The Rt Hon Sir Keir Starmer
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
10 Downing Street
London SW1A 2AA

22 September 2024

Dear Prime Minister, 

We are parents of students who attend French schools in the United Kingdom that are a part of the AEFÉ (The Agency for French Education Abroad) network. We hereby petition you to exempt these schools from your proposed imposition of VAT on private schools in the U.K.

The French Embassy and the Association of Parents of the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle (“APL”) have already written to your government during the consultation period laying out their arguments for such an exemption. We will not repeat those arguments here, but will request that you give them due consideration. In addition, many of us have written to our Members of Parliament, who have no doubt shared our concerns with your government.

The basis for our petition is simple.

Our children, being bilingual in French and English and coming from multinational backgrounds, have specific educational requirements. The U.K. state schooling system does not currently accommodate their specific educational requirements.

Specifically, the U.K. state schooling system does not currently provide a French and English bilingual education and does not prepare students for the French secondary examinations – the Brevet and the Baccalauréate. The AEFÉ network of schools is the only option for us to meet the specific educational requirements of our children.

Imposing VAT on our school fees places an unreasonable financial burden on us when we have no other viable choice for our children, at a time when we face multiple other sources of inflation in our cost of living. Indeed, many parents whose children are in the AEFÉ network will be unable to continue a bilingual education for their children.

Please therefore consider granting an exemption from VAT to the schools in the AEFÉ network.

Yours faithfully, 

The undersigned