Mother. “Middle class woman of a certain age”.
United Kingdom
Joined August 2010
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Pinned Tweet
“What @bphillipsonMP has done is displace 40,000 children…find places elsewhere either because their school has closed or they don’t have the money to pay VAT. The reason why those taxes were put in place was to fund 6.5k more teachers. We have 2k fewer teachers”.
@KemiBadenoch
Victoria retweeted
What’s so interesting about @UKLabour’s vile policy is that a transfer of infrastructure is taking place from not-for-profits to private equity.
How can @JohnHealey_MP be OK with this.
It’s a dissolution akin to the monasteries and will go down in history as a stain on @andyburnham & @Keir_Starmer showing the United Kingdom to be a nation of pedagogical ignorance.
Victoria retweeted
Where were these concerns about a sustainable transition when VAT was imposed on independent school fees midway through the academic year, leaving parents facing higher costs or the prospect of having to move their children to new schools?
Where was the carefully considered implementation plan, the concern for educational continuity, or the recognition of the disruption to children and families?
Victoria retweeted
🎯🎯🎯It was always the top one. That people, teachers especially; turned a blind eye, as thousands of children's lives were ruined, will never not shock me. We are a nation of Bad Samaritans.
Victoria retweeted
It’s hard to narrow down Labour’s most malignant policy, but wrecking children’s educations and destroying sometimes centuries-old institutions so their coveted buildings can be seized by Chinese developers and private equity has to be at least in the top 3
Victoria retweeted
Some of the arguments I made against imposing VAT on independent school fees back in May 2025. My position remains unchanged. It was the politics of envy then, and it remains the politics of envy now, a tax on aspiration, ambition and parental choice, dressed up as a policy to improve state education.
Thanks, Stuart. How about these to start with (in no particular order):
1. Increased financial burden on the state
2. Potential for a net fiscal loss
3. Elastic demand among middle class families, many of whom have only recently accessed private education after significant effort by previous generations who were working class.
4. Job losses in the independent sector and associated industries (negative multiplier effect)
5. Reduction in the availability of bursaries
6. The merit good argument and associated positive externalities
7. Distortion of market-based resource allocation
8. Crucially, imposing VAT on private schools will not lead to improvements in state education.
Victoria retweeted
It is the same ideological contradiction exemplified by Diane Abbott and Shami Chakrabarti, who chose private education for their own children.
If the local state school is not good enough for your own children, on what moral authority do Labour loyalists seek to undermine the discipline and standards in schools educating other people’s children?
I fear their approach risks reversing the hard-won improvements in educational standards achieved under the previous Conservative government.
I believe in parental choice. The state should not make private education prohibitively expensive or seek to restrict the alternatives available to families. If state schools wish to compete, the answer is to improve the quality of education they provide, not to diminish the choices available to parents.
The solution is to raise standards, not restrict choice
Victoria retweeted
Champagne socialists.
Labour may have removed hereditary peers from the House of Lords, but the party has its own dynasties. This government has a Kinnock, a Falconer, a Miliband and a Reeves, all representatives of famous political families.
But the minister with perhaps the most intriguing ideological ancestry is the Energy Secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh.
No one denies that Fahnbulleh is an intellectually formidable operator in her own right. With a PPE degree from Lincoln College, Oxford, she speaks with a poised confidence.
She has described herself as a Liberian 'refugee' and the inference many will draw is that she is a child of poverty, not privilege. But Fahnbulleh was educated privately at Beechwood Sacred Heart School in Tunbridge Wells, where fees to board are now more than £40,000 a year.
✍️ John Power
Article | spectator.com/article/the-re…
Victoria retweeted
Why are head teachers from all over the country writing to the government saying they are £millions short in their budgets?
I thought the idea of imposing VAT on private schools was to put more funding into state schools?
This was obviously just another Labour scam.
Victoria retweeted
And what of the 6,500 teachers we seem to have conveniently forgotten about? Wasn’t that precisely what the VAT on independent school fees was supposed to fund?
No discernible improvement in state education, but considerable disruption to independent schools and the children and families they serve. Utter lunacy.
‘Independent schools face mounting financial pressure after the government’s introduction of 20 per cent VAT on fees in January last year. The Independent Schools Council estimated that more than 100 private schools have closed since the tax took effect.’
