Anyone betting that Trump and his two sons, being found by a court to have been engaged in a decade of fraud, will get even a tenth of the press coverage of Hunter Biden, unlawfully owning a gun for 11 days, 5 years ago?
Or indeed his continuing incitements to political violence.
Your defence of Hunter Biden is a bit cringe. Reminding us of his existence just isn't a good way to go about supporting the Dems (if that is your intention here).
I'm not defending Hunter Biden, you pillock.
I'm pointing out the absurd double standard in judging conduct of politicians - which Hunter Biden isn't.
You're even more of a pillock if you think anything I post here will make any difference at all to Democratic support.
I think the focus on charitable status for private schools isn't the central issue.
The question is whether children's education should be exempt from VAT, not least since these kids would otherwise be costing the state for their education. Personally I think it should. Same as if parents opt to have private tuition for their kids.
Incidentally, an acquaintance has taken one of his kids out of a local school and put her into private education because of some rather nasty bullying that the school could not, or refused, to combat.
Not everyone who sends their kids to private school are posh; many parents who send their kids to private school make sacrifices to do so - because they care for their kids.
Exactly my family's experience.
The State School was incapable of addressing, or dealing with, bullying - so my niece had to be pulled out and sent to a local small independent day school to ensure her welfare.
She eventually returned to the State Sector at the next educational stage, but obtaining appropriate aid (ie a Statement) required a couple of years of bureaucratic process including the need to attend meetings with a specialist barrister (at 4 figures a time), private medical reports and all the rest.
Far better to have tolerably affordable alternatives, which many parents can meet by not taking holidays, living in a smaller house etc if they choose to do so.
These are things that the Labour proposals, as far as I can see, have just not bothered thinking about (having read the supporting report) in their enthusiasm to trip over their own feet to pander to Neander.
Not something Mr Starmer should do to raise pin money when he also needs every vote he can get his hands on.
Well said.
There is a 'toff-bashing' attitude shown by many of those disliking private schools, but the true toffs will be able to afford increased fees no matter what, its those like you describe who will suffer the most from these proposals.
I count myself very fortunate, my kids have a place in a good primary school. We've moved since they started the school and the schools closest to us do not have such a good reputation, so we're keeping them in their old school and I'm driving them to their school. No fees thankfully, just petrol money, but their education comes first. I could relocate them from their school I drive to, to the one with a rough reputation they could walk to instead, but their education absolutely has to come first and inconveniencing me and costing me petrol money is a price I'm absolutely prepared to pay to ensure they continue to get a good education.
Too many others in the state sector aren't so fortunate. Too many have poor schools and not much they can do about it. "Fix that" is the obvious rallying cry, and yes that should be done, though the biggest difference in school behaviour is often not from funding, or the teachers, its the pupils parents surely and that's not so easy to fix?
For those of middle income, neither poor, nor well off, who find themselves lumbered with a bad school or a school that can't handle their child's needs, an affordable alternative should be available ideally. A Plan B so to speak.
For those who have enough money they don't need to worry about bills, they'll continue to get private education either way.
I'd have thought you'd be all in favour of the market. Remove the charity status, let schools charge the full economic rate and the ones delivering value will survive while the others fail, with parents deciding whether the higher fees are justified.
The charity status is there because what they're doing is charitable. They literally are charities, they're not businesses paying dividends to shareholders last I checked.
The core function of the sector is to provide a kind of 'gated community' in education for people with money. This is fine or not (depending on your politics) but it's hardly a charitable activity.
What's the core function of charity shops?
The sector offers free education to many pupils and other charitable services based on the funds they raise. How is that not charity?
If that money were being paid out in dividends to shareholders it would be a business. If its going to charitable services its a charity. That's a pretty clear definition to me.
Private schools do provide some free places, yes, but it's a tiny fraction. It has to be because they need the fee income to operate their gated community. That's the core function. The free places aspect is a sideshow. The core function of charity shops by contrast is to raise money for good works. It isn't to provide an exclusive retail space where monied people can browse and buy things, with a small handful of 'deserving' other folk allowed in if they pass a test on the door.
Sorry but there's no difference.
On the one hand you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works. On the other you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works.
They're both exactly the same.
The comparison would work if the granting of free places by private schools was their main function in life. But it isn't.
Many charities of the high street variety are actually large businesses that do a moderate amount of charity on the side.
Which ones?
Go examine the accounts of the major charities. The actual spend on the charitable object is not the majority of their cash flow.
OK but which ones? Like all of them? And if a charity spends £6 on fundraising to earn £10 and £4 goes to the charitable object is that so terrible?
There is no definition. There are even charities which do *no* charitable work. They lobby the government on the charitable object in question.
The problem is that we use charity to include non-profit organisations.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
Having worked in the charity field, there is often considerable resentment towards "unworthy" organisations getting charitable status.
I used to find that many people who worked for medical charities would get pissed off that animal charities had charitable status - one woman telling me she thought the donkeys at the Donkey Sanctuary should be turned into salami.
I take the opposite view. Charities that benefit humans are bottom of the list as far as I'm concerned.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
The question is whether the provision of education for a fee mostly to wealthy people should fall within the scope of charity. In my view it shouldn't.
Of course it should. First of all it saves the State money, providing the education that they would otherwise have to provide. Secondly, they invite the community to use the facilities, and a few lucky people from that community get to have their education sponsored by the charity.
Surely it would be fairer to tax the rich and provide a higher quality education to all children? Yours is a rather roundabout way of taking pressure off the state.
This is like when people go for private healthcare - you aren't taking any pressure off the system, you're just using your wealth to skip the queue.
Anyone betting that Trump and his two sons, being found by a court to have been engaged in a decade of fraud, will get even a tenth of the press coverage of Hunter Biden, unlawfully owning a gun for 11 days, 5 years ago?
Or indeed his continuing incitements to political violence.
Your defence of Hunter Biden is a bit cringe. Reminding us of his existence just isn't a good way to go about supporting the Dems (if that is your intention here).
I'm not defending Hunter Biden, you pillock.
I'm pointing out the absurd double standard in judging conduct of politicians - which Hunter Biden isn't.
You're even more of a pillock if you think anything I post here will make any difference at all to Democratic support.
Yes you are defending him, not for the first time recently. And no, of course your defence of the Bidens won't make any difference, but that doesn't mean you're not doing it.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
If you're providing primary or secondary education, you can't qualify for charitable status. It's not difficult to decide that, the only question is whether or not it's the right thing to do.
And tertiary?
Why can't you run it based on whether they're doing good works or not, whether they're paying dividends or not etc, ie traditional objective charity criteria?
Is it simply that you know they objectively are charities but dislike that, so want to change the answer?
See my earlier reply to Sean_F about tertiary.
Private schools that claim charitable status ARE objectively charities, I'm not denying that. I'm saying that I would prevent them from claiming that status. And yes, it's entirely because I think they do more harm than good. Using the tax system as a disincentive to behaviours you don't approve of is not novel. You might not like it or you might agree in some cases and not others but come on, you know this happens.
I see that some folk are demanding that we maximise our reliance on oil from Russia and Saudi Arabia, rather than develop reserves in UK waters.
Given the meagre size of our remaining reserves, it would make more sense to save them for when they are really needed rather than squandering them now and leaving us completely reliant on Russia and Saudi Arabia in the future.
Which is a different argument to the "leave it in the ground" crowd.
Presumably fans of football clubs owned by the Middle East are in the "leave it in the ground" camp.
It makes no sense on environmental, economic or security grounds to burn up our last remaining oil reserves. Doing so will reduce incentives to develop cleaner alternatives while also leaving us completely at the mercy of foreign suppliers of hydrocarbons for plastics, fertilisers, etc. in the future. It reeks of greed, short-termism and political opportunism and plays directly into the hands of our enemies.
Except these are not our last remaining reserves. We have other remaining reserves untapped even after this.
It makes no sense to be importing from dictatorships when we have our own reserves.
For environmental reasons we need to reduce consumption.
Anyone who proposes reducing production doesn't give a single damn about the planet, they're just Putinist idiots.
Our remaining reserves are insignificant compared with those possessed by Russia and Saudi Arabia. Squandering our reserves now will only hand more power to those countries with large reserves in the future. If you want to know who the Putinist idiots are, look in the direction of those who have done their best to keep us reliant on the sale and consumption of fossil fuels.
Compared to Russia or Saudi Arabia is utterly irrelevant. The question is what our remaining reserves our compared to what we could need in the future and the truth is we have a healthy reserve it's not being squandered.
I absolutely support phasing down the consumption of fossil fuels, and said so myself. Production is unrelated to that.
What percentage of oil production is used for fuel as opposed to medicines, plastics and the rest?
Would some people be against it even if none of the oil ended up being burned?
I once looked this up about 15 years ago. The vast majority of fossil oil is burnt in one way or the other. The figure IFAICR is between 85 and 90% burnt and 10-15% for any other purpose.
Anyone betting that Trump and his two sons, being found by a court to have been engaged in a decade of fraud, will get even a tenth of the press coverage of Hunter Biden, unlawfully owning a gun for 11 days, 5 years ago?
Or indeed his continuing incitements to political violence.
Your defence of Hunter Biden is a bit cringe. Reminding us of his existence just isn't a good way to go about supporting the Dems (if that is your intention here).
I'm not defending Hunter Biden, you pillock.
I'm pointing out the absurd double standard in judging conduct of politicians - which Hunter Biden isn't.
You're even more of a pillock if you think anything I post here will make any difference at all to Democratic support.
Yes you are defending him, not for the first time recently. And no, of course your defence of the Bidens won't make any difference, but that doesn't mean you're not doing it.
Nope.
And your inability to distinguish between the President and his son is characteristic.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
Having worked in the charity field, there is often considerable resentment towards "unworthy" organisations getting charitable status.
I used to find that many people who worked for medical charities would get pissed off that animal charities had charitable status - one woman telling me she thought the donkeys at the Donkey Sanctuary should be turned into salami.
A friend of mine who was a solicitor working in wills and probate had to bite his tongue hard when clients asked that donkey sanctuaries be put in their will (not his place to try to persuade the client to dispose of their assets in another way but he thought it was silly).
Nothing against donkeys, but they do incredibly well through bequests because for some not so mysterious reason older people feel a tremendous sense of affinity with the poor old beasts who have worked hard all their life and now want a nice retirement on the south coast. That's fine but the level of support is out of all proportion to the scale of the problem.
Guide Dogs for the Blind are another one. Again, a perfectly worthy cause and this is in no way a criticism of the work they do, but they get a lot of money in bequests because they sit in the sweet spot between a medical condition that people feel a lot of empathy with and an animal that people like. Yet actual demand for guide dogs isn't really that huge due to advances in medical treatments.
Charities are sometimes made by the Charities Commission to disperse reserves to other charities in the sector if they build up too massive a cash pile. But there is still resentment about that a few charities are absolutely loaded (and some charity employees/managers have a pretty sweet deal) whereas a lot aren't in a way that has limited relation to the objective value of the work the charity is doing.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
If you're providing primary or secondary education, you can't qualify for charitable status. It's not difficult to decide that, the only question is whether or not it's the right thing to do.
Why not extend that to university education, which after all, provides benefits disproportionately towards the well-off?
Universities have a separate function in terms of research which makes mapping between secondary and tertiary a little more complicated
Not that complicated.
If you're being consistent, presumably you want £9,500 tuition fees undergraduates currently pay to become £11,400? Ie 9500+20%
Also, can someone tell me how much of a charity's income needs to go towards charitable efforts; how much income they can spend on salaries and overheads, and who checks this?
And can that please be expanded to all charities. Many of the larger charities, those that advertise on TV (although mostly at reduced rates), have massive overheads, large offices, and plenty of executives on six-figure salaries.
But they don't generally allocate their services of the basis of recipients' ability to pay for those services, but rather on need.
If I was to set up an education charity, providing schools, I'd be looking to target it at the areas where all the local schools are shit and no one can afford to pay. Not to the parents (like myself) who live in areas where all the local state schools are actually very good and going private, at a bottom end private school, would potentially be a viable option finance-wise.
That's funny, I was just in an Age Concern shop over the weekend where we picked up some second hand books for my kids - and they weren't doling them out, they were very much allocating who could leave with the stock based upon the recipients ability to pay for those services.
Most large charities fundraise in no small part based on ability to pay.
The ones paying (myself buying a book, parents of pupils who are paying) aren't the ones receiving the charity, the ones who are receiving the charity is others.
Second hand books in Age Concern shops tend to cost a lot less than private school fees…
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
Having worked in the charity field, there is often considerable resentment towards "unworthy" organisations getting charitable status.
I used to find that many people who worked for medical charities would get pissed off that animal charities had charitable status - one woman telling me she thought the donkeys at the Donkey Sanctuary should be turned into salami.
Indeed and I bet the animal charities are pissed off that the medical charities have it too, if they engage in legal animal testing.
That's why we have objective criteria and shouldn't pick and choose winners and losers.
If the Tories were to decide to target Oxfam and other left wing charities then people supporting targeting private schools (which are neither left nor right as whisperingoracle noted) would be crying murder over that.
The skepticism about the donkey sanctuary seems fully justified to me, given their turbo-anthropomorphism and suffering-porn-heartstring-tugging adverts.
The only animal charity I can think of that I think is notably worse is Penn Farthing's Nowzad, his activities screwing around with the evacuation from Afghanistan, and his flying dogs around the world on airlines to find them new mummies and daddies. However, there may be others. It's a problem of being a nation of animal sentimentalists imo.
But none of this justifies creating an eloi/morlock caste system. Choice should be available to all, not just people with £££.
I reckon you can tell with a very high level of accuracy which regulars on here had a public school education just from their contributions.
Name the future pb.com posters. L-R
I always love that photo. Plainly the boys on the right are having lots of fun taking the piss out of the Etonians.
They are Harrovians not Etonians.
Little known fact however that this was nothing to do with showing a class difference it was just a coincidence that the Planters Peanut advert auditions clashed with the Hovis delivery boy auditions that day.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
If you're providing primary or secondary education, you can't qualify for charitable status. It's not difficult to decide that, the only question is whether or not it's the right thing to do.
Why not extend that to university education, which after all, provides benefits disproportionately towards the well-off?
Universities have a separate function in terms of research which makes mapping between secondary and tertiary a little more complicated
Not that complicated.
If you're being consistent, presumably you want £9,500 tuition fees undergraduates currently pay to become £11,400? Ie 9500+20%
It could just be that I don't want universities to have tuition fees!
Anyone betting that Trump and his two sons, being found by a court to have been engaged in a decade of fraud, will get even a tenth of the press coverage of Hunter Biden, unlawfully owning a gun for 11 days, 5 years ago?
Or indeed his continuing incitements to political violence.
Your defence of Hunter Biden is a bit cringe. Reminding us of his existence just isn't a good way to go about supporting the Dems (if that is your intention here).
I'm not defending Hunter Biden, you pillock.
I'm pointing out the absurd double standard in judging conduct of politicians - which Hunter Biden isn't.
You're even more of a pillock if you think anything I post here will make any difference at all to Democratic support.
Yes you are defending him, not for the first time recently. And no, of course your defence of the Bidens won't make any difference, but that doesn't mean you're not doing it.
Nope.
And your inability to distinguish between the President and his son is characteristic.
Neil Henderson @hendopolis · 15m MAIL: Labour’s class war begins on Day One #TomorrowsPapersToday
===
"Backlash as parents face school fees hike"
How many Mail readers send their kids to private school???
It is not just the mail going onto the attack
The i as well
Sorry the link didn't work
The Mail tries its best to make it sound like Labour will be charging a new fee for all parents . Not sure the I headline will worry Labour . A backlash from private schools . 93% of children do not go to private schools . They get a subsidy in effect from tax payers whilst state schools are crumbling. Do you want your taxes subsiding rich parennts sending their kids to places like Eton .
That will be the Labour campaign.
Of course, the exact opposite is true.
Every parent who sends their child to private school is effectively paying double - they are paying all the tax for a state school place, but not taking it up, thereby donating the resources they would have used so they are available for everyone else instead. Meanwhile, they expand the level of investment going into the education sector overall, funding the training of more teachers, experimenting with new education styles, more resources and facilities, rather than spend it on property and consumption. Which is where they money would otherwise go. And private schools are charitable endeavours that don't generate profit or return to investors but invest in an educational mission overall.
This is why governments of all stripes have recognised this in the tax system for decades - because it's in the public interest. They are a net good.
It won't be Eton, Harrow or Winchester hit by these changes. It will be the smaller more marginal private schools where two parents working full-time - doctors, accountants, pilots, solicitors, and small businessmen - work hard to be able to afford the fees are forced to pull their kids out, with the school closing and the community assets lost. The state system won't gain a bean from it except an additional burden and the education sector overall will shrink. We'll all be poorer for it.
It's a disgrace of a policy based on prejudice. It deserves to fail, as all bad policies should.
This is spot on. (Even if Casino thinks I’m a “Leftie”.)
The big name public schools will sail on regardless. The ones that will be hit will be the small ones with the specialisms in autism support or music or whatever, where the parents have scrimped and saved to send their kids because they’ve been failed by the state system.
If your position is “well improve the state system so it caters for those kids” that’s an honest position to take… and also I have a bridge to sell you. You have a look at the EHCP backlog for any given local authority and tell me how long that’s going to take.
Really it’s not that fricking hard (and here is where Casino will conclude I am in fact a Leftie). Tax wealth, rather than taxing people when they choose to spend that wealth on good things like education. A couple of pence on income tax for the super-rich would dwarf anything raised by VAT on school fees.
But Starmer won’t do that. It’s tokenism rather than genuine redistribution, at the expense of kids’ education.
What a load of shite. This is closing a tax loophole on a tax that is levied on pretty much everything else.
If VAT on private school fees already existed nobody would be campaigning to remove it.
There are huge swathes of the UK economy which are exempt from VAT.
Start with £250bn sales of food. - that's retail consumer sales, What about purchases of food by businesses - no idea on that. Add in segments of the clothing market - children incl. school uniforms. Then all businesses turning over less than £85k a year (approx figure). Reduced VAT on energy bills at 5%. (Energy bills = £50bn to £100bn a year at present) Medicines and medical devices, including I think Motability cars (Motability do £4bn of business a year). Then there's a whole bundle of non-VAT or reduced rate VAT exemptions for charities. Financial services.
And it goes on...
No precise idea on the total, but it looks to me as if perhaps 15-20% of GDP is VAT exempt.
I think this is the important point that both sides are perhaps avoiding. Whether VAT is charged on an activity is often arbitrary and not consistent with similar products or services.
So whether private school fees should be chargeable cannot be resolved by considering whether they are a "genuine" charity or not, or if they are good or bad for society. It is rather a political and fiscal choice without a correct answer either way, and it is a matter of preference rather than charging VAT is right or wrong.
Politically I think it is an own goal by Labour, although probably most helpful to the LDems rather than the Cons. Fiscally I think it is the correct decision.
I think it's likely to work politically, precisely because it's the politics rather than the fiscal aspect that is driving it. This policy appeals to the left in Labour and also polls well with floating voters, esp in the sort of seats needed to win the GE. There aren't many policies like that. It's a rare bird. This imo is why it's not only going in the manifesto but is being given a reasonably high profile.
I'd wager that the vast majority of the population couldn't give a toss about private education and never think about it. It's a very first world problem. Tax it, don't tax it, the rich / Tories will just find a way to shovel the money back to their gang anyway.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
If you're providing primary or secondary education, you can't qualify for charitable status. It's not difficult to decide that, the only question is whether or not it's the right thing to do.
And tertiary?
Why can't you run it based on whether they're doing good works or not, whether they're paying dividends or not etc, ie traditional objective charity criteria?
Is it simply that you know they objectively are charities but dislike that, so want to change the answer?
See my earlier reply to Sean_F about tertiary.
Private schools that claim charitable status ARE objectively charities, I'm not denying that. I'm saying that I would prevent them from claiming that status. And yes, it's entirely because I think they do more harm than good. Using the tax system as a disincentive to behaviours you don't approve of is not novel. You might not like it or you might agree in some cases and not others but come on, you know this happens.
Glad we agree they objectively are charities.
So if I feel Oxfam does more harm than good, I should be able to pick on them if elected?
Politicians should not be picking winners and losers. Set the law, the standards, then let people, businesses or charities operate within those.
I see that some folk are demanding that we maximise our reliance on oil from Russia and Saudi Arabia, rather than develop reserves in UK waters.
Given the meagre size of our remaining reserves, it would make more sense to save them for when they are really needed rather than squandering them now and leaving us completely reliant on Russia and Saudi Arabia in the future.
Which is a different argument to the "leave it in the ground" crowd.
Presumably fans of football clubs owned by the Middle East are in the "leave it in the ground" camp.
It makes no sense on environmental, economic or security grounds to burn up our last remaining oil reserves. Doing so will reduce incentives to develop cleaner alternatives while also leaving us completely at the mercy of foreign suppliers of hydrocarbons for plastics, fertilisers, etc. in the future. It reeks of greed, short-termism and political opportunism and plays directly into the hands of our enemies.
Except these are not our last remaining reserves. We have other remaining reserves untapped even after this.
It makes no sense to be importing from dictatorships when we have our own reserves.
For environmental reasons we need to reduce consumption.
Anyone who proposes reducing production doesn't give a single damn about the planet, they're just Putinist idiots.
Our remaining reserves are insignificant compared with those possessed by Russia and Saudi Arabia. Squandering our reserves now will only hand more power to those countries with large reserves in the future. If you want to know who the Putinist idiots are, look in the direction of those who have done their best to keep us reliant on the sale and consumption of fossil fuels.
Compared to Russia or Saudi Arabia is utterly irrelevant. The question is what our remaining reserves our compared to what we could need in the future and the truth is we have a healthy reserve it's not being squandered.
I absolutely support phasing down the consumption of fossil fuels, and said so myself. Production is unrelated to that.
What percentage of oil production is used for fuel as opposed to medicines, plastics and the rest?
Would some people be against it even if none of the oil ended up being burned?
I once looked this up about 15 years ago. The vast majority of fossil oil is burnt in one way or the other. The figure IFAICR is between 85 and 90% burnt and 10-15% for any other purpose.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
In the tratidional type of charity, the donors donate money that is then spent on others usually unknown to the donors, and it is ceratinly a choice made by the charity itself. E.g. donating to a homeless hostel, you don't know who are recieving the charity.
For a private school: The people paying are paying for the beneft of a specific person. This is not donating it is buying
The two models are totally different.
Charity shops say you're wrong.
If I donate by buying a second hand product or service from paid staff and the net proceeds fund good works that's a charity, even if I benefit from my purchase.
If I buy from a second hand book store whose owner takes the profits as dividends, that's not a charity.
Again, private school fees don't just cover the pupils own education, they cover the schools good works too, whether that be bursaries, facilities donated to be shared with other schools etc
No good works? They're not a charity then.
We've done this already. The person buyin in th charity shop is not the recieving person. Someone who buys a video in a charity shop takes a video home. They have no idea who the disabled child is who will benefit from this money.
A person paying a private school, does so so thet their child or grand child gets a service. The payer knows directly the person who benefits.
Neil Henderson @hendopolis · 15m MAIL: Labour’s class war begins on Day One #TomorrowsPapersToday
===
"Backlash as parents face school fees hike"
How many Mail readers send their kids to private school???
It is not just the mail going onto the attack
The i as well
Sorry the link didn't work
The Mail tries its best to make it sound like Labour will be charging a new fee for all parents . Not sure the I headline will worry Labour . A backlash from private schools . 93% of children do not go to private schools . They get a subsidy in effect from tax payers whilst state schools are crumbling. Do you want your taxes subsiding rich parennts sending their kids to places like Eton .
That will be the Labour campaign.
Of course, the exact opposite is true.
Every parent who sends their child to private school is effectively paying double - they are paying all the tax for a state school place, but not taking it up, thereby donating the resources they would have used so they are available for everyone else instead. Meanwhile, they expand the level of investment going into the education sector overall, funding the training of more teachers, experimenting with new education styles, more resources and facilities, rather than spend it on property and consumption. Which is where they money would otherwise go. And private schools are charitable endeavours that don't generate profit or return to investors but invest in an educational mission overall.
This is why governments of all stripes have recognised this in the tax system for decades - because it's in the public interest. They are a net good.
It won't be Eton, Harrow or Winchester hit by these changes. It will be the smaller more marginal private schools where two parents working full-time - doctors, accountants, pilots, solicitors, and small businessmen - work hard to be able to afford the fees are forced to pull their kids out, with the school closing and the community assets lost. The state system won't gain a bean from it except an additional burden and the education sector overall will shrink. We'll all be poorer for it.
It's a disgrace of a policy based on prejudice. It deserves to fail, as all bad policies should.
This is spot on. (Even if Casino thinks I’m a “Leftie”.)
The big name public schools will sail on regardless. The ones that will be hit will be the small ones with the specialisms in autism support or music or whatever, where the parents have scrimped and saved to send their kids because they’ve been failed by the state system.
If your position is “well improve the state system so it caters for those kids” that’s an honest position to take… and also I have a bridge to sell you. You have a look at the EHCP backlog for any given local authority and tell me how long that’s going to take.
Really it’s not that fricking hard (and here is where Casino will conclude I am in fact a Leftie). Tax wealth, rather than taxing people when they choose to spend that wealth on good things like education. A couple of pence on income tax for the super-rich would dwarf anything raised by VAT on school fees.
But Starmer won’t do that. It’s tokenism rather than genuine redistribution, at the expense of kids’ education.
What a load of shite. This is closing a tax loophole on a tax that is levied on pretty much everything else.
If VAT on private school fees already existed nobody would be campaigning to remove it.
This is middle class crybabyism
I do hope that VAT will be applied to all private tutoring - and other private educational facilities only accessible to those with money - as well. If only so that we can hear the wails from those parents sending their children to state schools but using private tutors to help them get on.
BTW for those agitating for private education to be abolished, Article 2 of the Protocol to the ECHR waves hello. So if you want this to happen you'll be hoping Ms Braverman gets her way. Or perhaps not .....
Presumably most private tutors would fall below the VAT threshold…?
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
In the tratidional type of charity, the donors donate money that is then spent on others usually unknown to the donors, and it is ceratinly a choice made by the charity itself. E.g. donating to a homeless hostel, you don't know who are recieving the charity.
For a private school: The people paying are paying for the beneft of a specific person. This is not donating it is buying
The two models are totally different.
Charity shops say you're wrong.
If I donate by buying a second hand product or service from paid staff and the net proceeds fund good works that's a charity, even if I benefit from my purchase.
If I buy from a second hand book store whose owner takes the profits as dividends, that's not a charity.
Again, private school fees don't just cover the pupils own education, they cover the schools good works too, whether that be bursaries, facilities donated to be shared with other schools etc
No good works? They're not a charity then.
We've done this already. The person buyin in th charity shop is not the recieving person. Someone who buys a video in a charity shop takes a video home. They have no idea who the disabled child is who will benefit from this money.
A person paying a private school, does so so thet their child or grand child gets a service. The payer knows directly the person who benefits.
If I buy a video I am the recipient of that service. The net proceeds go to someone else.
The net proceeds in private schools go to someone else too. Not the fee payers children.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
In the tratidional type of charity, the donors donate money that is then spent on others usually unknown to the donors, and it is ceratinly a choice made by the charity itself. E.g. donating to a homeless hostel, you don't know who are recieving the charity.
For a private school: The people paying are paying for the beneft of a specific person. This is not donating it is buying
The two models are totally different.
Charity shops say you're wrong.
If I donate by buying a second hand product or service from paid staff and the net proceeds fund good works that's a charity, even if I benefit from my purchase.
If I buy from a second hand book store whose owner takes the profits as dividends, that's not a charity.
Again, private school fees don't just cover the pupils own education, they cover the schools good works too, whether that be bursaries, facilities donated to be shared with other schools etc
No good works? They're not a charity then.
That's the issue with Oxfam shops for me. They use their charity tax breaks to let their corporate businesses unfairly compete with local small businesses - from bookshop to wedding shops and others.
When you get free stock, free staff and sometimes free premises, and the Govt gets no tax on your profits, it is fairly easy to compete and the public benefit is questionable.
I think there is perhaps a strong argument for restricting charity shops to secondhand stock - eg the Oxfam Wedding Departments in some of their shops sell new stock.
As with independent schools, drawing boundaries is difficult.
I think I might support a blanket removal of the business rates exemption. But aren't business rates due to be abolished?
But none of this justifies creating an eloi/morlock caste system. Choice should be available to all, not just people with £££.
I reckon you can tell with a very high level of accuracy which regulars on here had a public school education just from their contributions.
Name the future pb.com posters. L-R
I always love that photo. Plainly the boys on the right are having lots of fun taking the piss out of the Etonians.
They are Harrovians not Etonians.
Little known fact however that this was nothing to do with showing a class difference it was just a coincidence that the Planters Peanut advert auditions clashed with the Hovis delivery boy auditions that day.
No Etonians. Etonians wore the topper (until it was discontinued in WW2). Harrovians the boater.
Incidentally, an acquaintance has taken one of his kids out of a local school and put her into private education because of some rather nasty bullying that the school could not, or refused, to combat.
Not everyone who sends their kids to private school are posh; many parents who send their kids to private school make sacrifices to do so - because they care for their kids.
Exactly my family's experience.
The State School was incapable of addressing, or dealing with, bullying - so my niece had to be pulled out and sent to a local small independent day school to ensure her welfare.
She eventually returned to the State Sector at the next educational stage, but obtaining appropriate aid (ie a Statement) required a couple of years of bureaucratic process including the need to attend meetings with a specialist barrister (at 4 figures a time), private medical reports and all the rest.
Far better to have tolerably affordable alternatives, which many parents can meet by not taking holidays, living in a smaller house etc if they choose to do so.
These are things that the Labour proposals, as far as I can see, have just not bothered thinking about (having read the supporting report) in their enthusiasm to trip over their own feet to pander to Neander.
Not something Mr Starmer should do to raise pin money when he also needs every vote he can get his hands on.
Well said.
There is a 'toff-bashing' attitude shown by many of those disliking private schools, but the true toffs will be able to afford increased fees no matter what, its those like you describe who will suffer the most from these proposals.
I count myself very fortunate, my kids have a place in a good primary school. We've moved since they started the school and the schools closest to us do not have such a good reputation, so we're keeping them in their old school and I'm driving them to their school. No fees thankfully, just petrol money, but their education comes first. I could relocate them from their school I drive to, to the one with a rough reputation they could walk to instead, but their education absolutely has to come first and inconveniencing me and costing me petrol money is a price I'm absolutely prepared to pay to ensure they continue to get a good education.
Too many others in the state sector aren't so fortunate. Too many have poor schools and not much they can do about it. "Fix that" is the obvious rallying cry, and yes that should be done, though the biggest difference in school behaviour is often not from funding, or the teachers, its the pupils parents surely and that's not so easy to fix?
For those of middle income, neither poor, nor well off, who find themselves lumbered with a bad school or a school that can't handle their child's needs, an affordable alternative should be available ideally. A Plan B so to speak.
For those who have enough money they don't need to worry about bills, they'll continue to get private education either way.
I'd have thought you'd be all in favour of the market. Remove the charity status, let schools charge the full economic rate and the ones delivering value will survive while the others fail, with parents deciding whether the higher fees are justified.
The charity status is there because what they're doing is charitable. They literally are charities, they're not businesses paying dividends to shareholders last I checked.
The core function of the sector is to provide a kind of 'gated community' in education for people with money. This is fine or not (depending on your politics) but it's hardly a charitable activity.
What's the core function of charity shops?
The sector offers free education to many pupils and other charitable services based on the funds they raise. How is that not charity?
If that money were being paid out in dividends to shareholders it would be a business. If its going to charitable services its a charity. That's a pretty clear definition to me.
Private schools do provide some free places, yes, but it's a tiny fraction. It has to be because they need the fee income to operate their gated community. That's the core function. The free places aspect is a sideshow. The core function of charity shops by contrast is to raise money for good works. It isn't to provide an exclusive retail space where monied people can browse and buy things, with a small handful of 'deserving' other folk allowed in if they pass a test on the door.
Sorry but there's no difference.
On the one hand you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works. On the other you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works.
They're both exactly the same.
The comparison would work if the granting of free places by private schools was their main function in life. But it isn't.
Many charities of the high street variety are actually large businesses that do a moderate amount of charity on the side.
Yes, I can imagine. There's a lot of non charity activity (indeed anti charity activity) goes on in the charity sector.
But none of this justifies creating an eloi/morlock caste system. Choice should be available to all, not just people with £££.
I reckon you can tell with a very high level of accuracy which regulars on here had a public school education just from their contributions.
Name the future pb.com posters. L-R
I always love that photo. Plainly the boys on the right are having lots of fun taking the piss out of the Etonians.
They are Harrovians not Etonians.
Little known fact however that this was nothing to do with showing a class difference it was just a coincidence that the Planters Peanut advert auditions clashed with the Hovis delivery boy auditions that day.
No Etonians. Etonians wore the topper (until it was discontinued in WW2). Harrovians the boater.
No, they are Harrovians. I can give you their names if you still wish to disagree.
I see that some folk are demanding that we maximise our reliance on oil from Russia and Saudi Arabia, rather than develop reserves in UK waters.
Given the meagre size of our remaining reserves, it would make more sense to save them for when they are really needed rather than squandering them now and leaving us completely reliant on Russia and Saudi Arabia in the future.
Which is a different argument to the "leave it in the ground" crowd.
Presumably fans of football clubs owned by the Middle East are in the "leave it in the ground" camp.
It makes no sense on environmental, economic or security grounds to burn up our last remaining oil reserves. Doing so will reduce incentives to develop cleaner alternatives while also leaving us completely at the mercy of foreign suppliers of hydrocarbons for plastics, fertilisers, etc. in the future. It reeks of greed, short-termism and political opportunism and plays directly into the hands of our enemies.
Except these are not our last remaining reserves. We have other remaining reserves untapped even after this.
It makes no sense to be importing from dictatorships when we have our own reserves.
For environmental reasons we need to reduce consumption.
Anyone who proposes reducing production doesn't give a single damn about the planet, they're just Putinist idiots.
