Any other Heads publicly worrying about VAT?

[JustanotherBerkshiremum]

DCs at an independent school. The Head is obsessed by the proposed VAT implementation. Since October he has raised this issue in all public correspondence, ie newsletters, the school magazine and the end of term letter.

Are any other Heads out there publicly worrying about the future to their parents or is it just ours? You don’t need to name the school.

I get that it’s an issue but the school can finally claim back VAT. And if they get decent tax advice then they can cushion it a bit more. And it will only happen after the next election if (because nothing set in stone) Labour get in which is two years away.

I’d rather the Head kept his thoughts to himself at the moment. Am I being too harsh?

University fees are a massive problem, and one that the Tories continue to ignore. They have (in England) been £9000 since 2012, rising to £9250 from 2017.

Inflation has been rising much, much faster than that, and so where in 2012 universites might have been able to subsidise more expensive courses from less expensive ones, now even the less expensive ones are costing universities £9250 or more to put on.

The solutions available to universities are to squeeze staffs pay and conditions- that is not going down well, to increase numbers of students and not staffing, to reduce student contact time or significantly increase the numbers of international students. Some estimates suggest that over the next two years universities to stay solvent will need to increase by 50% the number of overseas students.

Thersea May did embark on a review of tuition fees, but then we had a whole series of destructive Tory leadership elections and the whole thing has been ignored.

But it’s outrageous that our hugest taxes pay for HS2 and similar corrupt projects, MP PPE thievery, Test and trace £32bn disgrace…but not university tuition.

let alone increasing it any further for students.

It’s daylight robbery- rob from the young and give it to the politicians

It is the will of the people.

There is a lot of whingeing from people who basically, as a ‘class’, wanted massive fees, but feel an extra 15% will break the proverbial camel’ back.

An extra 15% rise in a year is larger than any fees rise in the past. Average fees rise in the last decade had been less than 5%, except for last year, when it was 5.5% (the numbers from ISC census that the IFS report uses too). If the 15% rise is introduced gradually, people would complain less.

Secondly, all those past fees rise had been in the midst of low interest rate environment. It's harder now for many households to absorb a 15% rise in fees when their mortgage payments have also risen substantially. Hence more complaints probably?

It has been a massive arms race for world class facilities, a massive SLT, marketing department, counsellors on site etc etc, very little of it benefiting actual education.

I don't think this is right, on average.

The IFS report several PPs mentioned, estimates that an average independent school spends 71% of its revenue on wages, and another 6% on goods and services not subject to VAT. But that's the average, mingling the numbers of Eton, Winchester and the likes with much smaller independent schools. Majority of independent schools are in fact much smaller; 65% of schools have less than 400 students.

Anecdotally, this had been my experience too, when visiting a number of popular independent schools in London (and reading their financial reports). They don't have "world class facilities" or a "massive SLT, marketing department". But teacher to student ratio is much better than state sector.

it is amazing that fees have gone up inflation+3% for years and years, with nary a whisper from parents, but a one off increase due to VAT is considered shocking.

Entirely anecdotal, but in my experience, the relentless fees rise worry many parents. It is regularly discussed here in MN, people plan for it, some go back to state sector.

I think it's wrong to assume that parents using the independent sector are all super wealthy, easily able to absorb a 15% rise in fees. For sure many are, and most are wealthier on average, probably majority in the top income decile. But not all.

FWIW, I support the policy (DC goes to an independent school). But it is wrong to dismiss parents' concerns and "whingeing"; for many it will present real difficulty. No one likes a sudden 15% rise in prices.

Try raising VAT by even a half percentage point, or pension age suddenly by 7 years (only a 10% increase), and watch how much people "whinge"

My old private school had a huge fundraising campaign for a music studio, has a poet-in-residence amongst other fripperies. Their fees have increased from £9k a year when I left (2007...back in the mists of time) to £23k now. It's not a tippy-top private school either - SHHS for anyone wondering. A pretty average London indie I would say. They spent a huge amount of money in roughly 2010-2013 knocking down a perfectly serviceable if old building and rebuilding that too... I imagine parents paying £23k net of tax could probably afford to pay £27k - it's just what the fees would be in a few years anyway.

It would be nice to believe independent schools will cut back on superfluous spending to keep the effect of VAT down. I suspect they will have to if all else fails. Fees respond to the income and ability to pay of the customer. SHHS is a great example of that second tier school which is very selective and gets great results. They would have already set fees as high as they can go and preserve their talent pool. They could ease the entry criteria, and recruit higher performing girls for 6th form entry. Parents might also consider 13plus entry instead of 11 plus to save money. All sorts of tactics will be tried by parents and schools to manage this.

SHHS used to be good value and cheaper than other comparable schools! I think the GDST aims to be relatively good value but I suppose they were badly falling behind other schools by 2007 due to cheaper fees - and lack of facilities other schools had. A pity as I would consider a no frills private school for my children...if we could afford it (probably still not)

"it is amazing that fees have gone up inflation+3% for years and years, with nary a whisper from parents, but a one off increase due to VAT is considered shocking."

