The private school debate on MN never ceases to amaze me, and it is riddled full of all sorts of claims from private school parents that are desperate to maintain the privilege that they current hold of not paying VAT on fees, so well, lets take apart some of the most commonly used arguments.
Parents make sacrifices to send their children to private school/lots of average families send their children there. According to data from the UCL Institute for Education the proportion of children being educated privately is close to 0 in the first 9 household income deciles. Less than 1% in each, meaning that a tiny proportion of students come from average background in terms of income. The study found that the % of the cohort attending private school actually only rises to 10% only once into the top 5% of household incomes.
A further UCL study showed that the major reason for children attending from outside of the 10% household incomes was mainly household wealth or grandparental help, NOT scholarships/bursaries. The average bursary only accounts for about 35% of the fee, so this must be covered elsewhere ( also it notes that whilst 1 in 6 children at private schools receive some form of financial aid, outside of the top 10% of incomes 4/5 are not receiving any help as not all scholarships are focused on income.
So no, average families do not make up any significant level of the population of private schools, even when accounting for scholarships. Please do not make the argument that its just good choices/financial prudence that allows parents to make this choice, the data just doesn't back it up ( and no your anecdote here will not count as evidence).
Just a quick aside on scholarships, they aren't really that charitable, its a business transaction, the school gets to get great grades or highly talented musicians/sports/artists that then attract fee paying parents. They also won't disappear if VAT is added because most schools don't use revenue from fees to pay for them, they are paid for out of endowments left to the school. MOST private schools will be keen to retain the charitable status too, so this won't be wound down either. So all the bluff and threats from the private school parents here will amount to nought.
Along with this we need to address the idea that there is going to be a large exodus from private schools to state schools. In reality, an increase in VAT on the average school fee (15,200 according to the IFS) will result in an 3040 PA rise in prices. Sounds high right? Not really, 58 quid a week. If your budget doesn't have enough flex in it that you can't afford 58 quid a week, you were flying way too close to the sun financially, and you couldn't really afford private school in the first place. Sorry to be blunt about it. The vast majority of parents will just pay this, there won't be the exodus predicted.
There are also those who claim that the NEED to send their children to private school because all the local schools are "dire", really? Who are these people that can afford for one child, to spend 91k for one child to be educated but aren't living in catchment areas of good schools? Or who are making the decision to pay this money for schooling whilst not already moving and getting a better return on that cash? The idea that people will then just move into the catchment areas of good state schools and price out parents who otherwise would have afforded it is yet another thinly veiled threat and one which bears not scrutiny. No, there won't be a major uplift in prices for those catchment areas, the people that send their children to private school already live in the nicest areas in town and their children could go to those schools anyway.
Just as an aside, I was at a party once and overheard parents using this justification for why they had to send their child to private school, the local schools were all "hell holes with terrible results". I was horrified to find that they were discussing the OFSTED outstanding rated comprehensive my children and siblings children attended that got great results, had good facilities, and is what mumsnet would describe as a "leafy comprehensive". I suspect many of those who claim they need to send their children to private schools have more than adequate options from the state, they just want to buy their children more privilege, which is fine, but it IS a luxury and you should be paying VAT on it.
The whole "already paying for a place" thing is a also a misnomer, 4.4% ( the amount of the UK budget allocated to schooling) of your income tax amounts to the same amount as the per head spend on a pupil, no, you aren't already paying for a place. The term "net tax contributor" gets thrown around here a lot too, but the data shows that people are very rarely net tax contributors for long, and actually all but 3 % of us die in as net life tax contributors. People doing this also throw up the "pay half of all the tax" as a phrase a lot without counting in the fact that income tax is only about 25% of the entire tax take. Just whilst I'm on this rant, the net tax contributor figure is also a very rough figure, it only measures direct benefits in cash or kind, it doesn't measure anything else, so it isn't really accurate.
To summaries, mumsnet has lots of myths about private schools but for the most part, they are just a load of rubbish that people use to try to protect the privilege they are currently afforded ( and I'm shocked that people who claim to be so clever can use them so badly)