Our remaining reserves are insignificant compared with those possessed by Russia and Saudi Arabia. Squandering our reserves now will only hand more power to those countries with large reserves in the future. If you want to know who the Putinist idiots are, look in the direction of those who have done their best to keep us reliant on the sale and consumption of fossil fuels.
Compared to Russia or Saudi Arabia is utterly irrelevant. The question is what our remaining reserves our compared to what we could need in the future and the truth is we have a healthy reserve it's not being squandered.
I absolutely support phasing down the consumption of fossil fuels, and said so myself. Production is unrelated to that.
What percentage of oil production is used for fuel as opposed to medicines, plastics and the rest?
Would some people be against it even if none of the oil ended up being burned?
I once looked this up about 15 years ago. The vast majority of fossil oil is burnt in one way or the other. The figure IFAICR is between 85 and 90% burnt and 10-15% for any other purpose.
Or it was 15 years ago.
I'm sure this has hardly changed. Plastic is pretty much a by product of fuel oil business, and the global amount of fossil fuel is pretty much the same level.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
If you're providing primary or secondary education, you can't qualify for charitable status. It's not difficult to decide that, the only question is whether or not it's the right thing to do.
And tertiary?
Why can't you run it based on whether they're doing good works or not, whether they're paying dividends or not etc, ie traditional objective charity criteria?
Is it simply that you know they objectively are charities but dislike that, so want to change the answer?
See my earlier reply to Sean_F about tertiary.
Private schools that claim charitable status ARE objectively charities, I'm not denying that. I'm saying that I would prevent them from claiming that status. And yes, it's entirely because I think they do more harm than good. Using the tax system as a disincentive to behaviours you don't approve of is not novel. You might not like it or you might agree in some cases and not others but come on, you know this happens.
Glad we agree they objectively are charities.
So if I feel Oxfam does more harm than good, I should be able to pick on them if elected?
Politicians should not be picking winners and losers. Set the law, the standards, then let people, businesses or charities operate within those.
Yes. If you're in charge of tax policy you should be allowed to decide which sectors get tax breaks or not.
I wouldn't recommend picking winners within a sector, but whole sectors are fair game. I'd think it were odd if you were to pick on Oxfam specifically and leaving other anti-poverty charities alone, but if you decided that anti-poverty charities or retail charities were a sector you disapproved of, and you fancy your chances selling that to the voters, knock yourself out.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
In the tratidional type of charity, the donors donate money that is then spent on others usually unknown to the donors, and it is ceratinly a choice made by the charity itself. E.g. donating to a homeless hostel, you don't know who are recieving the charity.
For a private school: The people paying are paying for the beneft of a specific person. This is not donating it is buying
The two models are totally different.
Charity shops say you're wrong.
If I donate by buying a second hand product or service from paid staff and the net proceeds fund good works that's a charity, even if I benefit from my purchase.
If I buy from a second hand book store whose owner takes the profits as dividends, that's not a charity.
Again, private school fees don't just cover the pupils own education, they cover the schools good works too, whether that be bursaries, facilities donated to be shared with other schools etc
No good works? They're not a charity then.
It's a balance to be struck.
That needs to be decided on public benefit, and in the case of schools benefit to pupils as well as the local community, not kneejerk ideology. That I think is where Starmer will hit a brick wall.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
In the tratidional type of charity, the donors donate money that is then spent on others usually unknown to the donors, and it is ceratinly a choice made by the charity itself. E.g. donating to a homeless hostel, you don't know who are recieving the charity.
For a private school: The people paying are paying for the beneft of a specific person. This is not donating it is buying
The two models are totally different.
Charity shops say you're wrong.
If I donate by buying a second hand product or service from paid staff and the net proceeds fund good works that's a charity, even if I benefit from my purchase.
If I buy from a second hand book store whose owner takes the profits as dividends, that's not a charity.
Again, private school fees don't just cover the pupils own education, they cover the schools good works too, whether that be bursaries, facilities donated to be shared with other schools etc
No good works? They're not a charity then.
We've done this already. The person buyin in th charity shop is not the recieving person. Someone who buys a video in a charity shop takes a video home. They have no idea who the disabled child is who will benefit from this money.
A person paying a private school, does so so thet their child or grand child gets a service. The payer knows directly the person who benefits.
If I buy a video I am the recipient of that service. The net proceeds go to someone else.
The net proceeds in private schools go to someone else too. Not the fee payers children.
Are you trying to claim that most parents who pay a private school are doing so to teach other people's children?
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
In the tratidional type of charity, the donors donate money that is then spent on others usually unknown to the donors, and it is ceratinly a choice made by the charity itself. E.g. donating to a homeless hostel, you don't know who are recieving the charity.
For a private school: The people paying are paying for the beneft of a specific person. This is not donating it is buying
The two models are totally different.
Charity shops say you're wrong.
If I donate by buying a second hand product or service from paid staff and the net proceeds fund good works that's a charity, even if I benefit from my purchase.
If I buy from a second hand book store whose owner takes the profits as dividends, that's not a charity.
Again, private school fees don't just cover the pupils own education, they cover the schools good works too, whether that be bursaries, facilities donated to be shared with other schools etc
No good works? They're not a charity then.
That's the issue with Oxfam shops for me. They use their charity tax breaks to let their corporate businesses unfairly compete with local small businesses - from bookshop to wedding shops and others.
When you get free stock, free staff and sometimes free premises, and the Govt gets no tax on your profits, it is fairly easy to compete and the public benefit is questionable.
I think there is perhaps a strong argument for restricting charity shops to secondhand stock - eg the Oxfam Wedding Departments in some of their shops sell new stock.
As with independent schools, drawing boundaries is difficult.
I think I might support a blanket removal of the business rates exemption. But aren't business rates due to be abolished?
Indeed. To be fair the staff are often paid, and the top staff can be well renumerated, but that doesn't make things better for the staff running a competing business without those breaks.
If Labour despite knowing that these schools are objectively charitable changes the rules to deny them these rights, then perhaps when next elected the Tories should expand that principle to Oxfam and all the other charity shops on the High Street.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
If you're providing primary or secondary education, you can't qualify for charitable status. It's not difficult to decide that, the only question is whether or not it's the right thing to do.
And tertiary?
Why can't you run it based on whether they're doing good works or not, whether they're paying dividends or not etc, ie traditional objective charity criteria?
Is it simply that you know they objectively are charities but dislike that, so want to change the answer?
See my earlier reply to Sean_F about tertiary.
Private schools that claim charitable status ARE objectively charities, I'm not denying that. I'm saying that I would prevent them from claiming that status. And yes, it's entirely because I think they do more harm than good. Using the tax system as a disincentive to behaviours you don't approve of is not novel. You might not like it or you might agree in some cases and not others but come on, you know this happens.
Glad we agree they objectively are charities.
So if I feel Oxfam does more harm than good, I should be able to pick on them if elected?
Politicians should not be picking winners and losers. Set the law, the standards, then let people, businesses or charities operate within those.
Politicians pick winners and losers all the time. That’s what politics is. When you set the law or the standards, you are inherently making choices, picking winners and losers.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
In the tratidional type of charity, the donors donate money that is then spent on others usually unknown to the donors, and it is ceratinly a choice made by the charity itself. E.g. donating to a homeless hostel, you don't know who are recieving the charity.
For a private school: The people paying are paying for the beneft of a specific person. This is not donating it is buying
The two models are totally different.
Charity shops say you're wrong.
If I donate by buying a second hand product or service from paid staff and the net proceeds fund good works that's a charity, even if I benefit from my purchase.
If I buy from a second hand book store whose owner takes the profits as dividends, that's not a charity.
Again, private school fees don't just cover the pupils own education, they cover the schools good works too, whether that be bursaries, facilities donated to be shared with other schools etc
No good works? They're not a charity then.
We've done this already. The person buyin in th charity shop is not the recieving person. Someone who buys a video in a charity shop takes a video home. They have no idea who the disabled child is who will benefit from this money.
A person paying a private school, does so so thet their child or grand child gets a service. The payer knows directly the person who benefits.
If I buy a video I am the recipient of that service. The net proceeds go to someone else.
The net proceeds in private schools go to someone else too. Not the fee payers children.
Are you trying to claim that most parents who pay a private school are doing so to teach other people's children?
The net proceeds are going there, yes.
I bought a book for my daughter because she wanted the book, not as an act of charity. The net proceeds go to charity, not what I spent.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
In the tratidional type of charity, the donors donate money that is then spent on others usually unknown to the donors, and it is ceratinly a choice made by the charity itself. E.g. donating to a homeless hostel, you don't know who are recieving the charity.
For a private school: The people paying are paying for the beneft of a specific person. This is not donating it is buying
The two models are totally different.
Charity shops say you're wrong.
If I donate by buying a second hand product or service from paid staff and the net proceeds fund good works that's a charity, even if I benefit from my purchase.
If I buy from a second hand book store whose owner takes the profits as dividends, that's not a charity.
Again, private school fees don't just cover the pupils own education, they cover the schools good works too, whether that be bursaries, facilities donated to be shared with other schools etc
No good works? They're not a charity then.
That's the issue with Oxfam shops for me. They use their charity tax breaks to let their corporate businesses unfairly compete with local small businesses - from bookshop to wedding shops and others.
When you get free stock, free staff and sometimes free premises, and the Govt gets no tax on your profits, it is fairly easy to compete and the public benefit is questionable.
I think there is perhaps a strong argument for restricting charity shops to secondhand stock - eg the Oxfam Wedding Departments in some of their shops sell new stock.
As with independent schools, drawing boundaries is difficult.
I think I might support a blanket removal of the business rates exemption. But aren't business rates due to be abolished?
Indeed. To be fair the staff are often paid, and the top staff can be well renumerated, but that doesn't make things better for the staff running a competing business without those breaks.
If Labour despite knowing that these schools are objectively charitable changes the rules to deny them these rights, then perhaps when next elected the Tories should expand that principle to Oxfam and all the other charity shops on the High Street.
Just a gentle FYI, the word is "remunerated", not "renumerated". It's a common mistake because it sounds like it should be to do with numbers, but it's not.
Incidentally, an acquaintance has taken one of his kids out of a local school and put her into private education because of some rather nasty bullying that the school could not, or refused, to combat.
Not everyone who sends their kids to private school are posh; many parents who send their kids to private school make sacrifices to do so - because they care for their kids.
Exactly my family's experience.
The State School was incapable of addressing, or dealing with, bullying - so my niece had to be pulled out and sent to a local small independent day school to ensure her welfare.
She eventually returned to the State Sector at the next educational stage, but obtaining appropriate aid (ie a Statement) required a couple of years of bureaucratic process including the need to attend meetings with a specialist barrister (at 4 figures a time), private medical reports and all the rest.
Far better to have tolerably affordable alternatives, which many parents can meet by not taking holidays, living in a smaller house etc if they choose to do so.
These are things that the Labour proposals, as far as I can see, have just not bothered thinking about (having read the supporting report) in their enthusiasm to trip over their own feet to pander to Neander.
Not something Mr Starmer should do to raise pin money when he also needs every vote he can get his hands on.
Well said.
There is a 'toff-bashing' attitude shown by many of those disliking private schools, but the true toffs will be able to afford increased fees no matter what, its those like you describe who will suffer the most from these proposals.
I count myself very fortunate, my kids have a place in a good primary school. We've moved since they started the school and the schools closest to us do not have such a good reputation, so we're keeping them in their old school and I'm driving them to their school. No fees thankfully, just petrol money, but their education comes first. I could relocate them from their school I drive to, to the one with a rough reputation they could walk to instead, but their education absolutely has to come first and inconveniencing me and costing me petrol money is a price I'm absolutely prepared to pay to ensure they continue to get a good education.
Too many others in the state sector aren't so fortunate. Too many have poor schools and not much they can do about it. "Fix that" is the obvious rallying cry, and yes that should be done, though the biggest difference in school behaviour is often not from funding, or the teachers, its the pupils parents surely and that's not so easy to fix?
For those of middle income, neither poor, nor well off, who find themselves lumbered with a bad school or a school that can't handle their child's needs, an affordable alternative should be available ideally. A Plan B so to speak.
For those who have enough money they don't need to worry about bills, they'll continue to get private education either way.
I'd have thought you'd be all in favour of the market. Remove the charity status, let schools charge the full economic rate and the ones delivering value will survive while the others fail, with parents deciding whether the higher fees are justified.
The charity status is there because what they're doing is charitable. They literally are charities, they're not businesses paying dividends to shareholders last I checked.
The core function of the sector is to provide a kind of 'gated community' in education for people with money. This is fine or not (depending on your politics) but it's hardly a charitable activity.
What's the core function of charity shops?
The sector offers free education to many pupils and other charitable services based on the funds they raise. How is that not charity?
If that money were being paid out in dividends to shareholders it would be a business. If its going to charitable services its a charity. That's a pretty clear definition to me.
Private schools do provide some free places, yes, but it's a tiny fraction. It has to be because they need the fee income to operate their gated community. That's the core function. The free places aspect is a sideshow. The core function of charity shops by contrast is to raise money for good works. It isn't to provide an exclusive retail space where monied people can browse and buy things, with a small handful of 'deserving' other folk allowed in if they pass a test on the door.
Sorry but there's no difference.
On the one hand you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works. On the other you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works.
They're both exactly the same.
The comparison would work if the granting of free places by private schools was their main function in life. But it isn't.
..and it hasn't been since 1868 at the latest. People who talk as if they're providing some great benefit to the wider population are being deeply disingenuous.
The contortions gone through on behalf of private schools are quite something.
'It's people who can afford it doing what they think is best for their kids, end of. And it's a free country.'
That's the essence of the argument for and it's a perfectly good one. No need to pretend they are a positive for society as a whole.
If they are genuine charities doing genuine good work, then they are. Objectively.
Oxfam campaign on left wing political issues. They advocate left wing taxes. They also spend a smaller percentage of revenue on good works than many charitable schools do.
I wouldn't target them for their politics though, as they are objectively a charity, just like schools objectively are.
If it's fair game to start picking on charities we dislike, I nominate Oxfam next.
Incidentally, an acquaintance has taken one of his kids out of a local school and put her into private education because of some rather nasty bullying that the school could not, or refused, to combat.
Not everyone who sends their kids to private school are posh; many parents who send their kids to private school make sacrifices to do so - because they care for their kids.
Exactly my family's experience.
The State School was incapable of addressing, or dealing with, bullying - so my niece had to be pulled out and sent to a local small independent day school to ensure her welfare.
She eventually returned to the State Sector at the next educational stage, but obtaining appropriate aid (ie a Statement) required a couple of years of bureaucratic process including the need to attend meetings with a specialist barrister (at 4 figures a time), private medical reports and all the rest.
Far better to have tolerably affordable alternatives, which many parents can meet by not taking holidays, living in a smaller house etc if they choose to do so.
These are things that the Labour proposals, as far as I can see, have just not bothered thinking about (having read the supporting report) in their enthusiasm to trip over their own feet to pander to Neander.
Not something Mr Starmer should do to raise pin money when he also needs every vote he can get his hands on.
Well said.
There is a 'toff-bashing' attitude shown by many of those disliking private schools, but the true toffs will be able to afford increased fees no matter what, its those like you describe who will suffer the most from these proposals.
I count myself very fortunate, my kids have a place in a good primary school. We've moved since they started the school and the schools closest to us do not have such a good reputation, so we're keeping them in their old school and I'm driving them to their school. No fees thankfully, just petrol money, but their education comes first. I could relocate them from their school I drive to, to the one with a rough reputation they could walk to instead, but their education absolutely has to come first and inconveniencing me and costing me petrol money is a price I'm absolutely prepared to pay to ensure they continue to get a good education.
Too many others in the state sector aren't so fortunate. Too many have poor schools and not much they can do about it. "Fix that" is the obvious rallying cry, and yes that should be done, though the biggest difference in school behaviour is often not from funding, or the teachers, its the pupils parents surely and that's not so easy to fix?
For those of middle income, neither poor, nor well off, who find themselves lumbered with a bad school or a school that can't handle their child's needs, an affordable alternative should be available ideally. A Plan B so to speak.
For those who have enough money they don't need to worry about bills, they'll continue to get private education either way.
I'd have thought you'd be all in favour of the market. Remove the charity status, let schools charge the full economic rate and the ones delivering value will survive while the others fail, with parents deciding whether the higher fees are justified.
The charity status is there because what they're doing is charitable. They literally are charities, they're not businesses paying dividends to shareholders last I checked.
The core function of the sector is to provide a kind of 'gated community' in education for people with money. This is fine or not (depending on your politics) but it's hardly a charitable activity.
What's the core function of charity shops?
The sector offers free education to many pupils and other charitable services based on the funds they raise. How is that not charity?
If that money were being paid out in dividends to shareholders it would be a business. If its going to charitable services its a charity. That's a pretty clear definition to me.
Private schools do provide some free places, yes, but it's a tiny fraction. It has to be because they need the fee income to operate their gated community. That's the core function. The free places aspect is a sideshow. The core function of charity shops by contrast is to raise money for good works. It isn't to provide an exclusive retail space where monied people can browse and buy things, with a small handful of 'deserving' other folk allowed in if they pass a test on the door.
Sorry but there's no difference.
On the one hand you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works. On the other you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works.
