lying about ‘tax breaks’ when they wanted to add a new tax, and then successfully blaming private school parents and private schools for existing, means zero likelihood it will be reversed.

I am a Labour voter but I won’t miss their personal hypocrisy- apparently Bridget Phillipson has never visited a private school in an official capacity as Education Secretary, which should be a grounds for sacking her, but she visits their grounds for personal reasons to play weekend matches with her local hockey team.

You’re welcome

On who, Karl Turner is equally scathing on the VAT nonsense. Perhaps he will come back. They could get him to do something much better for education that a ridiculous spite tax that just closes schools and nothing else.

Labour forget every time that people do not have to pay their spite taxes and are perfectly free to adjust their behaviour not to. I know so many people who took their kids out and I also know a fair few who are going to leave the country if there is a property tax. I know they will act on it. This happens every time you have overtaxation linked to ideology. They forget that others have principles too and won’t pay absurd taxes out of principle either.

I find it completely baffling that the VAT was supposed to be used for improvements to state schools, which hasn’t happened, and that Labour doesn’t seem to have any alternative plan to fund improvements.

I heard that a number of private schools in Cornwall are on the verge of collapse which I don't think is surprising given the cost of living at the moment!

Private schools are collapsing all over the country. It’s really serious. Appalling that these are kids’ schools being shut down, often after centuries, never to return.

What sane government wants to force a good industry like education to contract, or to fail completely?,A tax paying and employment-generating industry that isn’t about the London bubble, is still being deliberately run into the ground; at a time when the UK is desperate for tax take to prop up public services, caused by 14 years of Tory underinvestment.
Burnham’s supposed to be a pragmatist- I wonder what he’s got to say about this horrible farce?

I absolutely agree with Karl Turner on Jury trials. it’s reassuring to me when MPs make themselves a thorn in the side of their own party. Important to have a policy debate within parties.

The whole VAT education thing is just so vindictive and slippery as to what’s been raised in taxes and what it’s being spent on, and what’s the principle the gov is trying to deter. Since we are all made to pay for university and nursery education, why is school age education specifically attracting the new deterrent taxes? The VAT ripple effect is entrenching inequality for bright kids from less well off backgrounds who will now have kids from private schools taking up their sought- after high performing state school places. It will be interesting to see how this has affected state secondaries and sixth form colleges for example.

What do Jude Bellingham and Arthur Fery have in common?!

As the government already explained in the Autumn term before they brought in VAT in January 2025

The independent schools are misappropriating funds.

non means tested blanket staff fee remissions perks and executive salaries.

They were advised to tighten their belts or face the consequences.

Independent schools are facing the consequences of their corrupt behaviour.

📌

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/parenting/5551437-independent-schools-in-2026-are-full-fees-still-worth-paying?reply=153382614

📌

https://www.pepf.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/InvestigatingBursaries_PEPFReport_010425-1.pdf

📌 “despicable”

https://www.pepf.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/InvestigatingBursaries_PEPFReport_010425-1.pdf

@SchoolRunDays - all I heard is that eg Chinese and US and international education groups can buy up some of these schools and asset strip them on the cheap. All just as we predicted!
So job losses and real estate losses, for all of us. Well done Bridget Phillipson, clearly not able to keep up!

For most private schools now, there is no added benefit to having charitable status. Most are run leanly anyway with hardly any profit to pay tax on and the benefit of having business rates relief was removed anyway. So I do not think threatening most private schools with taking away charitable status would lead to anything at all and most cannot fund bursaries anymore, they cannot expect some parents who are struggling to pay for others, And as regards teachers moving to the state sector, well they would have if they wanted to. Most will disappear out of the system entirely. The private school teacher with a PhD in Physics is just going to do something else instead. Just like the academic losing their job since the Government have decided they have it in for universities too.
Just because successive Governments have gotten away with basically bullying mainly female teaching staff in state schools does not mean they will with other parts of the education sector. All that will happen is that they are destroying value for the next generation and something we as a country have been good at.