Steve Beegoo, former headteacher and head of education at Christian Concern and CEO of The Christian Schools' Trust, shares his thoughts on the government's plan to charge VAT on private school fees and why Christians are challenging it.
The so-called 'tax breaks', which private schools benefit from, are nothing of the sort. Schools, often begun by Christians, have always been seen as a public good, and not something to be taxed. The Lord calls his people to educate, through the great commission and through his church. Has the state ever thought it right to tax the church on the offerings given to it to provide such teaching?
The New Testament is clear that the labourer deserves his wages. The small, low-cost private schools, which prop up the state through their educational service, are not receiving 'tax breaks', but simply seeking to pay their teachers. Our Christian legacy has been one which shows us that teaching children is a holy and godly thing to do, and our laws have recognised this.
The teachers in the low-cost, small private Christian school which I know through my work with The Christian Schools Trust, all work for less than a state-salaried teacher. It is their vocation to do so. This helps the schools be affordable to parents. They are not all feeding finances towards embossed paper and new swimming pools as intimated by the education secretary in her recent tweet. These schools disproportionately support children with special educational needs who therefore do not add to the backlog and waiting lists in the state system, where it can take months or even years to get support for a child.
It is envy-politics spin to explain this as ending tax breaks for such schools. Taxes for the wealthy can be delivered through other means to those who can afford Eton. Our society, based on a Christian worldview, decided fairly recently that teaching children to read might actually be a good thing, especially so they could read the Bible. No government to date has thought it acceptable to tax those who provide such education when they attempt to cover the costs of this from the recipients or from generous donors. It has always been seen as a social good to educate.
Post-war the welfare state stepped in to continue the work which had been started predominantly by Christians; faith-based sacrificial communities, who had never previously had or expected any state funding to support them. They had been following the biblical mandate to contribute to their community, in loving thy neighbour and so had sought to 'train up a child in the way they should go'.
The Labour party who in 2019 voted to abolish private schools, will instead be seeking to take finances from low-income working parents who choose low-cost private Christian schools. This could have the effect of destroying charitable faith-based education, and, in the process damaging the state system, stripping all children of services they need.
Many schools have been created in the last few decades where low-income parents save or borrow to pay fees, volunteering their time and talents so their children can be part of these educational communities. Some of these schools have agreed a flat level salary structure; the head and the infant teacher on the same 20 or so thousand a year. They find ways to hire halls or playing fields for sports from others, and can be found in adapted homes, ex-offices, or church buildings providing excellent, peace-filled education. They bend over backwards to accommodate children where they can. They keep their classes deliberately small and make no profit whatsoever. They are families. They are not tax avoiders as they are being portrayed.
So, who will be damaged by this? The parent of the child who would be waiting not months but years for the state SEND (special educational needs and disability) or mental health assessment and then the release of funding for the resources or staffing their child needs to access education in these huge settings. They, instead, find a home, a family, in these schools.
Or consider the parent of the 12-year-old boy being bullied by the sexualised gang. He could not face another incident of anal violation, and so could be moved, because of the generosity of others, to a small Christian school.
How about the child who would not celebrate or join in with promotions of Pride and transgenderism due to their faith, and who could no longer cope with the ostracisation of the other pupils and even of the teachers. Such parents would come to me weeping and desperate when I was a headteacher of one of these small schools.
The so-called 'tax breaks', which such private schools benefit from, are nothing of the sort. What we have in many small Christian private schools are working families and a sacrificial community of teachers and churches serving them. These are the ones who will be taxed in the legislation. Parents with children whose educational, spiritual or mental health needs are not being met, are already paying tax towards the education services of the state which they are not taking up, and so, in effect, preventing the stretching of those services for the majority.
All who privately educate are propping up the state system. They should be thanked, not taxed. How much tax will be obtained from those paying less than the state provides for each pupil in its schools. The £1,000 tax which will be demanded from a low income family, for paying a £5000 per year school place, is economic unfairness at its utmost. The costs will have to be passed on to parents as these schools make no profits.
And which children in the state system will actually benefit from the less than one third of a teacher per state school that the tax policy is lauded to create. With the government itself expecting at least 45,000 children to be forced to move from private to state schools, and many of those with special needs who would be entitled to thousands of pounds of funding, that will soon stretch the system beyond any advantage obtained. These smaller schools disproportionately serve those with undiagnosed but significant needs, which would cost local authorities hundreds of thousands of pounds to provide.
Working families, faith-filled families, low and middle income families have often needed to exercise choice away from state provision, and the generous and charitable in society have never been taxed for supporting those who do, be that through providing food, clothing, health care or education. This has not happened in the developed world and may be against international law. But it is beginning here in the UK.
Penalising parents for not accepting the state's provision, especially at a time when it has so many issues, and taxing them for the care and nurturing of their children, is nothing like Robin Hood's legendary taking from the rich to give to the poor; more like the taxes of the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Legal actions are being prepared, headteachers of these small low-cost schools are appearing in the media, parents and children themselves are trying to be heard, but the Treasury is persevering and the Budget is about to be announced. You will continue to hear the mantra, 'We are ending tax breaks for private schools.' Don't be fooled by the spin.