But it will be infkation ( which is high anyway) + 3% + vat , so maybe 30% in a year

I think many schools will try the price-cutting thing as part of their survival strategy....the problem is that staff costs tend to be by far the biggest expense, meaning that increasing class sizes is likely to be the most effective way to cut costs. That will be impossible for small schools with only one class per year. For bigger schools, it will depend on what their offer to parents is and what parents tend to prioritize. Parents in the UK tend to be kind of preoccupied with small classes, IME, and are reluctant to pay for education if class sizes are not substantially smaller than in the state sector.

I think the problem is that the Conservatives are so far in a hole due to a catastrophic 13 years in power and some, like Gove, actually support this, there is no one to push back. Given that more than 80% of tuition fees go on teacher salaries, this is effectively a tax on teaching, maybe teachers might see a reason to protest. We should be finding ways pay teachers more, not less.

‘You have to ask why private school fees have massively exceeded inflation for the last 30 years plus and, on the whole, now exclude all but the wealthy. Clue: it is not teachers’ salaries that have underperformed inflation.’

yup. No point in getting angry at the rest of us who don’t think private schools should be getting tax breaks they don’t deserve.
We aren’t the ones charging you…

@Whereforartthoudave I have no issue paying annual increases in fees to enable them to retain and recruit. The reachers at DDs school are fantastic and I'm happy to accept the annual rise.
What I'm against is paying the government extra when there is zero guarantee that the VAT will help state schools (not ring fenced etc) and that Labour aren't going after tax evaders who would contribute a larger % of the education budget.
It is just an attack on private schools to get them to cut budgets and lower their standards, rather than an attempt to actually raise standards in the state sector. If they were serious about improving state education then the VAT would be 1 in a suite of measures including social/health etc. It isn't.

Teachers salaries or teaching jobs, or both. The point is that private schools spend most of their funds on the cost of teachers. Which ever way you cut it, it’s less demand for teaching services if you put a tax on it. You might argue that “private school parents can pay”. Maybe, but it limits the potential for future fee increases. Over time, it will reduce demand for teaching services as a whole. Private schools place less burden on teacher’s time, can employ highly specialised experts as teachers and offer a better career pathway. Why would teachers want that attacked?

I know a couple of people who teach in private school and they aren't qualified teachers. Don't know if that is common.

It’s routine at our children’s prep. A classics graduate teaches classical studies, latin and Greek, a chemist teaches chemistry. Makes sense, I would have thought.

Wouldn't it make more sense to have the whatever graduate teaching their whatever having also qualified as a teacher? That's what normally happens in state schools isn't it, a chemistry graduate does a post grad year to qualify as a teacher and start teaching chemistry.

I've home schooled and I know you can teach a child without QTS but I think if you are going to teach multiple children with various abilities it would be really useful to have that training.

I’m sure that is the best way of choosing teachers for mass education systems where responsible people in departments of education manage hundreds or thousands of schools not a single school. Private schools are allowed more flexibility and don’t require teachers to have particular qualifications, though I believe most do.

@Iwasafool in theiry yes but academies don't have to employ qualified teachers, and indeed many have got rid of older, more experienced and therefore more expensive teachers in favour of unqualified.
At DDs private school all subjects teachers are MA/MSc plus (some are PhD) with QTS or equivalent. Many private school teachers are also ex-state ones who left the state sector.

They have the flexibility to employ people who have moved from industry for example. Whilst some might be “unqualified” teachers, they have real life experience of their subject and can make excellent teachers. Academies are the same apparently.

“That's what normally happens in state schools isn't it”

Unfortunately not. Because of the recruitment crisis in state schools, you can end up with a teacher teaching a subject they have little experience in. Whilst they might technically be “qualified” they don’t necessarily have in depth knowledge of the subject they end up teaching.

One of the people I know teaching in a private school doesn't have a degree. He has a lovely voice though, cut glass accent.

@Iwasafool yes 1 out of 1000s of private school teachers. It isn't mandatory for teachers at private school to be qualified however many are and all at DDs school are PLUS have Masters/PhDs instead of Bachelors degrees. The only teachers who don't are the pastoral/SEN team and a few sport specific games teaches, but when one of the Rugby masters is an ex-England rugby player I'm sure it doesn't matter!

‘One of the people I know teaching in a private school doesn't have a degree. He has a lovely voice though, cut glass accent.’

Recent hire at my friends ( she’s a teacher) private school
is ex military, officer, has a lovely accent and no nonsense attitude,
been in active service 20 years and despite not having a teaching qualification or a history degree is teaching history.

She strongly suspects he’s got PTSD and they haven’t run the proper back ground checks in him. But apparently the head hired him And knows him from school. She thinks it’s mad but he’s far from the only unqualified teacher at their £25k day/££40k boarding school.

Isn’t it strange that, with all these apparently unqualified teachers, private schools often manage to get such good exam results (admittedly there are some that don’t). Where is the “privilege”, which people often complain about, if the staff they are being taught by are apparently sub-standard?

Yes it's amazing. I know a teacher who gave up teaching to tutor fulltime. She has a wonderful time, gets taken on foreign trips so kids don't miss their tutoring. Imagine paying these high fees and then having to pay someone enough to cover for their normal earnings and take them abroad for your month long holiday.

Amazing how well off people have such clever kids.