Bridget Phillipson has been accused of “gaslighting” middle class parents after claiming that they back Labour’s private school tax raid.
The Education Secretary said she was the champion of “pushy parents” who supported the measures after being priced out of sending their children to independent schools.
Labour’s tax raid on independent schools, which will come into force on Jan 1, will see 20 per cent VAT applied to fees for the first time.
Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, said the remarks were “more gaslighting from this socialist government that has broken its general election promises”.
She added: “Bridget Phillipson is yet another Left-wing ideologue in Britain’s most socialist Government since the 1970s.”
In an interview with the Sunday Times, Ms Phillipson said middle-class parents had “largely been priced out of private schools” and claimed that was why there was “such support for our policy”.
Private school headteachers also hit out at Ms Phillipson’s claims, with one describing them as “Orwellian”.
Silas Edmonds, the principal of Ewell Castle School in Surrey, suggested that the Education Secretary’s comments were an attempt to reinforce the stereotype of private school parents as the super-rich elite.
He told The Telegraph: “It’s absolute nonsense. We’ve got 660 parents at our school and not one of them is supportive of the VAT on school fees. Our parents are not mega-rich, they’re families where both parents are working.
“Essentially, they’re having to make huge sacrifices to keep their children in the school and avoid the upheaval of moving them halfway through a school year.
“I do not understand how the rhetoric could be spun as if this policy is somehow doing everyone a favour. I find it utterly extraordinary. It’s almost Orwellian in its audacity to say that one thing is actually the opposite of what it is. It’s breathtakingly deceitful.”
Toby Mullins, the head of Bedstone College in Shropshire, echoed criticisms that Ms Phillipson’s comments “focus entirely on a few very prestigious, highly expensive, schools”.
He said: “The aspiring ‘middle class’ parents, who want small class sizes and a personalised curriculum, have been using the smaller, niche, independent schools where the fees are more affordable.
“Unfortunately, the irony is that these are precisely the schools that this Government is putting out of business. Rural independent schools will go to the wall and parents will not have the options of top class academies for their children.”
Mr Mullins said parents at his £12,000-a-year school were “furious” about the VAT raid, with many facing a double whammy after Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, announced inheritance tax changes in the Budget.
He said: “My middle class parents are furious about VAT. It is also a big farming area and so they are suffering on several fronts.”
Ms Phillipson defended the VAT raid in an article for The Telegraph, arguing that the exemption for private schools was a “luxury our country cannot afford”.
She wrote: “I recognise this is an area where feelings have run high, but some of the commentary we’ve seen has been nothing short of scaremongering.
“The Government’s impact assessment is clear: very few families will move out of private schools.”
However, there have been reports that officials in her own department are bracing for an influx of pupils into the state sector as private schools collapse.
Surrey county council admitted earlier this month that it will not have enough places at state schools to accommodate students from the independent sector.
Ministers have repeatedly cited a forecast that between 4 per cent and 7 per cent of private school pupils will move to state schools in the coming years.
They have also argued that independent schools do not need to pass on the full 20 per cent cost of the VAT increase to pupils.
But bodies representing independent schools have said the true figure could be as high as 25 per cent as many parents struggle to pay higher fees.
Private schools have faced a last-minute scramble to register for VAT in time for the tax raid next week, after the window to sign up was open for just six weeks before the Christmas holidays.
Mr Edmonds said Ewell Castle, where senior school fees will rise to £24,618 a year when the VAT raid comes into force on Wednesday, has had to make “double digit” redundancies to absorb some of the tax rise.
He added: “We’re also into our second consultation of our pension [scheme], starting in the new year. So that’s going to be tough for staff. It’s demoralising for them, and it’s tough for us.”
The Treasury has also been heavily criticised after it put out a message on social media describing the VAT raid as the end of a “tax break”.
Tory MPs said that civil servants who posted the message could have breached impartiality rules by pushing out politicised language used by Labour.
Peter Bedford, the MP for Mid Leicestershire, said it was “outrageous terminology” and suggested that the “politicisation of the Civil Service [is] complete”.
Dr Ben Spencer, the shadow science minister, added: “In Labour world, if it’s not being taxed then it’s a ‘tax break’.
“I feel sorry for the civil servants forced into publishing this rot.”
Labour hopes that its tax raid on private schools will raise £1.8 billion each year by the end of the decade.
The Government has pledged to spend the revenue raised on a raft of education measures, including recruiting 6,500 new teachers and ensuring that each state school has access to mental health counselling.
Many have criticised the scale of ambition and the extent to which it will realistically raise state school standards. The pledge for 6,500 new teachers will equate to an extra staff member in just one in three schools in England.
Mr Mullins told The Telegraph: “The level of investment required to raise state education standards across the country is so great that the Government just doesn’t have the finances to do the job.
“The much vaunted VAT revenues will not even buy one extra teacher per school. How is that going to raise standards?”
