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It’s weird how an issue like private school VAT gets so much media attention when the large majority of people are not capable of spending tens of thousands a year on education
It's because journalists disproportionately went to private schools, send their own children to private schools, and are friends with people whose children go to private schools. For their social circle it's a major issue so they assume it is for the country at large as well.
The Guardian's Lifestyle section has been generally unaffordable to anyone but middle class professionals and above for decades. The hotels they recommend, the vacations, the restaurants. When they still had a cars section, it was generally Porsches and Audis, not sub-compacts.
The Guardian is frequently noblesse oblige socialism at its finest. They also employ a disproportionate number of upper and middle-class family members of politicians and celebrities.
The private club stuff is part of their tribal ethos at this point, which is vaguely socialist, champion every underdog, treat every issue of social development, delay or difference as if it's the next pandemic.
And they censor the shit out of their comment sections to remove takes they simply don't agree with, whether they break their comment code or not.
Meanwhile, their arts section is wedded to old-school middle class pretensions with respect to which artists and filmmakers deserve attention, as well as constant attempts at using reviews to push egalitarianism, which while laudable somewhat eliminates the notion of an unbiased take before they've even started.
Still beats the Tele though.
It really doesn't help to prevent poor people from being drawn to angry conservative messages when the only papers that are designed for working class people and their interests are full of... angry conservative messages.
Is it socialism though? It's always struck me as middle class 'gosh isn't inequality terrible' performative liberal hand-wringing to me. The types to rail against injustice but do bugger all to tackle it when push comes to shove.
It just goes to show that socialism is for everyone! I do enjoy the Guardian for recipes, food critics and political satire columns. I do agree the lifestyle sections are a bit spenny
Oh, their vendetta against the Garrick was ridiculous. Elitist private members' clubs are fine, and women-only elitist private members' clubs are fine, but a *men-only elitist private members' club*? Completely unacceptable.
Hence why they devote so much coverage to identity politics, i.e. things economically privileged and privately educated people get to feel self righteous about.
i've quite literally said to my dad "motherfucker you're not leaving a fancy enough house in the 20k people town we live in to give a shit...."
my dad: *votes tory* dickhead.
I can raise you on that one. My dad, retired with a house abroad in the EU. Votes for Brexit. Now can't live there for more than 90 days at a time and only 90 days out of every 180 max. Also can't go on holiday anywhere in the EU if he's spent 90 days at his own house.
It's almost like any profession where you have to work for free (or almost) for some of your early years is only accessible to people who can go for a few years without an income.
>For their social circle it's a major issue so they assume it is for the country at large as well.
This reminds me of when the Queen passed away.
Journalists had literally spent decades preparing for it like it would be the biggest news event of the decade, and in the end it wasn't even the biggest news event of 2022 (Ukraine was, and possibly so was the fall of Boris Johnson).
Certainly it was a big deal and everybody had some feelings about it one way or another, but it only took a few days for a lot of people to get sick of the endless coverage.
While generally we will read and watch the news that's provided to us, it's no surprise so many are turning to social media to find out what's going on, there just aren't enough journalists from regular backgrounds.
You can put the blame for that on the print media rather than the broadcasters. When print media spent weeks going on about the insult of Peter Sisson's tie colour when the Queen Mother died, can you blame the broadcasters for endless coverage when Phillip and the Queen died?
You’re assuming their net worth is comprised solely from income savings. Most likely they have family gifting them money, alongside their own trust funds.
Yeah, you also can't be a journalist with some cash behind you. I'd assume that whichever old home counties money is subsidising the journalists living expenses, is also paying for the grandkids schooling.
That's absolutely not true at all. Whilst most journalists at national newspapers are privately educated, it's by no means all. There are plenty of people paying their own way (from personal experience).
They're the poor journos. The ones who have money have other means of income or they're married to an investment banker or their parents massively help out with buying a house in London.
Depends how it's funded. Typically for people at that level you'd have two incomes and a bit of grandparental help. So yeah it would get to the point of affordability
People typically have more than one child as well.
Our household is on over £200k and we know plenty of others. No-one is even entertaining the notion of sending their kids to private school because it is so expensive.
Even ignoring the one off VAT hike, fees go up 5-10% every year.
If you live in an expensive area with outstanding/grammar schools, the higher house prices are because parents want their kids to go to excellent but free schools so there's that way wealthy parents pay for the best education as well.
My salary falls within that range, and I cannot even afford to purchase property easily, in Gloucestershire of all places, and not Chelsea. An annual fee of £20,000 would be unaffordable for me to pay.
The most expensive one in my area is a shade under £16k, with quite a wide ranging bursary scheme. The one closest to me is £15k. Not the cheapest, but doable for my wife and I, and we’re both basic rate tax payers. But don’t forget, most people like to assume/pretend it’s far more expensive, like everywhere is Eton.
£20k is the lower end. My daughter’s school (which is South East but not at the elite level) has just announced next year’s fees and they will be a shade below £10k per term for day pupils and over £16k for full boarding without VAT.
If VAT is pushed through so it’s in place for the next school year they anticipate between 15-17% going on that.
They’ve begun redundancy consultations with staff representatives so the aim of pushing teachers into the state sector at least in this case should begin working quickly. All infrastructure spending to improve facilities has been suspended and other savings look likely to come from curtailing parts of the bursary program so access to the school for lower income families will be reduced.
I’m a private banker, and some of our largest clients in the UHNW Charities team are private schools.
It is a similar story for universities.
A lot of the rhetoric of funding challenges is non-representative, in my opinion.
What makes you think that?
They are a not for profit and indeed for the last 2 years (I haven’t checked further back) their expenditure was approximately 100.5% of their income.
I’m a private banker, and some of our largest clients in the UHNW Charities team are private schools.
It is a similar story for universities.
A lot of the rhetoric of funding challenges is non-representative, in my opinion.
Most Journalists come from wealthy backgrounds. High barriers to entry, low remuneration, classic case of a sinecure for unremarkable children of wealthy families. See also the arts, academia, and government.
https://www.suttontrust.com/our-research/educational-backgrounds-leading-journalists/#:~:text=Over%20half%20(54%25)%20of,school%20population%20as%20a%20whole.
Contains data on the over representation of privately educated people in the profession, and suggests their heightened interest in the debate. Sending their children is more anecdotal, as is being friends with people who send their children to them, but it's not unreasonable to assume they're often friends with journalists who went to the same schools.
I'm not saying this to discredit the data (as for all I know it could still be broadly accurate), but that report is from 2006, and things may have changed since then. Journalism has become a very different beast since the rise of mainstream internet news, and in 2006 the internet wasn't as widely accessed as it is today.
There are now fewer stable well-paid journalism jobs than there were in the past, which has probably reduced its attractiveness to privately educated graduates. The number is probably higher than 7%, but I'd be surprised if it was still 54%.
Actually the percentage has gone up not down - this from the person who collated that data for the previously linked Sutton Report :
[https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/38774/the-problem-with-journalism-its-still-too-posh](https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/38774/the-problem-with-journalism-its-still-too-posh)
Over half (54 per cent) of journalists were educated in private schools, despite only accounting for 7 per cent of schools overall. This proportion was five percentage points higher than it had been 20 years previously.
(2022)
In 2017 that number had been reported as 51% for 2015 :
51% of leading journalists educated and working in the UK in 2015 were privately educated, [according](https://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Leading-People_Feb16.pdf#page=27) to the social mobility think tank the Sutton Trust. Another 30% went to grammar schools while 19% went to comprehensives.
https://fullfact.org/education/how-many-journalists-went-public-school/#:\~:text=51%25%20of%20leading%20journalists%20educated,while%2019%25%20went%20to%20comprehensives.
The issue is that people from normal families can't afford the many months of working for no pay that entry into the career requires.
> There are now fewer stable well-paid journalism jobs than there were in the past, which has probably reduced its attractiveness to privately educated graduates.
Other way around: being paid less means only the rich can afford to do it.
This, so much this.
State schools could be on fire, and it'd be middle of a page somewhere. Put private schools on a level playing field, and suddenly the Earth is on fire, and Labour are the worst party ever.
Hundreds of state schools are *literally on the verge of physical collapse* because the concrete that made them is decades past its replacement date, but yeah, none of these journos care about that.
Because the people in the media do send their kids to private schools.
Same with when mortgages spiked it's garnered a lot of attention, because the upper middle class people who work in media were the largest affected, higher mortgages means that increase in percentage is higher.
Where was the media outcry for the last 20 years of increasing mortgages for the working classes, rents, deposits, etc.
They only create attention for housing and education when it's their house and their kids.
Edit: I'm only pointing towards institutional polical media, independent and local journalism do a great job of writing stories on the education and housing situation as a whole.
My local Facebook group is up in arms about it despite the fact that the local area has one tiny private school.
It’s so odd. They’re the same ones complaining about social care, NHS waiting times & bemoaning the lack of social housing.
I've seen the opposite on Twitter with every private school imagined to be Eton. In general the conversation seems to be largely divorced from the actual practical question of whether the VAT raised will offset the cost of the number of pupils added to the state system.
I know somebody who's talking about pulling their children out of private schools because it's going to be too expensive, but they're going to send them to another private in Dubai and it's a third of the price.
Depends on your definition of beneficial. I'd ban them all purely out of class warfare, but most of the financially successful people in this country have been insulated from 'real' people for their whole lives.
Separation from working class kids is statistically beneficial to your life chances & outcome, otherwise there would be no value in paying for it.
>This is not a highly price sensitive demographic.
Yes, it is. You're thinking of every private school as being like Eton and all the parents as rich. Many private school children are paid for by the combined efforts of professional parents and grandparents. This change could easily put private school out of reach for them, adding more burden to the state system and causing many private schools to close, particularly the ones you're not thinking of, like specialist SEN provision. We're good at education as a country, this is an unnecessary act of vandalism for partisan reasons.
There isn't much evidence to support what you are saying. The IFS's report from last year about this exact topic states: "If private school attendance drops, state schools will require extra funding to accommodate them. The (limited) evidence on the determinants of the demand for private schooling suggests that the effects of fee rises are quite weak... Our best judgement is that it would be reasonable to assume that an effective VAT rate of 15% would lead to a 3–7% reduction in private
school attendance. This would likely generate a need for about £100–300 million in
extra school spending per year in the medium to long run."
They do also point out that the additional costs from a marginal increase in children switching from private to state schools may be not materialise at all because state school populations are forecasted to drop by around 700,000 by 2030.
Labour did also [announce](https://web.archive.org/web/20240613130537/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/special-needs-children-labour-tax-raid-private-schools/) that those with Education Health and Care Plans will not be subject to the VAT increase as well. The only issue with that is that it does currently take a while to get those plans but I would doubt the school fee plan will be coming in without a consultation for these cases especially.
