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?

We do.indeed. They are the gateway to a superior education for children whose parents can't afford private education.

anybody else unimpressed by Labour still holding onto the claim that working people won't see a rise in tax, NI, or VAT?

Either they are prepared to stand by their lie, or they just don't understand that the vast majority of people who choose to send their kids to private schools are working to do so..

Grammar schools do not only take from the area they are located in. Not all pupils going there are from well off middle class families. Also grammar schools do not have higher funding than other secondaries. They also have SEND pupils and FSM pupils. True, there probably isn't a level playing field as some will have been coached. However being intensively coached does not guarantee a high enough mark to gain a place and children can do well without.

Look at the intake though - far lower than average fsm or send, and admittance to grammars disproportionately favours higher income families. They may not have higher funding, but by selecting the easiest to teach children they achieve great outcomes - though not necessarily better for the individual children than they would have achieved in a comp.