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)

Or the wealthy parents use their money to move into catchment areas of outstanding state schools, pricing out poorer families.

So the outstanding state schools get even better, but they are reserved for “a rich few”.

They won’t do it. Would piss too many people off.

Our private schools are v expensive. In a lot of places (Ireland, Australia) private schools get state funding and just charge on top, so they are vastly cheaper. So it doesn’t especially bother me if the ones here get Tax breaks, although I’d be all for getting them to sing for their supper more.

I’d actually be in favour of adopting the state finding for independent schools approach, so we can build a much more varied education system. I don’t think the one size fits all comprehensive system works very well.

Where would the money come from to buy the buildings and land?

The UK will continue to lose competitiveness at a rapid pace if the country continues to add direct and indirect tax burdens on middle income families.

even if private schools were abolished altogether, wealthy parents would just buy houses in the catchments of the best schools, pushing up house prices and pricing out less well off parents.

Parents who pay for private education pay for state education through their income tax and then aren't using it.

It would be nice if education could be 'levelled up' so the state system was in some way competitive against the private system.

It won’t though

The money won’t go into education

It won’t raise standards for all. Those parents will send their kids to state schools in wealthy areas where in the main there are already good schools, already used by well off parents with high cultural capital

The stats are dodgy anyway. A combination of absorbing costs and cutting some frills will limit the impact on fees - I think it’s only a grand a year per child on average. Most families already paying fees could cope with that, and those that can’t would mostly have bursaries redirected at them

This. We are not wealthy but we could afford a house in a good catchment area and we could offer above market value by a fair whack. It’s exactly when we will do if this happens.

Private school parents aren't going to end up in bad schools though.

You'll have extremely tight catchments in expensive areas and I suspect the online schools like Interhigh and Harrow Online will pick up a fair few more.

You will also end up with the issues you get in areas with state primaries where a hefty percentage go to private for secondary. Phenomenal SATs results and very high achieving kids - because the parents have spent 2/3 years paying for extensive tutoring, music lessons etc to get into the private secondaries. The results don't reflect the actual teaching at the school.

I suspect that there are quite a lot of top GCSE grades that owe as much to private tutoring as the teaching received at school.

Very few parents will leave things to chance in today's world if they have the means to provide additional support.

In other words, you cannot answer the question. How very much like Labour.

I'm a teacher and despise the fact that private schools even exist let alone can have charitable status!!!

An excellent standard of education should be the norm no matter where a child goes to school!!

Absolutely agree with labour that charity status should be scrapped!

I hope that Labour go ahead with this proposal.
I say this as a past parent of the school Rishi Sunak attended.

To be fair we are rural. And they don't have theatres with the music tech available that our local private has. Or astros, cricket pitches, gyms or squash courts. All of which are use by the local community and schools.
Yes they have a piano and school halls but they don't have the music expertise (no disrespect to music teachers in state schools, I mean time here really not quality!). For example our local private has more than 6 specialist brass teachers. They run weekly sessions with state schools, plus a lot of the county music work.

There seems to be a lot of catastrophising on this thread. The independent sector educates around 5.8% of the total number of school children in the UK.
The mostly wealthy parents of those children will just absorb the cost. As others have said the schools themselves may find ways to absorb the cost, e.g. slightly bigger class sizes( still nowhere near as big as those in State schools).
Those parents who can no longer afford the fees may be offered bursaries.
Those kids who are forced to slum it by joining state schools can be absorbed. We are talking about a small percentage of 5.8%, of all school children.
I suspect in reality many will just send their kids to cheaper Independent schools.

Labour are taking the view that most private school parents are hardcore tories so losing their vote won't make a difference.

This is the New Statesman article that debunked The Daily Fail’s attack on Labour’s policy.

“There are two parts to the Labour policy, which are often conflated. The first, to remove charitable status, would mean private schools losing out on around £150m a year in business rates relief. In practice I suspect Labour would end up just removing the tax exemption rather than charitable status, given it’s a lot simpler legally and achieves the same goal. This is not a substantial sum for the private schools sector – around 1.5 per cent of fee income – and even their lobby groups don’t try to pretend it would be unaffordable.”

“The more significant policy is VAT on fees. This could bring in around £1.5bn, taking account of the VAT schools would be able to reclaim if they were charging it to parents. Labour wants to spend this on various policies to support the state sector. The Mail claims it would actually cost the government £400m because so many pupils would be “forced” (poor dears) into the state sector.”

It then goes on to destroy the assumptions made by Baines Cutler, a business that provides financial advice and consultancy to private schools. They produced this 2018 report which was commissioned by the Independent Schools Council (ISC).

In conclusion
“Overall the policy is an entirely reasonable one. There is no justification for private schools, or parents, to get tax breaks given their primary role in society is to allow undue privilege to be passed on to the next generation. There would almost certainly be a substantial net revenue boost that could be used to fund policies that helped children who need additional support. There’s no political danger for Labour either, it’s a popular policy with only 10 per cent of people agreeing with the status quo and 47 per cent saying private schools should lose their tax exemptions.”

It's about time. I went to an expensive London day school. It honestly did nothing to earn its charitable status. We did 'granny bashing' or volunteering in a local primary school for an hour or so a week in year 11. That was it. None of the facilities were available for anyone to use. I don't think it's changed much if at all.

The schools near me now open their facilities in the form of expensive membership to use their pool, or allowing private providers to run expensive holiday clubs. One of them does let local primary schools use one of their grounds for sports day. Can't see how that justifies charitable status though.

"Primary role in society to provide undue privilege"

What? A decent education is now an undue privilege ? The state sector in many areas is failing due primarily to underfunding but no - it's the private sector being too good ?

There is a societal problem of privilege which will only get worse if the boundaries between rich and poor are more strongly enforced , where clever children can never get an enhanced education

All children deserve a decent education but the data suggests that about half of bright children are failed by the state system . That needs fixing. But a decent education isn't an undue privilege it's a fundamental right for all children

It’ll be a race to the bottom with enclosed and shut off elite. No cross over, bursary children, outreach. But people will dine on removing something from anyone. Depressing

The charitable status thing has been a massive tax dodge for a long time.
These schools are supposed to form Partnerships between with state schools, which can take a number of different forms, including sharing facilities or expertise, invitations to events, or even sponsoring academies, in the case of some larger schools.

Figures show partnership work has declined since 2017, when the annual report for the Independent Schools Council found that there were more than 10,000 partnerships. According to the same census in 2021 there were just over 6,900, though the ISC said Covid had made partnerships more difficult. Thats just a cop-out.

A good education should not only be available to the rich.

I thought the funds generated are meant to be going into improving state schools? Do you think Independent schools should keep their VAT exemption?

It's all so tokenistic is it @Fififafa

There’s no way the majority of parents( those who aren’t seriously wealthy or those being given money for fees from other family will manage to absorb the cost ). I know so many who are working their arses off to make ends meet so that their kids don’t have to go to the collapsing mess that passes for a state school here. Personally we’d move to a better catchment if fees got hiked again. There would be very wealthy parents who could afford the hike but please don’t assume that it wouldn’t have an impact because it absolutely will. The prediction is 90,000 out of approx 520,000 so not insignificant

Also facilities like theatres, pools, pitches, gymnasiums and dance studios will definitely not continue to be open to other schools in the community if charitable status is removed. Someone has to facilitate these visits, arrange them, be available to let visitors in and out. They may continue to allow paid sessions but there would likely be a good price tag attached ( with VAT)

That 90,000 has been shown not to be accurate. Look at the link I posted.