The major piss boiling thing is that, if you’re rich enoughm you can “donate” to your kids school and deduct it from your own personal tax bill.

Not read through the whole thing, but charitable donations are not considered donations and therefore would not be eligible for payment under the Gift Aid rules and therefore cannot be used to reduce a tax burden.
The definition of a “donation” or a “gift” is that the payee hands over the money with no expectation of a direct benefit for himself or his family.

but charitable donations are not considered donations and therefore would not be eligible for payment under the Gift Aid rules and therefore cannot be used to reduce a tax burden.

I think this needs clarifying a bit!

Put simply, you cannot claim your childs private education fees as charitable donations and therefore reduce your tax bill.

Life ain’t fair deal with it.

Wow, my head just exploded at the depth of this point. You’ve convinced me with you eloquence and intellect. **** the poor and dispossessed. Those **** should have had better parents.

I can’t speak for all schools, but….

They then give that interest back to the parents (in the form of a discount on their fees).
The parents are not paying in advance to fix their fees at today’s price, that doesn’t happen

Yes they are – there is no ‘discount’.

the fees can (and probably will) still rise

No they don’t.

I can guarantee that I know of at least two of our locals schools that you can pay 5 years in advance and that then fixes the fees at that rate unless the annual fee increase is over 4.5%.

The school doesn’t make the money, the parents do – the school makes the investment, and because they have charitable status they don’t pay any tax on the interest it earns. They then give that interest back to the parents (in the form of a discount on their fees).

They pay upfront and receive a discount on the fees at the gilt rate typically. One alternative would be putting the lump sum on deposit and paying the fees as they fall due. In that situation they would pay tax on the interest on the deposit interest, the discount they receive compensates them for this loss of interest.. Hence it can be argued they have benefited because they have paid less tax than a hypothetical alternative. That is how it works, my analysis above is based on that. It won’t be the first time and it won’t be the last time people struggle with understanding time value of money and tax, it is one reason banks make so much.

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There are 22 members of the cabinet, the other 5 attend cabinet but are not full members (they get paid less). I counted May as state as she attended a state senior school.

People with money will always have an advantage even if private schools where abolished

They would buy houses next to the very best schools
They would pay for after school coaching and summer schools
They would use the money saved in school fees to give their kids a financial headstart (eg buy them a house/flat)
etc

The teachers at private schools have in all likelihood been educated and trained by the state. If those teachers work in the independent sector, then the social contract that underpins state-funded services begins to fall apart, as the investment made by the state in those teachers is not realised beyond income tax.

So anyone who gets educated /trained by the state must always work for them after leaving education? Bizarre

People with money will always have an advantage even if private schools where abolished

OMG the of thought are really showing us their stuff on this thread!!!

So anyone who gets educated /trained by the state must always work for them after leaving education? Bizarre

…and what were people saying about social mobility earlier!! 😯

I love the fact that anyone who attends a private school is a toff, as is the family. That makes me a toff as Jnr attends a private school (we’re definitely not!). I also love the fact that we’re all high earners who live in big expensive houses. I’ll admit to my house being quite nice and in a nice village, the same village as I grew up in a council house, but the house wasn’t mega money. We’re also no high earners, both the OH and I are teachers at state schools.

The fact is Jnr was failing at his old school, he had plenty of mates there but detested it. We moved him about 6 months ago so he would have a chance when it came to his GCSEs (now in Y11). The main advantage for us are class sizes, they’re tiny so he gets a lot more help and he can’t get away with titting about so much. Our rationale for sending him was that he’s unlikely to want to go to university, so if he wants to stay there for 6th form we’ll have spent the same amount of money as 3 years at university.

Anyway on to the charity thing. I can’t really work out why his school is a charity. It’s a small school and doesn’t seem to support other schools or anything in the community. The town does have a lot of selective private schools who belong under the banner of a charitable trust (jnr’s school isn’t part of this trust and isn’t selective). These other schools do a lot of work in the community, there are loads of funded places offered to low income families. The trust also took over the running of the state school (now academy) I used to go to, which had been failing massively for about 25 years. It’s normal catchment covers some fairly rough estates, but the trust are getting some very good results.

What I find amusing about Jnr’s school are the various fund raising activities that go on. No different to any other school, Christmas and summer fayres, cake sales, raffles etc… All to raise money for things in school. The target attendees for these events being the parents and families of children that go there. The same parents who pay for their kids to go to the school! Why not charge a bit more and be done with it?

The other weekend Jnr went on a rugby tour for the school team. We paid for his weekend away, but they still decide to have a cake sale to help fund the trip. We paid for the ingredients and baked a cake for the sale, Jnr went and spent some of his money stuffing his face (we don’t mind all this, I just find it funny!). They may as well just charged everyone going on the tour an extra £5-10!