Quote:
Originally Posted by Hugh
Very few (if any) of the Private Schools in Leeds have put 20% on from January - GSAL (the Grammar School At Leeds) are absorbing the cost this year (it’s a big school, with nearly 2,400 pupils), and Richmond House School (225 pupils), just down the road from us in Far Headingley, are putting them up by 8%.
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A school the size of GSAL is absorbing more than £8m if it’s not passing on VAT to 2,400 pupils. For me this goes to the heart of the problem with our private schools and their charitable status. To what extent are they actually a charity? There can’t be many charities that can just find a spare £8 million down the back of the sofa. How many more bursaries could a school that size be funding if it had been deploying those funds?
My missus was lucky enough to go to a private school and she has been getting bombarded this week with requests to donate to a funding drive prompted by the new VAT measures. In their case, it seems, they don’t have a spare £8 million in their back pocket, but on the other hand, when they come with the massive begging bowl, it’s with the aim of getting their super-wealthy old boys and girls to subsidise the already comfortably-off families of current pupils.* It all looks very like finance directors acting to defend a business model rather than charities working to fulfil a charitable purpose.
Nobody scrimps and saves to raise £15-20k per child, per year, to secure private schooling. Anyone who thinks they’re ’going without’ by spending their money on a private education for their kids needs to give their head a wobble because they haven’t the first idea what ‘going without’ actually means (Clue: it doesn’t mean only going on a ski holiday every other year).
(Edit) *We are neither super-wealthy enough to donate, nor comfortably-off enough to send our kids there
