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

Pay rises 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

I’m not surprised you don’t work as I can’t see any employer putting up with that communication style. Unless, as said upthread, Donald Trump’s office need some more staff.

And presumably it’s actually your husband who pays full fee for your child then, given you have no salary?

(Yours, a private school parent happy to pay VAT. From my own salary).

I don't understand the pay rise thing. Independent schools set their own pay. I haven't had more than about 1-2% per year for over 5 years, because I reached the top of the (modest) ladder as I've been teaching so long.

I'm not complaining, I really enjoy my job and I'm happy with my salary. But we don't get big pay rises in the independent sector, not after the first few years.

[It's part of the problem causing the middle/senior management bloat, because you have to be promoted to get a rise. Hence the bazillion superfluous assistant heads. But that's a rant for another thread.]

I'm sorry that facts upset you so much...but your 'lived experience' is a datapoint of 1. My 'lived experience' is a pay cut over those three years of 60%. But, I have cut my hours to one day a week. The Commons Library facts are however based on millions of datapoints. I know which is more representative!

That’s because (rightly) the lowest pays have had much higher percentage pay rises. However 10 % on top of peanuts is still peanuts. once you reach a certain level (probably NHS band five and above) pay rises have been much lower. My sample size of one isn’t only me.

I think the teaching and expectations were different

For example a teacher would talk about the topic of medieval castles and go through everything to the class as a whole but then different groups were expected to do different things.
Those in the top groups would write and answer questions from the accompanying book about the subject

Middling Groups were expected to answer the questions and depending which level they were the answers expected were more detailed to a basic answer

The lower groups would label a drawing with all the different terms
Or those in the very bottom group would be helped to read the book or read a more simple termed book about castles
The teacher would be on hand for any questions and as long as it was kept to a low hum children were allowed to talk and share ideas and help others on their table if someone was struggling

It seemed to work better than to say where everyone has to do the same work regardless

Also we had no homework

I know I remembered more when I was allowed to talk about a subject or another child explained something a bit differently than where everyone had to be quiet and get on with their own work

Just had a look at NHS band 5 and was astonished to look at the pay

I outearn that in what is considered a minimum wage job. Granted I do huge number of hours but you don’t need any qualifications

@Yalta you get way less per hour. Nurses also often do overtime and if they worked the same number of hours as you, with overtime and anti social payments would also receive way more than you do.

I don’t think I do.

i think you are reading it as the job I do is a minimum wage job.

I said it is considered as a minimum wage job and I think a lot of people doing it do get the minimum wage but for me Just doing 40 hours per week it is over the NHS Band 5 minimum rate of pay

These threads are getting more abd more ridiculous. People are expecting parents at the London Welsh school, small Jewish schools (big increase in uptake since the war), and the various Steiner schools across the country to pay more tax because they don't want yo pay it themselves to fond their schools that their children use, bit they'll tell themselves anything to justify it. Now they're claiming that wages have risen so much in the last few years that they'll easily cover the VAT, plus other cost of living rises. Does anybody really believe this?

*MyNameIsFine *
You quoted my post regarding pay. This was in answer to *Tiredalwaystired *post inferring that once you got to NHS band 5 salary rises aren’t increased by as much as someone on a NMW salary as you are earning much much more

After tax and NI the monthly take home pay for someone doing a NMW job is around £1721per month

Band 5 is £1997

Ultimately there is only around £1.59 per hour difference between someone on the take home pay of a NHS Band 5 wage and someone on a NMW job.

When you bring in someone in London doing a job that pays London Living wage then the difference is only 36p per hour more and some companies in London pay more than the LLW for jobs that are considered to be minimum wage jobs

So earning more than a NHS Band 5 whilst doing what is in effect a minimum wage job is perfectly possible.

Remind me what this has to do with VAT again? I've completely lost the thread!

MyNameIsFine

Personally I think this policy to price out private schools for those middle income families has disaster and bad maths written all over it.

