Exclusive:Scottish school founder warns Labour's VAT charge 'discriminates' against children with disabilities

New VAT rules for private schools will “discriminate” against children with disabilities at a flagship school in Scotland, its founder has claimed.

Emma Rattigan established the Edinburgh Montessori Arts School in 2006 as a small nursery after running Montessori programmes abroad.

Since then it has grown to a school that caters for young people up to the age of 18, with a roll of close to 100, many of which are pupils with additional support needs.

Contributed

However, Ms Rattigan has revealed the school is now facing huge disruption and redundancies as a result of Labour’s decision to end the VAT exemption on private school fees from January.

One of the biggest problems is the small print of HMRC guidance for schools says VAT will also be payable for any nursery class connected to a private school that contains even one pupil aged five or over.

The issue impacts other independent schools, including Steiner schools, which often having six-year-olds in nursery classes.

In its submission to the UK government consultation on the VAT change, the Scottish Council of Independent Schools said it was another example of the way the impact of the policy on Scotland had not been properly considered.

“This difference in early years education between Scotland and England means that there will routinely be children of formal school starting age within most nursery classes in Scotland,” it said, in reference to the parental right to defer.

In an interview with The Scotsman, Ms Rattigan said: “The nursery aspect is very important to us because Montessori nurseries work with a three-year mixed age grouping. It is integral to our system.

“The younger ones having those role models of the kids that are a year or two older than them, it makes for a really natural social grouping within the class. So the entire model is built upon mixed age groups.

“So this idea, I mean it’s in the VAT guidance, if you have got one child over the age of the compulsory school age in your class, the whole nursery would have to pay VAT.

“This is our whole model, and it is very directly discriminating against us in that respect.

“The VAT policy is also really discriminating against kids with disabilities because the highest proportion of children that are deferring for an extra year of nursery are children on the autism spectrum with ADHD, or with other disabilities, which may or may not be recognised at that age.

“Private school nurseries, as well as all the regular nurseries, all have kids over the compulsory school age.”

Emma Rattigan, founder and principal of the Edinburgh Montessori Arts School | EMAS

Montessori nurseries and schools follow methods developed in the early 20th century by Italian physician Maria Montessori, with an emphasis on hands-on learning and developing real-world skills.

It is the oldest continuously implemented, and most widely implemented, alternative education in the world, currently used in over 550 public and 3,000 private schools in the United States alone.

After the Scottish school was founded in Edinburgh in 2006, Ms Rattigan said: “It just snowballed from there because parents were so happy with what we were offering.

“They wanted a primary programme, so I then did the training and sought other people who were trained in Montessori primary education, and eventually got the site where we are now in Liberton in 2011.”

In recent months, the presumption in Scotland of sending the majority of pupils with additional support needs to mainstream schools has come under scrutiny, with many school leaders, teachers and parents arguing that it has never been adequately resourced, leaving youngsters “let down” by the system.

Ms Rattigan said: “We have got a big chunk of our clientele are children who, in their parents words, have been failed by the mainstream system. We’ve even got kids that have come to us from special schools, where their needs are not being met.

“Adding VAT onto fees ... I mean, most of our clientele are people who are forgoing family holidays, potentially selling a property - they are really, really not people who would otherwise choose a private school. They are not your ‘oh I think I’ll just go down to Eton or Harrow’.

“I mean I think that is the situation in most of Edinburgh, to be fair, but we probably stand out even further because what we offer is so unique.”

Asked what the VAT change would mean for the school, Ms Rattigan said: “We would have to reconfigure our nursery. We would completely disenfranchise any child over five years old.

“You just basically could not operate a Montessori nursery if you were to take out kids of compulsory school age from the early years classroom, because our early age class is aged three to six, so P1 and P2 in there with nursery children.

“It works beautifully and it has done for 18 years. I mean there is no way, unless we said to everyone ’OK, you’re paying VAT’. There isn’t any way to operate what we do.

“We will come up with creative solutions, because we know that they will obviously levy VAT. It’s not something we can necessarily stop, but in terms of the nursery, I think that is something we have to try to stop.”

Ms Rattigan added: “We will have to let staff go. At the moment we are just cutting costs wherever we can to make sure we’ve got a sustainable plan going forward, but ultimately I think all private schools are looking to make redundancies, that’s not unique to us.

“Hopefully as a small school we can mitigate that in other ways. But we will have to streamline. And we will have far less to invest in any kind of infrastructure.

“Any money we make goes into resources for the kids and improving what we’ve got, or hiring other artists or guides.”

The school provides scholarships and therapeutic support for children of refugees. However, these schemes could now be lost.

Ms Rattigan said: “Growing our scholarship program is something we feel passionately about and is something that we obviously will not be able to do if we have less children.

“If parents pull out because they can’t afford our school, the community benefits we provide for these kids from really disadvantaged backgrounds will be lost.

“We hoped to expand this in future to a wider range of children, but this is only possible with the extra fundraising and support the school itself generates.”

A UK government spokesperson said: “The vast majority of nursery classes will not be subject to VAT, as children have usually entered the first year of primary school by the time they are five years old.

“We want to ensure all children have the best chance in life to succeed. Ending tax breaks on private schools will help to raise the revenue needed to fund our education priorities for next year.”