Removing charitable status for independent schools

[justanotherdaduser]

What do people here think of Labour policy of removing charitable status for private schools?

I am conflicted about it.

DD goes to a London independent and if in three years or so fees rise by 20%, it will not be easy for us.

But that's just our personal circumstances, and while I will be unhappy if fees go up by 20%, I can also see the point Labour is making -

that the school our DD goes to and hundreds of others like it are not really a charity. Most spend no more than 10% of their fee income on bursaries, if that. Vast majority of parents who send children there are comfortably above national average income. The charitable status is an anomaly and independent schools don't deserve tax breaks reserved for charities.

So was wondering how others feel about it.

(Applogies if this is not the right forum. I am mostly a lurker here and wasn't sure what's the best place to post this. Happy to move this somewhere more appropriate if required)

Quite. But the whole hypocrisy is a window into how dysfunctional politics is in this country. Riddled with class conflict and self interested posturing. People hiding behind principles of respecting ethnic identity while you extract money from people who just want to fund a decent education. It’s pretty disgusting but that’s where we are.

I am basing the £15000 on schools I know. One is GDST. Their demographic is largely made up of professionals doctors, teachers accountants, lecturers, local businesses but not always by any means great wealth. Some have only one child. There are also people on bursaries which are contributed to by other parents.

They keep the fees as low as they can as those people are being priced out as it is ( fees have gone up beyond income and so have house prices).

For these fees (£15000) these private schools deliver excellent education with extra curricular activities and good facilities and buildings. If they charged as little as the state contributes for fees and buildings they could not do so.
(It is not only the extra teachers and facilities that help make them good schools, there are obviously other factors such as the vested interests of people sacrificing so their children can go; ideas of what a good education entails beyond the national curriculum etc. But the level of money available does matter crucially too.)

I am not sure about how much funding grammar schools receive from the state per pupil including for buildings.

So the state provision of funds for schools is much too little for them to be of an equally high standard as the good private day schools.

Don’t we all need to pay higher taxes, or pay means tested fees for state school places, if we want to tackle how to make state provision as good as private and grammar for all children in all areas of the country?

Apparently grammar schools receive less funding per pupil on average. Unfortunately solving the problems of some schools is far more deep rooted than chucking more money at them. In fact, in our wider local area, those schools with the best facilities and more funding are often worse performing than those with much lesser facilities.

fullfact.org/education/are-grammar-schools-facing-crisis-funding/

Yes. Voluntary Controlled CofE schools are owned wholly by the state. They rarely select though. They just have a religious character.

All new secondary schools are academies. RC snd CofE are sponsors. Like other academy chains. They are no different. So they pick and choose who they went. It’s called “Choice” but of course it’s selection by the back door.

None of these state religious schools pay for their teachers or the education of your DC. Of course @Xenia is right. It would cost the state vast amounts of £££ to buy these schools. However many were started as charitable schools to educate local children. All local children. Not purely religious ones. The school was for a whole area anx often the only school. So now we have selection at some of them if VA (CofE) and lots of RC ones. People who don’t fit the rules, but live locally, are much less likely to get a place as others come from much further away with their religious credentials. Often catchment areas are very small.

I think these schools should work on parental
preference and catchment like everywhere else. It would fulfil their “charitable”
aims and would just be kinder all round, to everyone. That’s what religion should demonstrate. Not promote being an exclusive club. I wouldn’t support them being private. They are needed as state schools. These religions should think of everyone, not just themselves.

Also, they are not all great schools. Look at Ofsted. Plenty are RI or worse.

I‘m not surprised re grammars. If you select to that extent you can easily do very well with lower funding.

They do better than private schools with higher funding going by grades alone in some cases.

A major problem that’s hard to solve is attitude to learning, if behavioural issues take hold.

I think these schools should work on parental
preference and catchment like everywhere else. It would fulfil their “charitable”
aims and would just be kinder all round, to everyone.

What if the catchment requirement, to replace the religious one, would mean the parents need to be rich to live there; while the child of an out of work descendant of an Irish docker (Catholic) living outside this area would excluded? Would this be fulfilling a charitable aim?

Sorry, the first paragraph should have been in bold or quotes as a comment from TizerorFizz · Today 11:11

Depeds where you live as well. The Catholic primary near my parents' house in Newcastle had children of all faiths and was in a very deprived area and nothing like the sort of posh SE Catholic school parents fight over down here in London.

As mentioned by someone else above our children's day private schools were similarly about £15k (£10k in my daughters' day as that was years ago). My sibling in the North pays less than that too. Those are for very academic hard to get into day schools with the sorts of parents Scrolling mentions above. Here in London it is a complex picture as plenty of parents of children in the posh comps and grammars are heaps richer than some of the parents in the day private schools. There is just a huge array of different kinds of schools in both sectors.

Anyway at least the lawyers will get some work out of Labour's plans as it is going to be fiendishly complicated to put Labour's plans into effect. Every cloud....

@ScrollingLeaves
Immigrants’ grandchildren don’t get special preference for any other school,, so why a church school? Why are they necessarily more needy? Why do you think church schools are in leafy lane areas? They are not. However people just went a local school and not be excluded from it.

TizerorFizz · Today 22:51
I was responding to your point that a faith school would fulfil their charitable function more by excluding children of faith families/Catholics than by including those who live closest.

I am suggesting this would not necessarily be so.

Sorry. Late that didn’t make sense at all.
But I don’t agree that the charitable status of a faith school will necessarily be fulfilled by virtue of excluding faith children in favour of children who live nearest the school.

