Reduce or remove Staff discounts at Independent Schools.

[SchoolRunDays]

Historically staff at fee paying independent schools have received significant discounts on fees for their own children (I’ve heard ranging from 10% discount up to 85%)

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/26/private-schools-make-cuts-state-teachers-vat-raid-reeves/

At the independent school my daughter attends the discount for staff is 50% of the fee so if monthly fee is £2000 staff will pay £1000 if academic year costs £24000 staff will pay £12,000.

No parents ever raised an eyebrow it was never questioned until now.

The Labour introduction of 20% VAT sending panic through communities.

School have informed they cannot “absorb” this cost. Question parents are asking is “why not?” Where’s all the money going.

counting heads and realising just how many staff children are holding places (right throughout the school). Many families with multiple in attendance. Doing the math each child representing a potential 50% loss of revenue. Each child costing the school £12,000 pear year!

Are we really living in a time where there are no other staff available that we have to incentivise positions!?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13660725/amp/Education-Secretary-Bridget-Phillipson-parents-warning-Labours-VAT-raid-private-school-fees.html

Rather than full-fee-paying families having to leave school the staff discount needs to be reduced, removed or abolished.

Independent families under a Labour government simply cannot afford such extravagant discounts.

Staff at private schools do not need to send their children to their place of work. It’s a want not a need.

#VATonfees #PrivateSchoolTax #Labour

If they want to they should understand the unprecedented current political situation and accept new contracts with revised/removed discount on fees.

They can choose to stay and pay more online with parents suffering the 20% VAT or remove their children and free up spaces so the school can generate a full revenue per place.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/labour-private-school-fees-vat-tax-when-b2583658.htmlLabour Tax

BEFORE you remove your children from independent school. Fight for them*

Labour have made it clear school must make cuts that there’s no reason for annual price hikes, no reason to pass on the VAT to parents.

No reason bar the fact they are losing hundreds of thousands of pounds offering all-staff outrageous fee discounts.

Bursaries and scholarships are earned under strict admission criteria and few and far between. Take a moment to count heads of staff kids within your school. It’s a very different situation. If they want the privilege of discount their children should apply and be tested like everyone else.

Who to complain to?

Not the school the teachers, the headteachers the finance department the very people in charge of your payments all have a conflict of interest.

If their children are in school and they’re receiving a 50% discount do you believe they will help you to remove it? No They’re protecting themselves and the school(staff) families best interests.

School parents must petition via governors, lawyers and the media to expose what is going on.

#RemoveStaffDiscount #ProtectMyOwn #NewSchoolPolicy #EqualityInFees #LabourVAT

Parents don’t need to take their children out of independent education because of the VAT. Schools need to reduce or remove all unnecessary staff discounts and absorb the cost. Not pass it on to fee paying parents. Schools need to make internal tough decisions and efficiencies

Nobody tell the OP about scholarships 😂. There might be poor kids in there mingling with the upper crust. Maybe the schools should weed them out.

don’t worry OP it’s easy enough to tell the scholarship kids. They are the ones that don’t have the latest iPhone pro, and the ones who have their name written on their uniforms if they are lost so they can be returned. And they don’t have expensive glamorous holidays every break. You should be able to tell and start a witch hunt with the other parents.

Surely this is a business decision made by the school - they can probably get away with paying a lower salary as staff will be attracted by the benefit, and there'll doubtless be some tax thingummy that means it costs the school less to do to that way. No business decisions are ever motivated by altruism.

The teaching staff will be on a significantly lower income than all the parents sending their kids to the school.... otherwise non of the staff could afford to send their kids to their own school they work at!!!!

It's a bit like having 20% VAT put on your mortgage. It's not that you think you're just entitled to that house as some kind of birth right, but because of the financially planning and money you've already sunk into it. If you'd known 10 years ago it was going to be 20% more, you wouldn't have bought that house - you'd have bought a smaller one and felt entitled to that because, well, people feel entitled to things they've saved up their own money for!

Schools are just like any other purchase. Of course people have to think and plan what they can afford each month, what they need to save up etc. I've never looked at boarding schools, for example, because I know that would be out of our budget. The OP's reaction is rather unfortunate, but it's precisely because people have thought long and hard about what they could afford that it's so outrageous to have this 20% hike imposed, which some really can't afford.

Teaching assistant at a state school. Very happy Labour have secured funding. Very pro Labour.

Unless that's taking a job in a private so you can afford to put your own kids in it, yeah?

