How oversubscribed are your local schools? Will they be able to take on students who are currently privately-educated?

But, a main point here is that people who signed up for private may not have done so if they knew that 20% would be charged in tax on top of fees (that in themselves increase yearly) would be applied. It's a bit like suddenly deciding to increase pension age without any sort of phase in period or notice. It's cruel, it's wrong and unfair.

The best solution would simply to have a scenario where VAT is applied to any family who decide to apply to private now, not those who are already in the 'private system'.

@BagFullOfNoodles does your one and only local independent secondary school ha e a purple blazer, by any chance?

clearly not too busy to be on Mumsnet commenting on threads about topics you “don’t care about”!

May be you can recommend your area so that people move there? I can’t recommend mine sadly.

Places in all of the ones near me, one even had to drop from 3 to 2 classes. Low birth rates there's plenty of room

Great , my kids got excellent grades in a state school. My youngest is on track to get 7 8 and 9s in GCSE in a great state school where I can assure you there is no knife crime or violence. Plus my kids have a more realistic view of life than a kid caught in a private school bubble

Both areas where I have lived. Thankfully 😅 my OH was offered a job abroad with school fees paid and a thriving economy.

We were asked for our local areas. So that is my reply.

Like I said before, it didn't happen in my area. 21 years my kids have been in school. No it's not the norm no matter how many articles you look up.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/croydon-gangs-operate-outside-school-170000727.html

So one event and no one was stabbed. It's also a grammar so not the usual state school. Like I said before this has not happened in our area over the 21 years my kids have been in school. It's not the norm.

It’s been explained on many threads that whilst a lot of schools say they are full, they aren’t.
They set a number of students (PAN) which works for them financially, balancing number of students with the number of teachers they need to employ.
Adding a couple of students over the PAN can end up costing the school money.
If there was a sudden influx of students it would be worth increasing the PAN. The LA can offer temporary financial support to schools to increase the PAN as well.

Unless you work in admissions you don’t actually know what space is really available.

Totally! It has become very unsafe.

https://www.kentlive.news/news/kent-news/dane-court-grammar-reassures-parents-1815778

My kids have been in state schools for 21 years (different children obviously) all been in state secondary schools. There has been no knife crime, my kids have never been involved with violence. You comment is ridiculous

@Bosstanaka maybe you should move areas if that's the norm where you live. Because you and your children will still walk the same streets and who knows.

Honestly that is just ridiculous.

In over 10 years of state education in the wilds of SE London, DD has yet to come home with tales of violence or knife attacks. It would be the total opposite of normalcy.

And private school doesn't mean no issues either: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cglxlljkgyzo

Both private and state schools are very oversubscribed. The main difference is that behaviour in the state school where knife attacks and violence crime is normalcy. I would not be prepared to send my kids to state school under these circumstances. All pack and parcel of big cities you know.

@MrsAvocet "Personally, I am not entirely convinced that there will be a significant financial benefit and I would favour a small increase in income tax, particularly at the 40% rate and above (and yes, before anyone says anything, I am a higher rate tax payer myself)."

Personally I would prefer not to. I rent on the street where a lot of people live for free and we pay for everything. So I actually need my money more then they do because they're homeowners and I'm not that privileged.
Work should pay people who do it in the first place.

I do have sympathy for the individual young people who will have their education disrupted as I have seen how difficult it was for a number of friends' children when our local independent school closed. But do you know what? Despite that upset they all survived - in fact continued to thrive - because they all have massive advantages in life regardless of what school they went to. As indeed I acknowledge that my own children do.
But I am a lot more bothered about the conditions that huge numbers of children are growing up in in this country than I am about the effects of this policy on a relatively small number of relatively well off youngsters. Personally, I am not entirely convinced that there will be a significant financial benefit and I would favour a small increase in income tax, particularly at the 40% rate and above (and yes, before anyone says anything, I am a higher rate tax payer myself). But my doubts about this policy are not enough to stop me voting Labour - or more to the point, not voting Conservative - because there is far more at stake. Far more of the young people in this country stand to benefit from a change of government than stand to lose in my opinion.
And whilst I remain sympathetic because I know a lot of people who have been privately educated or are sending their children to independent schools currently and I know that most of them are perfectly decent people, the views being expressed by many of the private school parents/supporters on these threads are not winning hearts and minds. People "better themselves" by sending their children to private schools indeed!

@Euromonkey every area has the least desirable undersubscribed school. But in some areas it's the only school as well.

I think your missing 2 issues here. First, there isn't an issue with spaces even at Outstanding primaries. There is masses of capacity across the board and will be unless birth rates go up from what they are now. Secondly, most primaries are fine. The vast, vast majority are rated Good or Outstanding and they tend not to suffer from the behavioural issues secondaries do. Yes some very motivated parents will pay for a particular primary catchment but it's unlikely that primary is doing anything special. Desirable primary catchments are really just a symptom of parents buying into decent secondary catchment areas. If it means a few families who would have got into Primary A now end up at Primary B, the impact is probably minimal.

Didn’t Mordaunt state that 90% of all state schools are now graded good or outstanding by OFSTED but barely a post can go by without someone shrieking about ‘sink schools’ or ‘failing comps.’

It may impact here. There are a similar number of privates to grammars and I know families with children currently private who has already moved to get in the catchment for the best state school in case their children don’t make the grammar standard. They will give notice at the private school if VAT does get added to fees.

The grammars can’t take everyone. The result here is that the outstanding state secondaries which are already oversubscribed will shrink their catchments even further due to more applicants, with house prices in those catchment areas rocketing as wealthier families move in and further excluding less wealthy families. Children of those families then get whatever school is left; usually the nearest sink.

That HMRC aren’t likely to benefit much from the VAT given that private schools can then reclaim their capital allowance for refurbishment works seems to be overlooked.

It’s a labour election gimmick.

And I still believe Labour tax is just the last nail in the coffin. White collars can hardly afford private education anymore.

Exactly! We don't care but also feel sick of this unfounded scaremongering. How many VAT topics are active now on mumsnet?
Personally we could afford private school but chose not to because it would solely depend on my husband's ability to work - my salary is not enough to cover both housing and schooling. So we live well within our means and I don't understand and don't envy people who take risky decisions and then cry about it. I'd ask them to kindly stop doing both.