In London the standard of state schools is very good but they are pretty shit where we are. Poor leadership, lack of enthusiasm, poor quality governors and teachers, no vision. SEN provision at primary is good but poor at secondary.
If vat went on school fees.. the very wealthy would be fine and carry on though some of the smaller private schools would close so they would move onto the big famous schools.
Those on bursaries and middle income earners would be squeezed back into the state schools and all 3 small, local private schools would close. So that would be about 600 children in our local area to be squeezed into the already over crowded and underfunded state schools with very little extra funding. How does this help anyone? Makes the people in London feel better? Certainly doesn't help anyone out here..

Xenia so true.
Friends in London at state primaries are far more wealthy and neighbours and friends far more wealthy than those of us outside the south east. One family spend £12k per year on extra curricular activities for their kids which is phenomenal. We can pay day fees for that..

We are well off and used church schools and then state grammars (mostly superselective). There was simply no need for private schools as the grammar results were on par and our kids are bright, in fact, my friends with kids at private schools often moan about how the kids are so distracted by their drama/music/endless matches away they barely have any time to do proper school work.
There are plenty of good options for education in this country if you have money. Independent and paying for it is only one of them. You can eg move somewhere expensive like Cambridge, Oxford or Winchester and have some great schools and parent groups. It is simply not fair to punish one sector. And it would be damn stupid to abolish church/grammar/high achieving leafy comp. It need not be a race to the bottom. It is so unfair that some kids are born into poverty and cr.. education and parenting. However, poverty does not equal poor education - at my kids schools there are lots of hardworking immigrant parents owning eg corner shops, cleaners, bus drivers etc who started on minimum wage jobs and worked themselves up, they are not all middle class Indian doctors. Same applies to the church school- there are always a few eg single mums initially on benefit top ups who are massively ambitious for their kids and push them hard. And I have seen those kids go on to uni and so really well!

In the end, it is parenting and high expectations that make all the difference, not schools. And the kids character and mental health and intelligence too of course.
Government just want a slice of the pie and assault education even more … framing it as Sth ethical/class war, I am not going to be fooled.

It would be interesting to find a valid robust study as to the impact on independent schools of losing charity status and the introduction of VAT on school fees. I think those are two separate things. I believe VAT is not paid for private provision of school at the moment. It would have to exempt preschool I suppose. I wonder if it affects language and other cultural schools (like Saturday or Sunday school classes) and extra curriculum sport and tutoring. Seems odd that indie schools would charge VAT but tutoring wouldn't.
i know that the other would be tax free status of investments. That’s not going to affect most schools. I think only Eton has a significant endowment. Lastly it’s business rates. I assume that would be a big one. Not sure what the business rates would be for Westminster school. Could be significant. Speaking of Westminster, they share use of Westminster Abbey. Drawing a line around ownership of those buildings could become complicated for business rates (or not).

Most education is exempt from VAT (www.gov.uk/guidance/vat-on-education-and-vocational-training-notice-70130). Are they going to put it only on supply of education for kids 4-18 done outside a club setting. I actually really don’t think this will happen. It’s just red meat to the Corbynistas to keep them off his back. They promised the same thing in 1979.

Our local swim school already has to pay VAT which now makes the lessons unaffordable for many. It nearly went bust during Covid too because they still had to pay VAT on previous years supply despite months of closures.
Swimming lessons have gone up from 7.50 15 years ago to £14 for 30 minutes! And then people wonder why so many kids can’t swim anymore.
We should all be pushing back massively on this.
VAT is the least fair tax as everyone pays it. Next they will want to charge VAT on private health care- when for some people it is literally a question of life and death and they have remortgaged their house to do it.

@ScrollingLeaves
Im really saying that faith schools should be the same as other schools. Just use catchment and other standard criteria. They are not charitable schools. The looked after children and other defined categories get preference but of course Dc should go to a local school, where they also are preferred. They should not bypass them, use cars, and go to a faith school.it’s not necessary.

I am sure they’ll be non faith one day from this sort of pressure. At that point they may or may not maintain their higher standards.

Just ignore it.

It will never happen. Labour always roll the idea out to try and win a few votes. Likewise they’ve been talking about abolishing the Lords.

In around 12 months they will suggest legalising weed to get the yoof vote.

It’s just sabre rattling.

I mean, that's the point, isn't it? They can only maintain those 'standards' by being socially selective (to some degree or other) of the kids they accept.

Any form of selection (academic, faith, etc) disproportionately benefits children from better off backgrounds, and children whose parents are engaged with the system in terms of being able to attend church regularly, or prepare their kids for exams, or whatever.

Distance also does this - I'd be in favour of measures to combat the house price effect too.

The standards may come from the religious nature of the school. The religion may lend a cohesive character because of the overall shared belief system and willingness to work together.

There are plenty of good options for education in this country if you have money.

That's the whole problem isn't it? The poor at your kids school only have a shot at grammar, and then probably commute, they can't afford private unless they get a huge bursary award, which is oversubscribed and not assured, they can't move to a leafy suburb in the catchment of a great school. Whereas those like you have grammar, then private as a back up and they can afford to live locally to great academies as a back up also. For the poor its grammar or bust. No wonder Thatcher closed so many of them.

doubtmyself in our case there is only 1 grammar in the county.. it's over 30miles away and no public transport..

I've not seen any evidence that backs this up? From the stats I've seen, schools only tend to do better (as a group) when they are able to select their intake via priority faith places.

The religious nature of the school in itself doesn't seem to make much difference to how the school performs.