Low-budget independent schools which serve the Charedi community should have been spared having to pay VAT on fees, lawyers argued at the High Court in London this week in a challenge to the government’s taxation of private education.
In a three-day hearing which was due to end on Thursday, they argued that the policy amounted to a breach of human rights and discriminated against particular groups.
The case, supported by the Independent Schools Council, was brought on behalf of seven children, including two who attend strictly Orthodox Jewish schools and one Muslim. Another was sent to a single-school because of sexual abuse at her previous school, while others were children with special educational needs.
Low-fee independent Charedi schools were “essential in ensuring the Charedi Jewish community receive the education required by their faith,” barristers Lord Pannick and Paul Luckhurst stated in their skeleton argument for the children.
“There is no alternative state sector provision that would meet their needs,” they said.
Noting also that the Charedi community faced “severe antisemitic abuse and risks to their personal security,” they said one of the Jewish children in the case had experienced abuse in the street and her Jewish school had been targeted in two antisemitic attacks.
Charedi children, as “visibly Jewish”, were likely to face antisemitism and discrimination in non-Charedi schools, “endangering their safety and emotional wellbeing,” they observed.
But an increase in fees would put “a huge strain on her families” and could case her “to be withdrawn” from her school.
The lawyers also pointed out that it was impractical for many Charedi independent schools to try to convert to the state sector because aspects of the curriculum were “incompatible with their religious values”.
In reports to the Treasury, Government officials had acknowledged that “faith schools that serve narrow religious communities are generally smaller schools with lower fees on average than other independent schools.” Such schools were “more at risk of insolvency,” officials said.
According to Chinuch UK, the Charedi educational umbrella group, strictly Orthodox schools were already experiencing “severe financial fragility”.
Chinuch UK and Partnership for Jewish Schools (PaJes) had proposed exemption from VAT for small schools that charged less than the annual cost of education a child in state education which was £7,690.
This would have exempted around 150 small schools (there are around 65 Charedi independent schools in all, which charge an average of £2,231 a year according to Chinuch UK). The exemption would have represented around £10 million to £30 million, according to Treasury estimates, the equivalent of less than two per cent of the revenue it hoped to raise from taxing independent schools.
The Treasury had argued that exceptions were “administratively unworkable” but this was a “weak answer”, the lawyers said.
The exemption proposal was realistic, rational and inexpensive, they said.
