VAT: Independent Schools

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

Others have talked about the effect on children of military families and on children with special educational needs, as well as the impact on friendships, mental wellbeing, jobs in both state and private schools, and the bursaries, but I will focus on students in exam years. I declare an interest as I have three children in private school, one of whom is in her final year.

This measure is wrong, but it is especially reckless for those in exam years. We have heard a lot about the steps the Prime Minister took to ensure that his son could study peacefully, to give him the best chance in his GCSEs. Why does he not want the same for all the other children in this country?

The measure is not only disruptive but potentially impossible. Local to my constituency, Stamford school offers A-level Russian, Lincoln Minster school offers A-level Chinese and Oakham school offers the international baccalaureate. How could those children move into a state school that does not offer their course? Even if their course is offered, the timetable might not work. And even if the timetable works, the school might not teach the same periods and texts. For example, a student at Nottingham girls’ high school studying the Russian revolution as part of the AQA history curriculum might have to move partway through the year to Branston academy, which is teaching the Tudors under the OCR curriculum. What should children taking such courses do? Should they change course, merely months or even weeks before their exams? Should they try to learn the material themselves? Should they resit a whole year of school? Will the Government provide state schools with the extra resources to help those children complete their courses? If they intend to do so, will those resources be ready and available to the state schools those children will be forced into for January 2025?

I want to talk briefly about bursaries. I went to a state primary and a state secondary school. When I was a teenager hiking with my parents in the North York moors, I met a young lad who told me all about the cool, exciting school he went to, where they did a lot of outdoor stuff. I said, “I would like to go there. That would be really cool.” My parents said, “That’s far too expensive, Caroline. We can’t do that.” Then I read about the scholarships they offered. I was very proud and pleased that Gordonstoun School offered me the opportunity to study at the sixth form there—I will always be intensely grateful for that.

The measures proposed by this Government will reduce the amount of bursary support available to students like me, and those currently receiving bursaries, which enables them to get the education they wish for. Schools will have to cut back. The most obvious areas in which to do that will be in their charity work, the extra teaching staff they offer to pupils in state schools and the facilities they make freely available to state schools. This is a short-sighted measure focused entirely on the politics of envy and division.

--- Later in debate ---

[Saqib Bhatti (Meriden and Solihull East) (Con)]

I want to say from the outset that this is clearly an attack on aspiration, an attack on opportunity. I say to the constituents of the hon. Member for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) that he voted for winter fuel payments to be slashed and now he is voting for an attack on hard-working families who will be struggling to make ends meet. I went to a state school and an independent school and I was grateful for both those journeys and the education that I received in both. Plenty of hard-working families will be struggling to make ends meet.

The first point I want to make is about tone. I will come back to the Education Secretary’s tweet, which was deeply offensive. Surely Labour Members must acknowledge—it is a simple case of maths—that people who are rich enough to afford VAT increases, whether it is 4%, 16%, which is the average, or the whole 20%, will continue to send their kids to independent schools and pay the fees. It is the people who are struggling to make ends meet, or the really hard-up families, or—God forbid—parents of children who are on scholarships and bursaries who will no longer be able to send their kids to those schools, because those schools will have to withdraw those scholarships and bursaries as they will be less affordable. So the tone of this debate is really important. I would caution the Government to be more reticent on this. They refer to tax breaks; these are not tax breaks. Education should not be, and is not, taxed, and they are about to open that Pandora’s box.

There have been a lot of comments from Government Members about state schools. I agree: standards in state schools should be improved. They talk about the last 14 years. We delivered a real-terms increase per pupil. We have delivered record funding—about £60 billion. They may challenge that, but it is pure fact. I am happy to share those facts. We did that, and the result of that, especially with our focus on things like phonics, which Labour challenged when in opposition, is that we now have some of the highest reading standards in the world—independently and internationally rated. We also have some of the highest ratings in mathematics. So the Government may try to frame this debate as anything other than ideological, but those arguments are severely undermined by the Education Secretary’s tweet, which put it out there that this is really a class war.

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

My hon. Friend is making a great point about how this change is ideologically motivated. Can he see why there is a difference between private school fees, which the Government have chosen to tax, and something like Kip McGrath tuition, which is also a paid-for form of education, which they have chosen not to tax—at least yet?

[Saqib Bhatti]

My hon. Friend made an excellent speech about the practicalities of introducing this change in January, and she makes an excellent point now about the slippery slope involved. The Government say that the money will be focused on educational improvements, but there is no guarantee of that, as it will go into the general pot. They promised 6,500 new teachers, which is fewer than we delivered; it is a drop in the ocean, which will barely make a difference to the hundreds of thousands of schools that, of course, need extra teachers. I concede that point; we should have better educational standards.

SEND will affect every Member of Parliament. It affects me. I was with a north Solihull parents group just a few weeks ago. Those parents will no longer be able to afford to give their children a private education for SEND purposes, and they will now have to rely on the state. Surely Government Members can see that that will further increase the burden on state provision, particularly if they are right that there is a lack of teachers. The Minister might address this point: how does this policy improve state school provision? How does it improve the standard and quality of delivery for SEND parents? It was all right for the Prime Minister to make special provision for his kids, and for the Education Secretary to have a benefactor, but what are these parents going to do?