Private school entrants drop as Labour’s VAT plan blamed

25 comments

1. Apologies for the Telegraph link behind a paywall. Hopefully the archive link will work. The highlight of the article is the helpful graph showing what a 20% increase looks like…

2. This reads as rich people with enough money to send their kids to private school crying about a proposed tax they don’t want to pay.

   Anyway, nice weather out.

3. The big problem with modern politics is that politicians are out of ideas beyond “group x is a group we don’t like and we can control them, take more from them and use them to make you feel better about your life”.

   Obviously here, relative to total tax take it won’t bring in huge amounts, it will push middle class kids back into state school, but each one now needs an education paid for, whilst the very rich will still hoover up all the best jobs without any visible change. But people who’ve bought into the private schools moral panic will get their itch scratched.

   Anything that’s actually going to make lives better for people in the hear and now? Or just more regulation, new taxes, banning things, worsening lives for disliked groups? Anything to get excited about at all?

4. _Independent schools have seen a 2.7 per cent drop in enrolments this academic year, according to a report by the Independent Schools Council (ISC). It is the biggest annual decline since 2011_

   Doesn’t look significant. Although I guess a 2.7% loss of revenue doesn’t mean a 2.7% reduction in running costs.

5. I honestly don’t get how making private education the preserve of an even richer, smaller elite is a good Labour policy, other than the fact that it’s red meat for their voters.

   The less wealthy parents this displaces into the state sector will still be plenty wealthy enough to move house into prime catchments, pay for tons of enrichment, trips, clubs, tutoring etc, to make sure their kids get into the best state school. that in turn just displaces some of the least well off families into less good state schools.

   I get why it’s popular, but it seems like shooting yourself in the foot to me.

6. And the Russians are struggling to get to their money. The 2 local private schools by me have seen a large drop in pupils from there attending.

7. Maybe if they stopped buying Starbucks and avocado toast they could afford their kids private school

8. You’d need to ban private schools entirely to start seeing an impact. If the wealthiest and most influential people were forced to send their kids to state schools, we would see political pressure to improve state schools across the board.

   If you coupled it with reforms to actually fund schools properly and bring them back under full state control (dissolve the academy system and remove religious schools at the same time) then it would be much harder to just lift up the schools in wealthy catchment areas. Want more money for the school system your kids are sent to? cool but all schools get more money.

   Obviously you can’t stop wealthy kids getting extra opportunities through connections and tuition etc. But it would be a start.

   Other countries have done this successfully, but this is the UK where we like to pretend our problems have never been experienced or solved elsewhere.

9. A comment I added the last time this was discussed – everyone thinks of Eton or Marlborough when they think of private, but there’s a mid tier which this will really hit, ones where a normal family could scrape the fees together to avoid oversubscribed or poor local state schools. That’s who this will really impact.

   To me, this is akin to the Rwanda policy in that it’s a great one line thing that sounds like it’ll work but that when you looking to the intricacies it’s as solid as sand

10. If lots of private schools hadn’t entered into an arms race over the past 20 years regarding their facilities then they’d be in a position to offer lower fees. Those pools don’t pay for themselves…

11. This is an interesting one – I’m a teacher and have taught across both state and private and the contrast is quite stark. I’m sure will get downvoted for this as it’s hard to have sympathy for these parents I get it.

    In state atm schools just have next to no funding, large classes, kids with more behavioural issues, more bullying and higher need for emotional support from stressed teachers who are trying to make it work.

    In private you get a more relaxed environment with teachers who are paid well, smaller class sizes so children get individual lesson plans and goal setting, parents who care more because they’re paying for it and more kids who want to achieve on average.

    A vast majority of the parents at the private schools aren’t that wealthy- they have had to weigh the decision and put their kids into private schools because our state system sadly atm is a bit of a mess. These families are very stretched as it is.

    Until the state can offer a higher standard I’m not quite sure where these children are supposed to go? Into classrooms that are already full to the brim in state schools?

12. The best way to break through the class divide is to ensure the wealthy have adequate exposure to the rest of the population in a setting of equality, state schools are a great way to do this.

13. Or the elite just send their kids abroad to be educated.

    Banning independent education entirely would be stupid. That just hands control of all education, funding and content, to future governments, and who knows what kind of arseholes will have power in 10, 20, 50 years time. No thanks.

14. I’m fine with the idea of charging VAT on it but I think it should also attract tax rebates for not being a burden on public education services. Same applies for private medical. This would still lead to a net increase in tax revenue, but it would at least be fair.

15. Are we proposing to tax education for Under 16s.?

    Because you then open the flood gates for taxes/vat on all education settings, including:
    Universities,
    Tuition centres,
    After school activities and sports.
    School books.
    Scout and Girl Guide groups.

    Do you think any government will not bring in these other taxes once a precedent has been set.

    Also, targeting under 16s would then allow the government to start taxing;
    Children’s clothes and shoes.
    School uniforms for state schools.

    The children in the state schools will get caught up in all this, and then they will have an inflationary pressure.

    Edit. Spelling mistake.

16. My parents scraped together everything to put me into a fee paying school and get me out of the area I was in. We didn’t go on holiday, or have even a slightly decent car. A lot of my friends were on bursaries or in similar situations. The actually rich people will pay VAT without blinking. All this does is pull the ladder up from even more kids.

17. I guess the tories are expecting labour to win a majority then

18. Not the fact that all these people’s mortgages probably went up by an amount that would make it very very difficult to send a kid to private school then? I’m not saying the amounts are the same but if your mortgage has gone up £500 a month over a year that’s more than a term of private school and will probably make a dent in your affordability 🙃

19. I think we should expand test taking and have a system where you can move schools at the end of Year 8/9 if you test well. Ultimately, some children have to be left behind and there should be as many opportunities as possible for brighter kids to be in more conducive environments.

20. A 2.7% drop when post covid births have dropped by something like 20% is not actually that bad.

    Gotta ask whether they teach statistics in private schools.

21. Oh fuck off, they’re not even in power yet.

    This is just rich cunts complaining to their mates at the papers and manufacturing a story.

22. Weird to spin this onto labour when they’re not even in power yet. It’s more likely the cost of living.

23. The cost to send our kids to our local private school would be more than my wife earns in a year… This is without vat.

24. My goodness better put a stop to this right away, the rich will be minorly inconvenienced. They might have to start working for things, can’t have that!

25. Another day, another suspiciously whiny torygraph article about how poor rich people are.