Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 7 October 2024 to Question 5661 on Private Education: VAT, whether her Department has made a specific assessment of the potential impact of the policy on children with special educational needs in the independent sector.

This government is committed to ending the VAT exemption that private schools enjoy and will confirm the introduction of these changes at the Budget on 30 October. The Office for Budget Responsibility will also certify the government’s costings for these measures at that time.

Children with education, health and care plans that provide a necessary local authority funded place at a private school, will not be impacted by this policy. This is because local authorities can reclaim VAT on service expenditure through existing routes.

Analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies assumes a net gain to the public finances of £1.3 to 1.5 billion per year in the medium to long run as a result of removing tax exemptions from private schools. This would allow for about a 2% increase in state school spending in England. This analysis can be found here: https://ifs.org.uk/publications/tax-private-school-fees-and-state-school-spending.