They're both exactly the same.
The comparison would work if the granting of free places by private schools was their main function in life. But it isn't.
To pick a different part of the charity sector - heritage railways. Most have charitable status, on the basis that preservation of and education about heritage assets is a public good.
How do most visitors interact with one? Pay on the gate, get a heritage train ride. Generally without paying VAT either (rail travel is VAT exempt!). Most of the benefits acrue to those who pay to travel but we accept that there is enough public good for their activities to be charitable - and indeed most of them wouldn't last five minutes as normal commercial outfits.
Neil Henderson @hendopolis · 15m MAIL: Labour’s class war begins on Day One #TomorrowsPapersToday
===
"Backlash as parents face school fees hike"
How many Mail readers send their kids to private school???
It is not just the mail going onto the attack
The i as well
Sorry the link didn't work
The Mail tries its best to make it sound like Labour will be charging a new fee for all parents . Not sure the I headline will worry Labour . A backlash from private schools . 93% of children do not go to private schools . They get a subsidy in effect from tax payers whilst state schools are crumbling. Do you want your taxes subsiding rich parennts sending their kids to places like Eton .
That will be the Labour campaign.
Of course, the exact opposite is true.
Every parent who sends their child to private school is effectively paying double - they are paying all the tax for a state school place, but not taking it up, thereby donating the resources they would have used so they are available for everyone else instead. Meanwhile, they expand the level of investment going into the education sector overall, funding the training of more teachers, experimenting with new education styles, more resources and facilities, rather than spend it on property and consumption. Which is where they money would otherwise go. And private schools are charitable endeavours that don't generate profit or return to investors but invest in an educational mission overall.
This is why governments of all stripes have recognised this in the tax system for decades - because it's in the public interest. They are a net good.
It won't be Eton, Harrow or Winchester hit by these changes. It will be the smaller more marginal private schools where two parents working full-time - doctors, accountants, pilots, solicitors, and small businessmen - work hard to be able to afford the fees are forced to pull their kids out, with the school closing and the community assets lost. The state system won't gain a bean from it except an additional burden and the education sector overall will shrink. We'll all be poorer for it.
It's a disgrace of a policy based on prejudice. It deserves to fail, as all bad policies should.
This is spot on. (Even if Casino thinks I’m a “Leftie”.)
The big name public schools will sail on regardless. The ones that will be hit will be the small ones with the specialisms in autism support or music or whatever, where the parents have scrimped and saved to send their kids because they’ve been failed by the state system.
If your position is “well improve the state system so it caters for those kids” that’s an honest position to take… and also I have a bridge to sell you. You have a look at the EHCP backlog for any given local authority and tell me how long that’s going to take.
Really it’s not that fricking hard (and here is where Casino will conclude I am in fact a Leftie). Tax wealth, rather than taxing people when they choose to spend that wealth on good things like education. A couple of pence on income tax for the super-rich would dwarf anything raised by VAT on school fees.
But Starmer won’t do that. It’s tokenism rather than genuine redistribution, at the expense of kids’ education.
What a load of shite. This is closing a tax loophole on a tax that is levied on pretty much everything else.
If VAT on private school fees already existed nobody would be campaigning to remove it.
This is middle class crybabyism
I do hope that VAT will be applied to all private tutoring - and other private educational facilities only accessible to those with money - as well. If only so that we can hear the wails from those parents sending their children to state schools but using private tutors to help them get on.
BTW for those agitating for private education to be abolished, Article 2 of the Protocol to the ECHR waves hello. So if you want this to happen you'll be hoping Ms Braverman gets her way. Or perhaps not .....
Presumably most private tutors would fall below the VAT threshold…?
You could ask Ydoethyr! I would think that most, or at least many, private tutors aim to keep their income JUST below the VAT threshold. Although there are advantages in being VAT registered in being able to claim back the VAT on relevant purchases. When I ran a small business I found one advantage of being VAT registered was that it made keeping one’s accounts up to date for the year end much easier.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
If you're providing primary or secondary education, you can't qualify for charitable status. It's not difficult to decide that, the only question is whether or not it's the right thing to do.
And tertiary?
Why can't you run it based on whether they're doing good works or not, whether they're paying dividends or not etc, ie traditional objective charity criteria?
Is it simply that you know they objectively are charities but dislike that, so want to change the answer?
See my earlier reply to Sean_F about tertiary.
Private schools that claim charitable status ARE objectively charities, I'm not denying that. I'm saying that I would prevent them from claiming that status. And yes, it's entirely because I think they do more harm than good. Using the tax system as a disincentive to behaviours you don't approve of is not novel. You might not like it or you might agree in some cases and not others but come on, you know this happens.
Glad we agree they objectively are charities.
So if I feel Oxfam does more harm than good, I should be able to pick on them if elected?
Politicians should not be picking winners and losers. Set the law, the standards, then let people, businesses or charities operate within those.
Politicians pick winners and losers all the time. That’s what politics is. When you set the law or the standards, you are inherently making choices, picking winners and losers.
No it's not. That's bad politics.
Politicians shouldn't pick Oxfam as a winner and a competing charity as a loser, or vice versa. They should set the legal framework then charities or individuals or firms etc operate within that framework.
Charity schools and charity shops are objectively charities which provide services to their customers and they use the net proceeds for good works.
Perhaps you might want to insist on a certain minimum percentage going to good works, that's not a bad idea. But if you do, don't be surprised if many of what you consider legitimate charities cry foul.
The privately educated and the parents of children in private education are massively over-represented on PB.
No real point engaging in the debate here as the balance of opinion is massively distorted from the population as a whole.
OTOH, I went to both state and private schools, meaning that I get an unusual viewpoint on both sides of the issue.
There's good and bad in both systems; or, more accurately, there can be good and bad in both systems. The question that matters is this: will the country, and the population, be 'better' off if we reduce the number of private schools because we've taxed them?
It's a big experiment, especially when the change is only being done on an ideological basis.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
If you're providing primary or secondary education, you can't qualify for charitable status. It's not difficult to decide that, the only question is whether or not it's the right thing to do.
Why not extend that to university education, which after all, provides benefits disproportionately towards the well-off?
Universities have a separate function in terms of research which makes mapping between secondary and tertiary a little more complicated
Not that complicated.
If you're being consistent, presumably you want £9,500 tuition fees undergraduates currently pay to become £11,400? Ie 9500+20%
Universities should not be charities. Universities in the public sector should not have to pay VAT. Private universities are not charities and should have to charge their students VAT on the student fees.
The private/public fudge that is UK universites should also be cleared up even if this means bringing most unis properly into the public sector.
The privately educated and the parents of children in private education are massively over-represented on PB.
No real point engaging in the debate here as the balance of opinion is massively distorted from the population as a whole.
OTOH, I went to both state and private schools, meaning that I get an unusual viewpoint on both sides of the issue.
There's good and bad in both systems; or, more accurately, there can be good and bad in both systems. The question that matters is this: will the country, and the population, be 'better' off if we reduce the number of private schools because we've taxed them?
It's a big experiment, especially when the change is only being done on an ideological basis.
One way of answering this kind of question is looking into how this is done in many other countries, and seeing which ones get the best eductaion results and/or best education results per dollar.
Incidentally, an acquaintance has taken one of his kids out of a local school and put her into private education because of some rather nasty bullying that the school could not, or refused, to combat.
Not everyone who sends their kids to private school are posh; many parents who send their kids to private school make sacrifices to do so - because they care for their kids.
Exactly my family's experience.
The State School was incapable of addressing, or dealing with, bullying - so my niece had to be pulled out and sent to a local small independent day school to ensure her welfare.
She eventually returned to the State Sector at the next educational stage, but obtaining appropriate aid (ie a Statement) required a couple of years of bureaucratic process including the need to attend meetings with a specialist barrister (at 4 figures a time), private medical reports and all the rest.
Far better to have tolerably affordable alternatives, which many parents can meet by not taking holidays, living in a smaller house etc if they choose to do so.
These are things that the Labour proposals, as far as I can see, have just not bothered thinking about (having read the supporting report) in their enthusiasm to trip over their own feet to pander to Neander.
Not something Mr Starmer should do to raise pin money when he also needs every vote he can get his hands on.
Well said.
There is a 'toff-bashing' attitude shown by many of those disliking private schools, but the true toffs will be able to afford increased fees no matter what, its those like you describe who will suffer the most from these proposals.
I count myself very fortunate, my kids have a place in a good primary school. We've moved since they started the school and the schools closest to us do not have such a good reputation, so we're keeping them in their old school and I'm driving them to their school. No fees thankfully, just petrol money, but their education comes first. I could relocate them from their school I drive to, to the one with a rough reputation they could walk to instead, but their education absolutely has to come first and inconveniencing me and costing me petrol money is a price I'm absolutely prepared to pay to ensure they continue to get a good education.
Too many others in the state sector aren't so fortunate. Too many have poor schools and not much they can do about it. "Fix that" is the obvious rallying cry, and yes that should be done, though the biggest difference in school behaviour is often not from funding, or the teachers, its the pupils parents surely and that's not so easy to fix?
For those of middle income, neither poor, nor well off, who find themselves lumbered with a bad school or a school that can't handle their child's needs, an affordable alternative should be available ideally. A Plan B so to speak.
For those who have enough money they don't need to worry about bills, they'll continue to get private education either way.
I'd have thought you'd be all in favour of the market. Remove the charity status, let schools charge the full economic rate and the ones delivering value will survive while the others fail, with parents deciding whether the higher fees are justified.
The charity status is there because what they're doing is charitable. They literally are charities, they're not businesses paying dividends to shareholders last I checked.
The core function of the sector is to provide a kind of 'gated community' in education for people with money. This is fine or not (depending on your politics) but it's hardly a charitable activity.
What's the core function of charity shops?
The sector offers free education to many pupils and other charitable services based on the funds they raise. How is that not charity?
If that money were being paid out in dividends to shareholders it would be a business. If its going to charitable services its a charity. That's a pretty clear definition to me.
Private schools do provide some free places, yes, but it's a tiny fraction. It has to be because they need the fee income to operate their gated community. That's the core function. The free places aspect is a sideshow. The core function of charity shops by contrast is to raise money for good works. It isn't to provide an exclusive retail space where monied people can browse and buy things, with a small handful of 'deserving' other folk allowed in if they pass a test on the door.
Sorry but there's no difference.
On the one hand you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works. On the other you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works.
They're both exactly the same.
The comparison would work if the granting of free places by private schools was their main function in life. But it isn't.
To pick a different part of the charity sector - heritage railways. Most have charitable status, on the basis that preservation of and education about heritage assets is a public good.
How do most visitors interact with one? Pay on the gate, get a heritage train ride. Generally without paying VAT either (rail travel is VAT exempt!). Most of the benefits acrue to those who pay to travel but we accept that there is enough public good for their activities to be charitable - and indeed most of them wouldn't last five minutes as normal commercial outfits.
VAT-free thrash from preserved diesels is a fundamental human right.
But none of this justifies creating an eloi/morlock caste system. Choice should be available to all, not just people with £££.
I reckon you can tell with a very high level of accuracy which regulars on here had a public school education just from their contributions.
Name the future pb.com posters. L-R
I always love that photo. Plainly the boys on the right are having lots of fun taking the piss out of the Etonians.
They are Harrovians not Etonians.
Little known fact however that this was nothing to do with showing a class difference it was just a coincidence that the Planters Peanut advert auditions clashed with the Hovis delivery boy auditions that day.
No Etonians. Etonians wore the topper (until it was discontinued in WW2). Harrovians the boater.
No, they are Harrovians. I can give you their names if you still wish to disagree.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
If you're providing primary or secondary education, you can't qualify for charitable status. It's not difficult to decide that, the only question is whether or not it's the right thing to do.
And tertiary?
Why can't you run it based on whether they're doing good works or not, whether they're paying dividends or not etc, ie traditional objective charity criteria?
Is it simply that you know they objectively are charities but dislike that, so want to change the answer?
See my earlier reply to Sean_F about tertiary.
Private schools that claim charitable status ARE objectively charities, I'm not denying that. I'm saying that I would prevent them from claiming that status. And yes, it's entirely because I think they do more harm than good. Using the tax system as a disincentive to behaviours you don't approve of is not novel. You might not like it or you might agree in some cases and not others but come on, you know this happens.
Glad we agree they objectively are charities.
So if I feel Oxfam does more harm than good, I should be able to pick on them if elected?
Politicians should not be picking winners and losers. Set the law, the standards, then let people, businesses or charities operate within those.
Politicians pick winners and losers all the time. That’s what politics is. When you set the law or the standards, you are inherently making choices, picking winners and losers.
No it's not. That's bad politics.
Politicians shouldn't pick Oxfam as a winner and a competing charity as a loser, or vice versa. They should set the legal framework then charities or individuals or firms etc operate within that framework.
Charity schools and charity shops are objectively charities which provide services to their customers and they use the net proceeds for good works.
Perhaps you might want to insist on a certain minimum percentage going to good works, that's not a bad idea. But if you do, don't be surprised if many of what you consider legitimate charities cry foul.
Rules should not generally target a specific organisation, but you have to choose rules and any choice of rules will have winners and losers. Politicians shouldn’t pick on Oxfam while leaving similar charities alone. Polticians shouldn’t pick on Winchester while leaving similar private schools alone. And that’s not what’s happening. Labour have a proposal about a sector and everyone in that sector will be treated the same.
Arguing that private schools and charity shops are so similar that they have to be treated identically is risible.
Incidentally, an acquaintance has taken one of his kids out of a local school and put her into private education because of some rather nasty bullying that the school could not, or refused, to combat.
Not everyone who sends their kids to private school are posh; many parents who send their kids to private school make sacrifices to do so - because they care for their kids.
Exactly my family's experience.
The State School was incapable of addressing, or dealing with, bullying - so my niece had to be pulled out and sent to a local small independent day school to ensure her welfare.
She eventually returned to the State Sector at the next educational stage, but obtaining appropriate aid (ie a Statement) required a couple of years of bureaucratic process including the need to attend meetings with a specialist barrister (at 4 figures a time), private medical reports and all the rest.
Far better to have tolerably affordable alternatives, which many parents can meet by not taking holidays, living in a smaller house etc if they choose to do so.
These are things that the Labour proposals, as far as I can see, have just not bothered thinking about (having read the supporting report) in their enthusiasm to trip over their own feet to pander to Neander.
Not something Mr Starmer should do to raise pin money when he also needs every vote he can get his hands on.
Well said.
There is a 'toff-bashing' attitude shown by many of those disliking private schools, but the true toffs will be able to afford increased fees no matter what, its those like you describe who will suffer the most from these proposals.
I count myself very fortunate, my kids have a place in a good primary school. We've moved since they started the school and the schools closest to us do not have such a good reputation, so we're keeping them in their old school and I'm driving them to their school. No fees thankfully, just petrol money, but their education comes first. I could relocate them from their school I drive to, to the one with a rough reputation they could walk to instead, but their education absolutely has to come first and inconveniencing me and costing me petrol money is a price I'm absolutely prepared to pay to ensure they continue to get a good education.
Too many others in the state sector aren't so fortunate. Too many have poor schools and not much they can do about it. "Fix that" is the obvious rallying cry, and yes that should be done, though the biggest difference in school behaviour is often not from funding, or the teachers, its the pupils parents surely and that's not so easy to fix?
For those of middle income, neither poor, nor well off, who find themselves lumbered with a bad school or a school that can't handle their child's needs, an affordable alternative should be available ideally. A Plan B so to speak.
For those who have enough money they don't need to worry about bills, they'll continue to get private education either way.
I'd have thought you'd be all in favour of the market. Remove the charity status, let schools charge the full economic rate and the ones delivering value will survive while the others fail, with parents deciding whether the higher fees are justified.
The charity status is there because what they're doing is charitable. They literally are charities, they're not businesses paying dividends to shareholders last I checked.
The core function of the sector is to provide a kind of 'gated community' in education for people with money. This is fine or not (depending on your politics) but it's hardly a charitable activity.
What's the core function of charity shops?
The sector offers free education to many pupils and other charitable services based on the funds they raise. How is that not charity?
If that money were being paid out in dividends to shareholders it would be a business. If its going to charitable services its a charity. That's a pretty clear definition to me.
Private schools do provide some free places, yes, but it's a tiny fraction. It has to be because they need the fee income to operate their gated community. That's the core function. The free places aspect is a sideshow. The core function of charity shops by contrast is to raise money for good works. It isn't to provide an exclusive retail space where monied people can browse and buy things, with a small handful of 'deserving' other folk allowed in if they pass a test on the door.
Sorry but there's no difference.
On the one hand you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works. On the other you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works.
They're both exactly the same.
The comparison would work if the granting of free places by private schools was their main function in life. But it isn't.
To pick a different part of the charity sector - heritage railways. Most have charitable status, on the basis that preservation of and education about heritage assets is a public good.
How do most visitors interact with one? Pay on the gate, get a heritage train ride. Generally without paying VAT either (rail travel is VAT exempt!). Most of the benefits acrue to those who pay to travel but we accept that there is enough public good for their activities to be charitable - and indeed most of them wouldn't last five minutes as normal commercial outfits.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
Having worked in the charity field, there is often considerable resentment towards "unworthy" organisations getting charitable status.
