Children are the real losers from VAT raid

I never expected to use this line — uttered hysterically by the judgemental vicar’s wife character on The Simpsons — in earnest. But the Labour Party’s latest proposal to add VAT onto private school fees might just force my hand. Admittedly, like many of the biggest issues in the so-called culture wars, private schools get a disproportionate amount of attention in relation to the number of people actually affected by anything to do with them. Only 5.9 per cent of children in the UK are privately educated, with estimates putting the number at around 540,000 of the 14 million-strong population of under-18s. Some think the latest brouhaha could reduce this even further.

The addition of VAT — 20 per cent of the current fees — would be passed directly along to the parents of children in private schools, some of whom argue that they will feel unable to afford the price hike and end up moving their kids into the state system as a result. Labour said it would also end business rates relief for private schools in England. It’s been one of the most contentious and talked-about policy announcements of the election campaign thus far, drawing as it does clear battle lines between Starmer and Sunak. Critics on the right have called it the “politics of envy”; Labour has pledged that the £1.7bn raised by the move would be ploughed into improving local authority schools, funding “desperately needed teachers and mental health counselling in every secondary school” and helping to level the playing field between the haves and the have-nots.

It’s all purely hypothetical at present — a policy that Labour has pledged to introduce should they be elected in the snap general election on 4 July. But, as polling puts them more than 20 percentage points in the lead as of 31 May, it looks likely to become a reality. That’s certainly how parents are taking it, according to Catherine Stoker, founder of The Independent Education Consultants, which advises families on which schools and universities might best suit their children. “We can see changes happening for this coming September,” she says. “I think parents have already made decisions on what to do regarding future schooling, based on the assumption that there will be added VAT. Talking to independent schools, they’ve got more last-minute places than I’ve seen in 20 years of working in education.” She puts this down to parents being too anxious about the potential uptick in price to enrol their children into fee-paying schools.

In fact, more than a quarter of parents would remove their children from private school if VAT comes in, according to a survey of more than 2,000 high-net-worth individuals by wealth manager Saltus — prompting questions about how local authority schools will handle the sudden influx. Again, the level of discourse sparked by this particular political football vastly outweighs its relevance to most of the electorate. But while I’ve seen plenty of passionate arguments on both sides commending and disparaging the idea – and, while it makes no odds to most of us whether parents on the “poorer” end of the one percenters are priced out of the private education market and forced to put their offspring into (gasp!) state school — there’s been a worrying dearth of chatter about those most affected by it.

“In all the debates I’ve seen about proposed private school changes, nobody seems to be thinking of the kids,” agrees Dr Gavin Morgan, the chair of the division of educational and child psychology at the British Psychological Society. “Whether it’s from private to a local authority school or the other way around, any transition is a time of huge upheaval that needs to be planned for.” And as much as it can be tempting to scoff at elite parents having to downgrade from Farrow & Ball to Dulux or swap the Maldives for the Malverns, the real victims of a private school price hike will be the students yanked out mid-education and shunted into a new environment. “For some children, school changes can of course be positive, however when this change is sudden or unexpected, even if the change is a positive change, this can still cause anxiety,” says Tammy, co-founder and clinical director at the Children’s Wellness Centre, which specialises in educational psychology and counselling services for children and teens. She tells me that, while children experience many transitions throughout childhood, adequate preparation can make a huge difference in helping them adapt positively — such as nursery school teachers speaking to pre-schoolers about moving up to “big school” around a term before they leave. It helps them anticipate what to expect, lowering stress levels around the change.

Helen Coffey, The Independent