It’s Time For Parents to Step up Their Campaigning Against Labour’s Tax Raid on Independent Schools, Highlighting the Harmful Impact on Children
Given that the new Labour Government is planning to introduce VAT on independent school fees from January 2025, it is time for action.
Nearly 80% of the electorate didn’t vote for Labour, but the party achieved a huge majority by default. Instead of understanding this, Labour MPs have convinced themselves they have a mandate to do whatever they want.
The Government has decided that a certain group of pensioners will never vote labour so it has scrapped the winter fuel payment while allowing Ed Miliband to pursue policies that will make energy bills even more expensive.
VAT on school fees is something that people can take a stand against and show the Government it cannot just do what it wants. But there has to be a coordinated movement by families of children at independent schools.
Firstly, parents of children currently at independent schools need to write to their local education authority detailing how the Government’s plan has made private school fees unaffordable and that the local authority has to provide a school place for their child or children, bearing in mind that siblings generally attend the same school.
As local authorities start receiving more and more requests, they will have to liaise with the Department for Education on how to accommodate all these new pupils, particularly as some of them will be looking for in-year places outside the normal admissions cycle.
Secondly, they need to write to the independent school their children attend, before the beginning of the Autumn term, saying that if the Government goes ahead with its tax raid they will no longer be able to afford the fees and will be removing their children from the school at the end of the year. (One term’s notice is standard at independent schools.)
As most independent schools struggle to stay afloat, it won’t take many letters of withdrawal before the school bursar is calling on the school’s Board of Governors to either reduce fees or petition the Government to scrap the plan.
The Governors will look at the books and realise a reduction in fees is impossible so will have to contact the Government and explain that with so many families withdrawing, the school will have to close if VAT is introduced.
That will create a massive headache for the Government as there simply aren’t enough places available in the state sector to accommodate even a small number of refugees from the private sector – a problem that will be exacerbated if lots of schools are likely to close.
The Government could decide to take any independent school that is forced to close into the state sector to alleviate the problem, but then its plan to raise revenue via the tax blows up and it ends up costing the Government more than if it had done nothing. In addition, the parents of the pupils already at these schools would enjoy a massive windfall. Hard to see how that will please Labour’s pink-haired apostles.
The Government has assumed that almost everyone who sends their children to an independent school is so well off that a 20% increase in fees is chicken feed and they will carry on paying. Completely wrong, obviously.
So, this is a perfect opportunity give the Government a bloody nose. I just hope there are enough parents willing to put their heads above the parapet and some schools that could get on board to coordinate campaigning activities. I fear the damage this administration will do if they don’t.
Stop Press: There is a parent-led group campaigning against Labour’s tax raid on independent schools called ‘Education Not Taxation’. You can apply to join the Facebook group here.
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The majority of people don’t send their kids to independent schools and probably think it’s a good idea. I certainly do.
Parents paying to educate their children privately are doing all taxpayers a favour by reducing the wholesale cost of education. This is exactly the same as paying for private health and dentistry care but the government won’t reduce taxes for those electing to go private.
To be blunt and simplistic anybody paying privately for services which are provided at state level is paying twice.
More importantly they are using their free choice to ensure their children (not the State’s) get the educaton they think suitable and within their means (after much economy at home in most cases).
I wonder if Labour realise how many non-white children there are in most private schools. All their votes have now been lost.
It is also blatantly obvious that what is really behind the push to shut down private education is:
1. It further erodes English culture.
2. It ensures that ALL children are brain washed rather than educated.
Even the thicko in the Labour Party must know the sums don’t add up.
Yeah cause education will be made better by destroying the best schools said no one ever. This is about carpeting their playing fields in social housing and sticking migrants in there, as well as further meddling in society. If you are for that you are a fool.
I suspect this policy may be counterproductive in the long run, as this piece suggests. However, while governments of all colours continue to bribe the electorate with other people’s money, I would rather that private school fees were taxed than real essentials.
This will cost the government money, it won’t reduce yr taxes in any way at all.
The idea that the state should control education should on a rational basis be even more odious than control of religion, for obvious reasons rspecially these days. I can’t think of anything more hideous. Every teacher and every teaching is state approved. We lost so much due to the world wars in terms of how every acadamic discipline was expunged of a countervailing view. I hope we can garner an general understanding that everything since 1914 is based on lies. You could go back another half century to see this system in its nascency, Look on the bright side, enrolment at British universities in arts and humanities subjects has fallen off a cliff with many institutions in dire trouble which is exactly where they should be.I don’t have small children but if I did I would attempt to teach them myself. I would probably cock it up but at least it wouldn’t be with any evil intent.
Off-T
https://www.vaccinestoday.eu/stories/european-vaccination-card-will-be-piloted-in-five-countries/
Coming September on a trial basis in five European countries, vaccine passports; we didn’t see that coming. Obviously the “trial” will be a resounding success and full roll out 2026.
The thin edge of the wedge.
I love how they have honed the penalty for saying no. It won’t be people turning up at your door – they won’t need to. They will just switch your banking and online credibility off. No more Amazon bliss. And don’t try using a VPN because they log your bank details. If you want this world or tacitly accept it then this is what you will get. Don’t sell your birthright for a mess of pottage.
I remember atttending schools in Northern Ireland and England and frankly it was shocking to see that the level in Ebgland was two years behind Northern Ireland. More so I remember at school in Northern Ireland 13 year old boys submitting their own poems in an English class. Can you even imagine that in an English classroom. We have lost that. If we had schools where such things happened we would know that we still had some vitality. It has been strip-mined out of the English people but I do have hope for the younguns.
You’re finished man regardleSs of what you have in the bank because in the coming reset the books don’t add up. This is managed decline it doesn’t matter about your holdings because the elite know exactly where the centre is moving to. If you want to carry on like this world is still intact then please do so. You are going to discover a different reality very soon.
Oh come on! If we’re going to have a picture of a stereotypical private school surely it has to be from Tomkinson’s school days at Graybridge..
The issue of private schools has been a live one from Nicholas NIckleby and through to Orwell. But this is beside the point. They have in mind an algorithm driven system ot techno-communism. These are very dim people and they attach themselves readily to such a creed. If you want to oppose anything then please oppose the nascent techno-communism because it is the most evil system imaginable.All of the damage that you have seen so far- the decline in insects – they want to feed this system. They don’t know any better but that doesan’t make them any less pernicious.
This is the most cretinous bunch imaginable. The Conservatives are brigands of course but at least they were more concerned with the size of their wallet than anything else. This lot are going to mess up a lot of people. They have already shown that with the pensioners.Pensions in England are about a third of the European average and yet they take a meagre winter fuel payment off them. Obviously plenty of money for Ukraine though. I think the Brits will respond to this despite their contentedness and acquiescence.
Perhaps all the students from threatened independent schools could all arrive at their nearest council school at 8.30am. This might make them wonder where they are going to put all these extra students.