VAT and Bursary impact

[tam255]

For some parents in London on a reasonable income who can’t afford to buy in the catchment of a good/ outstanding school, sending to a private school with partial fee assistance/ bursary is the next best option.

Often these big private schools in London in fact often support the state sector, local schools in their area with use of facilities, pools, drama studios etc and are very generous indeed even with teaching staff, Saturday schools etc supporting local schools. This important fact just seems to be forgotten.

As for the student intake, in fact in London most of the private schools have more diversity than the superselective Grammar schools!! Getting a place into a superselective Grammar school for a child in London requires deep pockets. A bright child who cannot afford all the numerous tutors and mock classes etc has no chance of getting through a superselective grammar school and if you can’t afford to live in the catchment area of a good comprehensive will miss out there too.

The reality is that, if a child on a part bursary is in primary school yes, you could have an option to move to a state school at some point. However if a child on a part bursary say is in private secondary school yr 9 onwards ( where subject choices etc have been made) it’s going to be impossible to just change them to the state sector till sixth form.

Yes, there will always be millionaires and billionaires in the private schools but also a lot of parents who are covered partially with bursary’s. With all the vat added it will impact the bursaries which is sad and more importantly the support the private schools offer to the local state schools around in their catchment.

It’s the consolidated accounts for the group that owns the schools.

So what is still unclear? The private schools in UK are not legally allowed to be registered as " for profit". There are hundreds of thousands of organisations registered in UK as " charities" or " not for profit" that have income. The difference is in what is happening with the profit ( income- expenses). It cannot be given to the private hands and has to be invested in the business/ organisations. They even cannot keep too much ££ in holdings or banks and have to turn it to assets. They have annual financial audits. Jesus, this is basics knowledge of economy.

The wikipedia article is factually incorrect.

Do you understand that some things written on the internet are not accurate? Just because Wikipedia says so, does not mean that it is actually the case. The Wikipedia article is wrong. Completely erroneous.

the weird Dukes/ ISC mishmash screenshot you keep repeating is very odd. Dukes is a for profit educational multinational. ISC is a council/ membership/ representative body that acts as the voice of around half of independent schools in England.

It is a separate entitity to school. They only manage £££ because they have a chain of schools. They cannot use that money that is school income in any other way than invest in school, local community and that salaries for their work. School cannot be registered as " for profit" in UK. And the accounts have to be transparent.

I am sorry, I will pass because if somebody says that in UK private schools can be " for profit" organisations then is simply talking rubbish. Finding a difference between educational services such as holdings of groups of schools and the schools is also not a rocket science. Goodnight

They must own all those schools out of the goodness of their hearts.

And I recon this article also says nonsense in your opinion or you just prefer to ignore it?
Evidence in statement on gov pages that UK allows to register a secondary school as a " for profit" entity, please? Otherwise, it is hot air from your side

And don't show me any separate entities as financial managment/ holdings. We are talking about school and how they can distribute their income.

I kind of feel we are banging our heads against a collective brick wall here 😂.

@PeachSalad if you want to believe this for any reason, then go right ahead.

For everyone else there is this great thing called google.

It’s extraordinary

Here you are

https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/130803/1/forprofit.pdf

First UK for profit school was set up in 1910 btw

I’m a parent with a DC now in private school after my DC had months out of school in state school due to unmet SEN need. I struggle with the fees cost as it is, let alone to pay 20% more. In this thread the posts earlier from parents who have had wonderful SEN support from their state school are lovely to see. But they absolutely do not reflect the experiences of many families of kids with SEND that I know of. Maybe these great experiences were a long time ago, before Tory cuts, or maybe their kids were not needing lots of support.

In any case those families were extremely lucky. So many families have SEN kids not in any kind of education. The system is broken.

This is an official verdict on today’s SEN education system in the UK: ‘utter disarray’.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/aug/04/special-educational-needs-system-england-utter-disarray-ombudsman-amerdeep-somal

As my kids would say, 💯.

@EHCPerhaps im so sorry for what you’ve been through. It’s such an adversarial
system and I hope your application for an EHC plan and state funded provision for your child is successful.

re being able to register a secondary school as ‘for profit’ ..

you don’t have to register an independent school as anything regarding its profit/ non profit nature.