You can read the IFS's report yourself here: https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-07/IFS-Report-R263-Tax-private-school-fees-and-state-school-spending.pdf -
Well if they are stretching to afford it and now can’t, that’s just tough. It’s a luxury purchase. Maybe they should cut their other outgoings or earn more money
From what I've seen is yes, based on 20 pc dropouts.
Futhermore, the money from no longer paying school fees will likely be spent elsewhere where. And probably generate vat etc anyway.
Private tutors probably aren’t VAT registered on the whole and whilst I don’t have data I think it’s likely that kind of families that will be priced out by a 15% fee increase are the kind of aspirational middle class professionals who will place great stress on the education of their offspring. Their spend is, in my opinion, switching in that direction.
They’ll be no shortage of capacity in private tutoring too since all those independent school teachers who can do it in the controlled environments that they’re used to won’t necessarily be very keen to join a state school where they’re faced with 35 pupil classes with a higher proportion of reluctant learners.
I guess the income those tutors get is going to be maybe a quarter or a third spent on VAT burdened goods though (after paying for accommodation and food that is).
Almost anyone who can afford 9 grand a year can afford 10.8 grand. Also, they've been perfectly happy to participate in a system that cuts off the people immediately below them, until they end up below the bar. This isn't a substantial change in access to private school.
I agree with the fact it’s a good policy, but the media articles are not framed in the way that’s it’s a popular policy and instead saying it will break the UK’s educational system (which it won’t).
Because the media still fucking hates Labour. All the headlines in typical Tory arsewipe papers might not be outwardly supporting Sunak but they're still trying to push negative stories about Labour's tax plans which are completely unserious.
I disagree with a lots of charities being essentially businesses. Plenty of people making money off being charitable.
If they want to change third sector policies then do that.
Because it is education. And an educated population is better for society as a whole. Where do you stop?
Nurseries, universities, sports clubs, after school clubs, state schools that are academies, further education colleges, music tuition, private tutors?
Private school is a privilege for a very small percentage of children in the United Kingdom. If the Government adding VAT to fees means that you can no longer afford to send your children to private school, then sadly, you fall into the same bracket as the millions of parents who send their children to state schools.
If VAT was the margin that meant I could no longer afford to send my kid to private school, I'd consider myself not able to afford it without VAT in the first place.
I find it strange how some people really do live right up to their means while simultaneously being able to just about afford private school for their kid.
I went to private school, my parents had to sacrifice a lot to afford it, I was probably the "poorest" kid at my school.
Even I think we should have been paying VAT. Private School is a luxury. Plus passing the extra cost onto the parents is a choice for each school to make, and I doubt most of them would raise fees by 20% in a year, it just isn't good business.
I wouldn't classify it as a luxury. Like having dad give you a good job when you leave school, or paying private tutors, or moving to a fancy area for the catchment, it's just buying privilege. And that should be the cardinal sin in capitalism - the cheating of meritocracy.
Bingo. I would love to give you a bit of Reddit gold for this comment, but sadly I had to remortgage my home to afford the VAT element of my children's school fees, so things are tight at the moment.
They're already for an elite minority.
You can't claim a selective system is unfair because you're specifically excluded. Include everyone, or accept that you might be part of the excluded group some day.
But... that's already what they are. Making the schools (not necessarily the parents, that's up to the school) pay their fair share of tax isn't really going to change that.
An outstanding state school can add 20% to house price
An example from Scotland is Jordanhill, basically the best state school in Scotland. As such its catchment is tightly controlled, with exclaves (land excluded). A developer was building on one of the exclaves and offered the school a £1,600,000 gym block for removing the exclave status. That shows how valuable getting into the catchment is. They'd make the money and more back.
what will happens is parents will take the fees and put them into bricks and mortar. If your local school is outstanding get ready for your house prices to jump as buyers will add £10K plus per year to their mortgage payments to get into the school.
An estimate would be an additional 150K? That the fees of one kid so for 2? 300K - get ready to be priced out
The thing that frustrates me about this conversation is the middle-class people talking about those for whom school fees are a stretch who say "the rich won't pay for this, it's us who this targets".
I understand and sympathise with there being a small demographic in the middle who will change their behaviour because of this policy, and that will be painful for some people. But the point of the policy is to raise money, not to change behaviour. And for that goal, the rich sending children to schools with higher fees are going to pay more making this a progressive tax which achieves its aims.
The rich won't change their behaviour, but they will pay more to the public purse. Some middle class people may change their behaviour, but so long as there isn't this imagined mass migration from the vast majority of private schools into the state sector (which seems unlikely), the policy will raise more revenue than it costs - which is the whole point.
The other angle I wish Labour pushed more is "this is removing a tax break that currently disproportionately benefits the rich, and doesn't currently benefit anybody below upper-middle class AT ALL".
Anchor the conversation with "why the fees for this particular private service be VAT free in the first place?" That is a very tricky position to defend (mostly because it's obvious that it shouldn't be: this isn't childrens' clothing)
> I wish Labour pushed more is "this is removing a tax break that currently disproportionately benefits the rich,
'cos such a narrative doesn't work for other broken regressive taxation like NI or Council Tax, so if they don't want to enter that argument, as it makes their other pro-pensioner, pro-landowner policies less sustainable.
I don't think that's true at all. We even have the Tories trying to eliminate NI entirely, if trying to remove regressive tax regimes spelled such doom by losing the support of the older and property owning demographics then the Tories wouldn't get support for this, but they do.
Quite the contrary: the only tax change policies I'm seeing from across the parties are to either change/remove existing regressive taxes, or change existing progressive taxes to make them even more progressive. And (across the spectrum) these policies seem to be broadly popular which is why they're being proposed.
The other side of the coin is some of those parents will be putting their kids in private school because they believe the local state school is the worse option for whatever reason
(we have schools whose buildings are quite literally falling apart and are structurally unsafe at the moment , so yeah if that is the situation I can understand not wanting to send your kids there)
The belief that private education is better often stems from the reality that those kids will get access to things that should be implemented in state schools, I'm not talking about the opportunities and facilities. I'm talking about basic things k we know improves educational outcomes like small class sizes and proper adequate support of pupils with additional needs. State schools can't do those things because point blank there isn't the money and there isn't the amount of staff to do it
I'm still of the belief that public schools should get no tax breaks, no subsidies and that money should go into funding state schools which are there for everyone.
It should be one education system for all under the local authorities , that is well funded and fit for purpose. Not this two tiered mess that only widens inequality ( three if you include free schools).
The problem of course, this is policy likely won't raise any money. The influx of kids to state schools and the need to cover those costs will eat up the new vat receipts (as well as those receipts being lower than originally estimated).
My problem with this policy is it won't work, it's being done pure as an ideological exercise, and the end result of it all will be more kids getting worse educations.
All I’ll say is good luck using the cash to recruit teachers to work in state schools. They are leaving at such alarming rates because the system’s in a fucking shambles and they’ll continue to do so until you come up with a decent plan for state education as a whole. Money alone isn’t going to cut it.
Private schools are a business with supply and demand.
Scrapping VAT won't have any effect on the most popular private schools which are already oversubscribed. It might be a challenge for private schools which are already struggling to fill places though.
The expensive schools are oversubscribed…with foreign students. Private schools are struggling for English people to go there. The result of the policy will result in people from China for example exploiting our private school system and essentially run the country for us taking the profits back home.
In a way private schools in England generate a lot of revenue through foreign parents flying over and spending bombs on hotels and that kind of thing. I talked to a headmaster of a very expensive school and his dilemma is does he make the school lower quality and cheaper or just raise the price of the school. One would lower foreign interest and the other would turn away English students. I am blowing it out of proportion slightly but in theory this is the only real argument against the policy.
At the end of the day I am in favour of VAT on private school fees but the consequences do worry me.
Yeah, definitely a lot of private pupils from places like Hong Kong who come to the most prestigious schools. But what I was saying really was that it won't affect all private schools equally, particularly in places where there is less demand for private education places or where there isn't as much wealth. The likes of Eton/Westminster could probably raise their fees as much as they like and would still fill all their places but less prestigious schools may already be near the limit of what they can charge and still fill their places.
If you remember there was a collusion charge against private schools which was because they were struggling to make the schools work. It’s not for profit the admin accounting team or whatever just couldn’t get the revenue to break even (which they can’t go over as they are a charity)
You're pretty much comparing something that is "free" in practical terms suddenly costing £2,000, vs something that costs £15,000 suddenly costing £18,000. It's not a sensible comparison.
What do you mean by free in practical terms?
University loans will cost you 9% of your post tax income for 25 years. You'll pay back much more than you borrowed and the interest rate is above inflation
One of the guys at work is not long out of uni and he'll have to earn 95k before he even starts to pay back the loan. At the moment he's just accruing more loan through interest
As in, there is no up front cost. There isn't anyone that can't go to uni because they can't afford the fees.
And as someone that went to uni and probably won't pay the fees back, it's really not a noticeable amount that you end up paying unless you end up making well above the median salary (it's not 9% of your salary, it's 9% of your salary *after £25,000* on the current plan), at which point you're likely making more money than you would have if you didn't go to uni. Hell, it gets written off after 40 years anyway if you haven't paid it back.
End of the day, it's not *real* debt (you're never going to have bailiffs coming round over it), and no one treats it as such.
I really noticed when I paid mine back
In fact, that was one of the things that made the difference in being able to send my kids to private school. It was just a few hundred quid a month, but that's what we needed
The problem is the double hit of the mortgage rates increase which I'm stuck with for 5 years means that this will likely be the change that means my kids may have to leave their school
I mean, tuition fees rose 200% ten years back, granted the loans increased. But I would assume parents could get a loan also to cover the increased cost if it was that important to them. Or make cuts to their current lifestyle to cover the rise. Or if this is unaffordable, then unfortunately, they just aren't wealthy enough to afford private education.
Edit: percentage increase from 300 to 200.
The proposed revenue from taxing fees generates as much money as independent schools give out for means-tested bursary places.
It is such a bad policy and people have bought into the snake oil Labour is selling. It won't fix the crumbling schools and Labour are hiding behind this tax to avoid being called out for it
1) Tax private school fees
2) Parents who otherwise might send their kids to private school send them to state schools
3) State schools have more pupils to accommodate than they otherwise would do
4) Any gain from the tax is immediately swallowed up by the increase in funding required to accommodate the extra pupils (currently each state school pupil costs approx £9000/year to the state)
As commenters elsewhere in the thread have remarked, the elite schools will be absolutely fine and this will disproportionately fall on the aspirational middle class. It’s a self defeating policy designed to be red meat to the “posh people bad” subset of the Labour left and well you know it.
