V.A.T, in school fees

Daphne, I was giving my opinion on trisher's post that teachers in private schools are state educated and private schools benefit from this,

Going by the views of the far left on here ,if Corbyn did win in 2020 we can change the name of the UK to little Russia

You really are a fool DD,he had to take crap like that from badly educated neighbours who used to drink, smoke and take all manner of holidays, their decision , but he chose to educate his son. He lived on a estate that I would not have liked to live on, with jealous and uneducated neighbours, what's your excuse.

I have told you be is not wealthy and he is still paying back the money for his son's education. I am not a liar and when I tell you he is not wealthy I expect decent people to accept this.

I have for the first time showed my partner a post I am on in Gransnet and he told me you cannot argue with a Idiot, I agree, so you carry on living on sour grapes, and his son will carry on reaping the rewards that his wonderful Father sacrificed so much for.

If something is Getting up your nose try blowing it and stop talking rubbish.

I agree daphnedil that charitable status for independent schools should be removed. It is giving an unfair tax break to a organisations that are not charitable. Some of them try to pay lip service by doing "outreach work" etc
They are not charities by any stretch of the imagination.
I know a young man who went to one and had a wander round once. Fantastic sporting facilities and half a dozen Steinways for music students to practice on.
All schools should be great. The tories have been wasting huge amounts of money on "free schools"in England while banning Local Authorities from planning and building their own new schools. And all because Gove saw a couple of successful "charter schools" in the USA and seized on the idea with missionary zeal.
By allowing private schools to thrive the state sector has long been undermined in many ways and inequalities are perpetrated. Many people of moderately left wing views would like to see an end to them. One effect would be that all the people in an area would have a vested interest in the success of their local school.
And yes - anything we can do to improve the nutritional status of children is a good thing. I have seen children who packed their own lunch boxes eating a variety of sweet biscuits for lunch. I've also seen children given "lunch money" come into school with a pocket full of sweets. At one time there were proper school dinners with "seconds". When I taught in Oldham there were 3 sittings for dinner. Some of the boys - rather skinny teenagers - would always go into the last sitting as that was when you had a chance of 'seconds".
If you go to a school in a poor area you will see that the kids are on average smaller than those in the more affluent area a couple of miles away. And if you compare the sizes of the kids in the different sets, you will see that the average size of the ones in the "bottom sets" is noticeably less, with a later age of puberty.

If private schools ceased to exist, the state education system would be in trouble because there would not be enough school places for everyone's children. Why does the Labour Party think parents, who have done well in life and who decide that they would prefer their children be educated in the private system, should be expected to pay for other people's children? They are already doing the tax payer a favour by removing the cost of educating their own children from the state budget!

Jeremy Corbyn went to a grammar school himself but he opposes them. Diane Abbot opposes private schools but sent her own son to one. Both are hypocrites. There are many other Labour MPs who also choose to use the private system for their children. It seems they think the state system is good enough for their voters' children but not for their own!

Do you really think that the cost of actually training a teacher is met by the fees charged by universities. Yes they pay but that is only part of the cost.
Suppose a doctor chose to only work in private practice and not be part of the National Health service- oh but they can't do that because their training requires they work in hospitals. There is no such restriction on teachers.
I agree it is nit picking but it is just as valid as those who are insisting that somehow people who have their children privately educated are paying twice because they pay tax and school fees Just pointing out that they benefit from their taxes anyway.

So doctors who choose to work in private practice but are educated in state education, receive training in NHS hospital which is also paid for by the state are different to teachers who wotk in private schools yet received their education from the state

Trisher I don't really think it matters that teachers trained at the expense of the state then teach in private schools - they are still teaching UK kids who go on to work and contribute. I'm generally ok with the concept of private education, and indeed with the tax breaks such schools receive (given that the parents still pay their share of general taxes) but I do agree with what one poster said (Jess I think) that if all kids were in the local state school we would all be fully invested in supporting our schools. As it is many of the parents who are most committed to good education have opted out of the state system, which I'm sure suffers as a result. But whether this is a good enough reason to frogmarch them and their kids into the local school (eg by taxing the private system to the extent that it is no longer viable) is another matter. I'm in two minds but, on balance, would leave things as they are in the absence of truly reliable evidence that change would really have a substantially beneficial effect (i.e. much more than a hunch on my part!).

People with no children pay for state schools. People who only work here for a couple of years before returning to other countries pay for state schools. Everyone benefits from living in an educated country.
The state system has coped with bigger challenges than closing Independent schools and could adapt if there was a phased closure of Independent schools. In most boroughs is it no more than one or two new primaries and one more secondary.
Let's face it, if you were starting with a blank canvas, to design an education system, you would not come up with what we have at the moment - a divisive system that gives life advantages to the children whose parents just happen to be able to afford one of the more expensive independent schools. It's a system that we have inherited because school-types were started more than once in our history, with compulsory education for all - the state run system - coming late to the party. And this system has been a perpetuated by the class system - whereby power has been retained disproportionately by men who came through the Eton/Harrow - > Oxbridge route. And this inequality of power is still alive and well - the government that has imposed swingeing austerity on the poorest in the country was dominated by some fine examples.

Lets face it, if you were starting with a blank canvas, to design an education system, you would not come up with what we have at the moment

Too right JessM it's a complete mess.

I think, rafichagran, some posts lead to "carry(ing) on living on sour grapes."

