Labour VAT raid on private schools ‘will displace vulnerable pupils’

Independent schools leader fears many children will be unsupported in state sector and calls for levy to exempt more special needs pupils

An independent schools group has warned that the Labour Party has failed to engage with it over warnings that thousands of vulnerable children could have their education “thrown up in the air” by a planned VAT raid.
Julie Robinson, chief executive of the Independent Schools Council (ISC), said more than 95,000 children with special educational needs were at risk if Labour imposed its threatened tax penalty.
“A fifth of independent school children in our [ISC] schools – more than 103,000 – need some form of Special Education Need or Disability (SEND) support,” she said.
“But currently only children with the most severe or complex needs, who are covered by an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) – that’s just 6.9 per cent of them, just over 7,000 pupils – will be exempt from the planned 20 per cent levy.
“This leaves a very large cohort of children in the independent system – 95,000 plus on current figures – who have additional needs but who don’t have an EHCP.
“We all know this is true and yet the fees of these children are not exempt from Labour’s planned new tax. Most of their parents are also already stretched financially so thousands of these children could be displaced into the state system.”
Ms Robinson said she feared many of the children could then be left “without specialist support” in the state sector and specialist schools could face closure if pupils were forced to move.
“For many of these children, their parents have chosen to spend their money on an independent education because they need that specialist help – which may range from needing a quieter environment to a smaller class to enable them to cope.
“State schools cannot always provide that everywhere – it is not their fault that they are under-funded. It is widely and generally accepted that there is a lack of funding for provision for children with special educational needs in the state sector and, at the moment, independent schools are providing a really important capacity of specialism.”
The ISC, which represents more than 1,400 private schools in the UK, has lobbied Labour to look again at its planned VAT on fees policy and exempt more SEND children from the tax levy to protect their education.
Ms Robinson also warned that “if Labour don’t change their current approach to SEND pupils within their VAT plan for independent schools, it could create a perverse incentive for parents to seek out an EHCP which will be hugely costly for local authorities”.
“Equally, even if parents have a child with an EHCP, if that school cannot stay open because other children do not have an EHCP, they could still lose their school,” she says.
“We need to protect more children with SEND because on Labour’s current policy, we don’t know how many children could potentially be displaced, where they will be and which schools will be affected.
“We could be faced with a very severe situation where vulnerable children have their education disrupted. Parents need reassurance that this is not going to happen.”
Calling on Labour to broaden their potential tax levy to exempt more SEND children, she added:
“Let’s hope they take a practical view in the end and say ‘Well, we actually need that provision for the sake of the children’.
“Labour say they want every child to have the best education and that’s something we would all agree with but at the moment there isn’t enough money in the state system to make that happen.
“If it’s about money, you might say independent school parents are already subsidising the state. It’s amazing how much that has been twisted into them having “tax breaks” or independent schools having “tax loopholes” when it is actually the other way round and this is a very specific and targeted tax only on parents who pay private school fees.”
The ISC has lobbied Labour to carry out a formal assessment into their current policy on this and would like “to see a higher bar for all SEND pupils to protect those children”, says Robinson.
“We would welcome engagement on this with the Labour Party. We have tried and it is not happening. We hope the policy itself will refine and evolve towards being fairer for all SEND pupils in the independent sector.”
A Labour Party spokesperson said: “Labour will invest in delivering a brilliant state education for all our children including enhancing targeted support to help every child thrive, funded by ending tax breaks for private schools.
“Independent schools do not have to pass this cost on to parents, and a high-profile independent school has already said they will not be doing so.”