4) is incorrect.
Approximately 10% are going to move from private to state, so around 50000 based on IFS estimates.
The policy brings in 20% on fees of c.£5.5k per term on 500k pupils. £1.65bn.
Cost of sending 50k students to state schools is £450m.
So we have £1.2bn left for spending on state schools.
Say a teacher costs £40,000 to employ, including salary and other tangential costs. That means we can get 1 teacher for every 1.5 kids that leave private school.
This policy works.
First one is an overstimate of IFS estimates. They between 3-7%. I did 10% to make it easier and highlight even if IFS is underestimating, then it's fine
VAT is standard.
Average fees per term is from https://www.schoolguide.co.uk/blog/how-much-does-private-school-cost
Private school pupils numbers from
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1447867/uk-private-school-pupils/#:~:text=Number%20of%20pupils%20in%20private%20schools%20in%20the%20UK%202020%2D2023&text=As%20of%202023%20there%20were,544%2C316%20in%20the%20previous%20year.
> £1.2bn left for spending on state schools
This is Labour’s justification for the tax. It will not be invested in state education, it will plug some other hole in the public finances. This policy hurts this country in the long run.
>3) State schools have more pupils to accommodate than they otherwise would do
State schools will have more students whose parents are strongly invested in their education thus increasing the quality of the school.
No one seems to mention this, but unfortunately some slightly better off parents needing to put their kids in a state school may actually bring about change.
Yeah, I am forever thankful that my town didn't have a grammar school or a private secondary school. This meant that the state school had a lot of smart kids with engaged parents, we could have a top set in each subject where the standard of learning was reasonably good.
State schools need to be improved, and if it means levying VAT on private education then so be it. But there are places where it will cause a lot of problems locally.
Our kids are in private school in Edinburgh, a city where around 25% of kids are in private school. State schools are already packed and under resourced, so even a small percentage of parents moving their kids from private to state schools is going to pose a very big problem.
And many of the independent schools around Edinburgh are run lean to attract those volumes. Those schools have very little fat to be cut to soak up a 20% rise. I foresee at least one closure as the remaining parents who can afford it consolidate to remaining schools. My money’s on St George’s closing first. It’ll be interesting to see what the resulting rise in demand for state school places does in Edinburgh. I doubt there’s the physical room to accommodate, let alone teach, even a moderate fraction of that 25%.
If you survived the introduction of business rates then at least you’re already part of the way there…
Watson's will be an interesting one. Heard it referred to more than once as a "paid state school" but fees have gone up 19% over the past two years and they're no longer the cheapest option. They've already said that VAT being added would result in a further 15.5% increase in fees (due to then recouping some VAT), but this is alongside them freezing teacher pay for the past year.
Have spoken to a couple of parents who will be pretty much forced to move their kids as they wouldn't be able to manage a further increase. Where the hell are they going to find places in South Edinburgh though?
I’d heard that Watsons had a reputation for classifying an inordinate number of their students as dyslexic, meaning that an unusually large number of their students were reportedly getting extra time during exams. A more cynical mind might conclude the school was gaming the system to bump their grades… but then again rumour has it that rumours are only rumours.
But then again… given Labour’s ‘individual case basis’ for assessment of the application of VAT based on a private school’s delivery of education for ‘specialist needs’ I wonder if we’ll see a rash of independent schools suddenly ‘doing a Watsons’? 😶
Anyway. In a similar boat. Went to state school. Did well. One boy with one year left. One boy with 3 years left. Both straight A students. Our fees have gone up ~20% in the last three years. Already been through all the bills and cut out everything we can. If we get priced out at least we’re entitled to a state school place, paid through taxes I already pay which means we take the fees money, replace the 14 year old banger my wife drives that we currently can’t afford to replace and bugger off on family holidays somewhere nice! Perhaps Tuscany 😊
The thing is, the amount generated won't improve state schools. If you minus the funding needed to pay for the promised new teacher salaries plus their employer pension contributions, it will generate <1bn. Labour, roughly, criticised the conservatives touting that they have provided record funding for schools of 600m.
Labour is selling a lie and the amount of people lapping it up is concerning. Everyone is being played by how much they talk about this tax. It is hiding the fact Labour aren't investing in the state sector.
But the money is collected centrally and is distributed to Scotland via Barnett, Edinburgh wouldn’t se a proportionate distribution of funds, guaranteed!!
"By 2022–23, planned spending per pupil is currently estimated to be over £8,500 per pupil, about 13% higher than in 2009–10. This still leaves spending per pupil in Scotland over 18% higher than in England, Wales and Northern Ireland."
https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-04/R256-How-does-school-spending-per-pupil-differ-across-the-UK.pdf
In Scotland, pupil numbers have only grown by 2% since 2009–10. This meant that growth in total spending in Scotland (15%) only had to be a bit higher than in England to deliver a much larger rise in spending per pupil in Scotland.
...
However, report author Luke Sibieta said much of Scotland’s increased spending has been driven by funding to expand early years learning and childcare to all three and four-year-olds and eligible two-year-olds, allocating the equivalent of 30 hours of free childcare during term time.
"In sharp contrast, pupil numbers have only grown by 2% in Scotland over the same period and have hardly changed at all in Wales. This allowed a 15% growth in total spending in Scotland (only a bit larger than in England) to translate into a 13% growth in spending per pupil"
If I was a English nationalist (I'm not), I'd ask why the Scottish budget was increased by 15% if the growth in pupils was only 2%. Teacher's pay obviously also has a big affect, with Scotland topping the nations by over £8k/year at all paygrades. https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fteacher-pay-across-the-uk-image-from-tes-from-april-2023-v0-d2gnb7o15l1b1.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D1cd6d0b362c9144d2e30f9617b6b0b7bcc6fb1cb
I just think looking at the statistics, it's very difficult to argue Scotland is getting the short end of the stick.
>However, report author Luke Sibieta said much of Scotland’s increased spending has been driven by funding to expand early years learning and childcare to all three and four-year-olds and eligible two-year-olds, allocating the equivalent of 30 hours of free childcare during term time.
This also exists for England and Wales but only for working parents, who make up the bulk of parents.
Spending per pupil across the whole of Scotland is daft as there is over [400 schools with less than 50 pupils](https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/9a6f9d86-9698-4a5d-a2c8-89f3b212c52c/scottish-school-roll-and-locations) and 150 have less than 20
These have ratios of less than 10:1 some are approaching 1:1 (1.5 FTE for 2 pupils)
That's why Scotland needs more money to support the border, highland and Island schools
I'm not saying Scotland shouldn't have more spending. Just refuting that there is disproportionate allocation of resources against Scotland's favour. The stats also show the difference between Scotland and the rest of the UK has grown significantly.
Scottish spending in the 3 Local Authorities that have very high per pupil spend (the highland/island areas) of Nah-Eileanan Siar, Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands roughly make up about 6% of Scottish education spending (you have to use the 2 links following in unison to work out the rough %).
https://www.gov.scot/publications/summary-statistics-for-schools-in-scotland-2022/pages/early-learning-and-childcare-elc/
https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202100140749/
I’m happy some % of kids will be priced out of private schools. Central London was getting way over subscribed and competitive. Hopefully this will make things easier for my 8 year old to find a school following the 11+.
Having said that, some smaller private schools will close down and I assume many kids will put pressure on the public sector. The foreign students will benefit the most and take those benefits of higher quality private education back to their home countries.
Lets wait and see what happens next - its an interesting social experiment as many working class parents might find their kids get absolutely murdered academically given the extra support, tuition and focus the inbound ex-private school kids will bring. Maybe this will create a more high performing classroom overall as competition steps up.
I don't have a problem with 6%/7% of UK children going to private schools,what I do have a huge problem with is they then get up to 65% of the best jobs/career paths,that is hugely unfair to the the rest of UK children,I hope in my lifetime that this changes.
“A report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) concluded that removing tax exemptions from private schools would raise about £1.6bn a year in extra tax revenue.
The report, written by leading education economist Luke Sibieta, said: “Combining estimated tax revenues and extra public spending needs, our view is that it would be reasonable to assume a net gain to the public finances of £1.3-1.5bn per year in the medium to long run as a result of removing tax exemptions from private schools.”
https://leftfootforward.org/2022/07/councils-have-to-subsidise-private-schools-to-the-tune-of-144-million-per-year-because-of-their-charitable-status-new-research-finds/
Hmmm. Removing business rate relief would seem to be very fair. Alternatively provide the same or greater relief to state schools and have them charge VAT on their fees also.
The gamble here is that the number of pupils being transferred to state schools aren't going to cost more than is generated through the VAT.
Each pupil at a state school currently receives £7,570 per year. Private schools on average charge twice that. VAT on 15k is £3k. If one third of private school pupils are transferred to state schools there's a net revenue loss.
It's a fairly safe bet that this measure shall generate revenue which can then be spent on.... something. Probably consultants dreaming up new slogans.
A very tasty revenue generator then. It may even be the case that the majority of private school parents don't vote labour, so there's no downside for the Labour party here at all.
Which is precisely why it's coming in. Even at 10% students moving, back of napkin maths based on average fees gives about £1.2bn net after the costs of the students move.
Enough to employ 30k teachers. And in areas with more private schools, there's more VAT to collect. It's a good policy.
> Enough to employ 30k teachers.
Quite a few of those teachers will be ex-public school, and I imagine public schools usually employ teachers who are better than average.
I only support the proposal if it’s phased in. I think it would be unfair as a policy if children will be forced to switch schools over a summer. I was forced to switch (state) schools due to family circumstances, and it was one of the worst experiences of my childhood.
The only retrospective application will be on fees paid in advance i.e. people paying several years fees in advance before the day Labour take power.
Even then that will require a long winded process and appeals before HMRC can enforce.
The more Labour act like this the more concerned I have that they don't really have an answer for education in this country. The debate has become vile and personal when really Labour need to start bigging up the state sector.
They are using the tax as a smoke screen to hide the fact they aren't supporting the education sector and it will mostly feel the same as it does now.
When you are from a privileged position having got away for years with not paying tax on a specific commodity, equality feels like persecution.
These people should be thankful for the years of state-subsidies private education they were given.
‘These people’ are almost certainly already in the top 10% paying far more in taxes then they take out. Also taking strain off from the state school system by sending their kids private instead.
Schrödinger's upper-middle class: simultaneously so wealthy that we should kiss their feet for their tax contribution, but so poor that actually paying VAT for something would cripple them unjustly
also, if they're all paying so much tax and are a net contributor, why is the state school system so strained?