If you’re a TA then you know dam well about the recruitment crisis in teaching
And why aren’t you getting yourself a job in the private sector ?

OP is drunk or AI.

Because the parents of kids at the school will earn WAY more than the teaching staff. Why would you not want the people teaching and caring for your children being treated well??

If this is the quality of state school TAs I will sell my house to keep my child in private school. horrible person

Fuck, let me apply to get on a PGCE course right now.

A free book bag and pencil?!

I’m in the wrong job.

Just for clarity, though, how much does a book bag get you when you go to pay your bills? Do I just take it with me to the local Post Office and they’ll take and pay my bills for me? How much change will I get out of that?

And a pencil- that will be fantastic. I’m more than happy to work long hours in a private school and have the job eat into my free time with my own kids, that’s totally fab. A free pencil will pay for how many hours of childcare while I’m still in work, long after my own kids finish class in their “crappy” school?

You've sold me.

You people are off your heads.

You clearly know NOTHING about the state of teaching at the moment!!! Ha you're actually laughable.

Why do you send your children to private school OP?

How do you ensure your children don’t become friends with any children of teachers ? You seem to imply that they aren’t.

In my experience, teacher’s kids are usually the nicest, most polite and respectful children. Usually some of the brightest too …

Friends and family at state schools. Friends and family at independent schools.

I believe that when Labour say independent schools must make efficiencies this is exactly what they’re referring to “cut their cloth” no reason to “pass on VAT”

Everyone entitled to their own opinions. The most important for me the children.

Independent Schools must make efficiencies and cut backs. state schools have had to make the same efficiencies and tough decisions for years. Where do you look first to save money? Over expenditure.

Good grief! I can almost picture the OP flinging herself on the floor in full toddler tantrum mode!

OP, I'm assuming you have DC at a private school? And you're a bit upset because staff pay less fees than you? And you can't afford the 20% VAT increase??

Here's a secret, but don't let on to everybody - you can send your DC to state school, they can get into Oxbridge if that's your thing, and it won't cost anything other than school trips, non uniform days, donations for this, that and the other. But you have to have DC willing to learn and who will thrive anywhere - as the saying goes, you can't polish a ...yeah, well, you know what I'm trying to say. An engaged child with supportive parent(s) will always succeed.

PS. A lot of staff in employment receive perks such as discounts, not just in private schools, btw.

Is this a Labour plant making sure any final shreds of sympathy for private school parents is annihilated from MN?

Well if staff are going to have to pay full fees (as you are suggesting) then the school will need to pay them a lot more to afford it.

What a mean spirited post. You seem to be maniacal and cackling about your ‘solution’ which shows a total lack of awareness of most issues affecting the education system today.

Way to drive away committed and settled staff ‘for a fully paid place’ 🙄 Your kids would be the ones to suffer and I’m sure you’d be moaning about the inevitable stream of new teachers.

As another poster said, are you one of those parents who doesn’t like their darlings to socialise with children of ‘the staff’?

The TAs that work in the private school by me are on minimum wage!!!!

This has to be some sort of machavelean AI post, no???

It is just too obtuse.

All these threads about private schools & VAT and now this 🤪🙈- if designed to sow the seeds of division they are actually fiendishly clever.

What's your plan, OP? Let the thread run a bit longer and then say 'HA! So you DON'T agree with Labour's advice that schools should absorb the VAT'? I think this might be a bit subtle for a mumsnet thread, which tend to turn into bun fights with hundreds of messages and nobody really having the time to RTFT.

“Unfortunately the easiest way to reduce administrative expenses in a business downturn is to cut staff, which is painful for both employees and management but often necessary to ensure sustainability of the business,”

Shall I spell it out very slowly for you. If the school offers a discount to teaching staff, the school benefits from a committed teacher, has negligible marginal costs and receives marginal revenue.

If the school doesn't offer a substantial discount, the school will not receive these benefits. They would have to pay a teacher more money to compensate for the loss of the discount and they would lose the cash income from the teacher's child. Demand for fee paying places is going to fall (in some schools) so your friends are unlikely to be queuing up to take the teacher's child's place. Therefore your own child's place will become more expensive due to the school receiving less revenue.

Do you want me to go through it again?

The op is a TA in a state school? Gosh. Luckily my TAs are amazing and passionate about the state school we work in. I can't imagine having a TA who clearly looks down their nose at teachers and children in state schools.