Here’s a column I’ve wanted to write for months, but couldn’t quite muster the courage – so divisive is the topic.
But as Labour stick VAT – equating to 20% – on private school fees with the sense it’s a victimless levy, I see another story and life is nothing without opinion.
And there is a story that is different to the “who cares if people with more money than sense are forced to pay more” narrative, that I want to tell.
Spoiler alert: People who send their kids to private schools aren’t all loaded.
Often, they have the same amount of money as someone who does not make that choice – but go on one holiday less a year, or take on overtime when they’d rather be at home.
A minority have oodles of cash and no financial concerns – but a teeny, tiny minority, from my experience.
Imagine there was a single mother, living with her own mother in a semi in Charleston.
Imagine if that young woman in her 20s, whose husband hadn’t been seen or heard from for three years, decided to work every job going to send her five-year-old daughter to the High School of Dundee (HSD) – because, why not?
Why shouldn’t she? Because she doesn’t have the right address? Because her dad’s a plumber for the council, her mum a home help?
I was that little girl, sent to the only private school in Dundee age five.
You know how many pupils came from a single parent family when I was in junior school at HSD from 1982 to 1989? Not one.
I remember my P6 teacher going round the class, asking what our fathers did. When he got to me, he realised from the colour of my face he should move on.
Mind you, by the time secondary came round, so did the odd divorce.
This of course, was also a sign of the times. To be a single parent had a stigma that has diluted hugely.
I feel classless – as in, I do not belong to any and possibly I belong to all of them. I judge people by who they are as a person, not what they have. That’s not to say class or classism doesn’t exist because daily life proves it does.
I loved HSD. It served me well and I believe in it.
It was a meritocracy. It didn’t matter what you had, if you tried hard enough and/or had talent, it was rewarded.
I thrived and that is my story. My life is tied up in HSD – from meeting my husband on the first day of P1 to the friends who asked me to be godparent. I, in fact we, if I may speak for Jamie too, loved it.
If I’d gone to Harris Academy and loved it, I’d no doubt have wanted my kids to go there too – because I love them and want them to be happy.
I may have considered someone else’s decision to pay for an education lunacy. Who knows?
The decision to up fees is not victimless. Not for the parents who will be (and I’ve spoke to some) pushed over the edge financially and forced to take their kids out of school – away from their classmates and comfort to a new school.
Except, if your nearest primary is Rosebank in Dundee, you’ll probably be turned away as its over capacity at 105%
And how many more pupils can secondaries like Grove Academy at 97.7% or St John’s at 95.6% capacity accommodate?
Neither is the decision without effect for the staff or pupils at schools like Kilgraston in Perthshire, forced to close – the increase in fees the final straw in its already precarious profitability.
In 2022-23, school spending – that is, what it costs the government to educate a child- in Scotland was over £8,500 per pupil – more than £1,300 higher than that in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Parents who send their kids to an independent school pay their taxes but do not take up free education. They opt out.
As many schools are close to bursting point both in capacity and financially, you’d think the last thing a government would want is new admissions.
Parents are saving them on their budget and helping the much-quoted financial black hole – and being levied for doing so.
‘VAT on private schools is a reverse classism’
But this is just the start.
People with ambition might earn more money.
They might also employ people and give to charity – and what the government gets from them is a commensurate part of their earnings. You earn more, you pay more tax.
What you chose to spend the rest on is surely up to you.
Not now.
For if that choice is a big house (with big mortgage and deposit) Labour wants a slice of that with the so-called “mansion tax”.
They might take your garden into consideration too. If it’s big, they want money – while taking taxes all your life and then increasing the taxes you pay on inheritance tax when you’re dead.
It goes without saying, the decision to hurt pensioners by taking their fuel allowance, is nothing short of victimisation and abuse of power.
As a younger person, what’s the message there? If I’m going to be penalised as a pensioner, I better make enough money while I can so I can afford to heat my home.
But that drive to work and do well is being penalised every step of the way.
Driven people won’t stop being driven by a government. What they will do – eventually – is leave the country, or work less to receive more.
The black hole in our finances may have to be plugged but the vendetta against people perceived to be wealthy is a reversed classism – a spite that assumes people with a big house or kids in private school haven’t had to make sacrifices to get there.
And it will ultimately create a bigger black hole than ever – when everyone leaves or asks for more.
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