To think if you can no longer afford school fees...

If only there were other educational opportunities for those children.

It’s a shame there isn’t 🤷‍♀️

State schools are bad, that’s also tough.

Particularly on the children that are settled in their schools.

Not very kind OP!

How would you feel if you had to love your very settled thriving child from their school?

NB my children were not privately educated. ,

Could always give up SkyTv

Or take in ironing.

State schools where I live are actually very, very good. So I have no sympathy with any parent who thinks that their child is going to suffer from having to go to one.

(SEN provision is obviously a different kettle of fish)

So many people starting threads just to have a dig at people whose children go to private school.

It doesn't impact me either way, non of mine went private. It was never an option.

But I can totally understand people being pissed off about a 20% tax being added to something they pay for.

Not sure why some are so eager to try and getvpeople to shut up about things that are impacting them. Or so gleeful, that it might happen.

Honestly? I'd remortgage, downsize or, to be absolutely honest, not have put them in in the first place if it wasn't absolutely comfortable. It's the same reason I bought a house I could afford, not just within my price range. Because life isn't predictable.

The modern day middle class seem to have the idea that private school should be accessible necause you can scrape over the line. Ignoring any risks of ill health or job losses that might occur and result in the same problem.

Fee changes are not the sort of thing that bother parents woth kids at Eton.

It's a fable, and frankly poor planning, to have thought it was ever achievable or a safe bet that said child would have a pernament space if parents are that close to the line.

State schools where I live are actually very, very good. So I have no sympathy with any parent who thinks that their child is going to suffer from having to go to one.
Where you live. And there are other parts of the country (assuming UK) where they really are not.

Children move schools all the time. I did multiple times as a child. It really isn't that high a deal.

But where I live is where there will be a disproportionate number of private schools/children in private schools.

So there's plenty of very good provision for them.

@EatTheGnome has it all cured to you that other stuff may have had a financial impact and this is the final straw?

The amount of people gleeful at children losing their school places is awful.

Why are people so angry that some privately educate their children?

Yes, cry me a river. We’ll be saving £30k a year and the money will go on foreign holidays, saving for university costs/ future housing for the DC, tutoring, cultural enrichment, riding lessons, tennis lessons, music lessons, etc. DS moving to a leafy state grammar from his leafy prep. Best bit - you lot fund it.

Yawn, arent you bored of trying to froth up support for this?

I think you’ll be laughing a bit less when VAT is added to university fees.

They're good where you live.

Sometimes it's just luck to live near a good state school but often it's dependent on being able to afford to live near a good one (hence why house prices are higher near the good ones).

If people were genuinely concerned about inequality, they'd look at the wider picture. Housing, for example. Want to address educational inequality (and societal inequality in general)? Want mixed income state schools (presumably that's what those against private schools want)? Then achieve that through building more social housing that's spread out evenly across every part of the country.

I have an idea! Let's start yet another thread saying the same thing 🙄

Froth up support for Labour's mad plan to tax education.

There’s a big difference between not wanting to pay more and not being able to pay more. What intelligent person would actually put their child into private education knowing it was leaving them with no financial buffer whatsoever ? The problem is I would bet anything in the majority of cases that parents of privately educated children are just irritated by this rather than the increase would mean them going without necessities (and if that was the case then it was poor financial planning to opt for a private school and they need to cut their cloth accordingly).

I live in an area where there's a very high proportion in private schools - it will be absolute chaos if there's a significant drop in private school intakes because the state schools those children would be entitled to already tend to be very full.

There are also (at least in some) a lot of children with ASN. My daughter was at one (moved back to state, so I know this isn't always a huge drama) and a really quite high proportion of the kids were there because they had been in state and hadn't coped due to ASD in particular. There were a number of parents only just making it work who will have to pull out, but it's also the factor that with fees having gone up about 20% in a couple of years anyway and then adding on VAT the equivalent parents in the younger years simply won't put them in which will cause issues with a lack of state school spaces.

Some areas will be fine but in others the issue will be really concentrated.

So you are in an area of wealth and aspiration? DS has left school now but we live in an area of fairly dire state secondaries, requiring improvement. We also didn't want single sex which was our catchment.

OP is right it is tough. But you can still sympathise with the children who will likely have their education disrupted. Different exam boards for example.

@EwwSprouts I do, actually, have a lot of sympathy for those children. It's not their fault that things might have to change for them.

Maybe Labour will then build more state schools if the need for places is clear ?

Well yes it is tough. Particularly on the children involved. Yours is an unkind, goady post that really serves no purpose at all OP.

This issue does not affect my family personally. And I do agree with the tax. But it gives me no pleasure at all to think of the heartache it will bring to families, and in particular children, were at private school just by a tiny margin and who will have to move.

There will be a human cost involved. And the properly wealthy will be insulated from the fall out. So, whilst I support the tax, a bit of empathy would, in my view, have served you better OP.