News1 min ago
Vat On Private School Fees.
Contary to what many people think, sending kids to private school is not the sole preserve of the rich, and many people scrimp and save to be able to do so, so a 20% increase in their fees could make it unaffordable resulting in state schools having to take their kids in. It has been reported that 40% of kids could be withdrawn from private education. There's 550,000 kids being educated privately, so state schools will need to find places for an additional 220,000 kids. Plus this mass withdrawal could send some private schools under.
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The lack of VAT on private school fees is not, as some on the Left see it, a tax break for the rich.
Why is he going to do this?
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as a compromise they could leave Vat at zero for UK residents and come up with a tax on foreign children coming in - though this could accelerate what many schools have already done as in opening satellite-schools in other countries or increasing their presence. Mine has a branch in Fuzhou for example - though I am yet to see any stellar Chinese rugby players coming through the system.
It could even go as far as having UK parents sending their kids out to these satellites!
“Well, in that case, fix it.”
State education is unfixable. There are far too many pupils who do not receive the support and encouragement of their parents and would rather not be in school. Because of the scarcity of selective schools (largely brought about by the Labour Party) there is limited choice for parents who do want their children to do well.
“1) even if somebody can afford to pay for private education, they'd probably rather not have to pay, if the exact same quality of education was free in the state school next door”
But it rarely will be (see above).
“2) if a thick, awful kid with rich parents is placed in a private school, and a lovely, bright kid with poor parents is in a state school, that does not make a better society after those two children have grown up”
We’re not talking about making a better society. We’re talking about educating children to a decent level. If the kid with rich parents is that awful (so as to cause disruption) he will not survive for long in the fee paying school.
“But as I said, the principle isn't abolishing private schools . It's simply about making people pay VAT for them”.
So would you advocate VAT being imposed on private healthcare? Strangely the Labour Party is not, but sees it perfectly reasonable to do so for private education. Why is that?
“If folk want private education let them pay for it.”
They are paying for it. Why should they pay the government as well when they are saving taxpayers’ money?
"Wouldn't it be great if the meanest, bog-standard, school was upgraded so that it provided an educational as good as any in the land?"
Yes it would , but even if we spent three times as much as at present it wouldn't make any significant difference given the behaviour and attitudes to learning of so many pupils who schools can't easily exclude and where parents don't support the schools
NMA is absolutely right, you could give millions to a state school but it wouldn't improve, that is not the main issue. The issue is the number of pupils who have no sense of discipline, buckling down and learning and neither do many of their parents - you know, the ones who send them to school in nappes with no breakfast and expect the government to feed the children they produced.
Poor teachers have nothing to fight with, they can barely say boo to a goose without being suspended and need to focus not on their subject expertise but being high level social workers just to get through the day.
Ellipsis - // ... and if "State education is unfixable" throughout those 45 years, maybe it's time to give somebody else a chance now. //
Governments don't have the will to sort out the problems of education.
For a very simple reason - children don't vote.
The only way politicians ever think about education, is when they consider the parents of schoolchildren, who of course, do vote.
They use the word 'education' as a vote catcher, by using redundant sound bites about how they are going to fix schools - which of course, ample evidence shows that they don't.
You will never hear any politician of any stripe referring to 'children' - it's always 'our children', as though they are somehow connected to, and invested in, the tragic wreck of the education system they have systematically battered for over fifty years.
Of course, during election campaigning, you will hear the phrase changed to 'your children', because they are addressing adults and looking for votes.
But the fact is, successive governments have crushed the education system with punitive nonsense like 'The National Curriculum' which is so restrictive and centre-designated that it leaves no room for the imagination of individual teachers, tailored to the needs of their individual classes and schools.
Governments love to think that all schools, and all children, are the same, so a 'one size fits all' system is imposed without any room for manoevre.
It is of course, manifestly unsuitable, but that doesn't matter, because the government doesn't care anyway.
Their other damage is to foster the notion that they will 'improve' schools.
They do this by using a draconian Inspection system which, instead of addressing the problems of individual schools, hammers them with another 'one size fits all' measurement system that condemns failing schools, without addressing the reasons for the failures, which are rooted entirely in the National Curriculum, continual underfunding, and the perpetuating of the image that teachers are workshy lefties who do a nine-to-three job and have three months off.
This chimes with parents - the voters remember - but it utterly fails the children - but they don't vote so who cares.
The idea of punishing, and that's what it is, private schools for being 'elitist' is another nonsense designed to appeal to the inverted snobbery of the Labour voter they want to woo.
It's shameful, and Starmer should be ashamed of it.
It's a tax policy - of course it's a "punishment", like they all tax rises are. Whoever asked for more taxes.
What I'm hearing is: the state system is awful. Anybody in it, tough, but please don't "punish" the people not in it by making them pay more to stay out of it. It's a pretty disgraceful attitude, actually.
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