Private schools, times a changing?

[The Moose]

Benny Saltstein said:

Both my sons now attend private schools and if there’s an extra line on the invoice for the autumn term we’ll take the pain and suck it up because I want the best for them. It just leaves a bad taste in the mouth because you know the extra money for the state schools won’t make much difference.

And that’s what they’re betting on.

[Sheepshanks]

CLK-GTR said:

Managing to muddle through it so far but it would be nice to experience a government that wasn't always trying to give everything we have to the retired, the offshore or the bone idle.

The retired are furious about recent, and promised, tax reductions being focussed on NI. Seems an odd move for a Conservative government to make.

[okgo]

Telegraph reporting on the school mentioned by a poster in this thread

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/labour-vat-r...

[PhilboSE]

Dynion Araf Uchaf said:

And it’s very very likely that the good fortune you find yourself in is due to your family wealth and contacts. Do you think you’d be in your position if your parents were social workers?

And I am not a socialist, far from it, but there are some things that need to change and a tax on wealth is defo one of them.

My parents both left school at 16 with two O levels between them. Both left home at the same time because for different reasons there was nothing there for them. I grew up on the “wrong” side of Liverpool in the late 60s / 70s. The concept of “poor” that we lived through has no meaning to people today. Think: one pair of trousers, only meat we ever had was offal. My parents dragged the family out of poverty through sheer hard work and there weren’t any state handouts for us.

My mother taught me (and my sister) to read and write before we went to school. Consequently I was placed a year ahead but after a couple of years the school said it wasn’t right I was ahead of my age peers and held me back to repeat a year. A 7 year old boy being forced to repeat a year being re-taught stuff he could do already wasn’t a great plan and my behaviour went from model pupil to disruptive and I was eventually expelled. A local small private school gave me an assisted place where I was academically stimulated rather than suppressed and I got back on track. I sat examinations for 5 public secondary schools and got scholarships to attend 4 of them - without that it was back to the State for me.

In my professional life I was lucky to invent a thing and then built a business around it. In 30 years building and running that business I have fag packet calculated that I have generated over £100M in direct tax paid to HM government that they wouldn’t have otherwise received. By any measure I am wealthy but I have a fraction of the wealth compared with what I have generated in tax. The wealth I retain has been taxed multiple times - at source when it was generated, when I spent it eg SDLT/VAT, and the government will tax it a third time when I die through IHT. I have never dodged tax or done any kind of aggressive tax avoidance other than prudent planning.

And then the constant mantra I hear espoused by the Left and parroted by people like you is that I must be a tax dodging money grabber who was given everything I have in life through parental wealth and/or contacts, and that it’s only right that I should have additional taxes imposed upon me. These views being spoken, I would say, by people who have no knowledge or experience of how wealth is generated or taxed in the real world, yet you put yourselves on some kind of pedestal and point at other people who you deem to have “more” than you (they might have just made different choices) and shout “Tax them! Tax them!”. Quite frankly your opinions are based on perception and dogma rather than reality.

[Leithen]

PhilboSE said:

My parents both left school at 16 with two O levels between them. Both left home at the same time because for different reasons there was nothing there for them. I grew up on the “wrong” side of Liverpool in the late 60s / 70s. The concept of “poor” that we lived through has no meaning to people today. Think: one pair of trousers, only meat we ever had was offal. My parents dragged the family out of poverty through sheer hard work and there weren’t any state handouts for us.

My mother taught me (and my sister) to read and write before we went to school. Consequently I was placed a year ahead but after a couple of years the school said it wasn’t right I was ahead of my age peers and held me back to repeat a year. A 7 year old boy being forced to repeat a year being re-taught stuff he could do already wasn’t a great plan and my behaviour went from model pupil to disruptive and I was eventually expelled. A local small private school gave me an assisted place where I was academically stimulated rather than suppressed and I got back on track. I sat examinations for 5 public secondary schools and got scholarships to attend 4 of them - without that it was back to the State for me.

In my professional life I was lucky to invent a thing and then built a business around it. In 30 years building and running that business I have fag packet calculated that I have generated over £100M in direct tax paid to HM government that they wouldn’t have otherwise received. By any measure I am wealthy but I have a fraction of the wealth compared with what I have generated in tax. The wealth I retain has been taxed multiple times - at source when it was generated, when I spent it eg SDLT/VAT, and the government will tax it a third time when I die through IHT. I have never dodged tax or done any kind of aggressive tax avoidance other than prudent planning.