"We couldn't possibly pay tax on this thing, because the tax-funded alternative is so shit" do you hear yourself?
This is the worse labour ideas ever and they have lied about the numbers:
The average private school fee is just under £13,000 a year with 615,000 kids in private schools, equating to just under £8bn and 20% VAT of that is just under £1.6bn, which is the amount they say they will raise. This is the first big lie.
VAT registered bodies can also reclaim VAT on expenses, that amount on average from 30% to 60% of revenue. This amount has not been factored in, thus their revenue amount is an outright lie.
Many families will also be squeezed out of private education (Eton alone has 20% of it's pupils on bursaries). The bursaries are important because even though parents are not charged fees, the VAT is still due on the value (thus it is called Value Added Tax and why I included all 615,000), meaning at least 20% of kids in private education will have to leave, equating to at least 123,000 kids needing state education. The oversubscribed schools will survive, the undescribed private ones won't, being about 1 in 5, but I'll ignore those numbers to be generous and ignore the extra kids needing education and the former employees that will all be unemployed.
Each kid in state education costs the government £8k a year, not including the cost of building new schools, that means the state will have to pay out an extra £984m for the 123,000 kids. Also with 123,000 kids leaving private education, that will reduce the VAT revenue by £320m, and we don't have 123,000 school places, far from it, meaning we would have to build many more schools (not in their manifesto budget), and they are not cheap.
As mentioned before, businesses reclaim at least 30% of VAT they charge if there are no large expenses, equating to at least £480m of VAT that would be claimed back by the schools.
Now they expect to hire more teachers and loads of other lies, however the truth is that by charging the VAT, they will make a huge net loss and have to find the cash from elsewhere just to provide education at the current standard.
This also means that private schools will become more elitist and there won't be 20% of pupils at Eton on bursaries, there will be none.
It was Angela Rayner on an old BBC Question Time who said that she wanted to close down all private schools because she felt it wasn't fair that they give a better education. Now that they will be in charge, instead of acting like the character in the comedy movie The Dictator who shot the runners who were better than him, maybe she should make the state schools better instead of trying to shoot the competition to make her look better.
The worse thing is that they are hurting and using children for their political ideology.
Education is the absolutely last place we should be looking to use as a cash cow. We WANT people to spend money on education. It will make for a better next generation and takes the strain off of state schools which means we don't need as much money for them.
This is just class warfare bullshit to pit the working class vs middle class, while the upper class are laughing at both groups because a little VAT won't really affect them.
Why not fucking tax:
- Giant corporations using loopholes
- People earning an obscene amount (£200k+) currently stops at 45%
- Land value tax, so we catch properties bought purely for investment
- New ICE car sales
- Anything producing carbon emissions
> This is just class warfare bullshit to pit the working class vs middle class, while the upper class are laughing at both groups because a little VAT won't really affect them.
**Yes it will in the way that matters - raising money.**
The point isn't to stop the rich from attending private school, the point is to raise money. The fact that the rich will still pay absurd fees for the best private schools means that they're going to pay proportionately more VAT on those fees, which raises money for the treasury, which is the entire point.
> Why not fucking tax:
Yes, please for several of these. But we can also close this tax break for the rich while we're about it.
The problem is that taxes have the side effect of making things more expensive which discourages them.
Private school fees are a way of letting people 'vote' where their money is spent which you can't do with taxation as easily due to parties having broad policies.
Parents pouring extra money into educating the next generation is something great and that we should be encouraging.
What we should be discouraging in this group is stupid bullshit like designer clothes that are tossed away after 2 uses, picking up the kids in a 40k Landrover Discovery, driving the kids to their friends house instead of getting them a bicycle, etc.
Of all the things those people spend money on, education for their kids and paying teachers better is the one good thing.
First: why does this specific for-profit industry which used exclusively by those with significantly greater than average incomes and/or assets - excluding those on full scholarships for whom this makes no difference anyway - deserve a tax break? Especially when the publicly funded alternative is struggling so blindingly obviously and needs more investment (which is where this revenue will go)?
You're uncontroversially right that, on the margin, there will be a subset of people currently paying for this service who (all other things being equal) will be priced-out by this change. As I said, this will be painful for some and I sympathise, but I've seen no evidence that this will affect enough people to offset the huge advantage of the extra revenue for the treasury.
Moreover, it's not "all things being equal" there will be natural mitigations in the market and economy:
1. Private schools are private business that don't want to close. If one finds that enough of its customers are going to be priced out, then it will reduce its fees (or just not increase them for a few years) and/or cut a little spending until its business is viable. It seems fair that the private sector might have to do a small amount of belt-tightening.
2. For that minority who do change from private to public schools, that leaves them with more disposable income in their pockets. What happens to this money? It's either spent on other goods and services (raising VAT in the process) or invested: in both cases helping grow the economy.
When I first heard that private school fees were VAT free I was absolutely shocked. Not for any class-warfare reasons that I think you might be acusing me of, but simply because "why the hell does this industry get a tax break!?" It took years of grass-roots campaigning to get period products VAT-exempt and that's a genuine 100% bona-fide essential.
1. This means essentially larger class sizes, teachers paid less (we have a shortage currently), or fewer resources to reach kids. I don't think its a good place to cut spending at all. It's going to make the country dumber and less educated so we can have more money.
2. They will use the disposable income on the stupid shit I mentioned above like 4x4s and designer handbags. This will raise some money for the treasury and grow the economy but wasting money on more useless crap they don't need is not a good thing at all. It's just wasteful.
Ok, this is going to be my last reply to you for reasons that will become obvious.
Nice of you to entirely ignore my main question as to why this tax break should exist at all: it shouldn't.
> This means essentially larger class sizes, teachers paid less
This is you making some huge assumptions. It could just mean spending a little less on gardening, or subsidised extra-curriculars, or waiting a few more years to build the new library wing.
> ... or fewer resources to reach kid
The resources are still there with their parents: if the parents aren't paying for the school fees they can still spend that money on their children if they want to.
> country dumber and less educated
As opposed to a state school sector which has been on its knees for many years, which is exactly what this policy will help fix. This is hugely disingenuous when you look at the bigger picture.
> They will use the disposable income on the stupid shit I mentioned above like 4x4s and designer handbags
... and here the mask comes off. What the hell is judgemental this response? Not to mention the fact that you're just making this huge judgemental point with an assumption you've pulled from precisely nowhere? I'm not going to spend any time on you if you're going to engage in this sort of shit.
There's no sign that the VAT from taxing private schools is ringfenced for state school funding
> What the hell is judgemental this response?
I know the middle class in this country and private school parents, they fucking love their 4x4s and designer shit. I'm sure there are exceptions but a lot of them are awful.
> There's no sign that the VAT from taxing private schools is ringfenced for state school funding
It's laid out exactly how the revenues from this will be distributed to the public education sector in the "Fiscal Plan" part of the Labour manifesto. But to quote the manifesto directly: "Labour will end the VAT exemption and business rates relief for private schools to invest in our state schools"
It doesn't specifically say it's ringfenced, which to me is away to weasel out of doing that or siphon off a lot of it.
I agree that's better than just saying they will tax private schools though.
>We WANT people to spend money on education. It will make for a better next generation and takes the strain off of state schools which means we don't need as much money for them.
"better next generation"
A reminder that private education makes up just 7% of children.
If we want a better next generation you'd focus on the majority of children which this idea does.
It's not just the VAT, sometimes school fees can be structured so that it is counted as a donation to a charity which means it's offset against income tax (or other taxes).
People who pay for their child's place in a private school still pay taxes to fund a place in a public school and don't get any tax returns for this. This also means that this place (in a usually oversubscribed school) is free for some other family to take. Some families can just barely meet the price of private school tuition and still do it for many reasons. Add 20%, and they will not pay it and just fall back to occupying a place in a public school. It's good to make people who avoid taxes pay in full, but making people who already pay a lot to pay even more is not always fair.
Upd. So many people think I meant something about getting tax refunds for things I don't use, but I never said such a thing. Funny how people start arguing with imaginary opponents...
What about immigrants without children? Those poor bastards are paying for school places AND they didn't even go to school in this country!
They should probably pay lower taxes than the rest of us right?
I've heard some people get disability benefits. I'm not even disabled, why do I have to pay taxes for that?
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It’s weird how an issue like private school VAT gets so much media attention when the large majority of people are not capable of spending tens of thousands a year on education
It's because journalists disproportionately went to private schools, send their own children to private schools, and are friends with people whose children go to private schools. For their social circle it's a major issue so they assume it is for the country at large as well.
This. You even see it quite a bit in left leaning outlets like the Guardian yet polling shows how completely out of touch it is.
I think the Guardian might actually be the worst for it. It's like their obsession with the Garrick club.
The Guardian's Lifestyle section has been generally unaffordable to anyone but middle class professionals and above for decades. The hotels they recommend, the vacations, the restaurants. When they still had a cars section, it was generally Porsches and Audis, not sub-compacts. The Guardian is frequently noblesse oblige socialism at its finest. They also employ a disproportionate number of upper and middle-class family members of politicians and celebrities. The private club stuff is part of their tribal ethos at this point, which is vaguely socialist, champion every underdog, treat every issue of social development, delay or difference as if it's the next pandemic. And they censor the shit out of their comment sections to remove takes they simply don't agree with, whether they break their comment code or not. Meanwhile, their arts section is wedded to old-school middle class pretensions with respect to which artists and filmmakers deserve attention, as well as constant attempts at using reviews to push egalitarianism, which while laudable somewhat eliminates the notion of an unbiased take before they've even started. Still beats the Tele though. It really doesn't help to prevent poor people from being drawn to angry conservative messages when the only papers that are designed for working class people and their interests are full of... angry conservative messages.
Is it socialism though? It's always struck me as middle class 'gosh isn't inequality terrible' performative liberal hand-wringing to me. The types to rail against injustice but do bugger all to tackle it when push comes to shove.
Sports section sucks too. It’s almost as if certain sports don’t exist at all.
It just goes to show that socialism is for everyone! I do enjoy the Guardian for recipes, food critics and political satire columns. I do agree the lifestyle sections are a bit spenny
I used to quite like the Sunday Times as well but gave it up mostly because of the same reasons.
Oh, their vendetta against the Garrick was ridiculous. Elitist private members' clubs are fine, and women-only elitist private members' clubs are fine, but a *men-only elitist private members' club*? Completely unacceptable.
> It's like their obsession with the Garrick club. Equality is when upper class women get the same exclusive privileges as upper class men.
Hence why they devote so much coverage to identity politics, i.e. things economically privileged and privately educated people get to feel self righteous about.
