VAT on private school fees isn’t ‘class war’, it is common sense

It can be overwhelming at times to consider the challenges that exist within Scottish education. Whether it is falling attainment rates for all, the increase in the achievement gap between the richest and poorest pupils, the ‘intolerable’ crisis in supporting young people with additional support needs, or the tangle of piecemeal reform the system finds itself in, there is no shortage of urgent and pressing issues.

While ‘resource’ is not always the answer, it’s clear these issues require cold hard cash to begin to be addressed. Indeed, the culmination of a decade of ongoing education reform, and pledges it is the government’s ‘top priority’, sees looming savage cuts to core provision, including to teaching jobs and even potentially the length of the school week.

Big gap in private and state spending

The Office for Budget Responsibility has estimated VAT on independent school fees will generate approximately £1.7 billion a year, which the UK Government has pledged to spend on state education. This will generate roughly £170 million in Barnett Formula consequentials for the Scottish Government. While, rightly, Holyrood can spend that money as it sees fit, the Education Secretary has said she was waiting on the details of education consequentials so she could plan additional education spending.

It is important to consider that those who attend private schools are heavily concentrated among households in the top income and wealth brackets. Further, average private school fees in Scotland are roughly £15,000, whereas per pupil spending in state education is just over £8,500 (the highest in the UK), and this gap is increasing.

Across the UK, the fees of private schools have outstripped inflation, rising by an average of 24 per cent since 2010. All of this demonstrates how places at private schools are not consumed based on the price sensitivity of fees, but in purchasing access to an incredibly well-resourced educational experience, social and cultural networks, and opportunities not available in the state sector.

Legitimate concerns

Ninety-six private schools in Scotland will be affected, with benefits hopefully felt across many of the 2,567 state institutions. It represents a tax on the fees of four per cent of pupils to redistribute some resources into the education of the other 96 per cent.

There are some legitimate concerns with the policy as announced, however. There are young people who attend private school because of their complex additional support needs. While within the policy there is a rebate available for places which local authorities fund for those young people, care must be given so that none of these young people lose out. It should also clearly not be introduced in the middle of a school year; that is an unfair change.

This policy doesn’t stifle aspiration; it redistributes resources for a more equitable education system. It is not the politics of envy or some ‘class war’, as a reductionist debate aims to assert. It is common sense. It is about raising everyone up, not dragging the top down.

Barry Black is an education researcher at the University of Glasgow. He is a member of the Labour party