VAT and Bursary impact

Never seen the private schools around here sharing any of their facilities or resources with the public school.

My son went to the local comp and came out with 4 A*’s. And no, we never tutored. It’s the child not the school. Many schools in London are having to close classes in year groups due to not enough children.

I’m sort of in the opposite position. We applied to 3 local, small private schools for our autistic son with ADHD believing he would struggle in a large state mainstream - all 3 turned him down. Quite shockingly, the SENCO of one private school which had been recently justifying its existence by quoting the high number of pupils with SEN it supported (landowner was trying to kick them off the site and put an SEN school in its place) gave my son a multiple choice test with lots of inference in it and then was surprised when he became overwhelmed and went out and sat on the stairs - like she had set him up to fail!! We had thought the school would be perfect, within walking distance, small class sizes and a small campus with the same number of kids in the entire school as there are in one year of our local state schools. But no, these schools had plenty of people queuing up to pay their fees, presumably without the SEN my son has, so it was off to our 4th choice state school for him - 240 other kids in his year, yet one of the private schools said they thought he would ‘struggle moving between classrooms’ of their tiny school!

Anyway, his state mainstream has been fantastic. The teachers are empathetic and caring and approachable, and school leadership listen and are responsive. I’ve had to put a lot of effort in to communicate with his teachers and several meetings with the SENCO and Deputy Head, but my son has successfully finished year 7 and is not (yet!) freaking out about going back in year 8. He is also exceeding expectations in maths and science, so he’s not just ‘got by’.

I know all kids with SEN are different and most schools seem to be different, but I wanted to share the fact that not all state schools fail SEN kids and in fact some excel in teaching them. More resources would help them to support these kids even better and let’s hope this Labour govt provides that. But as well as there being state schools that support SEN well, my own experience of private schools is that they are happy to ditch kids with SEN for those without and it has completely changed my view of private education.

One other point, VAT on school fees won’t impact LEAs paying the fees for SEN kids at private schools as they will reclaim the VAT from HMRC. Also the govt has said that kids with acute SEN whose needs can only be met by private schools will not have to pay VAT.

They are freely available from ISC etc

I completely don't recognise the educational landscape described in the OP as London. Grammar schools are open to all, not tutoring is required. No deep pocket is required. Mine went without me spending more than about £20 on a couple of books of practice papers.

Private schools lending staff to state schools? Private schools and state schools draw from the same pool of teachers, and many teachers move between the sectors throughout their career. Some prefer private, although terms and conditions are often better in state. In what way would a private school teacher be of benefit for a state school to borrow? What a strange idea.

Use of land/ facilities etc, sometimes, although the charges are often higher than using other local facilities. I last "borrowed" a private school facility around 10 years ago, (a recording studio) Have found cheaper options since. We do borrow sports fields, but that is from other state schools, and lend our running track.

I've taught in private and state schools, behaviour and attainment is similar in both, and so is teaching.

No worries. There is genuinely sympathy out there for children like your child as ideally there would be appropriate numbers of spaces for SEN kids which we know there are not. Maybe this money can go towards making more appropriate spaces as a priority.

@Tiredalwaystired Admittedly I’m not always on mumsnet so apologies if I’ve missed the countless posts discussing that issue specifically.

Serious question, how do you know these stats please?

Which threads have you been reading? This ALWAYS comes up.

There are over 100 000 kids with SEN in private schools and only approx 10000 of these have EHCPs.

Incorrect. A few famous public schools have wealthy endowment but most cone from fee surplus. Private schools are either charities or non profit making therefore surplus go into bursaries to support less financially able pupils

@Newskool Rarely have I seen anyone talk about those SEN children with no EHCP’s who are effectively stuck in the middle.

We are in the same position, both Dd have SEN needs which weren’t able to be met in the state sector. We are considering our options. But it looks like this will now cost the LA over 400k+ in school fees, not to mention the legal fees to go through the EHCP process.

But that is on the parents for sending them to a school where the fees are so close to being unaffordable

It's a shit show and much more time and thought should have gone into it. Let's see how much income it generates.

I would have thought these schools would now have to pull the bursaries and other charitable actions and become more elitist now.

It’s definitely children like your son that there is a lot of sympathy for on the many many MANY threads about this policy.

Yes people are sneering but it’s not easy to have to pull your child out of school, especially in year 10 or 11. There should be some empathy for the kids at least. We can’t have ‘needing to use foodbanks’ as the only marker for compassion.

NC.
I've been reading these VAT threads from the shadows. But I'll come out and say that my DS is the recipient of a bursary. He is also SEN and cannot manage in a state school. We tried, it failed. The bursary saves the local authority thousands, as if I pursued an EHCP and was successful, specialist places cost the LA in the region of 30k per annum. I don't know how many children there are in private schools with my DS's needs...but we do exist and this affects us deeply. We don't have a simple choice of 'private or state'. It's 'private or nothing.'

The article that I linked to above agrees with you, and suggests that bursaries are not actually helping many disadvantaged children either.

This certainly tallies with the families that we know who have received bursaries and definitely don't need them. Our local schools essentially use them as a marketing tool.

DD got a part scholarship and to be honest she would have gone to the Private school anyway and the other Scholarship kids weren't from deprived backgrounds or anything so I don't think it helped with social mobility in that case.
Maybe Bursaries are different and maybe London is too?

Agree and this is why the vast majority will not feel bad about this policy.

The number of threads on this illustrates lots of things about MN. I am sure that there are people on here that have experienced real poverty and a poor education but I think they are a few. Some people have no idea what it is like to have no alternative when it comes to their children's schooling.

Choice for most people is an illusion or for people with money.

Sorry! No idea why that included an unrelated quote! This was in relation to the OP.

I do think this is a little disingenuous. There are outstanding school across London, including outside of zone 1-3, so expensive but not well beyond the price range of someone already living in London elsewhere, all with great access to public transport. If you wanted to live near an outstanding school there will be places where the £15k a year+ you’ll save per child on school fees would probably top up any mortgage or rent where you are. You’re still at a massive advantage to a lot of kids because you could do this if you wanted to.

Honestly the amount of energy that has gone into all these anti VAT threads....

It's happening. Pay the money or do what the majority of the population do and send your DC to state schools. Put all that energy wasted here into those instead.

Sending them to the local state school really is the solution if they really can't afford the 20% on the school fees they pay. Maybe the local private school will let them use their swimming pool once a week. I've heard they are very helpful.

Or, they could downsize, remortgate, ask their parents for money, or miss out on a couple of holidays.

93% of children go to state schools. It isn't a punishment.

Do you think parents who could only just not afford private school beforehand should have been given a discount?