I completely disagree with VAT on school fees. My opinion is nothing to do with taxing the wealthy.
School is a free service open to every school-age child, funded by the taxes adults are paying into the system. It costs the government around £5,000 per year per child to provide each school place, considerably more for children with SEN.
If someone opts out of sending their child to state school, regardless of whether that means private schooling or home education, they are saving the government that £5k+ per child each year.
Yet, if those parents opt for private school and therefore pay for the education themselves, they don’t get a tax rebate for the £5k they have saved the government. Plus, anyone affording private schools is likely to be a higher rate tax payer, so is actually financially contributing more to the state school system than many of the parents whose children actually use it.
So where is the logic in charging them EXTRA tax, for opting out of a service? It’s like if an elderly person was entitled to the £300 winter fuel allowance, opted out because they feel they can manage without it, and then the energy supplier charges them an extra £50 on their bill for not having used the allowance.
It simply doesn’t make sense. As a tax, all it is designed to do is target people who want to use their own money to make their own choices.
Another question that doesn’t get asked enough, is why people on middle incomes scrimp and save to put their children through private education? It’s because the state system is a mess, kids who want to learn are subjected to constant behavioural disruption and teachers who can’t discipline, and can’t pace the lessons to each child’s needs. Children are in school 7 hours a day and are lucky if they can achieve 2 hours of actual learning. I have worked in a state secondary school (admin, not teaching), children openly swear in front of adults and it’s not occasion for some kids it’s every other word coming out of their mouths, are allowed to walk the corridors and be out of lessons because they will just argue if they don’t get their own way, ‘additional needs’ are a persistent get-out clause for all kinds of bad behaviour, children who are in the care system can’t be expelled (even when they have brought knives into school). Schools can even discipline because when giving detention for not doing homework or insisting on uniform standards the parents argue back and take the side of their kids and so don’t support attempts to have kids follow rules. The schools are judged so heavily on exam results, and get so little actual teaching when the entire class is paying attention that they repeat themselves in lessons as nauseam, to the aim of simply getting them through the basics of what they know to be within the exam papers. There is zero imagination or explorative extra-curricular in the lesson planning, they are molly-coddling the kids and allowing them to have lots of opinions but not to actually think for themselves.
Some people also opt for private schooling after withdrawing from state school due to their child being bullied and the school not being able to resolve it. Why should those people be taxed in addition to paying school fees when they have only made the switch for their child’s safety?