The rules are, you have to register an independent school with the DfE if providing full time education to a prescribed number of pupils of compulsory school age or one with an EHC plan, and once registered you must comply with the Independent School Standards Regulations 2014 as amended.

this is basically telling the DfE you intend to operate a school. Not registering, and operating as an independent school (in law) is an offence.

The 2014 regulations do not make any provision for charging, profit making or taking, or anything like that.

there are entirely separate provisions on state-funded schools charging fees and making a profit. These are in different primary legislation backed up by statutory guidance and are completely irrelevant here.

Thank you. What a kind thing to say Helpmymumplease.

I always say the same thing but I feel like I have some kind of duty to comment on these threads when people are dismissive about the need for private schools (with small class sizes). It’s just more complex than Labour are making out. Because there are so many families with different reasons for their kids being at a private school. And because kids with SEND are being failed left right and centre in the state system. (It’s not just kids with SEND but that’s just my personal area of experience.)

There are kids with all kinds of reasons to not be state schools and many of them aren’t from families that can easily afford to send them privately. I don’t think we’ve mentioned on the thread the alternative Steiner type schools that currently have fees about half to a third of the conventional private school costs, those schools will also be affected by the VAT liability.

This policy really isn’t promoting social justice in the way it seems to think it is.

The independent article you quoted is actually about coalition/ conservative government policy on STATE- funded schools although that would not be immediately evident to non-uk, non-enmeshed in uk education policy circle folk. It’s badly written and unclear. It seems straightforward but is not. I can see why you’ve concluded what you have from this article, but you’ve misunderstood and also the article itself is poorly expressed and confusing.

That makes total sense actually. How infuriating, women always get the crap end of the deal!

🙄 honestly, you are copying information about higher education and White Rose which is not a secondary school. As stated in Wikipedia thatbyou dismissed clearly without readin, there are " for profit" higher education institution.

Show me a proper link to the contemporary secondary private school that is registered " for profit" and not some archaic stories about 1910 and educational i institutions, financial holdings that are not schools but only related to schools. Just black on white school. Thank you.

Are you actually capable of comprehension?

What you good at is being rude. Please send me the link of a proper school site where it is stated. Do you understand that the " for profit" schools already would pay 20 perc VAT? And that it is " not for profit" status that prevented it all this years? Why do you think 50 perc are registered as charities? Because of tax.

I think what they say on paper and what they actually do is two different things

they might be “not for profit” in Hmrc’s eyes but I personally have no clue what they’re doing with the cash!

if they’re actually reinvesting in education they’re doing an awful job, cause it doesn’t show!

they operate like a small neighbourhood groceries store !

I h ave not researched the law on this but I had thought private schools could run for profit. Almost all the good UK private schools - the only ones I have ever considered for my children or where their father has worked have all been charities; but even 100 years ago sometimes people set up a little school and lived off the profits - a couple of ladies might have done that and hired teachers and made a modest profit. I don't think the law ever changed to ban this but I might be wrong. It is a bit of a side issue as in my view the best academic private schools all tend to be charities.

I just found this from about 10 years ago "Although the Department for Education (DfE) in England acknowledges that schools in the
independent schooling sector can be run on a for-profit basis, they do not have a definition of
for-profit schools;"

No.

I think that's been proven multiple times.

@PeachSalad

It's the first paragraph of the paper.

It doesn't relate to higher education. It relates to secondary education.

In fact it relates to education generally - primary and secondary. It says schools. Not universities.

You are muddling up two separate issues.

VAT is not currently paid by charitable OR profit-making schools, and this is nothing to do with them being profit/ non-profit-based.

Educational services of a prescribed type are VAT exempt: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c033dp0z1edo

@Xenia Many private schools are companies. They file accounts and have shareholders. Just for interest: look at Wychwood School in Oxford accounts. There is loss as well as profit. They have shareholders. There are various models of private schools but private companies is certainly one and they must file accounts.

They could also be trusts or charities. Most well run ones want a buffer of money to invest in buildings, curriculum development or unforeseen expenses.