I used to find that many people who worked for medical charities would get pissed off that animal charities had charitable status - one woman telling me she thought the donkeys at the Donkey Sanctuary should be turned into salami.
Indeed and I bet the animal charities are pissed off that the medical charities have it too, if they engage in legal animal testing.
That's why we have objective criteria and shouldn't pick and choose winners and losers.
If the Tories were to decide to target Oxfam and other left wing charities then people supporting targeting private schools (which are neither left nor right as whisperingoracle noted) would be crying murder over that.
The skepticism about the donkey sanctuary seems fully justified to me, given their turbo-anthropomorphism and suffering-porn-heartstring-tugging adverts.
The only animal charity I can think of that I think is notably worse is Penn Farthing's Nowzad, his activities screwing around with the evacuation from Afghanistan, and his flying dogs around the world on airlines to find them new mummies and daddies. However, there may be others. It's a problem of being a nation of animal sentimentalists imo.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
Having worked in the charity field, there is often considerable resentment towards "unworthy" organisations getting charitable status.
I used to find that many people who worked for medical charities would get pissed off that animal charities had charitable status - one woman telling me she thought the donkeys at the Donkey Sanctuary should be turned into salami.
Indeed and I bet the animal charities are pissed off that the medical charities have it too, if they engage in legal animal testing.
That's why we have objective criteria and shouldn't pick and choose winners and losers.
If the Tories were to decide to target Oxfam and other left wing charities then people supporting targeting private schools (which are neither left nor right as whisperingoracle noted) would be crying murder over that.
The skepticism about the donkey sanctuary seems fully justified to me, given their turbo-anthropomorphism and suffering-porn-heartstring-tugging adverts.
The only animal charity I can think of that I think is notably worse is Penn Farthing's Nowzad, his activities screwing around with the evacuation from Afghanistan, and his flying dogs around the world on airlines to find them new mummies and daddies. However, there may be others. It's a problem of being a nation of animal sentimentalists imo.
(Is donkey salami tasty?)
Distressed Middle Eastern donkeys are the mother lode of animal fundraising. I liked to suggest that we purchase a couple of donkeys, dress up as Arabs, and then pretend to hit and kick them, for a fundraising video.
The privately educated and the parents of children in private education are massively over-represented on PB.
No real point engaging in the debate here as the balance of opinion is massively distorted from the population as a whole.
Literally no one I know ever talks about it, and that includes the parents/kids who used private education. I only ever thought about it because my wife worked in one.
Neil Henderson @hendopolis · 15m MAIL: Labour’s class war begins on Day One #TomorrowsPapersToday
===
"Backlash as parents face school fees hike"
How many Mail readers send their kids to private school???
It is not just the mail going onto the attack
The i as well
Sorry the link didn't work
The Mail tries its best to make it sound like Labour will be charging a new fee for all parents . Not sure the I headline will worry Labour . A backlash from private schools . 93% of children do not go to private schools . They get a subsidy in effect from tax payers whilst state schools are crumbling. Do you want your taxes subsiding rich parennts sending their kids to places like Eton .
That will be the Labour campaign.
Of course, the exact opposite is true.
Every parent who sends their child to private school is effectively paying double - they are paying all the tax for a state school place, but not taking it up, thereby donating the resources they would have used so they are available for everyone else instead. Meanwhile, they expand the level of investment going into the education sector overall, funding the training of more teachers, experimenting with new education styles, more resources and facilities, rather than spend it on property and consumption. Which is where they money would otherwise go. And private schools are charitable endeavours that don't generate profit or return to investors but invest in an educational mission overall.
This is why governments of all stripes have recognised this in the tax system for decades - because it's in the public interest. They are a net good.
It won't be Eton, Harrow or Winchester hit by these changes. It will be the smaller more marginal private schools where two parents working full-time - doctors, accountants, pilots, solicitors, and small businessmen - work hard to be able to afford the fees are forced to pull their kids out, with the school closing and the community assets lost. The state system won't gain a bean from it except an additional burden and the education sector overall will shrink. We'll all be poorer for it.
It's a disgrace of a policy based on prejudice. It deserves to fail, as all bad policies should.
This is spot on. (Even if Casino thinks I’m a “Leftie”.)
The big name public schools will sail on regardless. The ones that will be hit will be the small ones with the specialisms in autism support or music or whatever, where the parents have scrimped and saved to send their kids because they’ve been failed by the state system.
If your position is “well improve the state system so it caters for those kids” that’s an honest position to take… and also I have a bridge to sell you. You have a look at the EHCP backlog for any given local authority and tell me how long that’s going to take.
Really it’s not that fricking hard (and here is where Casino will conclude I am in fact a Leftie). Tax wealth, rather than taxing people when they choose to spend that wealth on good things like education. A couple of pence on income tax for the super-rich would dwarf anything raised by VAT on school fees.
But Starmer won’t do that. It’s tokenism rather than genuine redistribution, at the expense of kids’ education.
What a load of shite. This is closing a tax loophole on a tax that is levied on pretty much everything else.
If VAT on private school fees already existed nobody would be campaigning to remove it.
There are huge swathes of the UK economy which are exempt from VAT.
Start with £250bn sales of food. - that's retail consumer sales, What about purchases of food by businesses - no idea on that. Add in segments of the clothing market - children incl. school uniforms. Then all businesses turning over less than £85k a year (approx figure). Reduced VAT on energy bills at 5%. (Energy bills = £50bn to £100bn a year at present) Medicines and medical devices, including I think Motability cars (Motability do £4bn of business a year). Then there's a whole bundle of non-VAT or reduced rate VAT exemptions for charities. Financial services.
And it goes on...
No precise idea on the total, but it looks to me as if perhaps 15-20% of GDP is VAT exempt.
I think this is the important point that both sides are perhaps avoiding. Whether VAT is charged on an activity is often arbitrary and not consistent with similar products or services.
So whether private school fees should be chargeable cannot be resolved by considering whether they are a "genuine" charity or not, or if they are good or bad for society. It is rather a political and fiscal choice without a correct answer either way, and it is a matter of preference rather than charging VAT is right or wrong.
Politically I think it is an own goal by Labour, although probably most helpful to the LDems rather than the Cons. Fiscally I think it is the correct decision.
I think it's likely to work politically, precisely because it's the politics rather than the fiscal aspect that is driving it. This policy appeals to the left in Labour and also polls well with floating voters, esp in the sort of seats needed to win the GE. There aren't many policies like that. It's a rare bird. This imo is why it's not only going in the manifesto but is being given a reasonably high profile.
Its the same as ULEZ. Most people support the policy but its not in their top 5 or even top 20 issues, so it makes no difference to their voting. A few people are going to be losing thousands of pounds and so it is in their top 5 or even top 3 and it particularly changes their turnout as well as party voting intention.
Since we are doing independent schools, I looked up my own school and it comes out like this. Ignoring support for other schools etc. I think these numbers are not far off the high end of reasonable expectations from a school's own resources.
This is Nottingham High School - Heads' Conference. Good academically.
Full fees: 18k per annum, which is a little below average for the sector. Annual income: £20m. Pupils: ~1000 in toto in Junior and Senior schools. I'm ignoring infants. Endowment: £15-18m of investments, much in property. Bursaries: ~8% of fee income goes to means-tested bursaries, based also on academic performance. £1.4m in 2021/22. Just under 10% of pupils receive means tested bursaries, of which 3/4 are 75% or more of fees, and 90-95% are 50%+ of fees. On top of that there are smaller programmes for scholarships (academically based only) £100k, and concessions for children of staff £200k.
Incidentally, an acquaintance has taken one of his kids out of a local school and put her into private education because of some rather nasty bullying that the school could not, or refused, to combat.
Not everyone who sends their kids to private school are posh; many parents who send their kids to private school make sacrifices to do so - because they care for their kids.
Exactly my family's experience.
The State School was incapable of addressing, or dealing with, bullying - so my niece had to be pulled out and sent to a local small independent day school to ensure her welfare.
She eventually returned to the State Sector at the next educational stage, but obtaining appropriate aid (ie a Statement) required a couple of years of bureaucratic process including the need to attend meetings with a specialist barrister (at 4 figures a time), private medical reports and all the rest.
Far better to have tolerably affordable alternatives, which many parents can meet by not taking holidays, living in a smaller house etc if they choose to do so.
These are things that the Labour proposals, as far as I can see, have just not bothered thinking about (having read the supporting report) in their enthusiasm to trip over their own feet to pander to Neander.
Not something Mr Starmer should do to raise pin money when he also needs every vote he can get his hands on.
Well said.
There is a 'toff-bashing' attitude shown by many of those disliking private schools, but the true toffs will be able to afford increased fees no matter what, its those like you describe who will suffer the most from these proposals.
I count myself very fortunate, my kids have a place in a good primary school. We've moved since they started the school and the schools closest to us do not have such a good reputation, so we're keeping them in their old school and I'm driving them to their school. No fees thankfully, just petrol money, but their education comes first. I could relocate them from their school I drive to, to the one with a rough reputation they could walk to instead, but their education absolutely has to come first and inconveniencing me and costing me petrol money is a price I'm absolutely prepared to pay to ensure they continue to get a good education.
Too many others in the state sector aren't so fortunate. Too many have poor schools and not much they can do about it. "Fix that" is the obvious rallying cry, and yes that should be done, though the biggest difference in school behaviour is often not from funding, or the teachers, its the pupils parents surely and that's not so easy to fix?
For those of middle income, neither poor, nor well off, who find themselves lumbered with a bad school or a school that can't handle their child's needs, an affordable alternative should be available ideally. A Plan B so to speak.
For those who have enough money they don't need to worry about bills, they'll continue to get private education either way.
I'd have thought you'd be all in favour of the market. Remove the charity status, let schools charge the full economic rate and the ones delivering value will survive while the others fail, with parents deciding whether the higher fees are justified.
The charity status is there because what they're doing is charitable. They literally are charities, they're not businesses paying dividends to shareholders last I checked.
The core function of the sector is to provide a kind of 'gated community' in education for people with money. This is fine or not (depending on your politics) but it's hardly a charitable activity.
What's the core function of charity shops?
The sector offers free education to many pupils and other charitable services based on the funds they raise. How is that not charity?
If that money were being paid out in dividends to shareholders it would be a business. If its going to charitable services its a charity. That's a pretty clear definition to me.
Private schools do provide some free places, yes, but it's a tiny fraction. It has to be because they need the fee income to operate their gated community. That's the core function. The free places aspect is a sideshow. The core function of charity shops by contrast is to raise money for good works. It isn't to provide an exclusive retail space where monied people can browse and buy things, with a small handful of 'deserving' other folk allowed in if they pass a test on the door.
Sorry but there's no difference.
On the one hand you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works. On the other you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works.
They're both exactly the same.
The comparison would work if the granting of free places by private schools was their main function in life. But it isn't.
To pick a different part of the charity sector - heritage railways. Most have charitable status, on the basis that preservation of and education about heritage assets is a public good.
How do most visitors interact with one? Pay on the gate, get a heritage train ride. Generally without paying VAT either (rail travel is VAT exempt!). Most of the benefits acrue to those who pay to travel but we accept that there is enough public good for their activities to be charitable - and indeed most of them wouldn't last five minutes as normal commercial outfits.
That is an absolutely fantastic counter example.
Yes the principles are exactly the same!
No, it's not the same as educating children, because visiting or not visiting a heritage railway has no discernible effect on life chances. It's not an equality-of-opportunity issue.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
If you're providing primary or secondary education, you can't qualify for charitable status. It's not difficult to decide that, the only question is whether or not it's the right thing to do.
And tertiary?
Why can't you run it based on whether they're doing good works or not, whether they're paying dividends or not etc, ie traditional objective charity criteria?
Is it simply that you know they objectively are charities but dislike that, so want to change the answer?
See my earlier reply to Sean_F about tertiary.
Private schools that claim charitable status ARE objectively charities, I'm not denying that. I'm saying that I would prevent them from claiming that status. And yes, it's entirely because I think they do more harm than good. Using the tax system as a disincentive to behaviours you don't approve of is not novel. You might not like it or you might agree in some cases and not others but come on, you know this happens.
Glad we agree they objectively are charities.
So if I feel Oxfam does more harm than good, I should be able to pick on them if elected?
Politicians should not be picking winners and losers. Set the law, the standards, then let people, businesses or charities operate within those.
Politicians pick winners and losers all the time. That’s what politics is. When you set the law or the standards, you are inherently making choices, picking winners and losers.
Radically altering the law on charities is so hard that the best course for each government is to leave well alone except at the extremes.
The best example is religion. Historically religion itself is a public good and obviously charitable. This goes back to day when practically 100% of relevant religion was Christian in some form, and the great majority belonged to some part of it to some extent.
The modern contrast is stark. A large proportion think all religion is malign to some extent, and even more think some of it is. Only a small minority actively identify with it.
But abolishing religion's charitable status would be up with abolishing the monarchy in difficulty, and distinguishing (except at the violent extremes) between its infinite variety impossible. So both religious and non-religious subsidise things which which we profoundly disagree. I don't think this will change.
Incidentally, an acquaintance has taken one of his kids out of a local school and put her into private education because of some rather nasty bullying that the school could not, or refused, to combat.
Not everyone who sends their kids to private school are posh; many parents who send their kids to private school make sacrifices to do so - because they care for their kids.
Exactly my family's experience.
The State School was incapable of addressing, or dealing with, bullying - so my niece had to be pulled out and sent to a local small independent day school to ensure her welfare.
She eventually returned to the State Sector at the next educational stage, but obtaining appropriate aid (ie a Statement) required a couple of years of bureaucratic process including the need to attend meetings with a specialist barrister (at 4 figures a time), private medical reports and all the rest.
Far better to have tolerably affordable alternatives, which many parents can meet by not taking holidays, living in a smaller house etc if they choose to do so.
These are things that the Labour proposals, as far as I can see, have just not bothered thinking about (having read the supporting report) in their enthusiasm to trip over their own feet to pander to Neander.
Not something Mr Starmer should do to raise pin money when he also needs every vote he can get his hands on.
Well said.
There is a 'toff-bashing' attitude shown by many of those disliking private schools, but the true toffs will be able to afford increased fees no matter what, its those like you describe who will suffer the most from these proposals.
I count myself very fortunate, my kids have a place in a good primary school. We've moved since they started the school and the schools closest to us do not have such a good reputation, so we're keeping them in their old school and I'm driving them to their school. No fees thankfully, just petrol money, but their education comes first. I could relocate them from their school I drive to, to the one with a rough reputation they could walk to instead, but their education absolutely has to come first and inconveniencing me and costing me petrol money is a price I'm absolutely prepared to pay to ensure they continue to get a good education.
Too many others in the state sector aren't so fortunate. Too many have poor schools and not much they can do about it. "Fix that" is the obvious rallying cry, and yes that should be done, though the biggest difference in school behaviour is often not from funding, or the teachers, its the pupils parents surely and that's not so easy to fix?
For those of middle income, neither poor, nor well off, who find themselves lumbered with a bad school or a school that can't handle their child's needs, an affordable alternative should be available ideally. A Plan B so to speak.
For those who have enough money they don't need to worry about bills, they'll continue to get private education either way.
I'd have thought you'd be all in favour of the market. Remove the charity status, let schools charge the full economic rate and the ones delivering value will survive while the others fail, with parents deciding whether the higher fees are justified.
The charity status is there because what they're doing is charitable. They literally are charities, they're not businesses paying dividends to shareholders last I checked.
The core function of the sector is to provide a kind of 'gated community' in education for people with money. This is fine or not (depending on your politics) but it's hardly a charitable activity.
What's the core function of charity shops?
The sector offers free education to many pupils and other charitable services based on the funds they raise. How is that not charity?
If that money were being paid out in dividends to shareholders it would be a business. If its going to charitable services its a charity. That's a pretty clear definition to me.
Private schools do provide some free places, yes, but it's a tiny fraction. It has to be because they need the fee income to operate their gated community. That's the core function. The free places aspect is a sideshow. The core function of charity shops by contrast is to raise money for good works. It isn't to provide an exclusive retail space where monied people can browse and buy things, with a small handful of 'deserving' other folk allowed in if they pass a test on the door.
Sorry but there's no difference.
On the one hand you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works. On the other you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works.
They're both exactly the same.
The comparison would work if the granting of free places by private schools was their main function in life. But it isn't.
To pick a different part of the charity sector - heritage railways. Most have charitable status, on the basis that preservation of and education about heritage assets is a public good.
How do most visitors interact with one? Pay on the gate, get a heritage train ride. Generally without paying VAT either (rail travel is VAT exempt!). Most of the benefits acrue to those who pay to travel but we accept that there is enough public good for their activities to be charitable - and indeed most of them wouldn't last five minutes as normal commercial outfits.
That is an absolutely fantastic counter example.
Yes the principles are exactly the same!
I think that VAT should be payable on the tickets.
Incidentally, an acquaintance has taken one of his kids out of a local school and put her into private education because of some rather nasty bullying that the school could not, or refused, to combat.
Not everyone who sends their kids to private school are posh; many parents who send their kids to private school make sacrifices to do so - because they care for their kids.
Exactly my family's experience.
