How Labour's mission to tax private schools dashes the dreams of people like me

Our writer explains how the imposition of VAT on school fees will harm her family - and possibly the country too in the long run

Gillian Duncan with her two daughters. Photo: Gillian Duncan

My husband and I are “those parents”, with children at an independent school.

We chose this road for a few reasons when we arrived back in the UK from the UAE two years ago. And we don’t regret it for a moment, even though it is becoming more of a financial squeeze to do so – soon to be made worse by the imposition of VAT on my two girls’ school fees.

I can almost hear the chorus of the tiny violins I type. I get it. I experience the judgment regularly now due to the progressively toxic nature of this debate. And I am not looking for your sympathy or even understanding. But I would like others to understand why taxing independent school fees is far from the open and shut case Labour paints it to be, and why it may end up costing everyone in the UK more in the long run.

I was fortunate to grow up abroad when I was a child, which meant most of my education was private, paid for by my dad’s company. We arrived back to the UK from Indonesia when I was nine, and spent two very happy years at a private girls’ school in Hull, where I made good friends. My best friend and I at that school even bought matching very serious looking briefcase-type bags. I proudly took this with me, age 11, on the first day at a sprawling Scottish state secondary school following our move back home to Aberdeen. And it went exactly as you probably imagine it did. I was bullied relentlessly from that day.

The school didn’t do much to address it. And I was becoming progressively more depressed. So after a year, my parents decided to move me to a private girls’ school, like the one I attended in Hull, with my mum returning to work as a nurse to pay for it. I made good friends and the staff at that school helped support me through further hard times, including the difficult aftermath of my parents’ divorce.

I had that experience at the back of my mind when choosing a school for my two girls following our return to the UK after a 12-year stint in the UAE. We didn’t initially plan to put our girls in an independent school, but we were parachuting ourselves from Abu Dhabi into an area of south-east London where we had never visited, having pinpointed it on a map.

And when I saw a house to rent near a state girls’ secondary, it got me thinking. Perhaps we could find a girls’ school that we could enrol them in from the start of their school life in the UK – a place that proved so nurturing for me and, as, studies have proved, is better for girls’ achievement and personal development. So we got in touch with the closest girls’ independent school in the area and signed them up. Independent is the correct description, by the way, rather than private, as it is run by a board of trustees on a non-profit basis – something it shares with three quarters of paid for schools in the sector.

Like most independent school parents, we’re not rich. We don’t go on holidays and we don’t have a car. We choose to spend that money on our girls’ education. We are happy to do that. And we will do everything we can to ensure the girls can continue to stay there, even if it means cutting our expenses more until there is nothing left to trim.

In January the government will impose the tax on fees, making it the only second country in the western world after New Zealand to do so. Government officials admitted last week its figures showed that up to 45,000 children would leave the public school system to take places in state schools after the 20 per cent surcharge was announced. For now, the government believes it can stomach the fallout, saying in a blog in September it expects the numbers leaving private schools to be minimal. That is at question, with estimates of withdrawals ranging from 3 per cent to more than 25 per cent.

The government claims schools can simply absorb the charge, but with staffing costs typically representing up to 80 per cent of school budgets, they have little headroom to make efficiency savings. Schools, many of which are supplied by local businesses, are expected to close as a result, and as many as 10 already have, according to reports.

Around 10,000 of the almost 600,000 pupils from the sector were already withdrawn in the September term. And the policy is still months away from implementation. More pupils will be removed in January when it comes into force, while some parents will try to make it to the end of the summer term to minimise the disruption to their children's education. An unknown number will never start, making estimates towards the upper range look potentially more realistic.

More than a third of pupils receive help with their fees to attend through scholarships or bursaries provided by the schools. They will likely be among the first to be withdrawn because their parents will probably struggle the most to pay for any fee increase.

Even if withdrawals are closer to the lower end of the estimate, the policy is only expected to raise between £1.3 billion and £1.5bn a year, representing only a 2 per cent increase in state school spending. Taxing gambling winnings in the UK, for example, which are not currently subject to VAT, would arguably raise far more. More than £1 million in donations from gambling bosses to the Labour Party has been recorded in the past two years.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer explained his acceptance of £20,000 in donations for accommodation from Labour donor, Lord Alli during the election campaign to ensure his son’s studies were not disrupted ahead of his GCSE exams.

Yet, he is introducing this policy midway through a school year, leaving some parents who can no longer afford the resulting increase with no choice but to find a place, which could in some cases, be during an exam year. Perhaps he considers his children’s needs more important than others.

Mr Starmer defended the policy in the Commons this week, when he was asked by a new Conservative MP about the plan, which "strips hard-working families of the choice of what is best for their children" creating fears of job losses, and squeezing the state education sector to its "absolute limit." He responded by saying he "does understand" that parents "save hard" to send their children to private school. "The problem is we don't have enough teachers in key subjects in our secondary schools. The party opposite may be willing to tolerate that – I'm not," he said.

The removal of 10,000 pupils already represents a 1.6 per cent reduction, already halfway to the lower estimate produced in an independent report by IFS, the author of which happens to be a close friend of Labour MP Matthew Pennycook. As housing and planning minister, he is in charge of overseeing the removal of business rates relief from independent schools and has been referred to the parliamentary commissioner for allegedly breaching three rules, including not previously disclosing his friendship with its author, Luke Sibieta.

The policy’s biggest champion, the Education Secretary herself, Bridget Phillipson, has also been referred to the standards watchdog this week for comments she made about children at private schools. Sharing an article which identified ways for independent schools to make savings ahead of the planned introduction of the charge in January on X, Ms Philipson said the country’s “state schools need teachers more than private schools need embossed stationery”.

Experts in the independent school sector and several MPs on the other side of the Commons – Labour is the only party that supports the policy – have criticised her comments. “Her statements once again do not represent typical independent schools and she is misusing her position to target the very children for which she should be responsible. Being a Secretary of State means she should be representing all children and not just the majority,” Stafford Grammar School’s head teacher, Nick Pietrek, told The National. “I have made a complaint to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and I know many others have done likewise.”

It is believed many children who will be removed have special educational needs and disabilities (Send). Around a fifth of children who attend private schools have them, and they have often ended up there because they did not get the support they needed in the state sector. A legal challenge has been launched by a parent of a Send pupil on the basis that adding VAT to fees will force children into “unsuitable” places in the state sector.

On Tuesday, it emerged that three private Christian schools and a group of parents are preparing their own legal challenge, pledging to launch a judicial review if the policy is not dropped. They argue the tax would discriminate against them because it would probably force Christian schools to close.

Others, including the Independent Schools Council (ISC), are also weighing legal options, awaiting the full details of the legislation to be released in the budget at the end of the month.

“By treating our sector as a stereotype, a homogenous whole, the issues with VAT across the diverse range of our schools go conveniently ignored: military families; small, low-fee faith schools; specialist SEND provision. These are what will be damaged, not the large schools the government continues to point its rhetoric at,” Julie Robinson, General Secretary of ISC, said in a statement issued to The National.

Why is this a problem for everyone? If the policy backfires and more parents withdraw their children than the government's estimates suggest, it will lead to an increase in pupils in the already struggling state sector. It will also fail to make money, leaving taxpayers liable for the bill. So the government better be sure the benefits are worth the substantial cost.

Parents like me just want the government to listen. "Rather than making assumptions, we invite Ms Phillipson to meet us and hear the stories of working-class parents who choose independent schools and why," Loveena Tandon, a spokeswoman for the parent-led Education Not Taxation group told The National. "These are the very people she claims to support. By listening to their experiences, we can create policies that genuinely benefit every child in the country.”