private school staff fee reductions - place refused - discrimination?

[frenchlion]

OK; so I work in a fee paying school which offers staff discounts. The policy say "We off staff discounts depending on length of service, up to 2 years, 20%, between 2 and 5 years, 50 %, after 5 years, 70%"

A few (not many) staff have dc in the school (which goes from nursery all the way up to secondary).

In the primary school, there are about 30 members of staff - all but 3 are women of child-bearing age!

Anyway, a colleague applied for her twins to join the preschool. They were invited in for a trial day. Her dh had to take the day off work to bring them in. She was told that they did well, and that they were a good fit, but actually too many staff have places in the nursery/preschool, so on those grounds, her dc were refused places.

She is really angry, as the above doesn't suggest any limitations, why invite them in in the 1st place (they know how many staff kids attend!), she feels it is also discriminatory as they were turned down, not on ability, but purely on the grounds that she is staff. There is another member of staff for example with dc in the nursery, who only works for 8 hours a week, yet she works full time, and with 10 years service, is one of the longest serving members of staff there!

She wants to seek legal advice. I'm curious - what do you think?

Oh, and the boss cleared off on holiday and left the secretary to tell her - by the time boss gets back, the contracts will be being sent out, so too late.....

A school does something to benefit its staff as a perk and someone wants to take legal action because they've been told no?

I'd remove the possibity of the perk for all future employees if that occured.

Dozer - see Tommy's reponse!

Is your concern also that they could seek to remove the perk from staff with DC at the school on a discount?

That could happen at anytime though, and would be down to the policy being too costly, not your colleague taking legal action.

it'd seem unfair to not admit a longstanding staff member's DC and then give places (albeit at smaller) discounts to new staff.

Sounds like the cost of the current policy is more than the school is prepared to pay.

I think the main problem is a perk to some staff but not all, while you my offer gym membership to staff and later withdraw it you might get away with it but if the benefit applies to 90% of staff but just 10% of long serving staff have benefit withdrawn whilst it still looked to the others it is going to cause resentment at best.
While folks would not like complete withdrawal of benefits at least it is the same for all

I'm not concerned at all. It's not for me. Doesn't, and probably will never affect me. Was just looking for advice, thoughts, comments, experience from others for my colleague's situation. And again, I thank you all for that.

I wasn't sure that the question to me here means "That's a great discount, ET. Do you take it into account when you post about remuneration ratios?"

You might mean when I've posted I earned 10x my ex eventually - at that ratio stage our son was beyond prep age so the perk wasn't relevant and when we were first married in the first year we each earned the same and paid 50% of our net pay on childcare for the baby (another topic again).

We had the perk from age 4 - 12. Mind you we had a lot of other children to pay fees for so it has still been an expensive 30 continuous years I have been paying school fees (last term ever is coming up although university for 2 will not be cheap).

Yeah, the possibility of removing the perk completely had occurred to me as well - it might be tempting for the employer now even if it does raise concerns about financial viability especially if they have turned down two recently. They'd have to change the terms and conditions of employment though if it was a contractual obligation, although if it was an obligation then they couldn't turn it down? More of a salary sacrifice type of benefit perhaps?

I wonder if you could claim custom and practice? Previously staff have been able to use this benefit with no ceiling/restriction/bar on numbers.

Whatever the contractual status of the reduced fees, it has been handled badly and dented the staff morale. If the nursery was full though, it wouldn't be enforceable (the reduced fees place, although there seems to be no doubt in this case that the places were available) but I still don't think it is constructive dismissal unfortunately.

By the way any teachers interested in school fee perks and tax rules might be interested in this below which I just read today. It looks like in 2021 there will be higher tax but I haven't read the rules- they might exclude teachers.

"What are the new rules?
Under the current system, millions of employees receive company benefits -‘benefits in kind’ – that include anything from childcare and health insurance to mobile phones and gym memberships. Employees are given the option of salary sacrifice schemes – which allow them to give up part of their salary in exchange for these benefits.

From April employees will no longer have this option. These ‘benefits in kind’ are to become part of the employee’s salary and will therefore be taxed. The employer will have to pay income tax and National Insurance on these benefits.

The main benefits to be affected by the new rules will be gym memberships, health checks, mobile phone contracts, car parking and death in service.

The benefits that are protected until 2021 include accommodation arrangements, school fees and low emission cars.

The benefits that are exempt from these new policies include pensions, advice on pensions, childcare costs and the Bike to Work scheme."

I work in a private school with staff discounts. Fees are deducted from net salary though, not gross, so won't be affected by the changes to benefits in kind.

Marmitelover55 - fairly certain though that you would be deemed to have earned the amount of the discount in addition to what you actually earn (eg. if fees are £20k and you have 20% discount it is deemed you earn an additional £4k and will be taxed on that)

I think the Pepper v Hart decision years ago held that the marginal cost of a free place for a teacher was 15% of the fees so as long as the teacher was charged 15% of the fees or more then that was NOT an ordinary benefit in kind actually.

As I posted above school fee benefits are changing as to their taxation but I suspect that might be where your employer posts you abroad or you are in the army or a big company and board directors get free school fees perks. It is certainly something which I expect the NUT will have looked into in regards to the future changes and whether they apply to the school fee perk for teachers.