Hope for sixth form colleges on VAT? Or just a little more honesty?

Today’s Guardian online and tomorrow’s paper carries an article about sixth form colleges: overachieving but underfunded by Harry White. The piece highlighted the funding inequities suffered by SFCs.

The article included a quote from a Department for Education spokesperson:

Colleges are treated differently to schools when it comes to VAT because of their legal status. We are looking into whether funding arrangements should be reviewed to take this into account.

Basically that recognises that SFC bear VAT on their purchases whereas schools do not.

This contrasts with the Treasury minister David Gauke in Parliament in May this year:

There are no plans to allow sixth form colleges to waive VAT on purchases. They ar required to pay VAT on their purchases, in common with everyone else. The basic funding principle for sixth form colleges is that these VAT costs are taken into account as part of the up-front funding allocation.

I am not expecting any U-turn but there is now a more honest appraisal of the situation coming out of the Department for Education.