And then the constant mantra I hear espoused by the Left and parroted by people like you is that I must be a tax dodging money grabber who was given everything I have in life through parental wealth and/or contacts, and that it’s only right that I should have additional taxes imposed upon me. These views being spoken, I would say, by people who have no knowledge or experience of how wealth is generated or taxed in the real world, yet you put yourselves on some kind of pedestal and point at other people who you deem to have “more” than you (they might have just made different choices) and shout “Tax them! Tax them!”. Quite frankly your opinions are based on perception and dogma rather than reality.

[turbobloke]

PhilboSE said:

These views being spoken, I would say, by people who have no knowledge or experience of how wealth is generated or taxed in the real world, yet you put yourselves on some kind of pedestal and point at other people who you deem to have “more” than you (they might have just made different choices) and shout “Tax them! Tax them!”. Quite frankly your opinions are based on perception and dogma rather than reality.

I would say their capacity to point and bray also involves a baseless sense of moral superiority with condescension to go.

It's peppered through this thread.

[Talksteer]

numtumfutunch said:

PS private healthcare is currently VAT exempt - no idea why.....

Grandfather rights dating from when they were the only option, many of older ones like BUPA are none profits.

Also the political cost of doing so, similar to the debate here will also be part of it. Private healthcare also gets non cash subsidies from the public sector in terms of it's staff training or the fact that they can always throw patients back to the NHS if they can't treat them.

[Talksteer]

ClaphamGT3 said:

Talksteer said:

Just to remind you they are talking about removing a tax break that helps the rich maintain their positions of power over generations. Nobody is saying that you can't educate your child privately just that you aren't going to get a tax break to do so

It is not a tax break - education has never been subject to Value Added Tax and no other component of education will be subjected to it

Independent education is not, despite what Philipson, Reeves, Rayner etc al would have you believe, the preserve of the rich. Independent schools - even the elite ones - have a few pupils in each year who are from genuinely rich families, a few who could never afford Independent education but for bursaries, scholarships and immense sacrifice on the part of their parents and a majority of children from affluent but not wealthy backgrounds where parents (and often the wider family) are making hard choices to find the money to pay the fees because they want the best for their kids

As for your "positions of power" point, I hate to tell you this, but the "old school tie" thing ceased to be anything other than a left- wing trope about 40 years ago

As I've just posted only 7% of children at private schools get any form of help and only 1% get full fees.

The average private secondary school fees are ~£17k so the typical family with two children is having to find ~£34k.

You have to earn £43,000 to even take that much home, the median wage in the UK is £34,000.

The vast majority of the users of private schools are in the top 5% of income earners or asset holders.

[turbobloke]

"Just to remind you they are talking about removing a tax break that helps the rich maintain their positions of power over generations."

???!!!

That looks like a quote from a socialist campaign manual.

Talksteer said:

The vast majority of the users of private schools are in the top 5% of income earners or asset holders.

And the vast majority of the users of state education aren't. What would you expect?

[Tindersticks]

okgo said:

Telegraph reporting on the school mentioned by a poster in this thread

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/labour-vat-r...

I'm local to this school and have both a friend who is a teacher there and another who has a kid there.

The school has been in trouble, and declining in numbers, for years and the closure is absolutely nothing to do with the VAT issue.

[okgo]

Apparently the shock withdrawal of places has resulted in the quick nature of it though. My mum says it’s been sold already for housing, and we know someone who is trying to sue them for the notice or lack of!

[Tindersticks]

I can well believe it. My understanding is that the head knew in Feb and only told the staff and parents last week.

[DonkeyApple]

turbobloke said:

Independent schools vary in the degree to which they embrace the charitable works expectations placed on them, true enough.

That's very true. My old school closed its boarding house so gave up the easy path to overseas pupils which ensured that it had to keep working with the local community to acquire new and constant customer flow. When I was there they were doing this by buying into local prep schools and they ran a pretty small 11+ set of classes. However, these days they bankroll key local primary schools seeking to acquire almost half their customers from these using brand awareness, huge array of bursaries based on academia and bribing potential parents with weekend access to the sports facilities at a fraction of the cost of David Lloyd and without the local orange skanks and chattel monkeys, now there aren't boarders using them. Some local primary schools have had new classrooms built, others just get equipment whether new or used and they all get to use the main school facilities for fetes, fundraisers and sports days.

