Private school : VAT : labour

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I have recently come across this petition. Not sure if many of you have seen this.

https://www.change.org/p/stop-labour-from-adding-20-vat-to-private-school-fees-and-forcing-kids-to-change-schools?recruiter=false&utmsource=shareepetition&utmcampaign=psffcomboshareeinitial&utmmedium=whatsapp&utmmcontent=washarecopy376858822en-GB%3Acv451328&recruiteddbyid=44b8f4b0-d22c-11ee-82d6-61cc5900aa84&shareebanditexp=initial-37685882-en-GB

Yep getting a decent education is an advantage. What parent would purposely disadvantage their child if thei could afford not to? I don't buy it that any parent would do so.
Again, it is easy to judge if you have good stare schools, many areas don't.

There were a couple of posters earlier suggesting that private education wasn't an advantage. I found their assertions rather confusing, probably you did too?

Being born to wealthy parents who send you to state school is an advantage
Being born to university educated parents is an advantage
Being born to 2 parents in full time employment is an advantage
Being born to parents who can afford to live in the catchment area of a good school is an nxadvantage
Going to grammar school is an advantage
Being horn to parents who can afford foreign holidays to cultural places is an advantage
Being born to parents who can afford extra curricular activities is an advantage

Are we looking to end all these advantages too? Because if we are looking to truly end privilege then we shouldn't allow any of the above either.

I was merely potting out that it was a rather odd argument that sending children to private schools was not in order to get them an advantage.

I think probably we are in agreement with that?

An important part of living in a liberal democracy is that minorities are protected from angry jealous majorities by civic institutions, the rule of law, and governing for the whole not the parts - regardless of who voted them in.

Most people when they talk about the advantage of private school mean top jobs ie politicians and the old boys network. That may have been true 30+ years ago but unless you are talking about the likes of Eton etc then there is little career advantage with going private.

Those who can afford to send their children to private schools are exactly who springs to mind when I think of minorities that are in need of protection.

Too bloody right. Just hope Labour don't do a u-turn

The very very small numbers of private school pupils will be very welcome at state schools. It will absolutely not be a problem- there are spaces at state schools. Having motivated children and parents at state schools can only drive up the progress of state schools. It will be a good thing for private school pupils to move to state schools.

Private school parents already own the nice houses in the nice areas.

Private school parents are welcome to spend their money on tutors, I believe a lot already do despite being in private schools. It will make no difference at all to children already in state schools, it will not disadvantage them any further than they already are in comparison to private school pupils.

I'm sure the people who say they have no problem with the VAT will have a problem when all the children who currently go to private schools will suddenly be diverted into the state system and their children's classes will increase in size and house prices will go up even more close to the good schools and the crap schools will get worse because none of the less advantaged children will ever get a look in to the good schools because all the middle class parents who previously used private schools have moved next to the good schools. And so on and so on. VAT on fees will only work if Labour plans to increase funding and school numbers to mop up the kids leaving private schools. Which won't happen obviously. And the private schools will become even more selective and divisive because only the top 0.01% of kids will go to them and still be the ones to get the top jobs...hmmm. Not really the double fingers to the middle classes everyone was hoping is it?

We are talking about very few children. State school will cope with them as they do already with lots of SEN children.
They will receive the same SEN provision as state school SEN children, again levelling the playing field between state school and private school children, including those with SEN.
I have 2 children with SEN who attend state school.

To clarify: we all want the best for our kids. Is that "advantage"? To the extent we get our kids a good start, kind of.

But that's different from what @carmel1974 implied and I was responding to, that "advantage" such as "access to the best jobs" is available at the expense of others. The labour market is only partly a competition; mostly it reflects the human capital our education system gives it.

Education is an investment in human capital. Like other forms of capital, we tax the return on it, in form of future income taxes. You don't pay VAT when you open a cafe or buy a factory, because (1) society values the contribution of the capital you provide and (2) society has decided to tax you when the capital earns you a profit. This is why no country in the world taxes education. See here what happened when Greece tried it. and please let me know what you think.

And my point was it's not zero-sum. I'm supporting my kids education. And through my taxes I'm a disproportionate supporter of state education. I'm not disadvantaging anyone else or causing them to be excluded from future opportunities.

If state schools can be levelled-up I'm all for it. If there's a movement to raise taxes to spend on state schools, I can be persuaded, but that tax ought to get raised in the least harmful / most predictable / least distorting way. As the Greek Marxists kindly showed us, this isn't it.

It’s about levelling the playing field and reducing the advantages that private school children have compared to state school children in regards to education and therefore future.
Personally I think they should get rid of private schools altogether, it would be much fairer.

What else do you want to level-down?

Do homeowners need to watch out? it's totally unfair that some children grow up in houses and others in rented flats.

