How many kids have left the school? (VAT)

@Aislyn good point! we were lucky in that our schools are either ok, or merged with another school which luckily is ok for us. Local state would gave bern a disaster (2 kids with adhd/asd - we’ve tried local state before, it was horrendous)

I'm sure the vast majority of those children will be looked after in their local state school.

Private doesn't always mean better. State doesn't always mean worse. Neither are necessarily a reflection of a parent's view on the importance of education.

There is something deeply ironic about the supporters of private schools complaining that Philipson et al think “some of our children are more important than others”……

And a third group surely:
School closed and had to leave.

It happened to us, with minimal notice (under 24 hours) and was utterly traumatic.

In my experience, people who left fall in two categories

• living next to an excellent state school/ability to buy a super expensive house there
• parents of kuds with SENDs, who knew their child had no chance in state schools, but now have to accept that

Hmmm. I don’t think they did it to get any money. They knew that no money would be made. They talked about thousands of new teachers in state schools, funded by the glorious pounds from VAT on education. We’ve never seen any evidence of that have we.

It is a policy of spite, envy, and nastiness. That’s all it ever was. The fact they’ve punished those trying to give their kids a better educational environment, and made the PS system even more exclusive than it was, is despicable. The fact they’ve actively damaged the education of thousands of children is disgusting.

Tread lightly on people’s lives? No.

Bridget Phillipson said she’d look after ‘our children’. Apparently that only mean some of our children. Some of our children are more important than others, it seems.

My dc didn’t go to private school but I did double my mortgage to get us in to the catchment for a decent state and paid for private tutors. So I’m not going to criticise anyone for going private because that would make me a hypocrite.

Id be pretty insulted if an ex private school parent came into a state school and started suggesting that they could magically change something. Again, the parents who may need to move their kids are not the movers and shakers of industry and business. Their kids are untouchable at secure schools. Its the just barely making it work parents who are probably working 50 hour weeks to afford it. Not sure what impact you thi k they could hsve, especially at secondary.

None of our peers would ever think we'd be able to fund school fees for two DCs. They all know we're the ones who buy second hand uniform, walk everywhere to save money, buy yellow-sticker food etc.

What they don't know is that because of lucky investment decisions decades ago, extremely frugal living and a few inheritances, we can pay secondary fees for two DCs in full, up front, from savings if we wanted to. As it happens, even the investment income will pay any likely fees.

Yes I hope so.

more than 93%?
so these 93% are so useless that remaining e.g. 2-3% which will move from private to state will make a difference?

Most parents wont move their kids midstream. It will be falling intakes year after year that will kill the schools. That, and the parental anticipation thst this is a possibility.

I think most parents do, so now more people will put state education on the list of things that influence how they vote. Excellent.

I prefer small classrooms not ones with over 36 children in them.

Why? I think the more parents who have a personal stake in state education being good education the better.

It will be heartbreaking when the state schools are overflowing with the ex private school children.

There’s no way anywhere near the majority of the people I know have grandparents paying fees. They aren’t all “from money”. Many have ordinary parents that could not afford multiple school fees for all their grandchildren in their retirement years.

The ones I know have GPs who pay, (sometimes for whole sets of cousins), one couple inherited a property and they use the income from renting it out and others received inheritance early and invested it for the purpose of paying the fees. None of them are earning it and paying from in year income at all.

I know lots of people in accountancy/consultancy/law etc paying private, but they are mainly from well off backgrounds, and had huge family input/inheritances when buying property, so mostly have much lower mortgages than would be typical. They also tend to be in roles where they've had large bonuses along the way that they've used for things like cars, so they tend not to have finance on those.

As pp have said it is incredibly common for grandparents to be paying or at least contributing.

DH and I have gross earnings well over 300k but are also saddled with a big mortgage, commuting costs & childcare bills. We lose a lot of what we earn in tax. We could afford private but it would consume every spare penny we have.

@SALaw I worked in private schools, gps paying is really common. Also some people who got on the ladder early/right time have very low mortgages or none at all which helps hugely.

The schools tgat are closing around here seem to be the ones caring to SENDs kids with lower needs (ADHD, ASD, anxiety). Parents of these kids generally couldn’t really afford private, but had the choice between no education and private, so made it possible.
Now they have to choose no education (yes, there are some state schools with a decent offer for these kids - but it is very, very rare).

None from my dc school. Both are selective with long waiting lists so I guess they will always have their numbers

What would it be then? Onlyfans?

I’m not in an MC firm. They can’t ALL have grandparents paying those kinds of sums surely?!?

The schools that are popular will keep going. The ones failing will fail. The Tory dream really of the markets will decide. If you can't afford the fees wether it's the actual fees of the popular schools or the vat increase then you have to go State. Come 2029 I don't think you'll find any Party pledging repealing VAT on school fees as part of their manifesto.