It never makes any sense when posts devolve into money and the differences in peoples lives, but such foolery happens often. Ridiculous comparisons and unhappiness.

Can't stand sour grapes.
What's sour grapes about wanting an equal playing field - or any playing field at all - for all children, not just the privileged few.
You cannot dispute daphne's figures about the number of children at private schools whose parents earnings are in the top ten percent.
I speak as someone who went to a private school, but whose father quite regularly drove the school bus behind all the Jaguars and Rolls Royces. No, he couldn't afford to pay for me to go there.
I was the only one in my year whose parents applied for clothing grants for me.

I was talking about the insistance that my partner is wealthy, he was not/is not.
The fact is that is, he told me if VAT was put in he could not afford to send his son there.
I am not disputing free meals for families that need it, but not for everyone. I would like to see everyone get a good education but not at the expense of other parents.
Yes some parents who send their children to fee paying schools are wealthy but alot are hard working people who make sacrifices.

More I read the fsr left views here the more Tom Courtney and his grey outfit in Dr Zhivago comes to mind - up the revolution

So you think private education is acceptable, do you, Annie?

The reason they have charitable status is because they were built for the poor whose perants couldn't afford educating their boys.

As Tom Courtney went to the same school as I did and came from the working class I think he did very well out of the state system. Of course he went through when there was a huge surge of upward mobility and working class kids could make it in the arts, music and culture sections because the rich kids were all being lawyers and professionals. These days kids from private schools dominate even the arts and popular music sections. You have to wonder what can be done.

I have said it before and I will say it again. One persons idea of "wealthy" is often very different from the next persons.

Someone on minimum wage might feel wealthy earning £8-9 per hour. Some people earn this in the blink of an eye and would think they were poor earning twice that.

I do know the history of schooling in this country Jen. I have said they should not have charitable status . I have mixed feelings about them and I speak from the experience of being educated in a town with a girls convent and a boys boarder and from working in one.

I chose not to let my daughters go to the convent and stood firmly against my grandson sitting the entrance exam for the boys boarder.

For yesrs the Anglican priest and his wife at the boys boarder were close friends.

I went to a girls Grammer , we only mixed with boys from the boys grammer, convent girls only mixed with the boys boarder, the sec mod children the same except it was a mixed school, it was wrong, it was unfair , it was unhealthy .

I am more against Grammer schools than private schools but the far left posts have been so unpleasant , all this the state, the state, the state, A 16 hour a day isn't hard work etc, stinks of communism which is where some want to change the Labour Party to. And against free schools.

I am against parents paying vat on school fees to feed children in state schools, they pay tax so should not pay again. I know parents on benefits and I know benefit cheats who can't be arsed to cook for their children but can head for the pub at a speed.

daphne is wrong to claim the average fees are seventeen thousand , fees for eleven year old are not the same as fees for sixteen year olds.

I dislike greed and I dislike envy , I dislike the thought of a communist style state

Trisher, Tom Courtney was in a film Dr Zhivago, a film from a fictional book based on the history of the Russian revolution , spot the difference ? A film role is not real,life .

I recently read, that the average figure for private education for a child is around £156,000 (a heck of a lot more in some areas) . Times that figure by however many children you have and then try saying that you do not have to be wealthy to afford private education.

I would just be happy for my DGC to be able to get into a school within a mile or two of home.

I went to an all girls grammar (unbelievable I know) and I hated it.

It isn't communism to say that a day working in a corner shop isn't necessarily harder than the day of a professional. I simply offered my opinion that having done both one was easier and more profitable than the other. Could you explain how that "stinks of communism" please. You were posting about how hard someone's day was and I tried to explain the difference. The problem is that you refuse to recognise anyone's opinion other than your own, even when they have more experience and knowledge. Constantly falling back on this complaint that people are "leftist" or "communist" really is bigoted.
If you are wondering why I chose the less profitable but harder option as a career, working in a shop is bloody boring and I thought I had what was then known as a vocation (is that leftist and communist?)

As far as doctors go Anniebach if they choose to go into private practice they will either have trained as a GP or will be a specialist in a particular area both of which require them to work in the NHS whilst they obtain the required qualification. If the same restriction was placed on teachers I would see no problem, as it is they can go straight from teacher training into the private sector. Interesting enough they are then not qualified to teach in the state system because they have not completed a probationary year. I do know of someone appointed to a state school from the private sector who did his probationary year as a head teacher!

Trisher I am sure your parents had time to sit, I remember corner shops where the owners came into the shop to serve from their living quarters. The corner shop my friends run is a newsagents, post office, off licence, sandwich bar and groceries, they both work in there all day and work extremely hard, times have moved on

As to your opinions on my posts ? Apart from mocking me being dyslexic nothing else you say bothers me, I respect all opinions doesn't mean I have to agree with them.

Dear, oh dear, oh dear a poster talks of work in a family business and this talk smacks of communism - really? What will we hear next just so attacks on the current Labour Party leader can be made. Twisted logic isn't even close.

Nobody mocked you for being dyslexic AB. I know I asked when (out of interest from my own experience) you were diagnosed and what was done for you but you chose, as is your right, not to answer.

GG, I was not referring to you, truth is I choose not even to think about you, I was referring to someone who posted something on this thread .

So I will now place you back ignore, take care.

P.S. Is you need an address where you can buy wooden spoons in bulk do ask