Do you want your child to go to Eton? Prepare to pay $13,000 more every year

CNN — London (CNN) — Britain’s private schools may conjure up images of rolling lawns, pristine tennis courts and dormitories, serving as golden greenhouses of privilege. Eton College, perhaps the most famous, has trained no fewer than 20 British prime ministers.

These schools could soon become even more exclusive if the opposition Labor Party wins the country’s general election next month – which polls suggest it will win by a wide margin – and abolishes a 20% tax break on their tuition fees. schooling, for a long time.

If Eton increases its tuition fees by the full amount, rather than finding other ways to pay its larger tax bill, parents who send their child to the illustrious school can expect to pay £10,500 more ( $13,360) per year in addition to current standard fees. of £52,750 ($67,107).

Labor estimates that taxes on private schools will raise £1.5 billion ($1.9 billion) a year, money it says is urgently needed to improve the state school system, which is used by approximately 93% of students. The policy appears to have widespread support: an opinion poll last week by YouGov found that almost two-thirds of respondents supported the idea.

But private schools are vigorously opposing it, saying it could mean financial ruin for many of them and force thousands of children – some from very modest backgrounds and with special educational needs – to move to public school, in difficulty.

Not all private schools are “synonymous with privilege and great wealth”, says Sue Hannam, headteacher of Lichfield Cathedral School, a private school in central England. The vast majority of private, or so-called ‘independent’, schools in the UK have “very little in common” with their larger, more famous peers.

“We have a number of parents where not only do they both work, but some parents have more than one job… They don’t drive the newest cars, they don’t take massive vacations,” he said. she told CNN. .

It is these parents – who pay up to £16,600 ($21,079) a year to educate a child in Lichfield – who are deeply concerned about the proposed tax, Hannam said.

Around 620,000 children are currently enrolled in private schools in Britain, equivalent to almost 6% of all schoolchildren, according to the Independent Schools Council.

Collectively, the country’s 2,500 private schools generate tuition revenue of around £9.42 billion ($12 billion) a year, based on CNN calculations using student numbers in the ISC and Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) figures on average tuition fees.

And around half of private schools in England are registered as charities, according to the government, because, under English and Welsh law, they contribute to the “advancement of education” and thus provide a benefit to the public.

This status entitles them to an additional tax break – a reduction of up to 80%, and sometimes more, on a tax applied to commercial properties – in addition to exemption from paying the 20% sales tax.

In its manifesto published last week, Labor says it intends to scrap both tax breaks. The funds would be spent recruiting 6,500 new teachers for public schools, particularly in subjects where there are shortages, and providing students in every public school with access to a mental health professional, among other projects .

“In our state secondary schools we are missing thousands of teachers in the subjects we need,” Labor leader Keir Starmer told Sky News television earlier this month. “Take mathematics: too many students… are taught mathematics by sports teachers, by substitutes, and that is not acceptable.”

Starmer argued that adding VAT to private school fees was necessary to recruit teachers “to ensure that every child, wherever they come from, whatever their background, whatever the school he attends, has the same opportunities.

Britain’s state-funded schools are beset by problems. According to a key indicator, the number of teachers recruited for the current academic year was 38% below the government’s target. And, in a report released in November, lawmakers said “an unacceptable number of students are learning in poorly maintained or potentially unsafe buildings.”

The VAT will likely be passed on to parents, according to Louis Hodge, associate director at the Education Policy Institute, an independent research organization. In theory, private schools could keep their tuition fees relatively stable and save money on their budgets. “In reality, it’s probably not going to happen,” he told CNN.

An exodus?

Labor has called for an end to tax breaks for private schools for years, but parental concern has increased over the past year, according to an ISC spokesperson, as a Labor government is become more and more likely.

In its latest annual report, the association said it saw a 2.7% drop in the number of new students in its schools during the current school year compared to the previous year. This is the largest annual decline since the ISC began collecting data in 2011.

Loveena Tandon, a single mother, sends her 16-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son to private schools in London at a cost of between £42,000 and £48,000 ($53,000 to $61,000) a year.

If passed, Labor’s policy makes it “very likely” that it will have to move them, she told CNN.

“My son has just started making friends… it will be devastating, the impact. I have a lot of trouble sleeping at night knowing what I have to do…(My daughter is) very settled…it’s just cruel to take them out,” she said.

Julie Robinson, chief executive of the ISC, fears there will be many parents in Tandon’s position under a Labor government.

“We think the result (of Labour’s VAT policy) will unfortunately be that tens of thousands of children will be displaced,” she told CNN. “They will have to look for another school (and, overall) they will enter the public system – which means more pressure on an already strained public system.”

Contrary to stereotypes, typical British private schools operate on “very tight budgets”, are small – half of the schools represented by the ISC have fewer than 285 pupils -, rural and enroll younger children, Robinson added. And a fifth of students in ISC schools have special educational needs, the association says in its annual report.

“In recent years, independent schools have increased their tuition support. More than a third of the children in our schools already receive some sort of tuition discount,” Robinson said. ISC schools are providing almost £1.1 billion ($1.4 billion) of support to parents to help them pay tuition fees, up 6.8% on last year, according to the ISC report.

Christine Cunniffe, headteacher of LVS Ascot, a private school in the south-east of England, predicts that a 20% increase in tuition fees will cause her school’s student population to fall 20% compared to what it would be. ‘she would be otherwise.

Indeed, some parents are expected to withdraw their children from LVS Ascot, while others are likely to turn down offers for their children to start school in September.

“This is what we are negotiating for,” Cunniffe told CNN. “I just feel sorry for these kids who are being torn away from their peers.”

“Relatively low impact”

Others, however, believe the effect of Labor taxes on private schools and the impact on their state-funded peers will be small.

Hodge, of the Education Policy Institute, noted that, accounting for inflation, private school tuition has increased by as much as 25 percent since 2010.

“(Over) the same period, we have seen virtually no change in the number (of students) actually attending independent schools. It’s stayed pretty consistent,” he said. That would imply “fairly inelastic” demand for private school education, he said.

The private school sector is also “more dynamic than people think,” Luke Sibieta, a researcher at IFS, an independent think tank, told CNN. Since 2014, at least 20 to 30 schools – mostly smaller schools with tight budgets – have closed their doors each year, usually because they were unable to accommodate enough students, he said .

And the impact on public schools?

The IFS estimates that the number of children in private schools will fall by 20,000 to 40,000 over the next few years as a result of Labour’s tax policy, compared to the scenario in which private schools continue to receive relief tax.

“The movement of people from the private sector to the public sector clearly creates a demand on the public sector. But we don’t think it will be huge,” he told CNN. “Adding VAT would likely have a relatively small impact.”

The IFS estimates that bringing additional pupils into state schools will cost the exchequer up to £300 million ($382 million) a year.

Still, a demographic shift means public schools could “accommodate” this influx, Sibieta wrote last year. “It should be remembered that the number (of students) in the public sector is expected to fall significantly over the next decade,” he wrote.