There are around 615000 private school pupils (around 65000 of which who board)
All surveys done by parents of private school pupils say that 25% of these pupils will be pulled out of private schools. That is 153,750 new places to be made in schools, in the areas that these pupils live

State schools are given £7490 per child per year from the government

So another 153750 children entering the state education system will cost the government £1,151,587,500

The income from the 412,500 day pupils left paying an average of £6944 per term with vat being £4166.40 per year is £1,718,640,000
Of the 48,750 boarding school pupils left paying an average of £12,344 per term with vat being another £7,406.40 per year
That is £361,062,000

By the time you take away the costs that leaves an income of £928,114,500 which is around 800 million less than the government are expecting

Add in the pupils who are forced to leave because their private schools close because they are not sustainable with 25% less pupils and less income and that figures goes down further.

I haven’t even started on the logistical nightmare of having space for these pupils
in the current state schools

Yes some schools have spaces but these are usually the schools no one wants to go to in areas that are probably out of catchment and over a certain distance from most of theses ex private school pupils homes which means more costs from the government to pay LEAs for coaches/buses or taxi’s to get these pupil to the school

I just don’t think they are prepared for the tidal wave of school places that will be needed in 12 months time.

Looking back on this in 5 years time I can almost forecast that there will be children dying because of bullying and what little the government make will end up in the hands of solicitors or having to hire or equip schools the schools with extra things (153750 chairs and tables as a start because these pupils have to sit somewhere)
Parents of these pupils forced into the state system will be looking at the fine print of the law and the schools ethos/governors etc and holding these schools and teachers to account when they don’t adhere to their own policies

Bullying happens in private schools too. Within my friendship group, the people who went to private school tell far worse stories of bullying than anyone in state.

Sherrystrull
but coming from a private school to a state school puts a target on your back

I went to a private school (would have preferred to go to the secondary modern with my friends) Walking home each day I would get at least one group of pupils from the local grammar school jeering and shouting at me and making reference to the fact I went to a private school

There's lots of things that sadly put a target on your back.

Loads of empty school places where I am, even in popular sought-after ones. My DD moved from private, where she struggled and was bullied, to state comprehensive, where she blossomed and came out with top grades and good friends. She certainly did not have a target on her back.

This is somewhat over the top. Any good private school will have started financially planning for this years ago (I know the school I worked at certainly did). So they have had time, and a school finance manager, to prepare for absorbing the cost increases.

There isn't any reason middle class British students will get pushed out. A good school will have found other ways to manage the 20%.

Band five in London get London weighting. It’s still poor but not as poor as the conparison you’ve made.

Headteachers talk and parents get a reputation for this sort of batshittery.

What a dog eat dog world we live in these days.

I completely disagree with you.

Staff don’t earn the ludicrous salaries needed for private school and it’s one of the perks of the job and rightly so.

The sharp elbows of this message is all that’s wrong with the world. “Out of my way, me first!!!”

Whilst I can understand your frustration at what might appear to be staff 'playing the system' and paying less than you do for their children to be at the same school as yours, I can assure you that if this fee discount were not available, your child's educational journey would look very different. I have worked in independent schools for nearly 20 years and am on the interview panel when we recruit new staff. Many of the most qualified, professional, hardworking and engaged candidates who apply are indeed drawn to the role in part because they can get their child an excellent education at a discounted rate. This however sits alongside the fact that they bring to our organisation far more than they 'take' (not that I see them enrolling their child as 'taking' - very much the opposite.) As they are both staff and parents they have a hugely vested interest in making the school as outstanding as possible and if proof were needed that their motivation was more than a fee discount, many of my current colleagues who had children at our school are still working for us despite their child leaving years ago.

I can see how through a certain viewpoint it can seem unfair, but please believe me when I say that staff-parents add vastly more to a school than the negligible financial reduction we receive from their fees.