The Edinburgh Question: Labour's tax on private schools

[Eastcoastie]

A group has popped up on FB aimed at parents in Edinburgh who are against Labour's policy of charging VAT on private school fees if they get elected in July. 25-30% of children in Edinburgh are privately educated so the policy is very likely to require big changes to education providers in Edinburgh and some areas of the Lothians.

George Watson's has announced a 9% fee increase for the coming year and according to members of the group, if the VAT policy goes through, they have been told that this will have to be passed on too, so next years fees would likely see a 20% rise plus inflation. Staff at the school are already on a pay freeze and the accounts show an operating loss.

Members of the group have also said that GWC are planning for a loss of 350 students if the policy is enacted.

Heriots parents have been told of a 6% fee increase for the coming year and the school are also likely to pass on the VAT bill next year if enacted too. Parents are being told, if they are unhappy, to leave.

Prior to the policy being announced, Edinburgh's projections for school capacity flagged 9/23 secondary schools as being at or exceeding capacity in 2023, rising to 18/23 in 2027.

How will Edinburgh/Lothians manage even minimal fall out from the private sector?

https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/file/22448/secondary-school-roll-projections

There is no VAT on university tuition fees as you don’t pay university tuition fees.

Plenty of people do - English students for a start, also overseas students, and Scottish students after their first degree.

It is deemed university education useful enough to wider society to warrant exemption

university education is but not certain school education? Why?

@Ginny98 on your point 3 re being able to afford private school being a privilege. In some respects i agree, it is in theory an advantagous education available for those who can afford it however, i also strongly disagree. Neither dh nor I were privately educated, DH particularly had a tough childhood. We grew up aspiring for better and with fire in our bellies to achieve, we are not millionaires (far from it!) but we both have professional jobs and are comfortable. We have carefully planned our life including number of children to ensure we can pay for the life we want. Part of that comes at a cost, we need the holiday cover and wrap around care that private school provides. If dc was at state school and we didnt have the cover, i would need to leave my job and we would no longer be in the 'privileged' position of affording fees. So is it a privilege for me to work full time to pay for fees? Its certainly a sacrifice!

I feel like these days everyone not on the breadline is considered to have a privilege. We should be encouraging our youth to do and achieve their best, whatever that may be. For many, achieving wealth will be their goal. The country should want to encourage that, not tax them to the point you wonder whether its worth it.

@Eastcoastie I’m struggling to understand this.

If you pay for private school then you need to pay extra for the wraparound care, no?

So if they went to state school you would still have to pay extra for before/after school clubs?

Which I would imagine would be cheaper than paying for private school and wraparound care?

Yes, I'd say it is a privilege to choose between not having to work/state school and working full time/private school.

It's a choice. Not an easy choice, but still a choice.

The reward for it is the higher standard of education your children will receive.

And yes, it absolutely sucks that this standard of education is available only to the few who can afford it (who don't work any harder, and arguably less hard than the majority who can't afford it). But that's capitalism for you.

They'll also get better holidays, better healthcare, better housing, better food. The very least they (we) can do is pay tax on it.

All the throwing the toys out of the pram here is irrelevant.

Going by today’s polls Labour are coming in with the biggest majority for over 200 years.

It’s a headline policy that they are not going to row back on, to do so would make them look weak at the beginning of a long period of Government.

Like any policy there will be positive and negative effects.

But I think many of these are overblown.

I sent one of my kids to a private school in Glasgow, not through favouritism just that I was able to afford to at the time and wasn’t when her older siblings were at that stage.

I wouldn’t say I regret it but I wouldn’t do it again.

My other kids went to Williamwood and if I’m honest there wasn’t a huge difference in Educational standards between them.

More focus on music/sport as part of school life but that’s about it.

The VAT increase won’t affect a huge population of parents as much as they say.

Ultimately for the majority of them if they can afford £15k a year, then they can afford 18k.

If you also don’t have a buffer on your finances in case of emergencies/price rises then should you really be committing to spending the private school fees anyway?

Fees at some schools have risen by more than 10% in 2 years anyway, you would expect substantial fee increases over the 13 years a child would be educated.

You can’t even get a decent week in Spain for a family for under £3k now, for most of it comes to a decision to skip a week in Tenerife or take their child out of school then they’ll stay at the school.

All the talk here of the consequences the policy may or may not have is missing the point.

Labour know that it’s not going to solve the economic problems, they know it won’t have a huge impact, they know it’ll price some people out of private education but it’s more important for them to be seen to do the right thing.

