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

@MrsBennetsPoorNerves

It's not the number 1 priority for the parents I know. The majority of parents want the best teachers possible. They have huge respect for the teachers. I'm not sure there'd be much point in paying fees to a school who can't hire and retain decent teachers. The fee discounts often mean that staff turnover is low, which is a positive in my eyes.

OP even if we can’t appeal to your sense of decency can’t you understand that if a school is going to pass on the cost of VAT to parents that won’t change by ending the staff discount??

Especially if those staff end up just removing their child altogether. If anything they’ll have actually lost money not to mention the impact off some of their best staff leaving.

OP, your train of thought left the station without you a long, long time ago.

A good private school (and indeed state school - any school!) treasures its teaching staff above all else. Why else offer them the incentive of discounted fees in the first place? It's not altruism. It's hard-headed business practices. Teachers maketh a great school.

If you cannot afford the fees now, that is sad for your family and your DCs although all will survive. It isn't a terminal illness.

Once VAT is applied to fees, the better schools with the better teachers - attracted by the more generous pay packages, including perhaps even a heftier discount on fees - will continue to prosper and thrive. The problem for the state sector is that they may lose even more of their finest teachers to private schools and that is a great shame IMHO.

Crazy
What about those children of staff that will have their lives uprooted if they can't stay at the school ?

I'm going to shock you by adding that many state schools have priority admission for staff children (after looked after children, military children, Pupil Premium and EHCP/medical need, generally).

The market for teachers is very tight.

My LinkedIn inbox is full of recruiters trying to coax me to China or Dubai.

You sound bitter and nasty OP.

It's part of their employment package. This is a bit like saying why should parents sending their kids to private schools be priced out of the market because the schools spend their money on paying teachers a salary/pensions contributions/other employment benefit.
I'm not a teacher and my kids go to state schools so I have no skin in the game but it strikes me as such an odd thing to get angry and start a petition about tbh.

I have to say my mind went first to Cabin Pressure there even though I have a son who has just done his English GCSE. "Have you met my awful wife?"

Because if you remove the discount the teachers will want to be paid more. The average salary in a private school is about £35000.

Oh @SchoolRunDays do also start a petition to tell airlines to stop giving their employees such massive discounts (typically 100% discount on the first trip in a year, 90% on the 2nd and 50% thereafter) so that they can afford to put prices down for full paying customers. How shocking to be on a flight and realise that someone seated near you didn't pay for their ticket and got it as a freebie perk of employment and yet are breathing the very same air that you paid full price for.

There is talk by independent school advisors that staff discounts will actually need to increase once VAT comes in. I hope that hasn’t blown your mind. Maybe you could retrain as a teacher and capitalise?

Absolutely. Teachers should work in private schools for minimum wage, or even better, for nothing! Why should people like OP have to spend their hard-earned wages on paying for them?! They should do it for the love of the pupils.

OP, are you for real?!

Very interesting 🤔

You are in a fortunate position of not having to work and then be mean about the teachers at private schools who have the audacity to want their dc there with a discount

Sometimes they might not want their child to be there. I had a colleague who won his position on the strength of bringing his two children to the school. Even with the discount, it was more income and bums on seats.

the Op is delusional clearly. There is not hoards of teachers waiting in the wings to snap up jobs.

in Australia we have a teacher shortage too. In private schools too - my school is fortunate that we haven’t had too much but filling long service leave with short contracts is very difficult. Other private schools near me have unfilled roles and can’t get anyone.

we are also paid a fair bit less here too.

It is bizarrely illogical for parents paying huge fees for private schools to say that there is too much focus on teachers. How on earth do they think their children are going to get educated without those teachers?

Regardless of what anyone thinks of private schools or VAT on school fees etc, surely it is simply common sense to recognise that private schools need to attract and retain good teachers in order to succeed.it is astonishing that anyone would fail to understand this basic logic.

Of course, schools could opt to get rid of the staff discounts, and as a result, they would have a much smaller pool of potential teachers to choose from. I'm not sure how you think this would benefit your kids.

Having said that, I'd be more than happy to see great teachers abandoning the private sector and returning to state. Though of course, some might just leave the sector altogether.

I don’t work. I volunteer. As a TA

You’re a helper then? Not a TA.

It sounds like you are in an incredibly fortunate situation where your income must be high enough (wealthy husband?!) that you don’t have to do paid work yourself but your children can go to private school. What a shame that you have no idea that teachers may be drawn to private schools because of the financial incentives offered!

Yes it is. And if you can no longer afford the fees, go to state school. Like the majority do.

This is such a bizarre argument. OP, if you are going to petition the governors on potential cost savings why limit yourself to staff discounts which, as others have pointed out already, are unlikely to make a big difference to the overall school finances. Given your experience as a volunteer TA surely you should be recommending that the school look to that model - that would save entire salaries not just the fee discount.

Me too!!! (Username makes it clear!)

I don’t have a son doing gcse English- who is the other Birling?

Mr Birling from An Inspector Calls who represents the evils of capitalism. John Finnemore apparently named his Mr Birling after that one.

Out of curiosity I checked the “FAQs on VAT” document from the local independent (20k per year).

Of the 6 questions, none of them thankfully were “can we chuck out the children of the working class as it isn’t fair they don’t pay what I pay” but I was surprised to see this one:

Its a primary + secondary, so parents who can afford to pay £280,000 up front are trying to get out of paying tax!? Enough that it is a FAQ… wow!

OP, you sound really mean spirited, I hope your DC haven’t picked up on your attitude and that those teachers’ DC haven’t got wind of that at school. Also, the irony of showing so little class when you’re main priority seems to be maintaining the class divide…

This is just another reason why the policy is a ridiculous one. The wealthiest can pre pay and may well avoid the VAT. This will impact hugely on the estimated tax take, as it's schools with the highest fees who are likely to have parents able to afford to pre-pay. They are also the schools with large capital expenditure who will be able to reclaim a fair bit of input tax. It's the smaller schools with little capital expenditure, lower fees, and less wealthy parents who are going to be hit hardest by this policy.

Do I have it right OP? The most important thing is to have your children in their school, with their friends? Teachers are secondary to that? Or even last on the list? If so, what are you paying for?
You might as well keep them at home and educate them yourself and invite their friends round too. You could even give your house a nice name to make it more like a private school.
No? I thought not. Not enough social cachet? Too much work?

Your arguments show so little insight and thought that it's just as well you're not a teacher. I certainly wouldn't want you teaching (or even volunteering) in a classroom where you have so little appreciation for the teachers and staff.

Yes absolutely @User364837 I also find it odd that people don't realise the teachers will also leave! Such a strange thread to me, although it absolutely demonstrates the lack of understanding about the roles of teachers.