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

The school I work at offers a 25% discount for staff children - I wouldn't be able to afford one set of fees with the discount, and I have two children. I've never counted them, but there are a total in our junior and senior school of about 10 staff kids in a school of 900 - it's absolutely nothing in terms of the overall budget. 25% of 10 places is very very little in terms of the overall budget. Private schools need to be really careful - they are all also pulling out of the TPS so getting rid of this at the same time is another thing which risks recruitment and retention of good staff. I have noticed a drop in the calibre of new staff in the last 3-5 years.

Some schools which have larger discounts may revise them down, but it does then become a bit pointless as a recruitment tool.

Your children that you're paying to be educated, but there's no one to teach them?

Really you're batshit.

Get off here, get a life.

OP is a troll. Ignore.

Totally this

OP you are bonkers. If the discount got removed from staff, the cost of private school would likely increase further because schools would have to offer a more competitive compensation package to teachers. I can't see how removal of this discount would possibly reduce the fees payable by other parents. Imagine if you were a teacher with a child or two in the school, you would factor in the saving on fees when assessing whether you'd be happy to work or not. If the saving were to be removed you might demand more pay or leave. In any case the number of teacher children on the school books must be pretty small for the average private school; getting rid of the discount would not likely make up for the 20% VAT.

The thing is, the teachers are not paid very well and so having a staff discount is a major perk of the job. Plus it looks bad if you have teachers at a private school who don't want to send their own kids there.

Erm, you are so so wrong. I work in a top private school and even we are struggling to recruit. Get rid of staff discount? Staff would walk. I'd walk. It is the one reason I am currently teaching in this school. And there are plenty of other schools I could work at with fee discounts if my school got rid of it.

Of course if all schools got rid of their fee discounts at the exact same time, that would make things tricky. But a) that couldn't happen, and b) we'd just leave teaching. I have a PhD; it's not like being a schoolteacher is the only thing I could possibly do. But right now it's worth my while to keep going with it, as my kids are befitting, despite the endless marking in evenings and weekends. If I couldn't afford to send them to a school, I wouldn't be working at the school- simple as that.
Bottom line is, do you want decent teachers teaching your kids? If not, then okay sure - get rid of the fee discount.

At our son’s public school the fee reduction for staff encouraged some incredible teaching and non teaching staff.
It was seen as a perk and I don’t know anyone that resented it.

Schools, and employers in general, can't remove benefits with no consequences. What a crazy idea. They could remove the discount buy then would be expected to replace it with equivalent salary or benefit, or lose staff.
You'd be happy to accept a paycut in order that Johnny Public could afford the services provided by your employer I suppose?

Teaching staff are not paid particularly high salaries and offering a discount for staff children is a sensible and reasonable benefit to incentivise and retain teachers. Perhaps it can be thought of as being like corporate employees being given shares or bonuses. Many teachers have children of school age, or will perhaps plan to have them, if younger. it is unrealistic - and undesirable- to attempt to create an entirely child-free faculty.

Keeping these families is a way of maintaining stability, and to out-price the very people that you want completely invested in the school is not a great move. You will find that they (and all staff) go above and beyond anything within contracts. Everybody benefits.

The idea that staff children can go elsewhere- and the tone with which you write-suggests a real issue in the way that you might be viewing teachers: people there to serve your needs but who should not have access to the very systems that they are nurturing.

Perhaps you write from an anxious mindset but I would suggest that you think carefully about how articulate your position before expressing these ideas to your school governors, head, teachers and probably other parents. If you were to arrive with your post verbatim, the best case scenario is that you would be listened to politely and gently placated (you sound like your frustrations are aimed at the wrong people) and a slightly less good outcome is that you would be obviously ‘managed’.

Wait until OP hears about all the high achievers and elite sportspeople who've been poached from government schools with full scholarships to inflate the school's results.

The staff are not being subsidised.

It's part of their remuneration.

Many take jobs in this sector on lower pay than in state schools because the overall package offered is attractive to them.

Have you considered how much the value private education will depreciate if you drive all the good teachers out of the sector?

Or alternatively how fees will rise significantly as schools will have to compensate teachers in salary rather than fees?

Your position is ridiculous and by no means a solution.

I've no skin in the game here btw.

It’s almost certainly the case that the marginal cost of providing cheaper places to children of teachers as a recruitment / retention tool is less than the alternative, which is to pay more to recruit staff. And the other invariable truth is that if it was more profitable to be filling those places with fee paying students they’d already be doing it. And the price to other parents would be unchanged by that decision.

The reduced fees is part of the salary package !

There is a huge recruitment and retention crisis in teaching. Private schools often pay less than state and do not offer the decent pension scheme either. They probably do need to offer some other incentives or most decent teachers would just opt to work in a state school and earn more.

I was offered a job in a private school but both pay and pension were worse so wouldn't consider it.

This just feels like a business decision each school needs to make tbh.

My children's schools both offer reasonable staff discounts but plenty of the staff don't have any children at the school. Others do, or have at some point, but have taught there for far longer than their children will be in school.

I think it's a bit entitled to think that your children deserve to be able to go more than their teacher's children do.

OP you are coming across as totally unhinged.

I actually hope you have hairy feet.

Reported.

Private schools have been withdrawing staff from the teachers pension scheme which is a real negative for those considering working in the independent sector. Offering a discount for your own children gives them some wriggle room when it comes to incentivising potential new teachers. If you take that away, it’s very likely that private schools will start to struggle to recruit.

I wouldn’t accept a job in a private school without the TPS. I might have done if I’d got children I wanted to go there, though!

Staff discount is part of the pay package and I strongly support it. It encourages staff retention which is only positive.

Your view is an isolated one and not representative of most parents paying private school fees

I want the best possible teachers at my DD’s school and I’m happy to effectively subsidise teachers’ children if it means the school can attract the best staff. Subsidised fees is part of the salary package for private schools who often pay less and / or make lower pension contributions than state schools.

There’s too much fixation on teachers.

When I say staff-discount I’m talking about a 50% discount for all staff. Heads of departments. Heads of financial departments on significant salaries.

Receiving 50% discounts while families with multiple children paying a full fee will have to leave priced out by the new VAT policy, acceptable?

The staff discount is absolutely not set in stone. How can it possibly be? Every contract open to review.

Also, most independent schools are selective. There is no guarantee that even if school policy offers a discount the child would pass the selection process. It’s not a part of salary it’s an outdated perk no longer viable. No feasibility to continue with anywhere near 50% staff discount.

If parents petition and request reduction the governor’s of the school should listen. If they don’t take it further to the media. What makes staff think they’re above families.

If they can’t afford the school fee why do they believe they’re above state school ahead of other families paying the full fee?

Remember many of these staff these heads of departments can easily afford to pay the school fees for their children.

The difference is they just don’t want to.

Private school teachers definitely need the perk of staff discount because have to deal with entitled, awful parents like you.

If you take away a major financial incentive for teachers in this field, you will struggle to find teachers. If you struggle to find teachers, you will have to offer higher wages, if you offer higher wages you will have to pass that cost on to the parents. You are a bit silly.

Oh the irony

It’s a want not a need

You do realise that applies to every parent with a child in private education don't you.

You can't just remove a benefit in kind without negotiation as it's part of their contract of employment. If the benefit is removed, schools may find they have to increase salaries, so there's not necessarily a saving. It's certainly not something that can be in place for September

The teachers working at private schools who I have talked too, have been very clear. The discount for their children is a major factor in taking the job.

And yes - there really is a shortage of qualified teachers willing to work as teachers.

Do you actually know how much these "heads of department" earn?