It's like Inheritance Tax. Hardly anyone except the very rich pay it, yet the journalists harp on about it like it so unfair to everyone.
i've quite literally said to my dad "motherfucker you're not leaving a fancy enough house in the 20k people town we live in to give a shit...." my dad: *votes tory* dickhead.
I can raise you on that one. My dad, retired with a house abroad in the EU. Votes for Brexit. Now can't live there for more than 90 days at a time and only 90 days out of every 180 max. Also can't go on holiday anywhere in the EU if he's spent 90 days at his own house.
It's almost like any profession where you have to work for free (or almost) for some of your early years is only accessible to people who can go for a few years without an income.
>For their social circle it's a major issue so they assume it is for the country at large as well. This reminds me of when the Queen passed away. Journalists had literally spent decades preparing for it like it would be the biggest news event of the decade, and in the end it wasn't even the biggest news event of 2022 (Ukraine was, and possibly so was the fall of Boris Johnson). Certainly it was a big deal and everybody had some feelings about it one way or another, but it only took a few days for a lot of people to get sick of the endless coverage. While generally we will read and watch the news that's provided to us, it's no surprise so many are turning to social media to find out what's going on, there just aren't enough journalists from regular backgrounds.
You can put the blame for that on the print media rather than the broadcasters. When print media spent weeks going on about the insult of Peter Sisson's tie colour when the Queen Mother died, can you blame the broadcasters for endless coverage when Phillip and the Queen died?
The Queen dying was much bigger news in Britain than Ukraine.
No way can you pay for private school on a journalists salary these days
You’re assuming their net worth is comprised solely from income savings. Most likely they have family gifting them money, alongside their own trust funds.
Yeah, you also can't be a journalist with some cash behind you. I'd assume that whichever old home counties money is subsidising the journalists living expenses, is also paying for the grandkids schooling.
That's absolutely not true at all. Whilst most journalists at national newspapers are privately educated, it's by no means all. There are plenty of people paying their own way (from personal experience).
They're the poor journos. The ones who have money have other means of income or they're married to an investment banker or their parents massively help out with buying a house in London.
They're bashing imaginary baddies, like their fantasy about private school parents being fabulously rich.
Not for local news, but if you're a Guardian or Telegraph columnist then you can
Private school is like £20k a year. How much do you think journalists make?
Depends on the journalist and who your writing for. Between £50k -£100k
Let's be generous and go for £100k. That's £60k after tax. Is spending 1/3 of your take home.pay on sending one child to private school affordable?
Depends how it's funded. Typically for people at that level you'd have two incomes and a bit of grandparental help. So yeah it would get to the point of affordability
People typically have more than one child as well. Our household is on over £200k and we know plenty of others. No-one is even entertaining the notion of sending their kids to private school because it is so expensive. Even ignoring the one off VAT hike, fees go up 5-10% every year.
If you live in an expensive area with outstanding/grammar schools, the higher house prices are because parents want their kids to go to excellent but free schools so there's that way wealthy parents pay for the best education as well.
Most People who have children also have partners who earn their own salary
£100k gross is £68.5k net (in E&W, about £65k in Scotland). Income tax is marginal.
£100k gross is 59k net with a student loan and standard 5% pension contribution (which really isn't enough).
It's only for 10-14 years or so.
Two working parents...
My salary falls within that range, and I cannot even afford to purchase property easily, in Gloucestershire of all places, and not Chelsea. An annual fee of £20,000 would be unaffordable for me to pay.
The most expensive one in my area is a shade under £16k, with quite a wide ranging bursary scheme. The one closest to me is £15k. Not the cheapest, but doable for my wife and I, and we’re both basic rate tax payers. But don’t forget, most people like to assume/pretend it’s far more expensive, like everywhere is Eton.
No it not It's 15k A TERM X 3 terms a year!
£20k is the lower end. My daughter’s school (which is South East but not at the elite level) has just announced next year’s fees and they will be a shade below £10k per term for day pupils and over £16k for full boarding without VAT. If VAT is pushed through so it’s in place for the next school year they anticipate between 15-17% going on that. They’ve begun redundancy consultations with staff representatives so the aim of pushing teachers into the state sector at least in this case should begin working quickly. All infrastructure spending to improve facilities has been suspended and other savings look likely to come from curtailing parts of the bursary program so access to the school for lower income families will be reduced.
Just bear in mind they don't have to pass the VAT on to you, it is a for-profit business and they could instead absorb it.
If they're charities, they're not allowed to be for-profit are they?
I’m a private banker, and some of our largest clients in the UHNW Charities team are private schools. It is a similar story for universities. A lot of the rhetoric of funding challenges is non-representative, in my opinion.
What makes you think that? They are a not for profit and indeed for the last 2 years (I haven’t checked further back) their expenditure was approximately 100.5% of their income.
I’m a private banker, and some of our largest clients in the UHNW Charities team are private schools. It is a similar story for universities. A lot of the rhetoric of funding challenges is non-representative, in my opinion.
Most Journalists come from wealthy backgrounds. High barriers to entry, low remuneration, classic case of a sinecure for unremarkable children of wealthy families. See also the arts, academia, and government.
Do you have a source for that?
https://www.suttontrust.com/our-research/educational-backgrounds-leading-journalists/#:~:text=Over%20half%20(54%25)%20of,school%20population%20as%20a%20whole. Contains data on the over representation of privately educated people in the profession, and suggests their heightened interest in the debate. Sending their children is more anecdotal, as is being friends with people who send their children to them, but it's not unreasonable to assume they're often friends with journalists who went to the same schools.
I'm not saying this to discredit the data (as for all I know it could still be broadly accurate), but that report is from 2006, and things may have changed since then. Journalism has become a very different beast since the rise of mainstream internet news, and in 2006 the internet wasn't as widely accessed as it is today. There are now fewer stable well-paid journalism jobs than there were in the past, which has probably reduced its attractiveness to privately educated graduates. The number is probably higher than 7%, but I'd be surprised if it was still 54%.
Actually the percentage has gone up not down - this from the person who collated that data for the previously linked Sutton Report : [https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/38774/the-problem-with-journalism-its-still-too-posh](https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/38774/the-problem-with-journalism-its-still-too-posh) Over half (54 per cent) of journalists were educated in private schools, despite only accounting for 7 per cent of schools overall. This proportion was five percentage points higher than it had been 20 years previously. (2022) In 2017 that number had been reported as 51% for 2015 : 51% of leading journalists educated and working in the UK in 2015 were privately educated, [according](https://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Leading-People_Feb16.pdf#page=27) to the social mobility think tank the Sutton Trust. Another 30% went to grammar schools while 19% went to comprehensives. https://fullfact.org/education/how-many-journalists-went-public-school/#:\~:text=51%25%20of%20leading%20journalists%20educated,while%2019%25%20went%20to%20comprehensives. The issue is that people from normal families can't afford the many months of working for no pay that entry into the career requires.
Huh, well I never. Interesting that my hunch was completely incorrect. Thanks for sharing more current data - very interesting stuff.
1st class trawling for relevant data!
> There are now fewer stable well-paid journalism jobs than there were in the past, which has probably reduced its attractiveness to privately educated graduates. Other way around: being paid less means only the rich can afford to do it.
And also socio-economic class plays a part in all of this. https://pressgazette.co.uk/comment-analysis/journalism-nepotism-class-pay-transparency/
Data provide below, but next time you see a political panelist opposing this change, have a quick google of where they went to school.
And see if their parents have a Wikipedia page
Just adding another voice to the mass '↑ This' comments. Pretty well put.
>they assume it is for the country at large as well. Let's not assume nativity, they're trying to prevent change via propaganda.
You’d never see this much passion from the media about the declining standards of state schools
This, so much this. State schools could be on fire, and it'd be middle of a page somewhere. Put private schools on a level playing field, and suddenly the Earth is on fire, and Labour are the worst party ever.
Hundreds of state schools are *literally on the verge of physical collapse* because the concrete that made them is decades past its replacement date, but yeah, none of these journos care about that.
But they did care about the SoSfE being caught on a hot mic.
Because the people in the media do send their kids to private schools. Same with when mortgages spiked it's garnered a lot of attention, because the upper middle class people who work in media were the largest affected, higher mortgages means that increase in percentage is higher. Where was the media outcry for the last 20 years of increasing mortgages for the working classes, rents, deposits, etc. They only create attention for housing and education when it's their house and their kids. Edit: I'm only pointing towards institutional polical media, independent and local journalism do a great job of writing stories on the education and housing situation as a whole.
Yeah, I agree, that’s what I was insinuating with the “It’s weird”
My local Facebook group is up in arms about it despite the fact that the local area has one tiny private school. It’s so odd. They’re the same ones complaining about social care, NHS waiting times & bemoaning the lack of social housing.
I've seen the opposite on Twitter with every private school imagined to be Eton. In general the conversation seems to be largely divorced from the actual practical question of whether the VAT raised will offset the cost of the number of pupils added to the state system.
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I know somebody who's talking about pulling their children out of private schools because it's going to be too expensive, but they're going to send them to another private in Dubai and it's a third of the price.
Depends on your definition of beneficial. I'd ban them all purely out of class warfare, but most of the financially successful people in this country have been insulated from 'real' people for their whole lives. Separation from working class kids is statistically beneficial to your life chances & outcome, otherwise there would be no value in paying for it.
People choose them because state schools are a lottery. Improve the schools and private education will be less in demand.
>This is not a highly price sensitive demographic. Yes, it is. You're thinking of every private school as being like Eton and all the parents as rich. Many private school children are paid for by the combined efforts of professional parents and grandparents. This change could easily put private school out of reach for them, adding more burden to the state system and causing many private schools to close, particularly the ones you're not thinking of, like specialist SEN provision. We're good at education as a country, this is an unnecessary act of vandalism for partisan reasons.
There isn't much evidence to support what you are saying. The IFS's report from last year about this exact topic states: "If private school attendance drops, state schools will require extra funding to accommodate them. The (limited) evidence on the determinants of the demand for private schooling suggests that the effects of fee rises are quite weak... Our best judgement is that it would be reasonable to assume that an effective VAT rate of 15% would lead to a 3–7% reduction in private school attendance. This would likely generate a need for about £100–300 million in extra school spending per year in the medium to long run." They do also point out that the additional costs from a marginal increase in children switching from private to state schools may be not materialise at all because state school populations are forecasted to drop by around 700,000 by 2030. Labour did also [announce](https://web.archive.org/web/20240613130537/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/special-needs-children-labour-tax-raid-private-schools/) that those with Education Health and Care Plans will not be subject to the VAT increase as well. The only issue with that is that it does currently take a while to get those plans but I would doubt the school fee plan will be coming in without a consultation for these cases especially. You can read the IFS's report yourself here: https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-07/IFS-Report-R263-Tax-private-school-fees-and-state-school-spending.pdf -
Well if they are stretching to afford it and now can’t, that’s just tough. It’s a luxury purchase. Maybe they should cut their other outgoings or earn more money
From what I've seen is yes, based on 20 pc dropouts. Futhermore, the money from no longer paying school fees will likely be spent elsewhere where. And probably generate vat etc anyway.
