Classroom doors at the £18,000-a-year Catholic Alton School will shut for the final time this summer as a result of Labour’s plans to charge VAT on private school fees. The Telegraph has more.
Sir Keir Starmer’s planned tax raid on private education has claimed its first victim with the closure of a private school where parents faced paying thousands of pounds extra every year.
Families with children at Alton School in Hampshire, which last week announced it would shut this summer, have blamed the Labour Party’s tax policies for forcing parents to remove their children and place them in the state sector.
The school said in a statement on its website that “adverse political and economic factors” had drained pupil numbers, leaving it “unviable” to run.
Classroom doors at the £18,000-a-year Catholic school, which caters for 370 pupils, will close for the final time at the end of the academic year.
The school has suffered from dwindling pupil numbers in recent years, but the likelihood of a Sir Keir victory in the general election is said to have exacerbated the issue, with parents describing it as the “final nail in the coffin”.
Labour has doubled down on its commitment to apply VAT “straight away” on private school fees if it wins the keys to No. 10 in July.
Parents and headteachers across the country fear the 20% tax will spark an exodus of pupils as families struggle to afford fees. The hike could have added as much as £3,600 to Alton’s existing fees.
A parent of two pupils at the school said: “Labour’s VAT plan has clearly had a pretty terrible impact on intake for September.
“It seems like it’s been the final nail in the coffin. It’s been a topic of conversation for quite some time, and with Labour looking more and more likely to get in, it’s become more relevant.
“I know a decent proportion of parents are now looking at the state sector.”
Pupils, parents and staff were told of the impending closure last week as headmaster Andrew Reeve informed them “it is with a very heavy heart that we cannot continue”.
Mr Reeve was hired last year in an attempt to steady the ship at the Alton, but a letter from trustees admits this “has not translated into higher pupil numbers”.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Private schools must make cuts to cope with Labour’s planned VAT raid, just as the state sector was forced to by the Conservatives, Rachel Reeves has said. The Telegraph has more.
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