The Labour Government have allowed their warped socialist ideology seep into the way they govern our education system with the introduction of a blanket 20 per cent in VAT on private schools, and all this has done is limit the opportunities for our children and punish parents who often dream of sending their children to private schools.
The Government have failed to think this policy through, and it will punish not only parents and students but also the teachers and the country. This policy has resulted in fees rising substantially, and all this does is punish parents who only want to provide their children with the best opportunities possible, which is an ambition shared by families across the UK, but the Government are committed to limiting opportunities.
HM Treasury figures themselves show that this policy will have a net loss in revenue with 123 per cent of expected revenue lost, meaning that this Government is prepared to damage the already failing public services to negatively impact families they perceive to be overtly wealthy and achieve an ideological win for the left of their party. Ideology should not determine the state of our education system.
The Government are already realising that their policy is failing as they have enacted a soft U-turn on this policy and allowed gifted art students to avoid the introduction of VAT whilst forgetting families of our Armed Forces and children with special needs amongst other groups.
The Government must now go further and scrap the policy.
In their vindictiveness against families the Government views as “wealthy,” their policy has also failed to account for the impact that the introduction of VAT will have on special educational needs children. State schools and local councils who are both under financial pressures will struggle to accommodate such students and therefore unable to provide the specialist care which is needed for such students to thrive, and therefore our most vulnerable children will suffer due to an ideological decision from the Government.
The Government must rethink this policy and stop punishing the parents and limiting the ambition of both parents and children in the UK, instead they should put ideology aside and collaborate with our esteemed private schools in order drive ambition and opportunity across the UK and ultimately allow state schools to learn from our private schools rather than developing the current narrative which pits side against side. Alternatives are possible
A blanket 20 per cent in VAT on private schools limits the opportunities for our children and punishes parents, writes business entrepreneur Mandhira Kapur Smith
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Please write at least 2 paragraphs
My home country of India has a growing sector of private schools, and we can learn many lessons as to how this sector can support the state school sector and expand opportunities to all sections of society. For example, private schools in India often partner with local state schools to share best practices and private schools often collaborate with state schools to host collaborative teacher training sessions, which uplifts our local state schools rather than pitting private and state schools against each other. Private schools in India are also promoted to provide social outreach into the most deprived areas, which should be promoted in the UK.
The Government should think innovatively on this issue. Private schools should be promoted to host sessions after school hours where they host children from local state schools to provide extra-curriculum sessions, which gives state school students the opportunity to access the highest levels of education free of charge, which gives equal access to all without punishing parents of private school students. Instead of the introduction of the blanket VAT on private schools, the Government could have thought innovatively and provided private schools or parents of private school students to offset the costs of VAT by investing directly into state schools or academies or the Government could establish a route for parents of private school students to establish apprenticeships should those parents be entrepreneurs which state school students could access and in return these parents could avoid the increase in fees which will go towards the school paying the introduction of VAT which often goes into the abyss of tax.
We should look at establishing innovative programmes in which investors are welcomed into investing in our private school sector as well as our state school sector to radically rethink our curriculum through varied expertise.
As things stand, this policy only reinforces the view that our government are attempting to tax and spend their way out of our economic crisis, which this Government have only worsened whilst continuing to send taxpayers money overseas whilst taking opportunities away from its own people.
