Vulnerable children will suffer most if small private schools pay VAT

The Labour Party manifesto commits a future Labour government to making private schools pay VAT, a tax from which, as charities, they are currently exempt.

The party has made no distinction between huge public schools offering lavish and expensive luxury services to wealthy families and modest not-for-profit establishments offering good but basic education, often to vulnerable children, many on financially assisted places.

There is concern that because fees will rise, vulnerable children, including those with additional learning needs, will be forced to leave safe schools and not find suitable alternatives in the state sector.

Labour politicians ridicule these concerns, suggesting that parents will be able to meet additional costs and that their children would be better off in the state sector.

Labour dismisses fears that there are not enough suitable state sector places – despite reports that, in some areas, state schools are heavily oversubscribed.

The i newspaper reports that in Newcastle upon Tyne, 4,000 pupils are educated in the private sector because of lack of state provision.

The truth is that Britain’s state education system is not fit for purpose, despite the commitment and effort of many heroic teachers. There have been some recent improvements in reading standards and mathematics at primary level but overall the situation remains dire, as it has for decades.

Educational standards and attainment are low, discipline is poor and bullying widespread. Able-bodied middle-class children, who manage to avoid the worst of the endemic bullying, do well enough.

Their parents buy houses near the best state schools, investing in tutors, extra lessons and trips abroad. Many teachers call these children ‘high flyers’ and look after them, especially the boys.

Working-class children, male and female, are not so lucky, frequently enduring poor conditions and few choices.

In addition, disabled children and those with long-term health conditions are often denied the specialist educational help they need. Regrettably, they are a particular target of bullies.

Girls too are favoured prey, routinely subject to sexist abuse and sexual harassment – continuing to have their educational choices distorted by sex-role stereotyping.

Single-sex schools, which as all research shows, tend to protect and benefit girls though not boys, have virtually disappeared from the state sector. Despite protests, Margaret Hardy High, the last state run girls’ school in Brighton and Hove, was closed in 1989.

Unsurprisingly, truancy is rife and there are now thousands of children (92,000 across England and Wales) being “home schooled” by exhausted parents who know they are ill-equipped to teach.

These parents are frequently forced to give up paid employment or at least reduce hours, destroying all hope of planned careers.

In this context, it’s hardly surprising that parents, sometimes single parents on low incomes, attempt to get their vulnerable children into not-for-profit private schools. I know of several local mothers who have travelled this road.

These women will work their fingers to the bone to safeguard their child as best as they know how. Of course, they shouldn’t have to, but the failures of the state educational system and the indifference of successive governments, means these parents feel they have little choice.

In a worthwhile society there would be consensus about the care and education of our children but instead the issue is deployed by politicians as a weapon to point-score and attack party political rivals.

Education has become both a plaything of fashionable ideologues and a tool in the hands of some trade unions, seemingly more concerned about teachers’ wages and conditions than the wellbeing of children.

Well-endowed public schools should not be able to sell expensive education as a luxury commodity without being properly taxed. However, genuine charities charging as fairly as possible to provide a good standard of education should not be penalised.

Nor should charities providing services the state sector refuses to offer, such as same-sex girls’ schools, specialist schools and small safe establishments suitable for children with health problems or traumatised by bullying.

Labour’s current policy won’t make any difference to ancient and wealthy foundations like Eton and Harrow, which, along with wealthy parents, can absorb the costs.

If Labour wants to take on these bastions of extreme privilege it needs to do so directly, not pick on the least powerful institutions.

Brighton has already lost one low-charging girls’ private school. St Mary’s Hall was possibly the oldest girls’ school in the country, a Church of England foundation which provided financially assisted places to vulnerable children until the day it closed in 2009. Its assets have since been swallowed up by the far wealthier Brighton College and Roedean.

If Labour continues to pursue its current policy, it is smaller schools like St Mary’s Hall that will go to the wall.

We need root and branch reform of our education system, not tinkering at its edges. Labour needs to think again.