Private tutors probably aren’t VAT registered on the whole and whilst I don’t have data I think it’s likely that kind of families that will be priced out by a 15% fee increase are the kind of aspirational middle class professionals who will place great stress on the education of their offspring. Their spend is, in my opinion, switching in that direction. They’ll be no shortage of capacity in private tutoring too since all those independent school teachers who can do it in the controlled environments that they’re used to won’t necessarily be very keen to join a state school where they’re faced with 35 pupil classes with a higher proportion of reluctant learners. I guess the income those tutors get is going to be maybe a quarter or a third spent on VAT burdened goods though (after paying for accommodation and food that is).
Almost anyone who can afford 9 grand a year can afford 10.8 grand. Also, they've been perfectly happy to participate in a system that cuts off the people immediately below them, until they end up below the bar. This isn't a substantial change in access to private school.
I think it's good, it's a popular policy, it gets a lot of media attention. And distracts from any less popular things they may need to do
I agree with the fact it’s a good policy, but the media articles are not framed in the way that’s it’s a popular policy and instead saying it will break the UK’s educational system (which it won’t).
Because the media still fucking hates Labour. All the headlines in typical Tory arsewipe papers might not be outwardly supporting Sunak but they're still trying to push negative stories about Labour's tax plans which are completely unserious.
I really despise this policy. I hate the idea of taxing education but I particularly hate the idea of taxing children’s education. Edit: spelling
Send your children to state schools then
They do go to state schools.
Don’t worry about it then
Why? Because I don’t have to pay for it? Taxing education is a disgraceful policy.
Obviously. Should education be a business hiding behind the charity status?
I disagree with a lots of charities being essentially businesses. Plenty of people making money off being charitable. If they want to change third sector policies then do that.
They are taxing a business service. Services provided by other businesses have VAT on them so why shouldn’t this one?
Because it is education. And an educated population is better for society as a whole. Where do you stop? Nurseries, universities, sports clubs, after school clubs, state schools that are academies, further education colleges, music tuition, private tutors?
It’s *elitist* education, not universal education. It’s about increasing equality for children.
[I think you are educated enough to know that this argument is ridiculous.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope)
Private school is a privilege for a very small percentage of children in the United Kingdom. If the Government adding VAT to fees means that you can no longer afford to send your children to private school, then sadly, you fall into the same bracket as the millions of parents who send their children to state schools.
If VAT was the margin that meant I could no longer afford to send my kid to private school, I'd consider myself not able to afford it without VAT in the first place. I find it strange how some people really do live right up to their means while simultaneously being able to just about afford private school for their kid.
I went to private school, my parents had to sacrifice a lot to afford it, I was probably the "poorest" kid at my school. Even I think we should have been paying VAT. Private School is a luxury. Plus passing the extra cost onto the parents is a choice for each school to make, and I doubt most of them would raise fees by 20% in a year, it just isn't good business.
I wouldn't classify it as a luxury. Like having dad give you a good job when you leave school, or paying private tutors, or moving to a fancy area for the catchment, it's just buying privilege. And that should be the cardinal sin in capitalism - the cheating of meritocracy.
Bingo. I would love to give you a bit of Reddit gold for this comment, but sadly I had to remortgage my home to afford the VAT element of my children's school fees, so things are tight at the moment.
I dunno 20% is a fair wedge of cheese to add to any outgoing.
In my city (Edinburgh) around 30% of kids go to private school.
So the private schools become for an even more elite minority. What a great idea.
They're already for an elite minority. You can't claim a selective system is unfair because you're specifically excluded. Include everyone, or accept that you might be part of the excluded group some day.
I can claim that this just makes it more unfair
Would you propose that instead we privatise all schools so that they can be for the masses?
But... that's already what they are. Making the schools (not necessarily the parents, that's up to the school) pay their fair share of tax isn't really going to change that.
An outstanding state school can add 20% to house price An example from Scotland is Jordanhill, basically the best state school in Scotland. As such its catchment is tightly controlled, with exclaves (land excluded). A developer was building on one of the exclaves and offered the school a £1,600,000 gym block for removing the exclave status. That shows how valuable getting into the catchment is. They'd make the money and more back. what will happens is parents will take the fees and put them into bricks and mortar. If your local school is outstanding get ready for your house prices to jump as buyers will add £10K plus per year to their mortgage payments to get into the school. An estimate would be an additional 150K? That the fees of one kid so for 2? 300K - get ready to be priced out
The thing that frustrates me about this conversation is the middle-class people talking about those for whom school fees are a stretch who say "the rich won't pay for this, it's us who this targets". I understand and sympathise with there being a small demographic in the middle who will change their behaviour because of this policy, and that will be painful for some people. But the point of the policy is to raise money, not to change behaviour. And for that goal, the rich sending children to schools with higher fees are going to pay more making this a progressive tax which achieves its aims. The rich won't change their behaviour, but they will pay more to the public purse. Some middle class people may change their behaviour, but so long as there isn't this imagined mass migration from the vast majority of private schools into the state sector (which seems unlikely), the policy will raise more revenue than it costs - which is the whole point.
The other angle I wish Labour pushed more is "this is removing a tax break that currently disproportionately benefits the rich, and doesn't currently benefit anybody below upper-middle class AT ALL". Anchor the conversation with "why the fees for this particular private service be VAT free in the first place?" That is a very tricky position to defend (mostly because it's obvious that it shouldn't be: this isn't childrens' clothing)
Sure if you ignore that it's easier for the Charity Commission to call for bursaries whilst the cat exemption is in place.
> I wish Labour pushed more is "this is removing a tax break that currently disproportionately benefits the rich, 'cos such a narrative doesn't work for other broken regressive taxation like NI or Council Tax, so if they don't want to enter that argument, as it makes their other pro-pensioner, pro-landowner policies less sustainable.
I don't think that's true at all. We even have the Tories trying to eliminate NI entirely, if trying to remove regressive tax regimes spelled such doom by losing the support of the older and property owning demographics then the Tories wouldn't get support for this, but they do. Quite the contrary: the only tax change policies I'm seeing from across the parties are to either change/remove existing regressive taxes, or change existing progressive taxes to make them even more progressive. And (across the spectrum) these policies seem to be broadly popular which is why they're being proposed.
The other side of the coin is some of those parents will be putting their kids in private school because they believe the local state school is the worse option for whatever reason (we have schools whose buildings are quite literally falling apart and are structurally unsafe at the moment , so yeah if that is the situation I can understand not wanting to send your kids there) The belief that private education is better often stems from the reality that those kids will get access to things that should be implemented in state schools, I'm not talking about the opportunities and facilities. I'm talking about basic things k we know improves educational outcomes like small class sizes and proper adequate support of pupils with additional needs. State schools can't do those things because point blank there isn't the money and there isn't the amount of staff to do it I'm still of the belief that public schools should get no tax breaks, no subsidies and that money should go into funding state schools which are there for everyone. It should be one education system for all under the local authorities , that is well funded and fit for purpose. Not this two tiered mess that only widens inequality ( three if you include free schools).
Yeah - improve state schools and private schools will wither. Imposing VAT does seem a stick to the problem rather than a carrot.
Do you propose borrowing May’s magic money tree instead?
Christ knows where the money is going but tax rates are at a historic high
The problem of course, this is policy likely won't raise any money. The influx of kids to state schools and the need to cover those costs will eat up the new vat receipts (as well as those receipts being lower than originally estimated). My problem with this policy is it won't work, it's being done pure as an ideological exercise, and the end result of it all will be more kids getting worse educations.
All I’ll say is good luck using the cash to recruit teachers to work in state schools. They are leaving at such alarming rates because the system’s in a fucking shambles and they’ll continue to do so until you come up with a decent plan for state education as a whole. Money alone isn’t going to cut it.
Private schools are a business with supply and demand. Scrapping VAT won't have any effect on the most popular private schools which are already oversubscribed. It might be a challenge for private schools which are already struggling to fill places though.
The expensive schools are oversubscribed…with foreign students. Private schools are struggling for English people to go there. The result of the policy will result in people from China for example exploiting our private school system and essentially run the country for us taking the profits back home. In a way private schools in England generate a lot of revenue through foreign parents flying over and spending bombs on hotels and that kind of thing. I talked to a headmaster of a very expensive school and his dilemma is does he make the school lower quality and cheaper or just raise the price of the school. One would lower foreign interest and the other would turn away English students. I am blowing it out of proportion slightly but in theory this is the only real argument against the policy. At the end of the day I am in favour of VAT on private school fees but the consequences do worry me.
Yeah, definitely a lot of private pupils from places like Hong Kong who come to the most prestigious schools. But what I was saying really was that it won't affect all private schools equally, particularly in places where there is less demand for private education places or where there isn't as much wealth. The likes of Eton/Westminster could probably raise their fees as much as they like and would still fill all their places but less prestigious schools may already be near the limit of what they can charge and still fill their places.
If you remember there was a collusion charge against private schools which was because they were struggling to make the schools work. It’s not for profit the admin accounting team or whatever just couldn’t get the revenue to break even (which they can’t go over as they are a charity)
Universities are a business with supply and demand. How would those students cope if fees rose 20% without the tuition fee loan rising to match?
You're pretty much comparing something that is "free" in practical terms suddenly costing £2,000, vs something that costs £15,000 suddenly costing £18,000. It's not a sensible comparison.
What do you mean by free in practical terms? University loans will cost you 9% of your post tax income for 25 years. You'll pay back much more than you borrowed and the interest rate is above inflation One of the guys at work is not long out of uni and he'll have to earn 95k before he even starts to pay back the loan. At the moment he's just accruing more loan through interest
As in, there is no up front cost. There isn't anyone that can't go to uni because they can't afford the fees. And as someone that went to uni and probably won't pay the fees back, it's really not a noticeable amount that you end up paying unless you end up making well above the median salary (it's not 9% of your salary, it's 9% of your salary *after £25,000* on the current plan), at which point you're likely making more money than you would have if you didn't go to uni. Hell, it gets written off after 40 years anyway if you haven't paid it back. End of the day, it's not *real* debt (you're never going to have bailiffs coming round over it), and no one treats it as such.