The State School was incapable of addressing, or dealing with, bullying - so my niece had to be pulled out and sent to a local small independent day school to ensure her welfare.
She eventually returned to the State Sector at the next educational stage, but obtaining appropriate aid (ie a Statement) required a couple of years of bureaucratic process including the need to attend meetings with a specialist barrister (at 4 figures a time), private medical reports and all the rest.
Far better to have tolerably affordable alternatives, which many parents can meet by not taking holidays, living in a smaller house etc if they choose to do so.
These are things that the Labour proposals, as far as I can see, have just not bothered thinking about (having read the supporting report) in their enthusiasm to trip over their own feet to pander to Neander.
Not something Mr Starmer should do to raise pin money when he also needs every vote he can get his hands on.
Well said.
There is a 'toff-bashing' attitude shown by many of those disliking private schools, but the true toffs will be able to afford increased fees no matter what, its those like you describe who will suffer the most from these proposals.
I count myself very fortunate, my kids have a place in a good primary school. We've moved since they started the school and the schools closest to us do not have such a good reputation, so we're keeping them in their old school and I'm driving them to their school. No fees thankfully, just petrol money, but their education comes first. I could relocate them from their school I drive to, to the one with a rough reputation they could walk to instead, but their education absolutely has to come first and inconveniencing me and costing me petrol money is a price I'm absolutely prepared to pay to ensure they continue to get a good education.
Too many others in the state sector aren't so fortunate. Too many have poor schools and not much they can do about it. "Fix that" is the obvious rallying cry, and yes that should be done, though the biggest difference in school behaviour is often not from funding, or the teachers, its the pupils parents surely and that's not so easy to fix?
For those of middle income, neither poor, nor well off, who find themselves lumbered with a bad school or a school that can't handle their child's needs, an affordable alternative should be available ideally. A Plan B so to speak.
For those who have enough money they don't need to worry about bills, they'll continue to get private education either way.
I'd have thought you'd be all in favour of the market. Remove the charity status, let schools charge the full economic rate and the ones delivering value will survive while the others fail, with parents deciding whether the higher fees are justified.
The charity status is there because what they're doing is charitable. They literally are charities, they're not businesses paying dividends to shareholders last I checked.
The core function of the sector is to provide a kind of 'gated community' in education for people with money. This is fine or not (depending on your politics) but it's hardly a charitable activity.
What's the core function of charity shops?
The sector offers free education to many pupils and other charitable services based on the funds they raise. How is that not charity?
If that money were being paid out in dividends to shareholders it would be a business. If its going to charitable services its a charity. That's a pretty clear definition to me.
Private schools do provide some free places, yes, but it's a tiny fraction. It has to be because they need the fee income to operate their gated community. That's the core function. The free places aspect is a sideshow. The core function of charity shops by contrast is to raise money for good works. It isn't to provide an exclusive retail space where monied people can browse and buy things, with a small handful of 'deserving' other folk allowed in if they pass a test on the door.
Sorry but there's no difference.
On the one hand you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works. On the other you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works.
They're both exactly the same.
The comparison would work if the granting of free places by private schools was their main function in life. But it isn't.
To pick a different part of the charity sector - heritage railways. Most have charitable status, on the basis that preservation of and education about heritage assets is a public good.
How do most visitors interact with one? Pay on the gate, get a heritage train ride. Generally without paying VAT either (rail travel is VAT exempt!). Most of the benefits acrue to those who pay to travel but we accept that there is enough public good for their activities to be charitable - and indeed most of them wouldn't last five minutes as normal commercial outfits.
That is an absolutely fantastic counter example.
Yes the principles are exactly the same!
The purpose there is saving the trains/track. And trains/track are saved irrespective of their ability to pay
The privately educated and the parents of children in private education are massively over-represented on PB.
No real point engaging in the debate here as the balance of opinion is massively distorted from the population as a whole.
Literally no one I know ever talks about it, and that includes the parents/kids who used private education. I only ever thought about it because my wife worked in one.
If I’d been about 5 years younger I think my father’s political journey from Left to Right would have meant me doing Common Entrance rather than 11+!
Anyone betting that Trump and his two sons, being found by a court to have been engaged in a decade of fraud, will get even a tenth of the press coverage of Hunter Biden, unlawfully owning a gun for 11 days, 5 years ago?
Didn't Trump illegally buy a gun the other day? What's going on with that?
But none of this justifies creating an eloi/morlock caste system. Choice should be available to all, not just people with £££.
I reckon you can tell with a very high level of accuracy which regulars on here had a public school education just from their contributions.
Name the future pb.com posters. L-R
I always love that photo. Plainly the boys on the right are having lots of fun taking the piss out of the Etonians.
They are Harrovians not Etonians.
Little known fact however that this was nothing to do with showing a class difference it was just a coincidence that the Planters Peanut advert auditions clashed with the Hovis delivery boy auditions that day.
No Etonians. Etonians wore the topper (until it was discontinued in WW2). Harrovians the boater.
No, they are Harrovians. I can give you their names if you still wish to disagree.
Can't be. Looks nothing like the Harrow uniform.
They aren’t at school so not dressed in school uniform but dressed for being up to town.
Just to make it easier here is the story behind the photograph.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
If you're providing primary or secondary education, you can't qualify for charitable status. It's not difficult to decide that, the only question is whether or not it's the right thing to do.
Why not extend that to university education, which after all, provides benefits disproportionately towards the well-off?
Universities have a separate function in terms of research which makes mapping between secondary and tertiary a little more complicated
Not that complicated.
If you're being consistent, presumably you want £9,500 tuition fees undergraduates currently pay to become £11,400? Ie 9500+20%
Universities should not be charities. Universities in the public sector should not have to pay VAT. Private universities are not charities and should have to charge their students VAT on the student fees.
The private/public fudge that is UK universites should also be cleared up even if this means bringing most unis properly into the public sector.
Universities are universities. They have their own legal status, beyond any charitable status. There are very few private universities, although the Conservatives want more. Universities have various sources of income: most is from the government (via research grants and student fees), but also from charities (funding research), from companies (consultancy work), from individuals (paying fees), from donations, and from foreign governments (paying fees for their citizens). Government policy pushes universities to get more money from these latter sources. Government complains about overseas students’ effect on immigration figures, but won’t give universities enough money to get by without overseas students’ fees.
Incidentally, an acquaintance has taken one of his kids out of a local school and put her into private education because of some rather nasty bullying that the school could not, or refused, to combat.
Not everyone who sends their kids to private school are posh; many parents who send their kids to private school make sacrifices to do so - because they care for their kids.
Exactly my family's experience.
The State School was incapable of addressing, or dealing with, bullying - so my niece had to be pulled out and sent to a local small independent day school to ensure her welfare.
She eventually returned to the State Sector at the next educational stage, but obtaining appropriate aid (ie a Statement) required a couple of years of bureaucratic process including the need to attend meetings with a specialist barrister (at 4 figures a time), private medical reports and all the rest.
Far better to have tolerably affordable alternatives, which many parents can meet by not taking holidays, living in a smaller house etc if they choose to do so.
These are things that the Labour proposals, as far as I can see, have just not bothered thinking about (having read the supporting report) in their enthusiasm to trip over their own feet to pander to Neander.
Not something Mr Starmer should do to raise pin money when he also needs every vote he can get his hands on.
Well said.
There is a 'toff-bashing' attitude shown by many of those disliking private schools, but the true toffs will be able to afford increased fees no matter what, its those like you describe who will suffer the most from these proposals.
I count myself very fortunate, my kids have a place in a good primary school. We've moved since they started the school and the schools closest to us do not have such a good reputation, so we're keeping them in their old school and I'm driving them to their school. No fees thankfully, just petrol money, but their education comes first. I could relocate them from their school I drive to, to the one with a rough reputation they could walk to instead, but their education absolutely has to come first and inconveniencing me and costing me petrol money is a price I'm absolutely prepared to pay to ensure they continue to get a good education.
Too many others in the state sector aren't so fortunate. Too many have poor schools and not much they can do about it. "Fix that" is the obvious rallying cry, and yes that should be done, though the biggest difference in school behaviour is often not from funding, or the teachers, its the pupils parents surely and that's not so easy to fix?
For those of middle income, neither poor, nor well off, who find themselves lumbered with a bad school or a school that can't handle their child's needs, an affordable alternative should be available ideally. A Plan B so to speak.
For those who have enough money they don't need to worry about bills, they'll continue to get private education either way.
I'd have thought you'd be all in favour of the market. Remove the charity status, let schools charge the full economic rate and the ones delivering value will survive while the others fail, with parents deciding whether the higher fees are justified.
The charity status is there because what they're doing is charitable. They literally are charities, they're not businesses paying dividends to shareholders last I checked.
The core function of the sector is to provide a kind of 'gated community' in education for people with money. This is fine or not (depending on your politics) but it's hardly a charitable activity.
What's the core function of charity shops?
The sector offers free education to many pupils and other charitable services based on the funds they raise. How is that not charity?
If that money were being paid out in dividends to shareholders it would be a business. If its going to charitable services its a charity. That's a pretty clear definition to me.
Private schools do provide some free places, yes, but it's a tiny fraction. It has to be because they need the fee income to operate their gated community. That's the core function. The free places aspect is a sideshow. The core function of charity shops by contrast is to raise money for good works. It isn't to provide an exclusive retail space where monied people can browse and buy things, with a small handful of 'deserving' other folk allowed in if they pass a test on the door.
Sorry but there's no difference.
On the one hand you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works. On the other you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works.
They're both exactly the same.
The comparison would work if the granting of free places by private schools was their main function in life. But it isn't.
To pick a different part of the charity sector - heritage railways. Most have charitable status, on the basis that preservation of and education about heritage assets is a public good.
How do most visitors interact with one? Pay on the gate, get a heritage train ride. Generally without paying VAT either (rail travel is VAT exempt!). Most of the benefits acrue to those who pay to travel but we accept that there is enough public good for their activities to be charitable - and indeed most of them wouldn't last five minutes as normal commercial outfits.
That is an absolutely fantastic counter example.
Yes the principles are exactly the same!
The purpose there is saving the trains/track. And trains/track are saved irrespective of their ability to pay
Just as the benefits of the schools good works get those irrespective of their ability to pay, so exactly the same, yes?
Anyone betting that Trump and his two sons, being found by a court to have been engaged in a decade of fraud, will get even a tenth of the press coverage of Hunter Biden, unlawfully owning a gun for 11 days, 5 years ago?
Didn't Trump illegally buy a gun the other day? What's going on with that?
I can think of few more people in public life less suitable as a gun-owner.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
Having worked in the charity field, there is often considerable resentment towards "unworthy" organisations getting charitable status.
I used to find that many people who worked for medical charities would get pissed off that animal charities had charitable status - one woman telling me she thought the donkeys at the Donkey Sanctuary should be turned into salami.
Indeed and I bet the animal charities are pissed off that the medical charities have it too, if they engage in legal animal testing.
That's why we have objective criteria and shouldn't pick and choose winners and losers.
If the Tories were to decide to target Oxfam and other left wing charities then people supporting targeting private schools (which are neither left nor right as whisperingoracle noted) would be crying murder over that.
The skepticism about the donkey sanctuary seems fully justified to me, given their turbo-anthropomorphism and suffering-porn-heartstring-tugging adverts.
The only animal charity I can think of that I think is notably worse is Penn Farthing's Nowzad, his activities screwing around with the evacuation from Afghanistan, and his flying dogs around the world on airlines to find them new mummies and daddies. However, there may be others. It's a problem of being a nation of animal sentimentalists imo.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
Having worked in the charity field, there is often considerable resentment towards "unworthy" organisations getting charitable status.
I used to find that many people who worked for medical charities would get pissed off that animal charities had charitable status - one woman telling me she thought the donkeys at the Donkey Sanctuary should be turned into salami.
Indeed and I bet the animal charities are pissed off that the medical charities have it too, if they engage in legal animal testing.
That's why we have objective criteria and shouldn't pick and choose winners and losers.
If the Tories were to decide to target Oxfam and other left wing charities then people supporting targeting private schools (which are neither left nor right as whisperingoracle noted) would be crying murder over that.
The skepticism about the donkey sanctuary seems fully justified to me, given their turbo-anthropomorphism and suffering-porn-heartstring-tugging adverts.
The only animal charity I can think of that I think is notably worse is Penn Farthing's Nowzad, his activities screwing around with the evacuation from Afghanistan, and his flying dogs around the world on airlines to find them new mummies and daddies. However, there may be others. It's a problem of being a nation of animal sentimentalists imo.
(Is donkey salami tasty?)
Distressed Middle Eastern donkeys are the mother lode of animal fundraising. I liked to suggest that we purchase a couple of donkeys, dress up as Arabs, and then pretend to hit and kick them, for a fundraising video.
A friend used to work in fundraising. She said the perfect charity for fundraising would be Kittens for Kids with Cancer. You could even spell Cancer as “Kancer” as the sort of jolly misspelling a kid would do. Kittens for Kids with Kancer. Perfect name, no problems there whatsoever.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
Having worked in the charity field, there is often considerable resentment towards "unworthy" organisations getting charitable status.
I used to find that many people who worked for medical charities would get pissed off that animal charities had charitable status - one woman telling me she thought the donkeys at the Donkey Sanctuary should be turned into salami.
Indeed and I bet the animal charities are pissed off that the medical charities have it too, if they engage in legal animal testing.
That's why we have objective criteria and shouldn't pick and choose winners and losers.
If the Tories were to decide to target Oxfam and other left wing charities then people supporting targeting private schools (which are neither left nor right as whisperingoracle noted) would be crying murder over that.
The skepticism about the donkey sanctuary seems fully justified to me, given their turbo-anthropomorphism and suffering-porn-heartstring-tugging adverts.
The only animal charity I can think of that I think is notably worse is Penn Farthing's Nowzad, his activities screwing around with the evacuation from Afghanistan, and his flying dogs around the world on airlines to find them new mummies and daddies. However, there may be others. It's a problem of being a nation of animal sentimentalists imo.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
Having worked in the charity field, there is often considerable resentment towards "unworthy" organisations getting charitable status.
I used to find that many people who worked for medical charities would get pissed off that animal charities had charitable status - one woman telling me she thought the donkeys at the Donkey Sanctuary should be turned into salami.
Indeed and I bet the animal charities are pissed off that the medical charities have it too, if they engage in legal animal testing.
That's why we have objective criteria and shouldn't pick and choose winners and losers.
If the Tories were to decide to target Oxfam and other left wing charities then people supporting targeting private schools (which are neither left nor right as whisperingoracle noted) would be crying murder over that.
The skepticism about the donkey sanctuary seems fully justified to me, given their turbo-anthropomorphism and suffering-porn-heartstring-tugging adverts.
The only animal charity I can think of that I think is notably worse is Penn Farthing's Nowzad, his activities screwing around with the evacuation from Afghanistan, and his flying dogs around the world on airlines to find them new mummies and daddies. However, there may be others. It's a problem of being a nation of animal sentimentalists imo.
(Is donkey salami tasty?)
Distressed Middle Eastern donkeys are the mother lode of animal fundraising. I liked to suggest that we purchase a couple of donkeys, dress up as Arabs, and then pretend to hit and kick them, for a fundraising video.
Another interesting form of charity is the very local animal charity. SFAICS almost everywhere some family makes a living by setting up a small charity for local animal welfare (hedgehogs with blunt spine disorder, crow with broken wing, dog with limp) and using it to fund the family's income stream. On the back of the status you can operate a shop and fund raise in all the usual ways. There are thousands of them.
The Charity Commissioners are very lax about oversight, proper financial returns, auditing, public benefit and so on.
Regarding private school fees, about 20 years ago I did some legal work for a couple of schools involved in the Office of Fair Trading's investigation into fee fixing. A few little observations on that experience.
Firstly, it appeared to be the case (although the schools I acted for were slightly lower tier) that the top schools basically had no need to charge fees at all due to their endowment being massive. So there was a big disconnect for those between their pricing policy and covering the costs of providing the service.
Secondly, one headmaster asked me in earnest if there was scope to argue that his school had to fix fees as parents would be mortified to be paying appreciably less than parents of children at Winchester. I said I'd not lead with it... although Ivy League universities did once manage, incredibly, to successfully argue that fixing fees enabled them to compete on quality so that students were not "unduly influenced by considerations of price".
Finally, the OFT resolution of the whole thing (the investigation was sprawling and rather lost its focus) was one of the most absurd I have ever seen. Trivial fines were issued, and a trust fund was set up by the schools to benefit pupils who had attended at the time of the infringement... apparently forgetting that the people who lost out were the potentially more able students who were priced out - so those whose parents could afford to pay benefited from the fees paid at the time (which were in fact spent on their education) AND trust fund payments for university fees etc.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
If you're providing primary or secondary education, you can't qualify for charitable status. It's not difficult to decide that, the only question is whether or not it's the right thing to do.
And tertiary?
Why can't you run it based on whether they're doing good works or not, whether they're paying dividends or not etc, ie traditional objective charity criteria?
Is it simply that you know they objectively are charities but dislike that, so want to change the answer?
See my earlier reply to Sean_F about tertiary.
