How Can I Help?

Thank you for your interest in this campaign!

We welcome help from parents and others who support parents’ right to choose the best school they can for their child.

Be informed and stay in touch

We want everyone to be able and willing to enter the debate. This website will be a place to keep you updated on developments, and share talking points emphasising why this policy is not only bad for us, but bad for all schools, communities and for the public finances.
Stay in touch. At the easiest possible level, please just keep following our updates. Also, please sign up to the Facebook group. This is a forum to support each other and share ideas and media updates. You can find it here: Education Not Taxation: Parents Against School Fee VAT.
You could also subscribe to Isabel Paterson’s blog to read a no-holds-barred view on the topic.
See what the data says. Labour regularly cite the Institute for Fiscal Studies as the basis of this policy. You can read the IFS paper here. EDSK examined the obstacles of implementing school fee VAT. The Adam Smith Institute reviewed the economic arguments and consequences underpinning Labour’s policy proposals. You can find those here and here. Ashbridge Partners conducted a survey of independent school parents, and you can find more about that here.

Speak up

Speak out locally: Share how this issue affects you or those close to you. Share your concerns in community Facebook groups, your local newspaper and religious or social organisations. Speak to your own school and fellow parents, including parents in state schools. We all want great schools, but taxing independent school fees won’t raise money or help state schools. See “Key Messages” below as a starting point.
Contact your MP: Your MP, regardless of party, needs to know how important this issue is to you. The more people who contact them, the clearer the message will be. You can find a template letter here, to help you get started. You can find your MP here.

Please be respectful and positive, and we encourage you to share your story – how this issue will affect you or those you know. We’d love to bring copies of these letters to MPs in person, if we receive enough. If you’d like us to include yours, please cc us on mail@educationnottaxation.org.

Get more actively involved

If you’re under the impression Education Not Taxation is some well-funded, highly-disciplined lobbying group with an office and professional PR firm…well, we’re sorry to disappoint you. There are about eight of us working as volunteers, and we all have full-time jobs and families to look after. Whatever is a couple of rungs below a “cottage industry”…that’s us! So we’re desperate for some assistance. We’d love to hear from anyone willing to:

Coordinate discussions and engagement at your school: it would be terrific to have a local champion at every independent school, please let us know if you’re willing to be that person by completing the form on the Contact Us page.
Help us in HQ! We are a small group and we’d really love some helpers to mobilise the campaign as we hurtle towards the election. At the moment, our greatest needs include writing on social media, PR, drafting regular campaign communications (such as updates like this) and also analytical support. If you can spare an hour or two each week, we’d love to hear from you – contact us here.

Key Messages:

Speaking out can be hard, especially if you’re unsure what to say or how to communicate your concerns. Below are some key messages that will help you get started.

Independent schools aren’t simply schools for wealthy children. Most independent school families are just working, taxpaying parents who make life-changing sacrifices to make this possible. Adding VAT will force many families to move their children to state schools, causing unnecessary stress on these children.
Parents send their children to independent schools for many reasons. These include better support for children with special education needs (such as dyslexia, ADHD, etc), giving children an escape from bullying or strengthening specific cultural or community connections (e.g. faith and bilingual schools).
We all want good schools – let’s not start by harming, and risking closure, of good schools. We want every child to have the best education possible. Independent schools are but one part of an education “ecosystem”. Our friends, neighbours and colleagues are at state schools and we support them. Every school has a role to play to ensure each and every child is ready and able to contribute and thrive in modern Britain. Pitting one school against another will not achieve that goal. It is far better to encourage schools to work together and learn from each other to achieve this common goal.
School Fee VAT won’t generate the funding promised. Labour claim they will raise £1.6bn but the numbers just don’t add up.
- Parents already fund state school places through their taxes, so sending their children to independent schools saves money for state schools (to the tune of £7.5k per pupil plus some additional thousands in fixed costs and overheads). This means it will cost cash-strapped local authorities more as children move from independent schools to state schools. It will cost even more for children with special education needs, whose parents fund these themselves in independent schools.
- As you can read here, independent schools are a help, not a hindrance, to the economy and the public finances. Analysis by EDSK estimates that the policy raises no extra tax revenue if 25% of children are forced into the state sector. A recent survey of 1,000 parents by Ashbridge Partners found that “18 percent of parents would definitely move their children out of private schools and a further 21 per cent would probably do so.” Some schools estimate that they could lose a third of their pupils.
- Even EDSK modelling assumed that working parents moving their child to a state school will continue to work in the same way. Without the financial pressures of school fees, it’s not far-fetched to see parents working less or even retiring early. We don’t know how families will react, but it doesn’t take many families choosing to work less or retire early to cost the public finances billions of pounds.
- The Adam Smith Institute paper “Short-Term Thinking: Analysing the Effects of Applying VAT to School Fees” explains why Labour shouldn’t take parents for granted and should prepare for a substantial movement of pupils, costing the public finances dear and causing several other unintended consequences. They wrote a follow-up paper (“Short-Term Thinking: Analysing the Effect of Applying VAT to School Fees”) that looks at the wider effects, such as parents working less (and paying less tax) if their child is taxed out of their independent school.
School Fee VAT will put pressure on popular state schools and increase house prices nearby. Families with children in independent schools are already looking at state school alternatives. This will increase competition for places in popular state schools, making it harder for other children to benefit from these schools. This is already happening, according to the Financial Times and The Times.
Labour leaders themselves agree that tax increases won’t help public services and that the burden on working people is too high. Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves told the Telegraph that: “I don’t see a route towards having more money for public services that is through taxing our way there. It is going to be through growing our way there.”

Sir Keir Starmer told the Mirror that: “We will do nothing to increase the burden on working people, whether it comes to tax or anything else. They have paid a heavy price for the incompetence of the government after the last 13 years.”

While we are not a party-political group, we ask the Labour Party to adopt an education policy that is consistent with the modern, competent, innovative future they envision. That means not harming children and families, not pitting working families against each other and not harming good schools.