Why are private school parents punished when they remove a financial burden from the taxpayer?

[FishPhoods]

My DC do not go to private school, if I could afford it I would.

However - this policy makes no sense to me. I'm a TA. The school I work in has huge class sizes and is overstretched.

Starmer is saying that the VAT he proposes to add to private school fees will be channelled into the state education system. However we use the facilities of the local private school (swimming pool, sports fields) two days per week for no charge. If they lose their charitable status we lose access to that.

Also any money gained from VAT will potentially be outweighed by more pupils joining from the local private - or pupils who would have potentially gone but now won't. It costs the taxpayer roughly £8k per year to educate a child in the state system - we won't gain anything like that from VAT to cover the "new" pupils we acquire from the private system.

The way I see it if the rich can afford to or choose to pay for their children's education it's one less burden on the taxpayer. And making schools more expensive just makes them more elitist surely? Financially I just don't see how this makes any sense - is it just a populist thing as people generally feel aggrieved that some have the option of private education when some don't, so it's a way to punish them?

After adding the VAT, the private schools will not disappear but convert to state schools, with all facilities etc. I work in a few private schools as a tutor. The leadership is incompetent and the students who go there are usually failed by the parents as well as the school management. A lot of them would be better off in a state school with a few hours of private tuition on a side if they need to catch up.

This again- you couldn’t be more wrong. The numbers will not be spread thinly across the country, there will be real problems in some particular areas where schools close and local state schools are full. In some area there will be minimal affect and in others it will be massively disruptive for ALL chikdren.

@Thisagainandagain well said

The fact that Labour has chosen to try to fund the (very laudable and much needed) increase in state school budgets with this tax is telling. They could have done it by increases in the higher bands of income tax - truly progressive and better tested in terms of revenue impacts. They have chosen a divisive, untested and non-progressive route.

On a related note, Wes Streeting this week referred to people using private health as "NHS refugees, not traitors)... funny same does not apply to private education. I assume completely unrelated to the fact that he has received 175k in donations from donors linked to private health provision.

Sorry, still don't get it - do labour want to close down private schools or keep them going and use vat to subsidise state schools?

You can't do both (no private schools = no vat)

Indeed

let’s not forget that Keir and his wife have both benefitted from attending private schools

Most independent schools do not have a surplus of cash…. So will have to pass the 20% on to parents. A proportion of whom will end up having to leave… which will then cost the state more … in my area the state schools are jam packed and struggling financially so adding e.g 100+ extra pupils in each year group will not be welcomed:( Eton etc will be unaffected. Doesn’t make sense as a policy but I guess Labour feel their ‘anti private school’ stance will win votes even if ends up costing the country even more money. Madness!

How about asking the actual parents using the state system to contribute the “much needed funds”? Why not means test the families using the schools and those that earn over a certain amount (say £100k, of which there are many!) to make a yearly contribution for their own children’s full time education? Rather than asking those who don’t even use the system to cough up the money on your behalf? It is done in many other progressive countries!

Quite the opposite. It will take out those like me who are pretty ordinary..single parent, work FT who scrapes fees together for my ND children so their needs can be met. It will leave those on six figure salaries who can afford the rise. It will increase not decrease elitism and the money raised will be a tiny drop in the ocean even IF it does all go straight to state schools, which it almost certainly won't.

You want to level the playing field far more? Take the 93% of kids in state and distribute them by demographic band and SATS results around the LA. No more catchments. Break up the selection by postcode and dilute the effect of "problem" kids from disaffected and unengaged parents. We keep being told the private kids will somehow magically improve state by their presence. Surely this would do the same, but many fold? Would only need a decent transport scheme and a government with the balls to do it. It would have a much greater levelling effect but would be vastly unpopular so obvs won't happen.

I have never heard of state schools using private school sports facilities in my area. Many of the state secondaries have their own pool and if they don't they use the council pools.primary schools use council pools too, and have their own fields. T he very few that don't, have use of a local community or sports club fields.

The point of the policy is not to punish private school parents.The school do not need to increase their fees, they could cut their spend per child instead.The vat given to state schools will allow them to increase their spend per child, and be a start towards closing the gap.
The cry baby parents don't want their darlings to give up a little for state school pupils.boo hoo!!

You show that you know nothing about most private schools.

Cut spending per child? Done ages ago. I've had kids in the sector for 15 years. Our school has gone from class sizes of 15 to 25 already. We've already got rid of so many staff that the remaining ones are stressed and burnt out.

BTW am not a cry baby parents whining about my little darlings. They're grown up so the policy won't get me.

How about state school parents take responsibility and contribute to their kids' education? Why do you think someone else should pay for their education?

Then your area is not representative of most. No secondaries or primaries round here have a pool.

Surely you can appreciate that your so-called solution for not punishing private school parents of spending less per kid does exactly that - whether they get the same service for more money or the same fees for less service, it is still a penalty.

As for your last sentence, it says more about you and your level of argumentation than about the parents that oppose this policy. Parents opposing the policy are not inherently cry babies and already give up things (in the form of general taxation) for state school children.

For the record, I would not oppose Labour increasing income tax in a way that would impact me financially as much as this policy would do - so the pecuniary aspect is not the issue. It is the fact that the policy is ill-thought, unnecessarily divisive, with questionable impact and not an example of progressive taxation.

Wow how do they cope having 25 in a class. It must be horrendous for them. The sacrifices made.

I need new strings for the tiny violin

So we shouldn’t tax a Mercedes gas guzzler because you don’t want to use the bus?

Good analogy. I must remember that one.

I wouldn’t if I were you…. It only shows you have little to no understanding of the nuances here! Gas guzzlers as you call them (!!) harm the environment… last yi
e I chceked, choosing to pay for your own child’s education (with your own money!) did not harm anyone!

The gas guzzler gets taxed on account of their use of roads and the environmental externality imposed.
And most people that use public transport actually contribute to its cost when purchasing a ticket or travel card.

whether they get the same service for more money or the same fees for less service, it is still a penalty

Thats an argument against VAT in general, not VAT in particular. You have a £10k budget for a car then you need to buy a car that costs £8K ex VAT or increase your budget to £12500. You want a new pair of winter boots and you have £150 so you can only afford boots that cost £120 ex VAT. You get a toasted sandwich for lunch for £5 but decide against spending the extra £1 on a bar of chocolate - £1 goes straight to HMRC. You buy £50 worth of pizzas for a party - it either costs £62.50 or it costs you £50 but you only have £40 worth of pizza. Your friend has a baby and you her buy a 3 pack of baby socks from Louis Vuitton for £350 - you don’t pay VAT because they are VAT exempt as it’s an essential purchase which is a blessing as £420 is obviously silly for a 3 pack of baby socks. VAT sucks, especially at 20%, but everyone is in the same sucky boat, making choices and budgeting according to what things cost inc VAT. There is no point handwringing and saying “oh but without the VAT I would have been able to get that one instead, or save money”. Of course you could - so could everyone.

I do not disagree with your comment - my comment refers to the specific point that what is purportedly a way to avoid a penalty is just another "penalty".

What would be the problem that this would solve? How to increase the state school tax burden by £4.5 billion and put 80 thousand people out of work. The problem seems better than the solution

Please show your workings out. Thanks

Not every parent values education and certainly not every parent values education to the same degree. Some parents send their child to school only because it's illegal not to or to get them away from the house.
If government made it optional to attend school many won't.
The welfare state reduces the incentives to build human capital. This grasping for other people's wealth as the means of removing others from poverty instead of creating more of the opportunities that create wealth ie learning skills to drive innovation, duty, hardwork etc.