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

I don’t work. I volunteer. As a TA at a state school.

Ahhh, so you’re a parent helper who can afford to volunteer and still privately educate your DC, yet you don’t want those who are educating your child to receive any discount on the fees you don’t pay yourself anyway?

Close the door on your way out, will you@SchoolRunDays

Fee discount is a taxable
benefit to staff.
VAT is charged on luxury ie non-essential items. Private schooling and tuition are luxuries.
FYI I have taught in state and independent sector.

Exactly!!! What a fun holiday they are getting for free.

Seriously though… no amount of paid overtime would make me want to take a bunch of hyper, hormonal teens abroad. The teachers probably have hardly any sleep

Of bloody course. Really, who the fuck would think it’s a holiday

Oh dear - they really do walk among us don’t they? Our DC attend independent school and I don’t support VAT on school fees and the whole narrative of getting one over on toffs that issurrounding it. However I enthusiastically voted for the the Labour Government and welcome having grown ups in charge again and getting rid of the worst government I hope this country ever sees. I dont know what pass on will be in our school yet and staying in the sector is not an easy financial choice for us but one we will take as our DC are better catered for.

All that said I do not begrudge school teachers a discount and I am not interested in being pitted against anyone else. I’ve not heard any of this nonsense from OP in our school - thank goodness. We also don’t have parents who share worked examples of what 50% looks like.

Some people do. I've spoken to parents (both state/private) who resent having to pay for the teachers' places. Regardless of the fact that most tour companies incorporate teacher places into the pricing structure 🙄.

I didn’t attend a private school, nor would I send any children I might have to one, so I look at this as an outsider with no vested interest.

It’s clear to me that private schools are independent commercial businesses which are free to offer whatever perks or incentives they deem appropriate to their employees and such perks are nothing to do with anyone outside the business. In exactly the same way that the level of staff discount which, for example, Tesco offers to its staff is nothing to do with anyone who doesn’t work for Tesco.

Yeah there are a lot of stupid people about.

What I don’t get is the figures

Yesterday she said that ministers will 'move quickly' on the policy, which they say will raise £1.5billion a year to fund 6,500 more state school teachers, and suggested schools 'have had ample time to prepare

It will only raise £1.5billion if the children stay in private education.

So the scenario could be no money raised.
No money for extra teachers and an influx of more pupils to be taught

Regarding school trips.

They are a logistical nightmare. A LOT of chasing to get permission from school, then from parents, then there are meetings, planning, risk assessment, medical forms, prep of learning / activity packs whilst away, all of that whilst you are still teaching normal lessons.

Then you go, most usually in a half term, so you lose your half term holiday, so if you have kids of your own at another school, forget it. Whilst away someone gets lost. Someone has an allergy attack. You have to accompany someone else to a&e because they were pratting about and fell off something high. You have to ensure there is no-one left out, no bullying, no funny business after dark. You have to write daily updates and post photos and lovely commentaries that update the parents on a daily basis. You have to clean up sick and litter on the bus. You do a headcount forty times per day.

Then you come home and the ferry is delayed. You frantically message the school to alert the parents, who become more and more fed up as they wait in the car park.

The students get off the bus. No-one says thank you. You stand by the bus and assist with the luggage and pick-up. No parent says thank you.

You crawl into bed and realise you still have to plan the next term's lessons, which begin in just a few hours.

You realise you would have been paid the same wage if you had stayed at home and had a relaxing half term in your own garden. And you would have got your planning done.

Fee discounts are not taxable benefits

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

That is true of all parents. No one "needs" to send their child to an independent school. It's always a want rather than a need.

This is a daft petition. Of a menber of sysff gets a free child place or a discount they are goung to stay at that school for at least 5 years ensuring staff loyalty and retention

Schools can't get good teachers. Surely a private school wants to attract the best ?

More than happy for staff to receive a discount. Our daughters schools are proposing to remove state schools snd community groups free use of facilities / support from the schools and to remove all burseries from the term following any introduction of VAT.

A decent education should never be seen as a "luxury". In any case, the "luxury" aspect is irrelevant as VAT is not a tax on luxuries. Caviar is zero rated, whereas toilet paper is standard rated.

This is so weird. It's not the government's role to order privately run businesses to offer or not offer perks that are perfectly legal.

Op- armed services children often have discounts. Do you begrudge these too?

there are lots of other efficiencies schools could make - a big fancy end of year speech day with marquees, flowers and teas costs a fortune. Only the really ‘posh’ schools who can afford this do this.

OP - outside of London most schools don’t really have waiting lists, they will always take bright and or keen to learn kids. Have you understood that the discount isn’t a cost yet - that it’s actually an extra income for the school?

Hey OP, by the time my youngest is done, I'll have had 27 kidyears of free tuition at the school where I teach.

Try not to explode, now.

I'm not in the UK, btw. I took my UK training & experience to an international school overseas. It's great.

You do sound like a bot actually, so I am not convinced this thread is real, too much of anything unpleasant otherwise.

Op doesn’t work, has no concept of that, knows nothing about work place benefits, does not understand the teacher recruitment crisis, thinks staff should be falling over themselves to teach at her kid’s school, her only concern is for her own entitled social circle

Jacob Reese-Mogg, has nanny let you on the Internet again?

I really struggle to understand the point you are making. If the fees for a child are £20000 per year the VAT will be £4000. If the staff discount is 50% then the VAT payable on the £10000 for the child of a staff member is £2000. The VAT element charged by the school is payable to HMRC.
What point are you trying to make? Or are you just miffed that staff have a discount at all?

She's miffed that teachers get a discount.

And that teachers child associate with her exclusive social circle

Yes, that's probably an issue, too.