Vat on Independent school fees?

arbabarshad said:
Maybe not but around 8%-10% of those kids are on bursaries who are most vulnerable. And then every 4-5 kids in a school support a job. Plus doing it mid academic year leaves lots of kids having to move school mid year.
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It's been widely publicized, so no-one has enrolled this September not knowing it's coming in January.

arbabarshad said:
If state education was fantastic, there wouldn't perhaps be a need for private schools but can any government be trusted to run a state institution fantastically?
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Not if you put a bunch of privately-educated people in charge of it whose main focus is reducing the tax burden on the sort of people rich enough to use private schools, no. I've always said that the main problem with publically-run services is that at least half the time, they're being run by a party that doesn't believe in publically run services. But the reality is there isn't a need for private schools, they're a luxury, which is why they're being taxed as one.
 
metalblue said:
The distinction should be fairly straight forward. Anyone who gains a degree and works in the public sector giving back to society (nurse, doctor, teacher, army etc…not someone working as admin the local council office) for 5 years should have any student debt wiped. From the moment they walk through the door of that job they pay nothing back towards the loan.

That way teacher, nurses, doctors leave uni, walk into work and never pay a penny. Thats a fair society - now some might say just don’t charge uni fees but we want to make sure those that go straight into private sector are captured. I’m sure there are a few outliers here but I generally think that’s fair and right.
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Im all for fairness and that should be done by the taxation system which clearly needs an overhaul. However not everyone who works in the private sector is on mega wages (I think your alluding to the Banking and Finance), relative to doctors and teachers etc who already benefit from a far better pension scheme which the private sector aren't willing to match. I have deliberately left nurses out as they do seem to be horrendously underpaid looking at their pay scales.

What you're effectively saying is you value someone working in the public sector more than say a chemist who may be helping develop life saving drugs, physicists who are may be developing medical imaging equipment to allow diagnosis of illnesses, engineers building infrastructure and working on energy transition, environmental scientists etc all of which have similar remuneration to teachers and doctors. A society needs all these people plus more and yes in a capitalist system even the blood sucking leaches who work in banking, insurance and law (-:
 
Have all the state schools been overrun by the applications from the parents who could afford fees and now can't? And why would someone wealthy who is planning to leave the UK to avoid tax increases want to send their kids to a local state school in Urmston when the family have moved to Basle?
 
Kompany Car said:
Im all for fairness and that should be done by the taxation system which clearly needs an overhaul. However not everyone who works in the private sector is on mega wages (I think your alluding to the Banking and Finance), relative to doctors and teachers etc who already benefit from a far better pension scheme which the private sector aren't willing to match. I have deliberately left nurses out as they do seem to be horrendously underpaid looking at their pay scales.

What you're effectively saying is you value someone working in the public sector more than say a chemist who may be helping develop life saving drugs, physicists who are may be developing medical imaging equipment to allow diagnosis of illnesses, engineers building infrastructure and working on energy transition, environmental scientists etc all of which have similar remuneration to teachers and doctors. A society needs all these people plus more and yes in a capitalist system even the blood sucking leaches who work in banking, insurance and law (-:
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I think there is an element of valuing some roles greater than others. An example is my daughter has just qualified as a midwife and has I think best part of £70k worth of student debt. As a midwife she has limited earning opportunities and that debt is never getting paid back - I think it’s likely to put people off training for such vital roles, well put it like this it’s not going to attract people to want to become midwives even if it doesn’t stop them doing it. I’d have no issue if we made critical degrees (medical, teaching) fee free.

I do agree all jobs contribute to society be that through taxes paid or work undertaken.
 
metalblue said:
I think there is an element of valuing some roles greater than others. An example is my daughter has just qualified as a midwife and has I think best part of £70k worth of student debt. As a midwife she has limited earning opportunities and that debt is never getting paid back - I think it’s likely to put people off training for such vital roles, well put it like this it’s not going to attract people to want to become midwives even if it doesn’t stop them doing it. I’d have no issue if we made critical degrees (medical, teaching) fee free.

I do agree all jobs contribute to society be that through taxes paid or work undertaken.
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Exactly. The thing about the public sector is that while it's often reliable, the earning potential is effectively capped at whatever the government of the day is willing to pay, and there are often limited other opportunities. If you qualify as a nurse or a teacher, you're basically working in the public sector all your life. If you qualify as an engineer, or computer scientist, or graphic designer, you can basically jump between private sector employers to increase you income over time. But all of those degrees come with the same amount of debt, so is it any wonder that certain public sector roles have a shortage of workers? Who wants to go into tens of thousands of pounds of debt and give up 4 years of earnings to get a job that pays barely more than the average salary?
 
PPT said:
Another 111 kids looking for places in state schools….
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Think it's 70 not the 111 capacity, which in itself I would imagine is the key issue for the school. Some parents will send their children to another independent schools, there's already another one touting for their business. So if you assume about 50 pupils looking for state places and assume an even distribution across year groups and a bit of geographic dispersal of those numbers, it's really not a significant number of pupils to absorb into the system though the devil is always in the detail. Might be a couple of hot spots especially if parents are keen for their children to continue to receive a catholic education.

It's a shame for the children to be potentially split up from friends and obviously for the staff being laid off at Christmas but the fact that they are giving less than one term's notice seems odd and suggests the school hasn't been financially stable for a while. Maybe they were banking on a decent intake this year to get volume up closer to capacity/minimum operating cost, but this year is a low birth rate cohort so I imagine numbers are down.
 
threespires said:
Think it's 70 not the 111 capacity, which in itself I would imagine is the key issue for the school. Some parents will send their children to another independent schools, there's already another one touting for their business. So if you assume about 50 pupils looking for state places and assume an even distribution across year groups and a bit of geographic dispersal of those numbers, it's really not a significant number of pupils to absorb into the system though the devil is always in the detail. Might be a couple of hot spots especially if parents are keen for their children to continue to receive a catholic education.

It's a shame for the children to be potentially split up from friends and obviously for the staff being laid off at Christmas but the fact that they are giving less than one term's notice seems odd and suggests the school hasn't been financially stable for a while. Maybe they were banking on a decent intake this year to get volume up closer to capacity/minimum operating cost, but this year is a low birth rate cohort so I imagine numbers are down.
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I agree. There are always going to be schools closing. If there are 2500 private schools in the UK, they won't all exist forever.

As for the capacity, Labour are probably most relaxed about the policy because every council area in the country has the free spaces to absorb almost all private school kids, never mind the small percentage that are likely to actually move.
 
threespires said:
It's a shame for the children to be potentially split up from friends and obviously for the staff being laid off at Christmas but the fact that they are giving less than one term's notice seems odd and suggests the school hasn't been financially stable for a while. Maybe they were banking on a decent intake this year to get volume up closer to capacity/minimum operating cost, but this year is a low birth rate cohort so I imagine numbers are down.
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Yep, they mentioned issues with teachers' pensions, so it's hardly an issue that's just come about in the last year.
 
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