Private schools that claim charitable status ARE objectively charities, I'm not denying that. I'm saying that I would prevent them from claiming that status. And yes, it's entirely because I think they do more harm than good. Using the tax system as a disincentive to behaviours you don't approve of is not novel. You might not like it or you might agree in some cases and not others but come on, you know this happens.
Glad we agree they objectively are charities.
So if I feel Oxfam does more harm than good, I should be able to pick on them if elected?
Politicians should not be picking winners and losers. Set the law, the standards, then let people, businesses or charities operate within those.
Politicians pick winners and losers all the time. That’s what politics is. When you set the law or the standards, you are inherently making choices, picking winners and losers.
Radically altering the law on charities is so hard that the best course for each government is to leave well alone except at the extremes.
The best example is religion. Historically religion itself is a public good and obviously charitable. This goes back to day when practically 100% of relevant religion was Christian in some form, and the great majority belonged to some part of it to some extent.
The modern contrast is stark. A large proportion think all religion is malign to some extent, and even more think some of it is. Only a small minority actively identify with it.
But abolishing religion's charitable status would be up with abolishing the monarchy in difficulty, and distinguishing (except at the violent extremes) between its infinite variety impossible. So both religious and non-religious subsidise things which which we profoundly disagree. I don't think this will change.
Some countries offer very little in terms of tax breaks to charities.
But, common law jurisdictions tend to be pretty generous, and take a broad definition of what constitutes a charity. I think that is the best approach, because a big charitable sector is a benefit to society.
Anyone betting that Trump and his two sons, being found by a court to have been engaged in a decade of fraud, will get even a tenth of the press coverage of Hunter Biden, unlawfully owning a gun for 11 days, 5 years ago?
Didn't Trump illegally buy a gun the other day? What's going on with that?
To test his shoot someone on 5th Avenue statement?
I watched the Laurence Fox/GB News clip last night. Expecting to see the most outrageous behaviour ever to disgrace our TV screens (judging by the creations)
It was unpleasant and quite offensive. Without question. But I fail to see the reason for the hysteria
Since we are doing independent schools, I looked up my own school and it comes out like this. Ignoring support for other schools etc. I think these numbers are not far off the high end of reasonable expectations from a school's own resources.
This is Nottingham High School - Heads' Conference. Good academically.
Full fees: 18k per annum, which is a little below average for the sector. Annual income: £20m. Pupils: ~1000 in toto in Junior and Senior schools. I'm ignoring infants. Endowment: £15-18m of investments, much in property. Bursaries: ~8% of fee income goes to means-tested bursaries, based also on academic performance. £1.4m in 2021/22. Just under 10% of pupils receive means tested bursaries, of which 3/4 are 75% or more of fees, and 90-95% are 50%+ of fees. On top of that there are smaller programmes for scholarships (academically based only) £100k, and concessions for children of staff £200k.
Numbers below:
Thanks. So, a pretty small amount of turnover goes to charity.
That said, some charity shops have a pretty small amount of turnover going to charity. For some charities, I understand the presence on the high street is seen as being more important, because that reminder that you exist feeds through to more legacy donations, and that’s where the big income is.
Anyone betting that Trump and his two sons, being found by a court to have been engaged in a decade of fraud, will get even a tenth of the press coverage of Hunter Biden, unlawfully owning a gun for 11 days, 5 years ago?
Didn't Trump illegally buy a gun the other day? What's going on with that?
His team clarified that he hadn’t actually bought or taken possession of the gun.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
Having worked in the charity field, there is often considerable resentment towards "unworthy" organisations getting charitable status.
I used to find that many people who worked for medical charities would get pissed off that animal charities had charitable status - one woman telling me she thought the donkeys at the Donkey Sanctuary should be turned into salami.
Indeed and I bet the animal charities are pissed off that the medical charities have it too, if they engage in legal animal testing.
That's why we have objective criteria and shouldn't pick and choose winners and losers.
If the Tories were to decide to target Oxfam and other left wing charities then people supporting targeting private schools (which are neither left nor right as whisperingoracle noted) would be crying murder over that.
The skepticism about the donkey sanctuary seems fully justified to me, given their turbo-anthropomorphism and suffering-porn-heartstring-tugging adverts.
The only animal charity I can think of that I think is notably worse is Penn Farthing's Nowzad, his activities screwing around with the evacuation from Afghanistan, and his flying dogs around the world on airlines to find them new mummies and daddies. However, there may be others. It's a problem of being a nation of animal sentimentalists imo.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
Having worked in the charity field, there is often considerable resentment towards "unworthy" organisations getting charitable status.
I used to find that many people who worked for medical charities would get pissed off that animal charities had charitable status - one woman telling me she thought the donkeys at the Donkey Sanctuary should be turned into salami.
Indeed and I bet the animal charities are pissed off that the medical charities have it too, if they engage in legal animal testing.
That's why we have objective criteria and shouldn't pick and choose winners and losers.
If the Tories were to decide to target Oxfam and other left wing charities then people supporting targeting private schools (which are neither left nor right as whisperingoracle noted) would be crying murder over that.
The skepticism about the donkey sanctuary seems fully justified to me, given their turbo-anthropomorphism and suffering-porn-heartstring-tugging adverts.
The only animal charity I can think of that I think is notably worse is Penn Farthing's Nowzad, his activities screwing around with the evacuation from Afghanistan, and his flying dogs around the world on airlines to find them new mummies and daddies. However, there may be others. It's a problem of being a nation of animal sentimentalists imo.
(Is donkey salami tasty?)
Distressed Middle Eastern donkeys are the mother lode of animal fundraising. I liked to suggest that we purchase a couple of donkeys, dress up as Arabs, and then pretend to hit and kick them, for a fundraising video.
A friend used to work in fundraising. She said the perfect charity for fundraising would be Kittens for Kids with Cancer. You could even spell Cancer as “Kancer” as the sort of jolly misspelling a kid would do. Kittens for Kids with Kancer. Perfect name, no problems there whatsoever.
A donkey on a foundering lifeboat would be even better.
I watched the Laurence Fox/GB News clip last night. Expecting to see the most outrageous behaviour ever to disgrace our TV screens (judging by the creations)
It was unpleasant and quite offensive. Without question. But I fail to see the reason for the hysteria
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
Having worked in the charity field, there is often considerable resentment towards "unworthy" organisations getting charitable status.
I used to find that many people who worked for medical charities would get pissed off that animal charities had charitable status - one woman telling me she thought the donkeys at the Donkey Sanctuary should be turned into salami.
Indeed and I bet the animal charities are pissed off that the medical charities have it too, if they engage in legal animal testing.
That's why we have objective criteria and shouldn't pick and choose winners and losers.
If the Tories were to decide to target Oxfam and other left wing charities then people supporting targeting private schools (which are neither left nor right as whisperingoracle noted) would be crying murder over that.
The skepticism about the donkey sanctuary seems fully justified to me, given their turbo-anthropomorphism and suffering-porn-heartstring-tugging adverts.
The only animal charity I can think of that I think is notably worse is Penn Farthing's Nowzad, his activities screwing around with the evacuation from Afghanistan, and his flying dogs around the world on airlines to find them new mummies and daddies. However, there may be others. It's a problem of being a nation of animal sentimentalists imo.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
Having worked in the charity field, there is often considerable resentment towards "unworthy" organisations getting charitable status.
I used to find that many people who worked for medical charities would get pissed off that animal charities had charitable status - one woman telling me she thought the donkeys at the Donkey Sanctuary should be turned into salami.
Indeed and I bet the animal charities are pissed off that the medical charities have it too, if they engage in legal animal testing.
That's why we have objective criteria and shouldn't pick and choose winners and losers.
If the Tories were to decide to target Oxfam and other left wing charities then people supporting targeting private schools (which are neither left nor right as whisperingoracle noted) would be crying murder over that.
The skepticism about the donkey sanctuary seems fully justified to me, given their turbo-anthropomorphism and suffering-porn-heartstring-tugging adverts.
The only animal charity I can think of that I think is notably worse is Penn Farthing's Nowzad, his activities screwing around with the evacuation from Afghanistan, and his flying dogs around the world on airlines to find them new mummies and daddies. However, there may be others. It's a problem of being a nation of animal sentimentalists imo.
(Is donkey salami tasty?)
Distressed Middle Eastern donkeys are the mother lode of animal fundraising. I liked to suggest that we purchase a couple of donkeys, dress up as Arabs, and then pretend to hit and kick them, for a fundraising video.
Another interesting form of charity is the very local animal charity. SFAICS almost everywhere some family makes a living by setting up a small charity for local animal welfare (hedgehogs with blunt spine disorder, crow with broken wing, dog with limp) and using it to fund the family's income stream. On the back of the status you can operate a shop and fund raise in all the usual ways. There are thousands of them.
The Charity Commissioners are very lax about oversight, proper financial returns, auditing, public benefit and so on.
Isn’t there a charity for old male superhero cats that can’t walk well where there are questions about the family allegedly using the funds for personal reasons, something like the Captain Tomcat Foundation.
I wonder if the cops will be complaining about this?
The Crown Prosecution Service decided not to pursue charges against an undercover police officer who deceived a woman into a 19-year relationship without even hearing evidence from the victim in the case.
The CPS, which says its fundamental role is to support victims and protect the public, was informed in 2014 that an undercover officer at Avon and Somerset police had used his undercover identity to deceive the woman, who was innocent of any crime, into a long-term relationship.
The relationship had at that point already lasted more than a decade and resulted in the couple having a child together. The CPS, after receiving a file of evidence from Avon and Somerset police, concluded in March 2015 that the undercover officer should not face criminal prosecution for misconduct in public office.
However, the file did not contain any evidence from his victim, who could not be interviewed about the case because she had not been informed about the deception. The woman, whom the Guardian is referring to as Mary to protect her identity, was not informed about the true identity of her partner until five years later, in 2020.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
Having worked in the charity field, there is often considerable resentment towards "unworthy" organisations getting charitable status.
I used to find that many people who worked for medical charities would get pissed off that animal charities had charitable status - one woman telling me she thought the donkeys at the Donkey Sanctuary should be turned into salami.
Indeed and I bet the animal charities are pissed off that the medical charities have it too, if they engage in legal animal testing.
That's why we have objective criteria and shouldn't pick and choose winners and losers.
If the Tories were to decide to target Oxfam and other left wing charities then people supporting targeting private schools (which are neither left nor right as whisperingoracle noted) would be crying murder over that.
The skepticism about the donkey sanctuary seems fully justified to me, given their turbo-anthropomorphism and suffering-porn-heartstring-tugging adverts.
The only animal charity I can think of that I think is notably worse is Penn Farthing's Nowzad, his activities screwing around with the evacuation from Afghanistan, and his flying dogs around the world on airlines to find them new mummies and daddies. However, there may be others. It's a problem of being a nation of animal sentimentalists imo.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
Having worked in the charity field, there is often considerable resentment towards "unworthy" organisations getting charitable status.
I used to find that many people who worked for medical charities would get pissed off that animal charities had charitable status - one woman telling me she thought the donkeys at the Donkey Sanctuary should be turned into salami.
Indeed and I bet the animal charities are pissed off that the medical charities have it too, if they engage in legal animal testing.
That's why we have objective criteria and shouldn't pick and choose winners and losers.
If the Tories were to decide to target Oxfam and other left wing charities then people supporting targeting private schools (which are neither left nor right as whisperingoracle noted) would be crying murder over that.
The skepticism about the donkey sanctuary seems fully justified to me, given their turbo-anthropomorphism and suffering-porn-heartstring-tugging adverts.
The only animal charity I can think of that I think is notably worse is Penn Farthing's Nowzad, his activities screwing around with the evacuation from Afghanistan, and his flying dogs around the world on airlines to find them new mummies and daddies. However, there may be others. It's a problem of being a nation of animal sentimentalists imo.
(Is donkey salami tasty?)
Distressed Middle Eastern donkeys are the mother lode of animal fundraising. I liked to suggest that we purchase a couple of donkeys, dress up as Arabs, and then pretend to hit and kick them, for a fundraising video.
A friend used to work in fundraising. She said the perfect charity for fundraising would be Kittens for Kids with Cancer. You could even spell Cancer as “Kancer” as the sort of jolly misspelling a kid would do. Kittens for Kids with Kancer. Perfect name, no problems there whatsoever.
Heads off to the charity commission website to register new charity...
Incidentally, an acquaintance has taken one of his kids out of a local school and put her into private education because of some rather nasty bullying that the school could not, or refused, to combat.
Not everyone who sends their kids to private school are posh; many parents who send their kids to private school make sacrifices to do so - because they care for their kids.
Exactly my family's experience.
The State School was incapable of addressing, or dealing with, bullying - so my niece had to be pulled out and sent to a local small independent day school to ensure her welfare.
She eventually returned to the State Sector at the next educational stage, but obtaining appropriate aid (ie a Statement) required a couple of years of bureaucratic process including the need to attend meetings with a specialist barrister (at 4 figures a time), private medical reports and all the rest.
Far better to have tolerably affordable alternatives, which many parents can meet by not taking holidays, living in a smaller house etc if they choose to do so.
These are things that the Labour proposals, as far as I can see, have just not bothered thinking about (having read the supporting report) in their enthusiasm to trip over their own feet to pander to Neander.
Not something Mr Starmer should do to raise pin money when he also needs every vote he can get his hands on.
Well said.
There is a 'toff-bashing' attitude shown by many of those disliking private schools, but the true toffs will be able to afford increased fees no matter what, its those like you describe who will suffer the most from these proposals.
I count myself very fortunate, my kids have a place in a good primary school. We've moved since they started the school and the schools closest to us do not have such a good reputation, so we're keeping them in their old school and I'm driving them to their school. No fees thankfully, just petrol money, but their education comes first. I could relocate them from their school I drive to, to the one with a rough reputation they could walk to instead, but their education absolutely has to come first and inconveniencing me and costing me petrol money is a price I'm absolutely prepared to pay to ensure they continue to get a good education.
Too many others in the state sector aren't so fortunate. Too many have poor schools and not much they can do about it. "Fix that" is the obvious rallying cry, and yes that should be done, though the biggest difference in school behaviour is often not from funding, or the teachers, its the pupils parents surely and that's not so easy to fix?
For those of middle income, neither poor, nor well off, who find themselves lumbered with a bad school or a school that can't handle their child's needs, an affordable alternative should be available ideally. A Plan B so to speak.
For those who have enough money they don't need to worry about bills, they'll continue to get private education either way.
I'd have thought you'd be all in favour of the market. Remove the charity status, let schools charge the full economic rate and the ones delivering value will survive while the others fail, with parents deciding whether the higher fees are justified.
The charity status is there because what they're doing is charitable. They literally are charities, they're not businesses paying dividends to shareholders last I checked.
The core function of the sector is to provide a kind of 'gated community' in education for people with money. This is fine or not (depending on your politics) but it's hardly a charitable activity.
What's the core function of charity shops?
The sector offers free education to many pupils and other charitable services based on the funds they raise. How is that not charity?
If that money were being paid out in dividends to shareholders it would be a business. If its going to charitable services its a charity. That's a pretty clear definition to me.
Private schools do provide some free places, yes, but it's a tiny fraction. It has to be because they need the fee income to operate their gated community. That's the core function. The free places aspect is a sideshow. The core function of charity shops by contrast is to raise money for good works. It isn't to provide an exclusive retail space where monied people can browse and buy things, with a small handful of 'deserving' other folk allowed in if they pass a test on the door.
Sorry but there's no difference.
On the one hand you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works. On the other you have a charity that provides services for those who give it money, and uses some of that money to do good works.
They're both exactly the same.
The comparison would work if the granting of free places by private schools was their main function in life. But it isn't.
To pick a different part of the charity sector - heritage railways. Most have charitable status, on the basis that preservation of and education about heritage assets is a public good.
How do most visitors interact with one? Pay on the gate, get a heritage train ride. Generally without paying VAT either (rail travel is VAT exempt!). Most of the benefits acrue to those who pay to travel but we accept that there is enough public good for their activities to be charitable - and indeed most of them wouldn't last five minutes as normal commercial outfits.
That is an absolutely fantastic counter example.
Yes the principles are exactly the same!
The purpose there is saving the trains/track. And trains/track are saved irrespective of their ability to pay
Just as the benefits of the schools good works get those irrespective of their ability to pay, so exactly the same, yes?
No, the majority get them due to ability to pay, as the schools label all their activites as a whole as charity (No one would object, I think, to non-charitable fee-charging school with an allied charity providing bursaries, from e.g. alumni donations, for study at that school)
Always fun arguing with you, as long as one of us (me!) knows when to stop
There's no VAT payable on private healthcare either, for good reason. People using private healthcare are taking themselves out of the NHS, reducing the burden on that service, whilst still paying for it in tax/NI. Why should private schooling be any different?
We can say as some do that if all rich kids had to be educated in the state system, the state system would improve, but how? How would the presence of a small group of wealthier users (assuming they wouldn't just school their children abroad) feasibly improve a vast, monolithic state system? Sure, perhaps an odd science lab might be donated, but overall standards of teaching, rigour, attainment? It's bollocks. It feels like the state demanding a monopoly on the delivery of education because it doesn't like the fact that private organisations are better at delivering it than the state.
