Paul Givan

The Northern Ireland government’s education minister Paul Givan has said parents in the province should not pay VAT on private school fees because fee-paying schools there are different from those in the rest of the UK.

About 2,500 pupils in Northern Ireland attend grammar school preps, Christian and other independent schools, which charge parents a lot less than school fees on the mainland.

Speaking to BBC News NI, the Democratic Unionist Party minister Givan said the new Labour government’s approach did not “reflect how the Northern Ireland education system is funded”. Education is devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont, while taxation is decided at Westminster.

Given said: “This is ultimately HMRC, it’s the Treasury and I’m making the representation on behalf of schools in Northern Ireland and parents as to why they shouldn’t be included. I recognise the real concerns parents have.”

In a statement to BBC News NI a government spokesperson said: “We want to ensure all children have the best chance in life to succeed.”

There are nine independent Christian schools in Northern Ireland, including five run by the Free Presbyterian Church.

The Reverend Brian McClung, administrator of Newtownabbey Independent Christian School in Glengormley, County Antrim, said: “Our parents pay less than £2,000 a year to send a child to our school as they want the education we can provide.

“We already fundraise to cover the total cost of running the school so that we can keep fees affordable, but we would have no option but to charge parents more.

“We have some pupils in our Christian schools who are entitled to free school meals, so by no means are many of our parents rich. For instance, some families go without holidays to send their children to our schools and I know that some grandparents of children help out to pay the school fees.

“We are hoping that the Treasury understands that we just can’t be compared with better-resourced private schools in England.”

Peter Chambers, the principal of Steiner School Holywood, County Down said his school was almost completely funded by fees paid by parents, adding: “Our top end fee is just over £6,000 a year so it could be an additional 20% on top of that. And to have all these changes implemented in January becomes very complex for school budgets. To have a mid-year 20% increase for families could be a bit daunting.”

About 1,500 pupils in Northern Ireland went to grammar preps in 2023-24. Stephen Moore, principal of Friends’ School in Lisburn, which has a prep department, said the schools are different from independent schools in England: “They are entirely self-financing and have much greater autonomy in how they’re run than we do.

“It’s legislation that’s not really intended to capture schools like prep schools in Northern Ireland which do receive funding from government and which are very much departments of local grammar schools.

“It also could have an impact on the sustainability of prep schools here and that could also have a knock-on effect on the grammar schools of which they’re an integral part.”