Do you want to confiscate everyone's pet? growing up with a pet is good for kids, it's totally unfair that some families have a pet.

etc

@ThursdayTomorrow it's so insanely naive to imagine getting rid of private schools or putting VAT on fees will level the playing field in any way. Have you not noticed that our public services are utterly crippled with the people they support as it is? Schools are so chronically underfunded that teachers bring in their own materials and buildings are unsafe.

FWIW I have no skin in the game. My children don't (and won't) go to private school as we can't afford it. But I can certainly see that forcing children out of the private system into the state one is not going to be the great leveller you're hoping for.

They are trying to tax some of the wealthiest and smartest people in the country. I'm sure one the parents will be able to help the school find a loophole look at Starbucks, Amazon, Apple etc

I think we already pay to much tax in this country and another wealth/aspiration tax isn't levelling up it's an attempt to level down

Grammar school heads have already warned of the problems of this.

https://inews.co.uk/news/labour-private-school-tax-wealthy-poorer-children-grammars-2875633

I think we are in agreement then that paying for schooling is paying to get ones children an advantage?

Being born to parents who can afford healthy food, a warm house, extra curricular activities, foreign holidays, books, tutors etc is also an advantage. Why shouldn’t those be penalised through the tax system as well? At what point does an advantage become such that it should be taxed?

When/if labour bring in the VAT on private schools will that mean an end to the charitable status? How does that actually work, will all schools stop on a particular date or is labour proposing a sliding scale of VAT rates? I’ve not really followed this debate until coming across this thread so it may be a very obvious question

It's trying to give them a good start. It's not (as I've tried to be clear) buying them an advantage at the expense of, or that excludes, anyone else.

Or if it is, it's no more so than many characteristics of some state school families: "advantages" that come from a stable family, educated and comfortably-off parents, a few holidays, a home, a pet, a parent who's capable of cooking a decent meal, parents not boozehounds.

Nobody's seeking to level-down any of those attributes, even thought they aren't "available to all", and I hope they don't start.

Although the angry and jealous brigade will probably come for them once they have VAT on private school and realise they are still angry and jealous.

Me, I'm just an economist who wants good schools, and sees no good in this global outlier policy, as I wrote here....comments welcome:

An ill wind that harms state schools too (substack.com)

Hello, Labour have withdrawn the policy of ending charitable status. Charitable status is only "worth" serious ££££ to a small number of schools with large endowments. For the majority it's small change....and some schools aren't charities at all. Most of charitable funds, also, go on bursaries and partnerships, so charitable status (or not) doesn't make a huge difference to feepayers.

VAT is superfically clearer-cut. 20pc on fees for independent schools. You can read here or listen here about some of the myriad implementation challenges.

...is usually the attitude of people complacently thinking majoritarian rule suits them just fine, for now, not realising that it's up for grabs whether you'll be in a minority one day.

*Being born to wealthy parents who send you to state school is an advantage
Being born to university educated parents is an advantage
Being born to 2 parents in full time employment is an advantage
Being born to parents who can afford to live in the catchment area of a good school is an nxadvantage
Going to grammar school is an advantage
Being horn to parents who can afford foreign holidays to cultural places is an advantage
Being born to parents who can afford extra curricular activities is an advantage

Are we looking to end all these advantages too? Because if we are looking to truly end privilege then we shouldn't allow any of the above either.*

Some people won't be happy until we're all ameba again

The very very small numbers of private school pupils will be very welcome at state schools. It will absolutely not be a problem- there are spaces at state schools. Nobody knows anything about how many pupils will move. The most optimistic semi-formed estimate is from the IFS, who say 20-40,000. other estimates say up to 135,000. Nobody really has a clue.

It's flat out untrue that there are places at state schools. Not only are some schools full and oversubscribed, there are boroughs and even counties where they struggle to accommodate even one home-mover, let alone give them a choice. And nobody, even the rather optimistic IFS, claims to predict where pupil migration will happen or how it maps to state school capacity.

Having motivated children and parents at state schools can only drive up the progress of state schools. It will be a good thing for private school pupils to move to state schools. Can you explain precisely how this works? Do you have any evidence? Do "motivated children and parents" drive up the progress of state schools today, or do they buy catchment areas and tutoring? do you assume affluent ex-private school families will behave differently to affluent state school families?

Private school parents are welcome to spend their money on tutors, I believe a lot already do despite being in private schools. It will make no difference at all to children already in state schools, it will not disadvantage them any further than they already are in comparison to private school pupils. Now this makes sense! Affluent families will continue to buy better education, it will continue to do no harm to other children. But it won't raise VAT revenue, it will mean they demand those unfunded non-existent state school places, and it will give those higher earners the opportunity to consider whether they need to work so hard and pay so much tax to pay for the education of others.