To think a lot of people who agree with VAT on school fees…

[geeenuoe]

Actually don’t truly understand that to most sending their kids to these schools, it is a massive, massive struggle already.

There seems to be a mentality that if you can afford 20k a year then you’re already comfortable so sod it, you should find more cash now for vat … but do people in general not understand that some families re mortgage their homes to pay these fees? Yes there’s mega wealthy people but there’s many, many more who are not.

On the one hand we hear a good education is a luxury so VAT must be applied, then on the other we are told a good education is a right for all. So… why are we taking away that good education from those who already have it? Why is the focus not on sorting out the state sector properly? We all know the vat won’t fix the state sector. It may help in a tiny way in ad hoc circumstances but there’s so so so much more that needs to be done to state schools to make them ever match what the private sector offers.

I simply don’t get this mentality that those making sacrifices must make more when it comes to bloody education. I say this as someone who can’t afford the fees but if I could I absolutely would… and I also acknowledge that I am unwilling to go to some lengths that others will to pay it. I respect the choice of others to make such sacrifices and have no desire to make it harder and more inaccessible for the masses to access it. Similarly, I know plenty of people driving fancy cars and spending loads on holidays… they’ve chosen that over school fees. And those who have spend loads getting into a postcode of a decent state school… should they be paying enhanced tax on their house purchase?

Why do most people think those who pay schools fees are doing so with great ease? Is it basically because they don’t personally know people paying this so accept the media narrative that it’s the mega rich only?

I didn't get holidays as a kid that didn't involve camping in a tent in the cheapest farmer's field, with no toilet block and no shower. I first went abroad at age 12 as part of a State school trip. My mother could first afford to take us abroad when I was 17.

"A couple of holidays a year" and moaning about paying VAT on private schooling, something that 93% of families can only dream of? Is it normal that private school parents apparently don't know the meaning of the word "entitled"?

This is the common chorus of the wealthy. To claim that people who are not well off are feckless and deserving of their situation; "if only they worked harder and bought fewer avocados they could easily have the life I do"

Get on the tube at 5 in the morning and see who your fellow passengers are; middle-aged black women on their way to the first of their 3 jobs, cleaning the offices of city traders; construction workers on their way to the building site for another high-rise block of loft apartments.

Sure, there are some people on benefits who are idle, but there are plenty of rich people who are idle too. The vast majority of people, now in the middle of a cost of living crisis, are doing everything that they can to get by. There are very few people who have actually made their way from poverty to comfort and most of them state how lucky they have been to make the journey.

If you have a good job, you're lucky to have had the poortunities to enable you to get it, no matter how hard you work and there are plenty of people who work harder than you do and yet have virtually nothing. Have some self-awareness and some understanding of the world around you

Exactly! Op is confusing good education for all and taking it to mean good education for my child.

I had explained before.

This, 1000 times.

After the divorce, we had no central heating, house didn't have it, and there was a period when we couldn't afford to heat the water either.

I now own my home, it's small, but it's mine, and I can afford to put the central heating up on my work from home days. I am lucky that I grew up in a grammar school area so I could take the 11+ and lucky that I could go to an all-girl grammar school to escape the sexual assailants of my primary school. I am lucky that my natural aptitudes happen to be in demand right now and lucky that I live in a period in history where autistic women are supported to work and not institutionalised or channelled into becoming wives and mothers.

My sister lives in a two room rented flat, even though she is better-qualified than me, because her skills are in less demand. Again, luck. We don't choose what we are good at.

We don't choose our parents. We don't choose where we grow up. We don't choose who our parents are friends with and can pull strings with. We don't choose being disabled or female. Being born to rich parents is a matter of luck.

VAT on private schools is a luck tax, not a wealth tax. If you can afford to send your kids private, it's because you yourself are lucky.

. Deleted. I was responding to the wrong poster.

Sorry. It was @Cookieland who made the post I referred to. @CreateUserNames made the obnoxious post.

Do you seriously believe that there is something noble in buying education for your children? There isn’t. You’re not buying education, you’re buying separation from everyone else and their dangers and problems, and privilege. That’s why you haven’t been able to answer my question about what you mean by “an education”. It feels uncomfortable to face the truth, but that is what it is.

Whether the money all makes it through or not, I don’t even care that much. Even back when I was at school myself, I used to wonder how on earth the place had charity status, at the same time as building state of the art sports halls, drama studios and science blocks. Not to mention things like boating, beagling, and all the other crazy nonsense you get at the top end schools.

