So, Labour’s signature policy is slapping 20% VAT on private school fees. What a sorry state of affairs – that this is pretty much the sum total of the recent change in government. As someone who sheepishly skunked around in a private school blazer for a decade, I’ve got a few bones to pick.
Let’s face it, no child ever chooses their school. It’s not like we were five years old with a checklist of pros and cons. Parents make these decisions. Ever since my non-privately educated friends would extract the urine out of me because of the school I didn’t choose, I’ve never understood the hostility that the privately educated receive for a decision that they didn’t make.
Fast forward to adulthood and you’ll find me in Harrogate. Why? In large part because I dodged the private school bullet by buying an overpriced house near a top-tier state school. Yes, I essentially paid for a private education without the school fees—just with a whopping mortgage instead.
Some parents (particularly in Harrogate) fake religious adherence in order to get their kids into a “good school” (a blog topic for another day). Instead, we bought a house in a particular area.
Now, Labour purportedly wants to level the playing field by taxing private schools. Fair enough-ish, but if we’re playing that game, let’s be consistent. Shouldn’t we also tax those who move into “good school” catchment areas? Be fair and slap a 20% tax on posh postcodes, Mr Starmer.
And if private school fees shoot up by 20%, more kids will leave for state schools – of course they will. I very much doubt that this tax rise will improve state finances, if at all. Instead, state school resources will be stretched even thinner, penalising all state school pupils, including my own.
And when this dodgy policy is introduced, as ever, the richest will be fine, but families scraping to afford private school fees will be hit the hardest. Have some guts – Mr Starmer – and look at a wealth tax instead, specifically for groups of people who benefitted most from the recent spike in inflation.
Like it or not, the reality is that this intellectually and morally defective policy is less about delivering equality of opportunity and more about class warfare, with the best-off remaining the best-off.
Welcome to bat-dung Bonkers Britain, as potty-mouthed Katy Hopkins would put it.
(Photo is from 2018 of me wandering around my old school, Bolton School (and burying the hatchet), 20 years after I left)
