VAT on School Fees

We wrote to all parents of the Foundation schools on 1 August after the new Government had announced that they intend to add VAT to private school fees with effect from January 2025, subject to a public consultation which ends in September. We explained that although this was earlier than we had expected, we were working hard on our continuing strategy to share the increased costs with parents and expected to confirm the January changes before the end of August.

The Heads, senior colleagues and Trustees have completed this work over the summer holidays, so we are now able to share with you what the Princethorpe College January 2025 tuition fees will be - if the Government goes ahead with its plan to add 20% VAT on private school fees from 1 January 2025.

Our strategy is to ensure that current pupils can continue their education with us without facing the disruption and upset of moving schools, and that our schools remain strong and continue to attract families whose children would benefit from all that we have to offer and the high-quality education we provide. (For more on our strategy see FAQs below).

We will therefore be reducing our termly net fees in January 2025 by 12.5%, so that VAT is applied to a lower figure than would otherwise be the case. The gross increase passed on to parents will be 5% as illustrated in the table below, substantially less than the 20% VAT rate.

Princethorpe College Fees 2024-2025

	Michaelmas Term	Lent Term	Trinity Term	New Annual Total
Fees payable to school	£5,623	£4,920	£4,920	£15,463
VAT at 20%	£0	£984	£984	£1,968
Total fees payable	£5,623	£5,904	£5,904	£17,431

Additional cost to parents over 2024-2025 year - £562

Crackley Hall Fees 2024-2025

Reception	Michaelmas Term	Lent Term	Trinity Term	New Annual Total
Fees payable to school	£4,106	£3,593	£3,593	£11,292
VAT at 20%	£0	£719	£719	£1,437
Total fees payable	£4,106	£4,312	£4,312	£12,730

Additional cost to parents over 2024-2025 year - £412

Junior 1 and 2	Michaelmas Term	Lent Term	Trinity Term	New Annual Total
Fees payable to school	£4,328	£3,787	£3,787	£11,902
VAT at 20%	£0	£757	£757	£1,515
Total fees payable	£4,328	£4,544	£4,544	£13,417

Additional cost to parents over 2024-2025 year - £433

Junior 3 to 6	Michaelmas Term	Lent Term	Trinity Term	New Annual Total
Fees payable to school	£4,569	£3,998	£3,998	£12,565
VAT at 20%	£0	£800	£800	£1,599
Total fees payable	£4,569	£4,798	£4,798	£14,165

Additional cost to parents over 2024-2025 year - £458

Reception Class where claiming free entitlement

The entitlement starts the term after the child turns three and ends the term after they turn five or at the end of Reception, whichever is earlier.

Reception	Michaelmas Term	Lent Term	Trinity Term	New Annual Total
Fees payable to school	£3,210	£3,409	£3,409	£10,028

Crescent School 2024-2025

Reception	Michaelmas Term	Lent Term	Trinity Term	New Annual Total
Fees payable to school	£4,031	£3,527	£3,527	£11,085
VAT at 20%	£0	£705	£705	£1,411
Total fees payable	£4,031	£4,232	£4,233	£12,495

Additional cost to parents over 2024-2025 year - £402

Years 1 and 2	Michaelmas Term	Lent Term	Trinity Term	New Annual Total
Fees payable to school	£4,173	£3,651	£3,651	£11,476
VAT at 20%	£0	£730	£730	£1,461
Total fees payable	£4,173	£4,382	£4,381	£12,935

Additional cost to parents over 2024-2025 year - £416

Years 3 to 6	Michaelmas Term	Lent Term	Trinity Term	New Annual Total
Fees payable to school	£4,388	£3,840	£3,840	£12,067
VAT at 20%	£0	£768	£768	£1,536
Total fees payable	£4,388	£4,608	£4,608	£13,604

Additional cost to parents over 2024-2025 year - £440

Reception Class where claiming free entitlement

The entitlement starts the term after the child turns three and ends the term after they turn five or at the end of Reception, whichever is earlier.

Reception	Michaelmas Term	Lent Term	Trinity Term	New annual Total
Fees payable to school	£3,128	£3,330	£3,330	£9,788

Whilst we appreciate any increase in January will be challenging for those balancing family finances, we hope that the rise being substantially below the 20% VAT comes as good news, along with the assurance that we will remain focused on minimising the scale of any subsequent year increases.

Our underlying objective as a Foundation is to maintain the quality and variety of the pupil experience - delivering excellent teaching and academic outcomes, providing outstanding pastoral care, maintaining a broad co-curricular programme, and upholding the ethos that is central to our Foundation. As a charity, we must balance charging fees which enable us to deliver to this objective whilst holding our fees to the minimum level possible to ensure that they are as affordable as possible for fee payers choosing our schools for their children’s education.

By continuing to manage our finances prudently, seeking to maintain the number of pupils we support and focusing carefully on our expenditure and investment decisions we will continue to minimise any increases in future years, to be as close as we can to annual inflation.

If you have any queries or comments on the prospective January fee increase and the matters outlined on this page, please submit them using the link here. If there is any change to the Government’s position after the October budget, then we will of course provide further information.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are the Government’s plans to add VAT to school fees definitely going ahead for January 2025?

A public consultation is currently underway, the deadline for feedback is Sunday 15 September 2024, so there is still time to make our voices heard and influence the debate. It is not impossible that the government could delay the implementation of VAT until September 2025, but we must plan for January 2025.

What will happen if the implementation is delayed?

2024-2025 fees will remain at the same rate as originally published and we will notify parents of the timing of any changes once the new timescale or legislative changes are confirmed.

Will the school bus fares and cost of school meals be affected by the addition of VAT?

No, we are not expecting that these will have VAT added.

Will VAT payable on learning Support lessons?

Yes we expect it will be. We will increase the charge for these by 5% in line with other fee adjustments from January 2025.

How have you approached the imposition of VAT?

Our strategy in planning for this imposition of VAT (we have known it is likely from the Labour Party since early last year) has followed the following key principles:

Many fee payers will not be able to meet a 20% increase in fees – so we must find a way of sharing the burden;
We must find ways of reducing costs by forensically reviewing our budgets for 2024/25 and subsequent years, but without affecting the quality of education we provide;
We can delay some new investment decisions for a period, but not our responsibilities to maintain our schools and estates;
Being creative in how we can reduce base costs - for example we have invested in energy saving technologies over recent years to reduce energy usage and costs, we have driven a culture of minimising waste (energy, paper etc.) and have been driving efficiencies in terms of better use of IT and resources, moving to innovative digital solutions;
We have been increasing income generation through commercial enterprise and fundraising and expect this to increase;
We will, of course, ensure that we claim back as much VAT as we are allowed, including from recent capital projects.

What are your main budget areas?

School budgets invest first and foremost in our dedicated and committed staff, both our teachers and support teams; that is not an area we can compromise on. Other expenditure involves all our support services as well as the maintenance of and new investment in our school buildings and estates.

What about the longer-term picture for fees?

Despite progress to contain costs and increase other income, you will appreciate it is impossible to offset the total VAT charges without increasing total costs (including VAT) for fee payers. We have therefore agreed an increase (in total costs) in January 2025 of 5% on the basis that we will retain the vast majority of our pupils and so have modest increases in the following two to three years (closely linked to inflation on an annual basis).

In this way the Foundation shares the burden imposed by VAT with you and other fee payers.