The optics are basic, people in the UK have seen the damage that privately educated politicians have done to the Country over the last decade and they want to be seen to stand against it.

Rightly so.

Exactly.

I also question anyone who says that they can’t work if their kids go to state school.

That is as ridiculous as it sounds.

I worked full time when all my kids were at school.

There are Breakfast Clubs open from 7:30 and after-school care available until 18:00 where I am.

I don’t see the difference between this and the ‘wrap-around’ care that people use to justify their choice of private school.

Are we really saying that no state school parents are able to work/have successful careers because of school hours?

The way I look on this is simple, if you can afford it and want to do it then fine, but like every other luxury it’s morally right to pay tax on it.

If you can’t afford it with the tax then welcome to the majority, there’s loads of space for you and I’m sure everyone will be glad to have you.

Ultimately for the majority of them if they can afford £15k a year, then they can afford 18k.

The majority probably can, but if as little as 10% move it starts to become cost neutral or even start to cost more money than not applying VAT. And a lot of extra children in the state system in Edinburgh.

Have you not heard how scarce the availability of wrap around care is in Edinburgh schools? You talk as though there are places for everyone when that is simply not the case in many areas. There are many areas where once a year the parents are in a fug of panic as they find out which days their children have got a place and which days they haven’t. It’s chaos.

Choose private school and a place is available. No panic.

On class sizes there are 31 in my kid’s P5 class. One teacher. We came up from England where there were 30 (the max I think) but a teacher and a teacher’s assistant.

My Children’s class sizes have always been maxed out - 25/30/33. No TAs. I often wonder where these schools with TAs (not for ASN children) are.

@Meeplemakeglasgow my local state school has a tiny after school club that finishes at 545pm ie. before the commuter train arrives in the town and the breakfast club starts at 745am ie. 5 mins before the commuter train leaves. Not everyone can work from home so if like me, you are reliant on the train, i cant drop off or pick up dc from after school club at the local school. And that would be assuming id get a place. Last i heard, the waiting list was 2 years long and closed. The main reason we pay for dc to attend a private school is because it provides excellent childcare all year round. On top of the wrap around care issue, local holiday camps finish at 3pm - i finish at 5pm and i dont get home until 6pm.

@Ginny98 i think the tide is turning on the benefits of attending private schools and will continue to do so. I totally see where you are coming from but i think having the privilege is also a choice. Dh and i chose to follow specific career paths in order to achieve the life we wanted. We could have worked equally hard and put our efforts into stacking shelves at the supermarket - but that wouldnt have given us the same disposable income. We were both the first people in our families to go to uni so we are not from a background where relative success was a given, we worked specifically for this and it feels like we are being punished. Particularly when i read comments like the one from @Meeplemakeglasgow -having one child in private and another at williamwood is hardly like saying you have one at private and one at Govan High. People living in East Ren sending their kids to state schools could easily afford private but have chosen to spend their money living in an expensive catchment. Maybe vat wont see a mass exodus but i think it will make future families think twice about starting orivate education and instead they will invest in catchments and push up house prices. As a i said previously, its a two tier state system. If i felt like this policy was going to make a blind bit of difference to education in Scotland, id be more inclined to support it but since education is devolved, we cant even be guaranteed that any additional money from the uk gov to Scotland will even be spent on education. IMO the problem isnt just money either, its like the nhs, throwing money at a sinking ship wont bring it back to what it once was.

Possibly, although I doubt it will happen.

Even if 10% of children leave it doesn’t mean they places will stay empty.

Especially in Edinburgh where there are waiting lists for many of them.

@Meeplemakeglasgow waiting lists are not a true reflection because most parents will have dc on multiple lists. EA, Watsons even St Georges are constantly advertising available places

Yet the majority of state school parents manage to hold down a job?

For less the price of putting 2 kids through private school there you could employ someone to look after your kids personally.

No panic.

We can argue on the details of this all day.

It might make financial sense.

It might not.

But that’s not the point here.

It’s Labour’s Flagship Policy, and the one they’ve been most vocal about.

It’s as much of a cultural/societal policy as an economic one.

The public want it and they are about to be voted in with a record majority.

Your lifestyle is about to change, either by paying more money for the same thing or by having to change your circumstances.

Everyone in the country of all income levels has had to make lifestyle adjustments because of decisions taken in politics in the last 10 years.

There’s nothing remotely special about this one.

It’s not forcing anyone towards food banks like many other decisions.

You’ll survive.