I watched the Laurence Fox/GB News clip last night. Expecting to see the most outrageous behaviour ever to disgrace our TV screens (judging by the creations)
It was unpleasant and quite offensive. Without question. But I fail to see the reason for the hysteria
Because you're a complete idiot?
It was a man acting like an oaf. Probably drunk? I can see why people have been offended - as I say
But from the reaction here and elsewhere I presumed he had - at least - got his c*ock out and said “suck on that, bitches”
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
Having worked in the charity field, there is often considerable resentment towards "unworthy" organisations getting charitable status.
I used to find that many people who worked for medical charities would get pissed off that animal charities had charitable status - one woman telling me she thought the donkeys at the Donkey Sanctuary should be turned into salami.
Indeed and I bet the animal charities are pissed off that the medical charities have it too, if they engage in legal animal testing.
That's why we have objective criteria and shouldn't pick and choose winners and losers.
If the Tories were to decide to target Oxfam and other left wing charities then people supporting targeting private schools (which are neither left nor right as whisperingoracle noted) would be crying murder over that.
The skepticism about the donkey sanctuary seems fully justified to me, given their turbo-anthropomorphism and suffering-porn-heartstring-tugging adverts.
The only animal charity I can think of that I think is notably worse is Penn Farthing's Nowzad, his activities screwing around with the evacuation from Afghanistan, and his flying dogs around the world on airlines to find them new mummies and daddies. However, there may be others. It's a problem of being a nation of animal sentimentalists imo.
Thing is, I don't really care how tax efficient your system is, if your system is working towards a caste system.
Could equally be argued to be a liberal system. State provides education but doesn't mandate that everyone uses it. I support the private option but am amenable to tax being levied on fees, but 20% would do a lot of damage all round I think.
It's just a machine for generation inequality. I mean, obviously it is. That's why people are willing to pay so much money for it. A liberal system would see parental choice and it being free at the point of use. Oversubscriptions get decided by lottery not by how fat your wallet is. Oversubscribed schools get big government grants to expand.
We have that, which is why my kids go to their good state school I can drive them to rather than the closest state school that has not got such a good reputation.
Not everyone is fortunate enough to get a place in a good school though and for those who are of a middle income (not exceptionally well off, not exceptionally poor) should they be penalised for prioritising their kids education as a Plan B to a state system that has let them down?
Fix the state system is a nice idea, but since the problem begins at home and its bad parenting more than bad funding that leads to rough schools (indeed rough state schools often have a higher funding per pupil than good state schools) then fixing that is not easy.
Plan A should be to get a good free education, why not? But if that fails, should parents be banned from paying for a Plan B?
The fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to go to a good school is not an argument for deciding the allocation on this or that basis. It's an argument for sorting out the bad schools. If there are bad schools, SOMEONE needs to be penalised. If the answer to the "who" question is "well, the poor, obviously" then it's class warfare. If the answer is "it might be you or it might not be" that's fairer and perhaps will have the added benefit of spurring on political pressure to sort any problems out.
The people who send their kids to private school have, on average, a disproportionate amount of political power. They're the ones who can fix this. They just need a little self-interested incentive.
But allocation is not decided on this or that basis. 93% of pupils, like my own daughters, go to state schools.
What's the breakdown of the other 7%? I imagine maybe 5% are wealthy enough to simply want private education and will pay for it either way, while maybe 2% are situational dependent and people who have chosen to privately educate their kids because of circumstances.
Should that approximately 1/50 pupils turning to a Plan B have the Plan B denied to them?
If we're talking about specialist schools that cater for special needs then I support their existence and selection based on qualifying special needs. Clearly some children need a tailored school experience to mitigate their own personal disadvantages.
I don't see why parents should be made to pay for that though.
In some ways this reminds me of accessibility features. Some of us don't need specialist infrastructure, others do. We wouldn't expect a surcharge for wheelchair users in a supermarket even though there are architectural features that have been included specifically to cater for them. We absorb the extra cost as a community because that's what equality of opportunity is about.
93% of parents don't pay.
That some do is their choice and each will have different reasons.
If a child is being bullied that should be stopped but if a middle income parent decides to take their kid out of a system that's let them down, rather than taking their kid on a holiday in August, should they be punished or banned from doing that?
Paying VAT =/= being punished.
Paying VAT for what is objectively a charity and meets all objective definitions of a charity sure is.
If the school is a business not a charity and paying dividends to shareholders not using it's net proceeds for charitable purposes like any other charity does then it should have VAT.
See, I would modify what counts as a charity to specifically exclude private schools.
How? Objectively, without referring to schooling, simply based on objective criteria of what a charity does in good works, and how a charity fundraises, then how do you objectively modify that?
If a school uses a higher percentage of it's funds for objective good works than say Oxfam does, would it remain a charity or be excluded in your world?
Having worked in the charity field, there is often considerable resentment towards "unworthy" organisations getting charitable status.
I used to find that many people who worked for medical charities would get pissed off that animal charities had charitable status - one woman telling me she thought the donkeys at the Donkey Sanctuary should be turned into salami.
Indeed and I bet the animal charities are pissed off that the medical charities have it too, if they engage in legal animal testing.
That's why we have objective criteria and shouldn't pick and choose winners and losers.
If the Tories were to decide to target Oxfam and other left wing charities then people supporting targeting private schools (which are neither left nor right as whisperingoracle noted) would be crying murder over that.
The skepticism about the donkey sanctuary seems fully justified to me, given their turbo-anthropomorphism and suffering-porn-heartstring-tugging adverts.
The only animal charity I can think of that I think is notably worse is Penn Farthing's Nowzad, his activities screwing around with the evacuation from Afghanistan, and his flying dogs around the world on airlines to find them new mummies and daddies. However, there may be others. It's a problem of being a nation of animal sentimentalists imo.
(Is donkey salami tasty?)
Distressed Middle Eastern donkeys are the mother lode of animal fundraising. I liked to suggest that we purchase a couple of donkeys, dress up as Arabs, and then pretend to hit and kick them, for a fundraising video.
A friend used to work in fundraising. She said the perfect charity for fundraising would be Kittens for Kids with Cancer. You could even spell Cancer as “Kancer” as the sort of jolly misspelling a kid would do. Kittens for Kids with Kancer. Perfect name, no problems there whatsoever.
Unfortunate initialism though: please donate to KKK
I watched the Laurence Fox/GB News clip last night. Expecting to see the most outrageous behaviour ever to disgrace our TV screens (judging by the creations)
It was unpleasant and quite offensive. Without question. But I fail to see the reason for the hysteria
I haven't watched and don't really intend to. We live in increasingly hysterical times. I wouldn't bother looking for reasons.
Comments
I'm pointing out the absurd double standard in judging conduct of politicians - which Hunter Biden isn't.
You're even more of a pillock if you think anything I post here will make any difference at all to Democratic support.
Look at this Portsmouth FC fan: https://e4p7c9i3.stackpathcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/14-23.jpg?iv=644
The question is whether children's education should be exempt from VAT, not least since these kids would otherwise be costing the state for their education. Personally I think it should. Same as if parents opt to have private tuition for their kids.
The problem is that we use charity to include non-profit organisations.
This is like when people go for private healthcare - you aren't taking any pressure off the system, you're just using your wealth to skip the queue.
Private schools that claim charitable status ARE objectively charities, I'm not denying that. I'm saying that I would prevent them from claiming that status. And yes, it's entirely because I think they do more harm than good. Using the tax system as a disincentive to behaviours you don't approve of is not novel. You might not like it or you might agree in some cases and not others but come on, you know this happens.
And your inability to distinguish between the President and his son is characteristic.
Nothing against donkeys, but they do incredibly well through bequests because for some not so mysterious reason older people feel a tremendous sense of affinity with the poor old beasts who have worked hard all their life and now want a nice retirement on the south coast. That's fine but the level of support is out of all proportion to the scale of the problem.
Guide Dogs for the Blind are another one. Again, a perfectly worthy cause and this is in no way a criticism of the work they do, but they get a lot of money in bequests because they sit in the sweet spot between a medical condition that people feel a lot of empathy with and an animal that people like. Yet actual demand for guide dogs isn't really that huge due to advances in medical treatments.
Charities are sometimes made by the Charities Commission to disperse reserves to other charities in the sector if they build up too massive a cash pile. But there is still resentment about that a few charities are absolutely loaded (and some charity employees/managers have a pretty sweet deal) whereas a lot aren't in a way that has limited relation to the objective value of the work the charity is doing.
If you're being consistent, presumably you want £9,500 tuition fees undergraduates currently pay to become £11,400? Ie 9500+20%
The only animal charity I can think of that I think is notably worse is Penn Farthing's Nowzad, his activities screwing around with the evacuation from Afghanistan, and his flying dogs around the world on airlines to find them new mummies and daddies. However, there may be others. It's a problem of being a nation of animal sentimentalists imo.
(Is donkey salami tasty?)
Little known fact however that this was nothing to do with showing a class difference it was just a coincidence that the Planters Peanut advert auditions clashed with the Hovis delivery boy auditions that day.
So if I feel Oxfam does more harm than good, I should be able to pick on them if elected?
Politicians should not be picking winners and losers. Set the law, the standards, then let people, businesses or charities operate within those.
A person paying a private school, does so so thet their child or grand child gets a service.
The payer knows directly the person who benefits.
The net proceeds in private schools go to someone else too. Not the fee payers children.
When you get free stock, free staff and sometimes free premises, and the Govt gets no tax on your profits, it is fairly easy to compete and the public benefit is questionable.
I think there is perhaps a strong argument for restricting charity shops to secondhand stock - eg the Oxfam Wedding Departments in some of their shops sell new stock.
As with independent schools, drawing boundaries is difficult.
I think I might support a blanket removal of the business rates exemption. But aren't business rates due to be abolished?
I wouldn't recommend picking winners within a sector, but whole sectors are fair game. I'd think it were odd if you were to pick on Oxfam specifically and leaving other anti-poverty charities alone, but if you decided that anti-poverty charities or retail charities were a sector you disapproved of, and you fancy your chances selling that to the voters, knock yourself out.
That needs to be decided on public benefit, and in the case of schools benefit to pupils as well as the local community, not kneejerk ideology. That I think is where Starmer will hit a brick wall.
If Labour despite knowing that these schools are objectively charitable changes the rules to deny them these rights, then perhaps when next elected the Tories should expand that principle to Oxfam and all the other charity shops on the High Street.
I bought a book for my daughter because she wanted the book, not as an act of charity. The net proceeds go to charity, not what I spent.
It's the same either way.
No real point engaging in the debate here as the balance of opinion is massively distorted from the population as a whole.
How do most visitors interact with one? Pay on the gate, get a heritage train ride. Generally without paying VAT either (rail travel is VAT exempt!). Most of the benefits acrue to those who pay to travel but we accept that there is enough public good for their activities to be charitable - and indeed most of them wouldn't last five minutes as normal commercial outfits.
https://archive.ph/2023.09.27-080028/https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-night-i-accidentally-saved-a-baby/
When I ran a small business I found one advantage of being VAT registered was that it made keeping one’s accounts up to date for the year end much easier.
Politicians shouldn't pick Oxfam as a winner and a competing charity as a loser, or vice versa. They should set the legal framework then charities or individuals or firms etc operate within that framework.
Charity schools and charity shops are objectively charities which provide services to their customers and they use the net proceeds for good works.
Perhaps you might want to insist on a certain minimum percentage going to good works, that's not a bad idea. But if you do, don't be surprised if many of what you consider legitimate charities cry foul.
BTW, I have never heard of Oxfam wedding shops. Do they offer some sort of mail order bride service, rescuing hot young women from a life in poverty?
There's good and bad in both systems; or, more accurately, there can be good and bad in both systems. The question that matters is this: will the country, and the population, be 'better' off if we reduce the number of private schools because we've taxed them?
It's a big experiment, especially when the change is only being done on an ideological basis.
Universities in the public sector should not have to pay VAT.
Private universities are not charities and should have to charge their students VAT on the student fees.
The private/public fudge that is UK universites should also be cleared up even if this means bringing most unis properly into the public sector.
Arguing that private schools and charity shops are so similar that they have to be treated identically is risible.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56670162
Yes the principles are exactly the same!
Donkey salami actually sounds very tasty.
https://www.fondazioneslowfood.com/en/ark-of-taste-slow-food/donkey-salami/
This is Nottingham High School - Heads' Conference. Good academically.
Full fees: 18k per annum, which is a little below average for the sector.
Annual income: £20m.
Pupils: ~1000 in toto in Junior and Senior schools. I'm ignoring infants.
Endowment: £15-18m of investments, much in property.
Bursaries: ~8% of fee income goes to means-tested bursaries, based also on academic performance. £1.4m in 2021/22.
Just under 10% of pupils receive means tested bursaries, of which 3/4 are 75% or more of fees, and 90-95% are 50%+ of fees.
On top of that there are smaller programmes for scholarships (academically based only) £100k, and concessions for children of staff £200k.
Numbers below:
The best example is religion. Historically religion itself is a public good and obviously charitable. This goes back to day when practically 100% of relevant religion was Christian in some form, and the great majority belonged to some part of it to some extent.
The modern contrast is stark. A large proportion think all religion is malign to some extent, and even more think some of it is. Only a small minority actively identify with it.
But abolishing religion's charitable status would be up with abolishing the monarchy in difficulty, and distinguishing (except at the violent extremes) between its infinite variety impossible. So both religious and non-religious subsidise things which which we profoundly disagree. I don't think this will change.
( Lira hyper-inflation means better deals using the Euro)
Just to make it easier here is the story behind the photograph.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toffs_and_Toughs
But who knows
The Charity Commissioners are very lax about oversight, proper financial returns, auditing, public benefit and so on.
Firstly, it appeared to be the case (although the schools I acted for were slightly lower tier) that the top schools basically had no need to charge fees at all due to their endowment being massive. So there was a big disconnect for those between their pricing policy and covering the costs of providing the service.
Secondly, one headmaster asked me in earnest if there was scope to argue that his school had to fix fees as parents would be mortified to be paying appreciably less than parents of children at Winchester. I said I'd not lead with it... although Ivy League universities did once manage, incredibly, to successfully argue that fixing fees enabled them to compete on quality so that students were not "unduly influenced by considerations of price".
Finally, the OFT resolution of the whole thing (the investigation was sprawling and rather lost its focus) was one of the most absurd I have ever seen. Trivial fines were issued, and a trust fund was set up by the schools to benefit pupils who had attended at the time of the infringement... apparently forgetting that the people who lost out were the potentially more able students who were priced out - so those whose parents could afford to pay benefited from the fees paid at the time (which were in fact spent on their education) AND trust fund payments for university fees etc.
But, common law jurisdictions tend to be pretty generous, and take a broad definition of what constitutes a charity. I think that is the best approach, because a big charitable sector is a benefit to society.
It was unpleasant and quite offensive. Without question. But I fail to see the reason for the hysteria
That said, some charity shops have a pretty small amount of turnover going to charity. For some charities, I understand the presence on the high street is seen as being more important, because that reminder that you exist feeds through to more legacy donations, and that’s where the big income is.
Laurence Fox
@LozzaFox
·
7m
I have been approached by every MSM channel today asking for an interview.
I have said I will do any interview they like as long as it’s live and unedited.
Their interest wanes when they realise I am not interested in having them spin a narrative via dodgy editing.
A donkey on a foundering lifeboat would be even better.
The Crown Prosecution Service decided not to pursue charges against an undercover police officer who deceived a woman into a 19-year relationship without even hearing evidence from the victim in the case.
The CPS, which says its fundamental role is to support victims and protect the public, was informed in 2014 that an undercover officer at Avon and Somerset police had used his undercover identity to deceive the woman, who was innocent of any crime, into a long-term relationship.
The relationship had at that point already lasted more than a decade and resulted in the couple having a child together. The CPS, after receiving a file of evidence from Avon and Somerset police, concluded in March 2015 that the undercover officer should not face criminal prosecution for misconduct in public office.
However, the file did not contain any evidence from his victim, who could not be interviewed about the case because she had not been informed about the deception. The woman, whom the Guardian is referring to as Mary to protect her identity, was not informed about the true identity of her partner until five years later, in 2020.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/27/cps-declined-to-charge-undercover-police-officer-who-deceived-woman-into-19-year-relationship
Always fun arguing with you, as long as one of us (me!) knows when to stop
We can say as some do that if all rich kids had to be educated in the state system, the state system would improve, but how? How would the presence of a small group of wealthier users (assuming they wouldn't just school their children abroad) feasibly improve a vast, monolithic state system? Sure, perhaps an odd science lab might be donated, but overall standards of teaching, rigour, attainment? It's bollocks. It feels like the state demanding a monopoly on the delivery of education because it doesn't like the fact that private organisations are better at delivering it than the state.
The last 10 polls on UK Polling Wiki have Lab leads of 15. 17. 20.18.15.19.17.16.15.16 = Ave 16.8
The previous 10 polls on same site have Lab leads of 21.24.20.20.20.22.20.21.22.20 = Ave 21.0
Is it a trend?
Too early to say but glimmer of hope for the Tories maybe?
But from the reaction here and elsewhere I presumed he had - at least - got his c*ock out and said “suck on that, bitches”
https://www.oxfam.org.uk/about-us/faq/oxfam-shops-uk/bridal-shops/
If you are lucky, it's a trend.