Tax it, like any other massive luxury.

Wow. A lot of people have really shown their (vile) true colours on this thread.

I agree but I'm not sure which people you are referring to.

14 years of a Tory government worse than Thatcher has led to the most entitled, foot stomping, arrogant people who really think poverty is someone's own fault.

No matter how many whining threads people start, at some point you're going to have to accept that attitudes in the UK will change now. You've had things your own way and were happy to see the most vulnerable people in society shat on, repeatedly. What does that really say about you?

I also don’t believe that anyone is ‘living on the breadline’ to send their children to PS. I suspect they have no idea what that means.

DH grew up in a one bed flat, so did many of his school mates, some of them shared a bedroom with their parents into their teens. Their dads were all out of work because of the shipyards closing and their mums who all left school early had crappy jobs in factories and cleaning. Him and his contemporaries all did very well at school/university.
Not going on foreign holidays or not having a fancy car is ‘breadline’.

The suggestion for people struggling to manage on here is to move to a cheaper area, are these parents doing that?

Even if someone is living on the breadline to send their kids to private school...so what?! That's their choice. We'd be living on the breadline too if we sent our DC to private school, so we don't and we have a fairly decent standard of living.

I’m saying I don’t believe they are doing it. And that they don’t actually have an understanding of what that means.

Also you must know prices can go up at any time and make it impossible to pay:

Yes I know....my point was even if they were living on the breadline...so what?

Why would it be commendable to put your family into poverty just so the children can attend a private school?
People on the breadline choose between food and heat, decide which is the most important bill to pay first because they can't pay them all, no holidays, no spare money each month for anything.

What do you see as the main outcomes of private schooling that would make it worth giving up everything else?

I absolutely disagree about raising them the same. The societal pressures on boys and girls are still incredibly different. It's naive to suggest otherwise.

Sorry-wrong thread! I'm being controversial somwhere else now!🤣🤣🤣

It's easy to feel noble and self-sacrificing if you conveniently compare yourself only to people with identical incomes to you who spend more than you on luxuries like holidays. By conveniently zooming in on just that group, you can feel good about yourself, and as though you really deserve to get what you want, because look, it's such a noble thing. Since you deserve it, of course it must be wrong for anyone else to take it away.

But the country is full of parents who aren't in that group. What about the set of people with identical behaviour to you, in terms of working hard, not spending on luxuries, but who still can't afford to use private schools? Are you a self-sacrificing saint in comparison to them? Or just someone who has until recently been able to contemplate using a service that they have never been able to use.

Why should we feel more sympathy for you than for them, now that you're both in the same boat? Why didn't you feel any sympathy for them, these people identical to you but just earning a tiny bit less, before this change?

Wrong thread but I agree 😂

Is the VAT going to state schools?

Why should these people pay taxes, pay for their kids education, AND pay for everyone else's kids education, twice, as they are already paying tax in the first place?

Because the tax system wasn't singling them out for idealogical reasons with a new and regressive tax not used anywhere else in Europe. (Although I don't think private school parents want sympathy).

As to the rest of your argument I don't have anything to say and agree with much of it. While I don't think education in any form is a luxury (so do not agree with VAT or the principle that it should be taxed) I do think you are in a far better position financially than most if you can afford private education at all and it doesn't make you better than anyone else. The previous posts about people on the real breadline does resonate and its not something I would argue against.

@Comedycook ok. So why aren’t you contributing extra to the school you are using? You know, rather than keeping your money for a ‘fairly decent standard of living,’ and thinking it’s fine for those already paying for state education and fees to top up your school’s finances too? Are you going to pop in a bit extra?

The government educates it's citizens.

If you're so aggrieved at the idea of paying for private school AND your taxes going towards state schools, you are free to remove your child and use state education. No one is stopping you.

You made a choice. I made a choice. Do feel free to change yours if it upsets you so much.

@Comedycook the government isn’t doing a great job of it, though, is it? You haven’t answered my question as to why you expect some parents to pay three times over for your child’s place in school, while you pay once and admittedly have chosen instead to have a ‘fairly decent standard of living.’ Do you feel ok with that? Keep your money and free load off others when you clearly or apparently could chip in a bit more yourself?

And it’s ’its’… if you’re at all interested in being educated.