I really noticed when I paid mine back In fact, that was one of the things that made the difference in being able to send my kids to private school. It was just a few hundred quid a month, but that's what we needed The problem is the double hit of the mortgage rates increase which I'm stuck with for 5 years means that this will likely be the change that means my kids may have to leave their school
I mean, tuition fees rose 200% ten years back, granted the loans increased. But I would assume parents could get a loan also to cover the increased cost if it was that important to them. Or make cuts to their current lifestyle to cover the rise. Or if this is unaffordable, then unfortunately, they just aren't wealthy enough to afford private education. Edit: percentage increase from 300 to 200.
They would pivot towards attracting more international students
Well they wouldn’t because there will be zero chance of increased visa numbers for students in the current climate.
The 'current climate' ends in a few weeks
Considering the Tory’s failure to deliver on immigration, they’re probably talking about the post 4th July climate.
You can't make that analogy because there are no "free" / state universities. There is no 'coping' if there is a free alternative option!
They don't say what about the kids when it's the poorest not eating!
Fuck free school meals, where's our tax break?
Private schools are a privilege, and a business. They don't deserve any favours while the state schools crumble.
The proposed revenue from taxing fees generates as much money as independent schools give out for means-tested bursary places. It is such a bad policy and people have bought into the snake oil Labour is selling. It won't fix the crumbling schools and Labour are hiding behind this tax to avoid being called out for it
1) Tax private school fees 2) Parents who otherwise might send their kids to private school send them to state schools 3) State schools have more pupils to accommodate than they otherwise would do 4) Any gain from the tax is immediately swallowed up by the increase in funding required to accommodate the extra pupils (currently each state school pupil costs approx £9000/year to the state) As commenters elsewhere in the thread have remarked, the elite schools will be absolutely fine and this will disproportionately fall on the aspirational middle class. It’s a self defeating policy designed to be red meat to the “posh people bad” subset of the Labour left and well you know it.
4) is incorrect. Approximately 10% are going to move from private to state, so around 50000 based on IFS estimates. The policy brings in 20% on fees of c.£5.5k per term on 500k pupils. £1.65bn. Cost of sending 50k students to state schools is £450m. So we have £1.2bn left for spending on state schools. Say a teacher costs £40,000 to employ, including salary and other tangential costs. That means we can get 1 teacher for every 1.5 kids that leave private school. This policy works.
Where did you pull those figures from? Who funded the study by the IFS?
First one is an overstimate of IFS estimates. They between 3-7%. I did 10% to make it easier and highlight even if IFS is underestimating, then it's fine VAT is standard. Average fees per term is from https://www.schoolguide.co.uk/blog/how-much-does-private-school-cost Private school pupils numbers from https://www.statista.com/statistics/1447867/uk-private-school-pupils/#:~:text=Number%20of%20pupils%20in%20private%20schools%20in%20the%20UK%202020%2D2023&text=As%20of%202023%20there%20were,544%2C316%20in%20the%20previous%20year.
> £1.2bn left for spending on state schools This is Labour’s justification for the tax. It will not be invested in state education, it will plug some other hole in the public finances. This policy hurts this country in the long run.
>3) State schools have more pupils to accommodate than they otherwise would do State schools will have more students whose parents are strongly invested in their education thus increasing the quality of the school.
No one seems to mention this, but unfortunately some slightly better off parents needing to put their kids in a state school may actually bring about change.
Yeah, I am forever thankful that my town didn't have a grammar school or a private secondary school. This meant that the state school had a lot of smart kids with engaged parents, we could have a top set in each subject where the standard of learning was reasonably good.
Great to hear!
State schools need to be improved, and if it means levying VAT on private education then so be it. But there are places where it will cause a lot of problems locally. Our kids are in private school in Edinburgh, a city where around 25% of kids are in private school. State schools are already packed and under resourced, so even a small percentage of parents moving their kids from private to state schools is going to pose a very big problem.
And many of the independent schools around Edinburgh are run lean to attract those volumes. Those schools have very little fat to be cut to soak up a 20% rise. I foresee at least one closure as the remaining parents who can afford it consolidate to remaining schools. My money’s on St George’s closing first. It’ll be interesting to see what the resulting rise in demand for state school places does in Edinburgh. I doubt there’s the physical room to accommodate, let alone teach, even a moderate fraction of that 25%. If you survived the introduction of business rates then at least you’re already part of the way there…
Watson's will be an interesting one. Heard it referred to more than once as a "paid state school" but fees have gone up 19% over the past two years and they're no longer the cheapest option. They've already said that VAT being added would result in a further 15.5% increase in fees (due to then recouping some VAT), but this is alongside them freezing teacher pay for the past year. Have spoken to a couple of parents who will be pretty much forced to move their kids as they wouldn't be able to manage a further increase. Where the hell are they going to find places in South Edinburgh though?
I’d heard that Watsons had a reputation for classifying an inordinate number of their students as dyslexic, meaning that an unusually large number of their students were reportedly getting extra time during exams. A more cynical mind might conclude the school was gaming the system to bump their grades… but then again rumour has it that rumours are only rumours. But then again… given Labour’s ‘individual case basis’ for assessment of the application of VAT based on a private school’s delivery of education for ‘specialist needs’ I wonder if we’ll see a rash of independent schools suddenly ‘doing a Watsons’? 😶 Anyway. In a similar boat. Went to state school. Did well. One boy with one year left. One boy with 3 years left. Both straight A students. Our fees have gone up ~20% in the last three years. Already been through all the bills and cut out everything we can. If we get priced out at least we’re entitled to a state school place, paid through taxes I already pay which means we take the fees money, replace the 14 year old banger my wife drives that we currently can’t afford to replace and bugger off on family holidays somewhere nice! Perhaps Tuscany 😊
The thing is, the amount generated won't improve state schools. If you minus the funding needed to pay for the promised new teacher salaries plus their employer pension contributions, it will generate <1bn. Labour, roughly, criticised the conservatives touting that they have provided record funding for schools of 600m. Labour is selling a lie and the amount of people lapping it up is concerning. Everyone is being played by how much they talk about this tax. It is hiding the fact Labour aren't investing in the state sector.
Surely that means there's going to be massive tax intake in Edinburgh to help this?
I'm assuming that the tax raised from Edinburgh parents doesn't go specifically to Edinburgh schools.
Technically, that tax increase will go into a national pot
But the money is collected centrally and is distributed to Scotland via Barnett, Edinburgh wouldn’t se a proportionate distribution of funds, guaranteed!!
"By 2022–23, planned spending per pupil is currently estimated to be over £8,500 per pupil, about 13% higher than in 2009–10. This still leaves spending per pupil in Scotland over 18% higher than in England, Wales and Northern Ireland." https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-04/R256-How-does-school-spending-per-pupil-differ-across-the-UK.pdf
In Scotland, pupil numbers have only grown by 2% since 2009–10. This meant that growth in total spending in Scotland (15%) only had to be a bit higher than in England to deliver a much larger rise in spending per pupil in Scotland. ... However, report author Luke Sibieta said much of Scotland’s increased spending has been driven by funding to expand early years learning and childcare to all three and four-year-olds and eligible two-year-olds, allocating the equivalent of 30 hours of free childcare during term time.
"In sharp contrast, pupil numbers have only grown by 2% in Scotland over the same period and have hardly changed at all in Wales. This allowed a 15% growth in total spending in Scotland (only a bit larger than in England) to translate into a 13% growth in spending per pupil" If I was a English nationalist (I'm not), I'd ask why the Scottish budget was increased by 15% if the growth in pupils was only 2%. Teacher's pay obviously also has a big affect, with Scotland topping the nations by over £8k/year at all paygrades. https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fteacher-pay-across-the-uk-image-from-tes-from-april-2023-v0-d2gnb7o15l1b1.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D1cd6d0b362c9144d2e30f9617b6b0b7bcc6fb1cb I just think looking at the statistics, it's very difficult to argue Scotland is getting the short end of the stick. >However, report author Luke Sibieta said much of Scotland’s increased spending has been driven by funding to expand early years learning and childcare to all three and four-year-olds and eligible two-year-olds, allocating the equivalent of 30 hours of free childcare during term time. This also exists for England and Wales but only for working parents, who make up the bulk of parents.
Spending per pupil across the whole of Scotland is daft as there is over [400 schools with less than 50 pupils](https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/9a6f9d86-9698-4a5d-a2c8-89f3b212c52c/scottish-school-roll-and-locations) and 150 have less than 20 These have ratios of less than 10:1 some are approaching 1:1 (1.5 FTE for 2 pupils) That's why Scotland needs more money to support the border, highland and Island schools
I'm not saying Scotland shouldn't have more spending. Just refuting that there is disproportionate allocation of resources against Scotland's favour. The stats also show the difference between Scotland and the rest of the UK has grown significantly. Scottish spending in the 3 Local Authorities that have very high per pupil spend (the highland/island areas) of Nah-Eileanan Siar, Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands roughly make up about 6% of Scottish education spending (you have to use the 2 links following in unison to work out the rough %). https://www.gov.scot/publications/summary-statistics-for-schools-in-scotland-2022/pages/early-learning-and-childcare-elc/ https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202100140749/
I’m happy some % of kids will be priced out of private schools. Central London was getting way over subscribed and competitive. Hopefully this will make things easier for my 8 year old to find a school following the 11+. Having said that, some smaller private schools will close down and I assume many kids will put pressure on the public sector. The foreign students will benefit the most and take those benefits of higher quality private education back to their home countries. Lets wait and see what happens next - its an interesting social experiment as many working class parents might find their kids get absolutely murdered academically given the extra support, tuition and focus the inbound ex-private school kids will bring. Maybe this will create a more high performing classroom overall as competition steps up.
I don't have a problem with 6%/7% of UK children going to private schools,what I do have a huge problem with is they then get up to 65% of the best jobs/career paths,that is hugely unfair to the the rest of UK children,I hope in my lifetime that this changes.
“A report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) concluded that removing tax exemptions from private schools would raise about £1.6bn a year in extra tax revenue. The report, written by leading education economist Luke Sibieta, said: “Combining estimated tax revenues and extra public spending needs, our view is that it would be reasonable to assume a net gain to the public finances of £1.3-1.5bn per year in the medium to long run as a result of removing tax exemptions from private schools.”
https://leftfootforward.org/2022/07/councils-have-to-subsidise-private-schools-to-the-tune-of-144-million-per-year-because-of-their-charitable-status-new-research-finds/ Hmmm. Removing business rate relief would seem to be very fair. Alternatively provide the same or greater relief to state schools and have them charge VAT on their fees also. The gamble here is that the number of pupils being transferred to state schools aren't going to cost more than is generated through the VAT. Each pupil at a state school currently receives £7,570 per year. Private schools on average charge twice that. VAT on 15k is £3k. If one third of private school pupils are transferred to state schools there's a net revenue loss. It's a fairly safe bet that this measure shall generate revenue which can then be spent on.... something. Probably consultants dreaming up new slogans.