Pupils in limbo as Kristin Scott Thomas’s old school shuts without warning
thetimes.com/article/5531f63…
Victoria retweeted
At nearly 600 pupils this is bigger than most of the circa 130 schools which @Keir_Starmer & @andyburnham’s education tax has closed so far.
I wonder if we’re entering a new phase where bigger schools start closing because of the British Education Tax?
Will @JohnHealey_MP @hmtreasury cancel this immoral taxation of education in his Budget tomorrow?
Just weeks ago, Leweston was being celebrated for its pastoral care and opportunities. Now a school founded in 1891 has closed with almost no warning. Heartbreaking for pupils, families and staff. How did it come to this? 😢
dorsetecho.co.uk/news/266751…
Victoria retweeted
Labour’s vindictive assault on education has real consequences. Leweston School near Sherborne is closing permanently after half-term, leaving hundreds of pupils, families and staff in turmoil. Nobody benefits from these closures—not even the Exchequer.. dorsetlife.co.uk/leweston-sc…
Victoria retweeted
Misfeasance in public office. A specific group of people have been deliberately targeted and harmed by this policy - yet there will be no 'public good.' And those most harmed were children - in their thousands.
Things you won’t hear in @JohnHealey_MP’s Budget:
‘If self-funding pupil attrition is high, because of @hmtreasury’s British Education Tax, it will raise less than £0.5bn per annum. Not the ~£2bn that Green, Subieta et al estimated.
Meanwhile SEND costs, which are not unconnected to the British Education Tax, are heading towards £3bn per annum.
So money will have to come from some or all of; lower standards, fewer teachers, lower salaries, more crowded & more decrepit classrooms and more tax.’
Victoria retweeted
Another school gone thanks to the Labour government. A disaster for the families and the local community, not that @LucyMPowell or @andyburnham care.
Victoria retweeted
BREAKING: Leweston School, founded in 1891 and celebrated for its pastoral care, has closed with immediate effect - heartbreaking for pupils, families, staff and the local community (via @DorsetEcho) dorsetecho.co.uk/news/266751…
Victoria retweeted
“The inconvenient reality is that comprehensive schools really are incompatible with the pursuit of educational success for individual children.”
@joenutt_author's case against comprehensive schools.
thecritic.co.uk/the-case-aga…
Victoria retweeted
1. Tax private schools & SEND support, pushing more children with needs into the state sector
2. Allocate more children with complex SEND to mainstream state schools in the name of 'inclusion'
Then...
3. Make state schools cut SEND-specific support staff to fund pay-rises
Exclusive: Schools will be forced to cut special needs support staff in order to fund a share of the teacher’s pay rise, teachers have warned.
The i Paper has spoken to multiple headteachers and school leaders who say that despite suggestions the pay rise is “fully funded” at a “national level”, many schools will still face a shortfall and will need to find cash afford the 3.5 per cent pay award.
With finances already stretched, SEND staff will feel the brunt of cost-cutting which is likely to result, they argue.
It comes as local authorities are being driven into a projected deficit of £10.4bn by 2028 over the size of the bill for special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) as more children need support – 1.8 million children in England have special educational needs, a rise of 91,400 (5.2 per cent) since 2025.
Story 👇w/@connie_dimsdale
inews.co.uk/news/politics/sc…
Victoria retweeted
Tax private schools, leading to more children in state schools, then make state schools even worse. Amazing.
We are run by clowns.
🚨 NEW: Teachers could be allowed to work a 4-day week under the Government's plan for greater flexibility
[@thetimes]
Victoria retweeted
VAT on private schools was, in my view, driven by the politics of envy.
We should not forget that the policy was justified on the grounds that it would raise revenue to help fund the recruitment of 6,500 additional teachers.
Since its introduction, we have seen disruption to pupils’ education, families forced to find alternative schools mid-year, dedicated staff losing their jobs and long-established institutions closing their doors.
The consequences are still unfolding, and the full impact has yet to be felt.
The question remains, was it really worth it?
Victoria retweeted
A useful reminder that a Conservative government will remove Labour’s spiteful and punitive VAT on private education.
Parents who pay their taxes in full should have the right to educate their children in a fee-paying school is if works for them and children deserve better than to be punished because Labour think they’re privileged and therefore fair game.
Let’s end this mean-mindedness!
Victoria retweeted
Labour’s own admission is damning: their tax on education will force 35,000 children out of independent schools into state sector which is already under pressure, Scrap the VAT on school fees. Stop treating children’s education as a political football.