It's not altruism but pure business. The primary schools are full of children smart enough to add to the records and plenty of parents can scrape together the cost, especially if they can rope in the wider family and then the bursaries cover the difference and give the security. The brand awareness of logos on the gifted equipment and bringing the parents into the property to get comfortable with an environment they know nothing about so as to see firsthand that what they've been indoctrinated with by the media and their political leanings is a load of absolute hogwash all adds up to show what is possible and to not be intimidated.

The school gets the brightest kids from the local area. And even when parents don't buy they are far less anti and more supporting of the school and actually proud of it. And the school gets a very solid flow of new customers for a fair marketing cost, gets great PR and keeps the the alumni well balanced between landed, office and trade, country estate, suburban house, tiny house, flat. And the skin colour and religious blend ebbs and flows with the local economy. And it has upheld its 500 plus year history of having a large first generation private, second generation immigrant population.

And this type of private school is all over the U.K. supplying large numbers of solid tax payers and local employers and entrepreneurs, forming partnerships with their fellow locals who didn't attend those schools.

Sadly, the tabloids are fixed on hate and division and so will only ever drive forward the faux image of the more elitist end which ironically has a tendency to be comprised of the lowest classes seeking to ensure their children know what a knife and fork are and how not to spit in public but the byproduct tends to be a deluded elitism just because they've been taught how to speak and dress properly.

Those places will be absolutely fine. Regardless of cost they have the entire planet to harvest customers from. Customers who won't be adding back to the local community and if anything spending their adult life competing against the U.K. Meanwhile, it'll be the normal public schools, their local communities and U.K. Plc and everyone in it who benefits from the abnormal level of affluence this small island off the coast of an Asian peninsula who pays the price of having fewer children educated to the best they can be regardless of what brains they were born with instead of decreasing the number while increasing the overseas number.

Hate is easy. Being smart is hard work and takes time.

Ironically, one could apply the tax to just boarding places and place that tax to work in primary school bursaries to get more smart children the greatest chance in life and to support the local schools that support their local community, even when that is not their intention to do so.

But positive intelligence can't exist when hate is in the room.

[TownIdiot]

Referring to "orange skanks and chattel monkeys" whilst stating that "positive intelligence can't exist when hate is in the room" seems a bit of a self-own.


Looking at options going forward - what chance is there of a party stepping up and offering a return to the grammar school system?
I've always been surprised that this has not been on the agenda for the various conservative admininstrations over the years.
I'd have thought a modified version could work well.

Is it too much of a long term plan for a party to get behind?

[DonkeyApple]

TownIdiot said:

Referring to "orange skanks and chattel monkeys" whilst stating that "positive intelligence can't exist when hate is in the room" seems a bit of a self-own.

Not really as it isn't hate but acceptance that certain people look for different qualities with their gym membership while others seek to avoid those qualities. The more overly branded services become the more they attract consumers who desire association with those brands which creates a certain dynamic at one location and a business opportunity at another to cater for the non sex pond/firepit/piano teeth/celebrity community. Just like in London you can opt for a school with sporting and ITV celebs in it or specifically one without. Free market, rather the opposite of hate which hinders a free market and fuels elitism and division.

[turbobloke]

TownIdiot said:

Referring to "orange skanks and chattel monkeys" whilst stating that "positive intelligence can't exist when hate is in the room" seems a bit of a self-own.


Looking at options going forward - what chance is there of a party stepping up and offering a return to the grammar school system?
I've always been surprised that this has not been on the agenda for the various conservative admininstrations over the years.
I'd have thought a modified version could work well.

Is it too much of a long term plan for a party to get behind?

The conservatives did introduce 'new' grammar schools by publicising the option of satellites of existing schools...the law allows an existing grammar school to build a satellite extension miles from the existing school. As expected, supporters of equality in mediocrity tried everywhichway to cause bother.

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-urged-to-investigate...

[ClaphamGT3]

PhilboSE said:

My parents both left school at 16 with two O levels between them. Both left home at the same time because for different reasons there was nothing there for them. I grew up on the “wrong” side of Liverpool in the late 60s / 70s. The concept of “poor” that we lived through has no meaning to people today. Think: one pair of trousers, only meat we ever had was offal. My parents dragged the family out of poverty through sheer hard work and there weren’t any state handouts for us.

My mother taught me (and my sister) to read and write before we went to school. Consequently I was placed a year ahead but after a couple of years the school said it wasn’t right I was ahead of my age peers and held me back to repeat a year. A 7 year old boy being forced to repeat a year being re-taught stuff he could do already wasn’t a great plan and my behaviour went from model pupil to disruptive and I was eventually expelled. A local small private school gave me an assisted place where I was academically stimulated rather than suppressed and I got back on track. I sat examinations for 5 public secondary schools and got scholarships to attend 4 of them - without that it was back to the State for me.

In my professional life I was lucky to invent a thing and then built a business around it. In 30 years building and running that business I have fag packet calculated that I have generated over £100M in direct tax paid to HM government that they wouldn’t have otherwise received. By any measure I am wealthy but I have a fraction of the wealth compared with what I have generated in tax. The wealth I retain has been taxed multiple times - at source when it was generated, when I spent it eg SDLT/VAT, and the government will tax it a third time when I die through IHT. I have never dodged tax or done any kind of aggressive tax avoidance other than prudent planning.

And then the constant mantra I hear espoused by the Left and parroted by people like you is that I must be a tax dodging money grabber who was given everything I have in life through parental wealth and/or contacts, and that it’s only right that I should have additional taxes imposed upon me. These views being spoken, I would say, by people who have no knowledge or experience of how wealth is generated or taxed in the real world, yet you put yourselves on some kind of pedestal and point at other people who you deem to have “more” than you (they might have just made different choices) and shout “Tax them! Tax them!”. Quite frankly your opinions are based on perception and dogma rather than reality.

This is an excellent post.

My background is rather different, materially much more privileged and perhaps closer to the stereotype that some here are throwing rocks at. But let me put it in context to show just how wrong headed those posters still are.

My family can directly trace our ancestry back to 1346. Since that time, the family has steadily husbanded and grown its wealth for 678 years. 1346, 1549, 1711, 1860 and 1915 were key years for the family in growing their wealth. Our family motto is Dat Gloria Vires - there is honour in a good name - and that is very consciously and deliberately how the family have lived for over six centuries; we work hard, we manage our affairs prudently, we pay what we owe, we use our good fortune to assist those less fortunate and, probably above all, we value education and learning as a route to self improvement.

During the course of a normal year, the family will pay many millions of pounds in direct taxes. We never engage in aggressive tax avoidance or any form of avoidance that is not congruent with our mission which is that we will, by prudent and ethical commercial enterprise, deliver a risk adjusted return to the family with a view to long term, generational stewardship of wealth.

We have not one but two family trusts established to fund education. One is for family members and one is for employees and former employees of our businesses as well as members of the community where our businesses are based.

The former is accessible to any immediate member of the family not in a position to fund their children's education themselves. It is a discretionary trust and only grants when the trustees believe there to be a real and justifiable reason why the family member cannot pay. I and my brothers were educated by the trust because my father was serving as an army officer and my mother was a GP when we were school age. My children have not been educated by the trust but by my wife and I as we can well afford to pay ourselves.

The latter trust has, since its foundation by my Great Grandfather in 1903, paid for over 100 children to attend great schools and young adults to attend great universities. I am particularly proud that, in the year I myself failed to get into Oxford, the trust paid full expenses to enable a talented individual who was the daughter of a single mother of very modest means working in a local factory to go to Oxford. She is now, as a result of her education, a household name classical musician.

So, bearing all of this in mind, do not dare to tell me that generational wealth needs to be taxed more

[TownIdiot]

said:

The quoting system seems up the spout.

Surely you'd need to address the "non-grammar" element of this system for it to produce the desired results across the board.

Otherwise it's a postcode lottery for the academically gifted.

For every academically focussed grammar there would need to be something of equal quality with a less academic focus.
Not an easy thing to achieve.

[DonkeyApple]

ClaphamGT3 said:

PhilboSE said:

My parents both left school at 16 with two O levels between them. Both left home at the same time because for different reasons there was nothing there for them. I grew up on the “wrong” side of Liverpool in the late 60s / 70s. The concept of “poor” that we lived through has no meaning to people today. Think: one pair of trousers, only meat we ever had was offal. My parents dragged the family out of poverty through sheer hard work and there weren’t any state handouts for us.

My mother taught me (and my sister) to read and write before we went to school. Consequently I was placed a year ahead but after a couple of years the school said it wasn’t right I was ahead of my age peers and held me back to repeat a year. A 7 year old boy being forced to repeat a year being re-taught stuff he could do already wasn’t a great plan and my behaviour went from model pupil to disruptive and I was eventually expelled. A local small private school gave me an assisted place where I was academically stimulated rather than suppressed and I got back on track. I sat examinations for 5 public secondary schools and got scholarships to attend 4 of them - without that it was back to the State for me.

