Independent Schools: VAT

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I strongly support VAT on tuition fees. If parents want to avoid it, there is a perfectly acceptable alternative: send children to boarding schools in the state sector, where VAT is likely to apply to boarding alone and not to tuition. For example, Keswick School, formerly a grammar school and now a comprehensive with a wide curriculum, in my former constituency, which three generations of my family have attended, provides day-pupil and boarding facilities in a beautiful environment in the heart of the Lake District, and attracts pupils worldwide.

Whereas public school fees average over £40,000 per year, state boarding schools such as Keswick School average at around £14,000. It is their wide social mix, in an atmosphere of local intake, parental aspiration and teacher commitment, that enable such schools to top state and private sector academic listings. Such schools are few and far between. I would like a huge expansion. Too many parents commit to public schools in the belief that a narrower social mix uniquely provides for the standards that they seek. They are mistaken. There are far too many casualties in the system that so often go unreported.