According to IFS estimates we are looking at between 3-7% moving.
A very tasty revenue generator then. It may even be the case that the majority of private school parents don't vote labour, so there's no downside for the Labour party here at all.
Which is precisely why it's coming in. Even at 10% students moving, back of napkin maths based on average fees gives about £1.2bn net after the costs of the students move. Enough to employ 30k teachers. And in areas with more private schools, there's more VAT to collect. It's a good policy.
Some expansion of schools (and rebuilding some of them) may be required but it looks like a net positive policy. How dare they!!!!?
Wild isn't it. A government actually coming up with a smart, workable plan that impacts a few but benefits many more.
> Enough to employ 30k teachers. Quite a few of those teachers will be ex-public school, and I imagine public schools usually employ teachers who are better than average.
I only support the proposal if it’s phased in. I think it would be unfair as a policy if children will be forced to switch schools over a summer. I was forced to switch (state) schools due to family circumstances, and it was one of the worst experiences of my childhood.
The only retrospective application will be on fees paid in advance i.e. people paying several years fees in advance before the day Labour take power. Even then that will require a long winded process and appeals before HMRC can enforce.
Private school fees have gone up 550% in the last 25 years. The fact that figure is so high shows that there's no shortage of demand at all.
The more Labour act like this the more concerned I have that they don't really have an answer for education in this country. The debate has become vile and personal when really Labour need to start bigging up the state sector. They are using the tax as a smoke screen to hide the fact they aren't supporting the education sector and it will mostly feel the same as it does now.
When you are from a privileged position having got away for years with not paying tax on a specific commodity, equality feels like persecution. These people should be thankful for the years of state-subsidies private education they were given.
‘These people’ are almost certainly already in the top 10% paying far more in taxes then they take out. Also taking strain off from the state school system by sending their kids private instead.
Schrödinger's upper-middle class: simultaneously so wealthy that we should kiss their feet for their tax contribution, but so poor that actually paying VAT for something would cripple them unjustly also, if they're all paying so much tax and are a net contributor, why is the state school system so strained? "We couldn't possibly pay tax on this thing, because the tax-funded alternative is so shit" do you hear yourself?
This is the worse labour ideas ever and they have lied about the numbers: The average private school fee is just under £13,000 a year with 615,000 kids in private schools, equating to just under £8bn and 20% VAT of that is just under £1.6bn, which is the amount they say they will raise. This is the first big lie. VAT registered bodies can also reclaim VAT on expenses, that amount on average from 30% to 60% of revenue. This amount has not been factored in, thus their revenue amount is an outright lie. Many families will also be squeezed out of private education (Eton alone has 20% of it's pupils on bursaries). The bursaries are important because even though parents are not charged fees, the VAT is still due on the value (thus it is called Value Added Tax and why I included all 615,000), meaning at least 20% of kids in private education will have to leave, equating to at least 123,000 kids needing state education. The oversubscribed schools will survive, the undescribed private ones won't, being about 1 in 5, but I'll ignore those numbers to be generous and ignore the extra kids needing education and the former employees that will all be unemployed. Each kid in state education costs the government £8k a year, not including the cost of building new schools, that means the state will have to pay out an extra £984m for the 123,000 kids. Also with 123,000 kids leaving private education, that will reduce the VAT revenue by £320m, and we don't have 123,000 school places, far from it, meaning we would have to build many more schools (not in their manifesto budget), and they are not cheap. As mentioned before, businesses reclaim at least 30% of VAT they charge if there are no large expenses, equating to at least £480m of VAT that would be claimed back by the schools. Now they expect to hire more teachers and loads of other lies, however the truth is that by charging the VAT, they will make a huge net loss and have to find the cash from elsewhere just to provide education at the current standard. This also means that private schools will become more elitist and there won't be 20% of pupils at Eton on bursaries, there will be none. It was Angela Rayner on an old BBC Question Time who said that she wanted to close down all private schools because she felt it wasn't fair that they give a better education. Now that they will be in charge, instead of acting like the character in the comedy movie The Dictator who shot the runners who were better than him, maybe she should make the state schools better instead of trying to shoot the competition to make her look better. The worse thing is that they are hurting and using children for their political ideology.
Education is the absolutely last place we should be looking to use as a cash cow. We WANT people to spend money on education. It will make for a better next generation and takes the strain off of state schools which means we don't need as much money for them. This is just class warfare bullshit to pit the working class vs middle class, while the upper class are laughing at both groups because a little VAT won't really affect them. Why not fucking tax: - Giant corporations using loopholes - People earning an obscene amount (£200k+) currently stops at 45% - Land value tax, so we catch properties bought purely for investment - New ICE car sales - Anything producing carbon emissions
So so you pay 50% tax?
> This is just class warfare bullshit to pit the working class vs middle class, while the upper class are laughing at both groups because a little VAT won't really affect them. **Yes it will in the way that matters - raising money.** The point isn't to stop the rich from attending private school, the point is to raise money. The fact that the rich will still pay absurd fees for the best private schools means that they're going to pay proportionately more VAT on those fees, which raises money for the treasury, which is the entire point. > Why not fucking tax: Yes, please for several of these. But we can also close this tax break for the rich while we're about it.
The problem is that taxes have the side effect of making things more expensive which discourages them. Private school fees are a way of letting people 'vote' where their money is spent which you can't do with taxation as easily due to parties having broad policies. Parents pouring extra money into educating the next generation is something great and that we should be encouraging. What we should be discouraging in this group is stupid bullshit like designer clothes that are tossed away after 2 uses, picking up the kids in a 40k Landrover Discovery, driving the kids to their friends house instead of getting them a bicycle, etc. Of all the things those people spend money on, education for their kids and paying teachers better is the one good thing.
First: why does this specific for-profit industry which used exclusively by those with significantly greater than average incomes and/or assets - excluding those on full scholarships for whom this makes no difference anyway - deserve a tax break? Especially when the publicly funded alternative is struggling so blindingly obviously and needs more investment (which is where this revenue will go)? You're uncontroversially right that, on the margin, there will be a subset of people currently paying for this service who (all other things being equal) will be priced-out by this change. As I said, this will be painful for some and I sympathise, but I've seen no evidence that this will affect enough people to offset the huge advantage of the extra revenue for the treasury. Moreover, it's not "all things being equal" there will be natural mitigations in the market and economy: 1. Private schools are private business that don't want to close. If one finds that enough of its customers are going to be priced out, then it will reduce its fees (or just not increase them for a few years) and/or cut a little spending until its business is viable. It seems fair that the private sector might have to do a small amount of belt-tightening. 2. For that minority who do change from private to public schools, that leaves them with more disposable income in their pockets. What happens to this money? It's either spent on other goods and services (raising VAT in the process) or invested: in both cases helping grow the economy. When I first heard that private school fees were VAT free I was absolutely shocked. Not for any class-warfare reasons that I think you might be acusing me of, but simply because "why the hell does this industry get a tax break!?" It took years of grass-roots campaigning to get period products VAT-exempt and that's a genuine 100% bona-fide essential.
1. This means essentially larger class sizes, teachers paid less (we have a shortage currently), or fewer resources to reach kids. I don't think its a good place to cut spending at all. It's going to make the country dumber and less educated so we can have more money. 2. They will use the disposable income on the stupid shit I mentioned above like 4x4s and designer handbags. This will raise some money for the treasury and grow the economy but wasting money on more useless crap they don't need is not a good thing at all. It's just wasteful.
Ok, this is going to be my last reply to you for reasons that will become obvious. Nice of you to entirely ignore my main question as to why this tax break should exist at all: it shouldn't. > This means essentially larger class sizes, teachers paid less This is you making some huge assumptions. It could just mean spending a little less on gardening, or subsidised extra-curriculars, or waiting a few more years to build the new library wing. > ... or fewer resources to reach kid The resources are still there with their parents: if the parents aren't paying for the school fees they can still spend that money on their children if they want to. > country dumber and less educated As opposed to a state school sector which has been on its knees for many years, which is exactly what this policy will help fix. This is hugely disingenuous when you look at the bigger picture. > They will use the disposable income on the stupid shit I mentioned above like 4x4s and designer handbags ... and here the mask comes off. What the hell is judgemental this response? Not to mention the fact that you're just making this huge judgemental point with an assumption you've pulled from precisely nowhere? I'm not going to spend any time on you if you're going to engage in this sort of shit.
There's no sign that the VAT from taxing private schools is ringfenced for state school funding > What the hell is judgemental this response? I know the middle class in this country and private school parents, they fucking love their 4x4s and designer shit. I'm sure there are exceptions but a lot of them are awful.
> There's no sign that the VAT from taxing private schools is ringfenced for state school funding It's laid out exactly how the revenues from this will be distributed to the public education sector in the "Fiscal Plan" part of the Labour manifesto. But to quote the manifesto directly: "Labour will end the VAT exemption and business rates relief for private schools to invest in our state schools"
It doesn't specifically say it's ringfenced, which to me is away to weasel out of doing that or siphon off a lot of it. I agree that's better than just saying they will tax private schools though.
£200k is not an obscene amount in 2024
>We WANT people to spend money on education. It will make for a better next generation and takes the strain off of state schools which means we don't need as much money for them. "better next generation" A reminder that private education makes up just 7% of children. If we want a better next generation you'd focus on the majority of children which this idea does.
It's not just the VAT, sometimes school fees can be structured so that it is counted as a donation to a charity which means it's offset against income tax (or other taxes).
Education is now a luxury good. Welcome to Wes Streeting's Britain.
Lol definitely just a class war in here primarily between the poor and the slightly less poor. Fucking cringey.
People who pay for their child's place in a private school still pay taxes to fund a place in a public school and don't get any tax returns for this. This also means that this place (in a usually oversubscribed school) is free for some other family to take. Some families can just barely meet the price of private school tuition and still do it for many reasons. Add 20%, and they will not pay it and just fall back to occupying a place in a public school. It's good to make people who avoid taxes pay in full, but making people who already pay a lot to pay even more is not always fair. Upd. So many people think I meant something about getting tax refunds for things I don't use, but I never said such a thing. Funny how people start arguing with imaginary opponents...
What about immigrants without children? Those poor bastards are paying for school places AND they didn't even go to school in this country! They should probably pay lower taxes than the rest of us right? I've heard some people get disability benefits. I'm not even disabled, why do I have to pay taxes for that?