Richard Garner quotes the Sutton Trust in an Independent on Sunday report on sixth form college VAT.

A senior Tory MP has criticised the Government’s refusal to release sixth-form colleges from having to pay VAT.

Graham Stuart, the Conservative chairman of the Commons Education Select Committee, is leading a cross-party campaign by 75 MPs to persuade the Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, to exempt colleges.

At present, VAT payments are costing sixth-form colleges on average £335,000 a year – the equivalent of at least 10 teaching posts. Local authority-maintained schools and academies are exempt – the latter released from responsibility for VAT payments by a clause in education legislation dating back to 1994.

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One sixth-form college, Hills Road in Cambridge, has been bracketed together with three independent schools as the four institutions in the country that send the highest number of students to Oxbridge – ahead of any grammar school, academy or local authority-maintained state school, according the Sutton Trust, the education charity which campaigns for equal access to education. A greater proportion of sixth-form colleges (87 per cent) have been rated “good” or “outstanding” by Ofsted.

Read the full report here.

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