Labor’s private school tax is reverse discrimination | Politics News

Chaotic and noisy classrooms with 60 children moving freely in common areas. No all-round care for working parents. A windowless isolation room for misbehaving children.

When I toured the local public schools for my son a few years ago, I was told all of these features in a disturbing way. I felt worried and uncomfortable watching this in action – and I certainly couldn’t imagine how this setup would work for our family.

That’s when I knew I had to look for another option. So my husband and I enrolled him in our local private school – and we never looked back.

Two years later, we even enrolled our daughter in the same school.

But now it feels like Labour’s war on private schools by imposing a 20% VAT is punishing us for wanting the best for our children.

Rachel Reeves recently said: “There is an obsession with the 7% of children who attend our private schools.” “I am more interested in the 93% of children who attend our state schools.”

When I read this I felt angry, disillusioned, alienated and different.

While I understand that public schools are significantly underfunded, this doesn’t have to be a competition. Children are not statistics, they are individuals – each with their own unique story.

Comments like this only divide communities by pitting us against each other. Isn’t Rachel Reeves’ brief as an MP to care equally about the education of all children in the UK?

To me, this is the definition of reverse discrimination.

I was born in the UK but grew up in Canada where I attended public school. My husband grew up in an inner city area of ​​Bradford and was fortunate to secure a place at a secondary school.

We were both the first in our families to go to university – both children of immigrants. Therefore, we did not grow up with privileges, connections, or large inheritances.

After moving to the UK, I gained my PhD and now work as a clinical psychologist in private practice, having left the NHS a year ago, whilst my husband works as a senior software developer for a US based company.

For us, education was the solution to social and economic advancement, and for this very reason we decided to prioritize this for our children too.

Today my two children – aged six and eight – attend our local independent preparatory school, where they are all thriving in different ways.

My son receives differentiated instruction in his classroom, which simply means that the teacher can give different versions of spelling and math tests. This allows him to stay engaged in learning instead of being bored and disturbed.

In contrast, my daughter has a mild speech delay that causes her to have difficulty keeping up in the classroom. Therefore, she receives weekly one-on-one meetings with a teaching assistant to bring her up to speed (with no formal training required). and health plan that local authorities can prepare in public schools).

Alongside this, we receive weekly email updates from the school on the results of their intervention sessions and monthly meetings with their teacher to share feedback on their academic and pastoral performance.

Both of my children enjoy going to school, participating in various local after-school clubs, or taking part in extracurricular programs suitable for families with two working parents.

Essentially, they thrive in smaller classes and personalized learning. Teachers have the autonomy to teach in a way that meets the needs of their classes and are able to respond to problems as they arise.

I first heard about Labour’s plan to introduce a 20% VAT on independent school fees last year. I was immediately concerned about the introduction of this tax on private education, which is why my husband and I decided not to vote for Labor in the general election, which was a direct result of this policy.

I believe this is reverse discrimination because the government appears intent on completely ignoring our concerns and is deliberately displaying a biased view of the role of independent schools and the families who use them.

The thing is: my children’s school is a small, local, independent prep school on a tight budget and has neither an endowment fund nor large cash reserves to fall back on. There are no sports facilities or flashy buildings.

In fact, our school fees rose by 7% last year and a further 7.5% this year. A further 20% on top of the annual increases will be unsustainable for many middle class families and will have a detrimental impact on children in care.

Our school has already told parents that it cannot “absorb” the VAT and will likely pass on all 20% of it to parents, some of whom are professionals and are already making significant sacrifices to pay school fees.

This certainly applies to our family too.

If we didn’t pay school fees, we would have bought a much larger house in a top state school catchment area and taken several luxury holidays a year. I would have left the NHS much earlier than I did and become a housewife, which would have reduced our taxable income.

Ultimately, we will do whatever it takes to keep our children in their current school, where they are happy and successful. Therefore, I will be moving from part-time to full-time employment, which means I will have less time to support my daughter with her learning needs.

Fortunately, we are in a relatively fortunate position at the moment – we can afford to keep our children in school, but both my husband and I are discussing moving to Canada in the future when our attempts to improve our quality of life Improving family failure is no longer achievable in the UK.

There is no question that state schools need support so that children feel comfortable. But children in independent schools also have the same right to an education that enables them to achieve their full potential.

This kind of reverse discrimination from Labor on this issue is a disgrace.

Many schools like my children’s are becoming collateral damage in the push to tax education at 20%. But apparently that’s okay since according to Rachel Reeves it’s only the 7%.

What a sad society we have become when compassion for children’s education and mental health is reserved for only a select percentage of the British population.

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