In my professional life I was lucky to invent a thing and then built a business around it. In 30 years building and running that business I have fag packet calculated that I have generated over £100M in direct tax paid to HM government that they wouldn’t have otherwise received. By any measure I am wealthy but I have a fraction of the wealth compared with what I have generated in tax. The wealth I retain has been taxed multiple times - at source when it was generated, when I spent it eg SDLT/VAT, and the government will tax it a third time when I die through IHT. I have never dodged tax or done any kind of aggressive tax avoidance other than prudent planning.

And then the constant mantra I hear espoused by the Left and parroted by people like you is that I must be a tax dodging money grabber who was given everything I have in life through parental wealth and/or contacts, and that it’s only right that I should have additional taxes imposed upon me. These views being spoken, I would say, by people who have no knowledge or experience of how wealth is generated or taxed in the real world, yet you put yourselves on some kind of pedestal and point at other people who you deem to have “more” than you (they might have just made different choices) and shout “Tax them! Tax them!”. Quite frankly your opinions are based on perception and dogma rather than reality.

This is an excellent post.

My background is rather different, materially much more privileged and perhaps closer to the stereotype that some here are throwing rocks at. But let me put it in context to show just how wrong headed those posters still are.

My family can directly trace our ancestry back to 1346. Since that time, the family has steadily husbanded and grown its wealth for 678 years. 1346, 1549, 1711, 1860 and 1915 were key years for the family in growing their wealth. Our family motto is Dat Gloria Vires - there is honour in a good name - and that is very consciously and deliberately how the family have lived for over six centuries; we work hard, we manage our affairs prudently, we pay what we owe, we use our good fortune to assist those less fortunate and, probably above all, we value education and learning as a route to self improvement.

During the course of a normal year, the family will pay many millions of pounds in direct taxes. We never engage in aggressive tax avoidance or any form of avoidance that is not congruent with our mission which is that we will, by prudent and ethical commercial enterprise, deliver a risk adjusted return to the family with a view to long term, generational stewardship of wealth.

We have not one but two family trusts established to fund education. One is for family members and one is for employees and former employees of our businesses as well as members of the community where our businesses are based.

The former is accessible to any immediate member of the family not in a position to fund their children's education themselves. It is a discretionary trust and only grants when the trustees believe there to be a real and justifiable reason why the family member cannot pay. I and my brothers were educated by the trust because my father was serving as an army officer and my mother was a GP when we were school age. My children have not been educated by the trust but by my wife and I as we can well afford to pay ourselves.

The latter trust has, since its foundation by my Great Grandfather in 1903, paid for over 100 children to attend great schools and young adults to attend great universities. I am particularly proud that, in the year I myself failed to get into Oxford, the trust paid full expenses to enable a talented individual who was the daughter of a single mother of very modest means working in a local factory to go to Oxford. She is now, as a result of her education, a household name classical musician.

So, bearing all of this in mind, do not dare to tell me that generational wealth needs to be taxed more

Two very interesting stories to which I will add a third, far less interesting one.

While my father's side of the family arrived prior to Crecy and followed a similar path, it all went post 1918 during an inheritance kerfuffle that saw an uncle win over the surviving son. He then drank it away in the south of France and ended up selling the family home to a local builder for it to rather ironically now being a private school. My grandfather stole a car, that was technically his and left for London where he wasn't given a job in Clerkenwell which he eventually become the owner of and was able to pay for my father's education. He in turn created a modest retail business around Hatton Garden which paid for his children. My grandfather worked huge daily hours 6 days a week. My father worked long hours 6 days a week. My school peers are mostly first generation Irish, Indian, East African and Jewish immigrants whose parents arrived with nothing and gave everything for their children to be educated the best they could. I recall sitting around the table at the local pub one evening with about 20'of us and everyone working out that I was technically the only English person there. And the spread of wealth across that table was immense from children whose families owned chunks of countries to friends whose parents didn't even own a home.

I wouldn't want to curtail the tremendous opportunity that they and I had but want more children in the U.K. to have it.

Why would someone want to damage the potential of children? What causes an adult to actually want that to be done in their name?

[Wombat3]

DonkeyApple said:

Why would someone want to damage the potential of children? What causes an adult to actually want that to be done in their name?

Ignorance & spite.