@Meeplemakeglasgow maybe in cities the majority of parents have two full time working parents but thats not the case at my local state school. It is simply impossible. I no 3 people who have had to leave their jobs because they couldnt get their child a nursery place locally. In Glasgow you have a lot of choice, towns are not the same. Our local schools do half day Fridays too. Envariably its the mother who has to go part time or give up working.

Maybe this isn't a special policy to you because of your privilege. Anyway, i agree that we disagree! It will be interesting to see whether Labour stick to their word about properly costing this plan before implimentation.

I grew up in a massive council estate in East Kilbride, the only reason I have this privilege is the fact I was lucky enough to start a business that was bought over.

I didn’t always have this money, but anyone who can afford to send their kids to private school is privileged.

The fact that you can’t see how ridiculous the statement that people ‘need’ to give up work tells me a lot.

You have options, if you’re spending upwards of £15k a year on sending a child to school then you have the means to move somewhere else that will enable you to travel to work or has more availability.

Sure there might be reasons why you don’t want to move, but that’s no different to the people who have had to move away from their families in ex-mining villages or ex-industrial places in Lanarkshire because there’s no work.

Your comments about East Ren people ‘easily’ being able to afford private schools are quite bizarre.

It’s not Kensington, it’s an area stuck in between Cathcart and East Kilbride.

For every Whitecraigs/Giffnock there’s Stamperland, Thornliebank or Crookfur.

Which while relatively good places to stay aren’t hugely affluent.

You can still get semis here for <180k, which makes you far from poor, but not ‘rich’ by any stretch of the imagination.

The private schools will survive, the parents will moan about it but they’ll pay the fees, some will leave and be replaced with other kids, others will need to drop their fees or earn revenue by venue-hire or other methods and the taxpayer will get the VAT, Labour will get the optics and life will go on.

The worst scenario is that Edinburgh will get funding to build another state school if demand increases, which is a great result.

@Meeplemakeglasgow i have a dc at nursery. Nursery costs £90 per day. There is literally no choice in the cost, i can either pay it or not work. There are 3 nurseries in the area. None of them offer the 30 hours free for kids aged 3+. They are all within £10pd of each other and all have huge waiting lists.

If you dont think living in east ren is unobtainable to many thats fine. What i was getting at was most families with two working parents in professional jobs can afford private day school in Scotland by prioritising spending in this area. Private school is significantly cheaper than sending a child to nursery.

There is another reason why I think the state must not punish (tax) people attending private school and it is much more fundamental; the right to respect for private and family life, freedom of thought conscience and religion, and the rights of parents to direct and guide their children.

These freedoms are particularly important as we see the current Scottish Government embedding ideologies into schools. What greater interference is there in family life than to require children to attend a state school where they will be indoctrinated in particular beliefs? Private schools are a means to exercise freedom from the state. The left have historically been very keen on indoctrinating children and separating them from parents, especially those with wrong thoughts (talking globally here). The only other alternative is home education; something else often threatened.

Didn’t say for a second it wasn’t unobtainable for many.

But there’s a difference between meeting affordability for a <£200k mortgage and being able to afford £5k+ a term for school fees.

People send their kids to Private Schools because they are trying to use their wealth to buy them an advantage in life over others who can’t afford it.

Nothing against that, obviously in an ideal world it shouldn’t be the case but that’s not going to change.

But if you choose to try and buy an advantage for your kids, then morally, you should pay tax on it.

Financial Arguments can be made on both sides, but the moral one is equally, if not more, important.

That’s a stretch and a half.

No-one’s shutting down the schools.

Just saying if you don’t want to buy your kids what you perceive as an advantage, then pay tax on it.

Out of interest, what do people pay yearly for their child's education if educating privately?

What would the yearly increase be?

Don't we all buy advantage for our kids? Isn't that the point? Money to ensure they have a roof over their heads that is secure, food in their bellies, clothes on their backs. The more money you have the more choice that provides in most capitalist societies. Government policy should mean everyone has access to an environment where they can thrive as a basic threshold but if you want your kids to wear cashmere or expensive count sheets - you should pay for it.
The idea that you should not be able to buy privilege is ludicrous. More money may mean a parent can stay at home to support their child. Maternal level of education correlates significantly with outcomes over and above private/state school type. It is a privilege but privilege is a good thing.

It seems to have become some sort of dirty word that people are apologising for instead of making active choices to achieve

Oh my goodness what on earth did I just read 😂

They are seeking to punish those who do not attend state schools. Don’t pretend this is about raising funds; there are other far more effective ways to do that.