Wealthy private schools must continue community outreach schemes like bursaries and sharing facilities once VAT is charged on fees, Bridget Phillipson has said.
Some private schools are planning to cut back on bursaries for poor children, and may raise the cost of using facilities such as swimming pools in response to the Government’s VAT increase, according to the Sunday Times newspaper.
But the Education Secretary hit back at the concerns raised by headteachers.
“I don’t accept that,” she told Times Radio.
The Education Secretary said: “Some of them have got very large incomes and actually a relatively small percentage of that income going towards bursaries.”
She added: “That list in the Sunday Times had some very wealthy schools with significant assets and big levels of income who aren’t putting a huge amount of that money towards bursaries and support in terms of partnership working with the state sector.
“Changes around VAT should not and must not impact on the work that they are doing around bursaries. There is an expectation of course that that would continue.”
From January, the Government plans to remove the VAT exemption and business rates relief for private schools to enable funding for 6,500 new teachers in state schools.
MPs have previously raised concerns that the extra cost could lead parents to withdraw their children from the private sector, and place more pressure on state schools.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel