IELTS writing task 2: Liability to support state education system

Topic: Families who send their children to private schools should not be required to pay taxes that support the state education system. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?

state education system contribution

"Many believe that parents with children in private schools should not be liable to contribute to the state education system. I assume that citizens are responsible only for their corresponding choices made by them alone and therefore, I totally agree with this notion.

The first reason for holding the belief mentioned above is that many families assume that private schools are more appropriate for their children and they do not receive benefits from the state education system. It is common sense that it would not be fair on them if they were required to pay for the public education expenditure. Therefore, tax exemptions should be allowed for these households. Some may assume that those being eligible for these tax deductions should also help to fund the national education budget but this statement is somehow fallacious because the state's expenses have already been reduced by their joining the private education system.

Another significant point is that many families cannot afford to pay both private schools' expenses and to contribute to the state education system. It is a fact that the cost of private education is usually higher than the payment ability of parents with average income so that some have to ask for support which will eventually be a heavy burden on the government. For example, the total monthly tuition fees of a student in private high schools in developing countries is well above one thousand dollars which is worth a king's ransom if their parents are working in normal jobs such as workers or farmers. For this reason, I tend toward the viewpoint that financial concessions should be made to them.

In conclusion, it seems to me that people have the right to pay only for the expenses of their children to follow suitable learning paths and for this reason, I entirely agree with the viewpoint that tax liability to support state education system is not reasonable for those who send their children to private schools."

I would highly appreciate if you could help me to revise the above essay. Thank you all in advance.

Sarah, your restated prompt is too close to the original to be considered an accurate retelling of the topic provided. You need to make sure that you totally change the way that you represent the prompt in your own words. If it is too similar to the original wording, as this one is, you will be marked down in terms of GRA and LR considerations. The GRA requires you to prove your ability to create complex sentences so having your statement sound too much like the original will not prove that ability on your part. Let me show you an example of a distant, but still related prompt restatement below:

These days, families that send their children to private schools still pay taxes that are pushed towards the support of the public school system. There is a belief among the parents of children attending non-government subsidized schools that they should be exempted from paying the educational tax since their children do not attend the state schools. In this essay, I will discuss the degree of my agreement with this opinion.

The reasons that you present in the body paragraphs are very well developed. Though the grammar problems do exist that prevent you from developing better simple sentences, you were able to make your opinion understood through statements that were easy to understand. Focus on creating more fluent simple sentence in your next practice test.

For the concluding paragraph, you should have led in with another version of the original prompt discussion before presenting your impressive summary of discussion and personal opinion. This paragraph is good but could have been better.

@sarahna
Hello, basically, I think your essay is really good, and you elaborated your point of view well after all.
In my opinion, it may be a good choice if you can shorten some sentences. For instance, the second sentence of paragraph 3.
Here is my way expressing the idea,

->
It is a fact (...) parents with average income, this phenomenon, as a result, makes some parents have to ask for support which will eventually be a heavy burden on the government.

Well, this is my unprofessional view.
Finally, once again, I consider your essay a good article.

Dear Mary Rose and Johnny Hsu,

Thank you very much for your advises and comments. I'll try to revise my essay accordingly

Best Regards,

Hi all,

Assuming that simple sentences are the key to improve my essay, here is my edited one (I keep the suggestion for introduction of Mary Rose unchanged, because it's really hard for me to rephrase it)

"These days, families that send their children to private schools still pay taxes that are pushed towards the support of the public school system. [....]"

I hope to receive your comments...