Urgent Help - Year 9 school places for six children required asap

@Arran2024 - private schools are waving the notice fees for some parents who really cannot afford it - because think about it, the Government will probably want VAT on notice fees as well! So anything the school charges from January will be VATable. It is an anomalous situation so they may wave it quietly for genuine cases.

If it were my child I would go see the GP and get a note to state it is causing anxiety etc and bringing up Covid trauma and then I would try and use the Fair Access Protocol sooner rather than later on Bromley Council.

Some of the posters have been really nasty! A current Year 9 would have missed 6 months off school in Year 4 (from March 2020 to September 2020) and then another whole term in the Spring Term of Year 5. They may already have trauma from this and so do the parents.
For a Government to then inflict another quasi out of school period on a child and their parents who has already gone through this, is unconscionable.

@2010louises - if your friend is not too far from a train station into London, then suggest also that she looks at secondaries further into London that are not far from the stations en route into London. There are loads going into London and there may be more vacancies there. Please also remind your friend to keep her DS calm, he is going to be fine, she can use any extra money saved towards tutors in the future. In the mean time, if he is out of school for a few weeks early next term, it may mean she can successfully appeal for her preferred school. He should get online if that happens and work ahead in things like Sciences on Seneca or Maths on Dr Frost (free educational websites) and maybe practise his languages on DuoLinguo. Read some good books on the GCSE English syllabus etc. There is no need to panic, they are legally obliged to find him a place.

Please also remind your friend that her DS only has to go to the school allocated until end of GCSE. By Sixth Form, all the grammars open up as well again as long as he does well in his GCSEs. So the focus has to be to keep him calm and studying etc.

I bet there is a lot of brinkmanship going on here.

How is this private school going to find new students in the middle of year 9? If they can't, they will be losing £27k per child per year. I suspect that a deal will be done to keep the children in school.

But also, re the parents, don't they have to give notice? Won't they be committed to next term anyway?

I know the head of a private school in sw London. She says it's the recruitment of new pupils they are worried about, not the retention of existing pupils. They are not passing on the vat. They are having a wage freeze, no capital expenditure etc.

I bet this school cracks when there is a huge exodus.

Self-evidently not, if you read the thread. I don't, personally. I was the first person to mention independent schools because I wondered if a school might be closing with little notice. There are going to be lots of threads like this because there are going to be families who realise it just isn't affordable any more. It remains to be seen whether they are few in number or many, but there's no doubt they will exist, and why shouldn't they ask for advice on the MN Education topic?

Am I the only one that thinks this poster wishes to start a heated debate about private education?

I voted Labour but this is a poorly thought out policy. The fact that some very wealthy schools expect to be quids in because they can now reclaim VAT on their expensive building projects is no great surprise. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/oct/12/eton-among-elite-private-schools-set-to-cash-in-on-windfall-from-new-vat-rules

It was obvious that these schools would claim this money back and will probably lose no, or very few, pupils because they now have to charge VAT on fees. They have the endowments to provide bursary funding for the few who would struggle. Meanwhile the smaller poorer schools who can't afford big building projects and whose pupils come from less affluent families are going to lose pupils who will go into the state sector. This means their education will cost us all money which currently their parents pay over and above their taxes.

I wonder how much money this policy will actually raise as opposed to cost.

It’s not the only council. There are no local school places for my children if we wanted to move. My MP agreed with me when I pointed this out. Our nearest one with any space is about a 40 minute car journey away (no public transport available).

This thread is not seeking information about school places

I don’t think you read the first post. It specifically mentioned asking for information about school places. The OP only admitted to them currently being at private school after other posters pressed for more information and made some assumptions.

it costs money to people who already have it.

They don’t have the money. That’s why they’re moving.

expect other people to sympathise

No one is asking for sympathy, just for advice on specific school places. As it’s a thread on secondary education, it’s not an unreasonable post.

Unfortunately this is the reality of the situation. People might not like the fact that parents will now have to use overstretched state schools but they have no choice.

Bromley Council has relied for years on about 10% of the (admittedly) relatively affluent local population paying for private school, using grammars outside the Borough, paying for their own SEN support and "exports" a significant fraction of SEN kids...

They free ride on their neighbouring areas!

I think it is a real story.

I know you are you said you were and so am I is it?

It’s the Labour Government who is responsible for preparing for the inevitable transfer of pupils from the private to the state school system. If you bring in a policy which is likely to result in tens of thousands of pupils moving school, you plan for it properly. We are talking about children here.

Sure thing, sweetie 😘

I was referring to your rudeness, as you know.

This thread is not seeking information about school places. It is yet another thread trying to undermine a new policy because for once it costs money to people who already have it. I do not have time for parents who use a system that benefits them because they have privileges and expect other people to sympathise when they have failed to prepare for a change that was on the horizon years ago.

I haven't been rude to any individual. Whereas you resorted to rather lazy insult to me.

Yes, you were rude, repeatedly, about parents and children who are currently in a difficult position.

And for no reason, as this thread was about seeking information on state school places, not asking opinions on or complaining about the VAT policy.

Good for you for acknowledging your rudeness, though. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

How rude!

Mmm, what a delicious word salad. Thank you, Spinet, I was wondering what to have for lunch!

I’m so sorry for your friend. Some of the comments on here are disgusting. I’ve long said that Labour would have faced far less resistance to this policy if people hadn’t already become so stretched due to the cost of living crisis. Unfortunately, Labour (and some of their supporters on this thread) have their heads up their arses.

I put mine in private about 3 years ago, so acutely aware of how much has changed in that time period. over the past 3 years school fees are up more than my worst case forecast even before vat, my mortgage will be 20-30% higher when our current offer expires, the weekly food shop is about double, and every other bill has increased as well. It isn’t ‘just’ vat that makes private school suddenly unaffordable, but a sudden 20% on top of everything is the tipping point for many. Especially when your choice has to endure for the entirety of gcse years. Maybe they could swing vat this year, but are worried about the next 2, especially when school fees and other costs are likely to continue to increase?

and for everyone claiming this was a foregone conclusion that we all should have planned for, it really wasn’t. Labour have floated lots of ideas about policy (education and otherwise) that haven’t really stuck. Labour have also proposed banning private schools as well as stripping them of their charitable status - ideas that are half baked and fundamentally unworkable upon further scrutiny. VAT is probably in that category as well, but it looks like they are going to push on regardless. They still haven’t really firmed up the details and we are less than 3 months from implementation.

The fact is both the timing of the election as well as the reckless speed with which this is being rolled out have caught many by surprise. It really isn’t fair to blame these parents for poor planning when 1) so much has changed so quickly for many people’s financial context and 2) the government keep insisting that there are state school places for anyone who needs them.

I don’t think the figures are too far off the pace for your area but lots of things are more expensive in the SE, not just housing. Private schools are one of those things. We found we could save 25-30% in fees if we moved back to where I grew up.

It's this policy which is the problem or it isn't though.

As a labour voter I'm sure you are not one of those people who talk about how people ought to take individual responsibility when it comes to benefits and the NHS but the truth is that sending your kid privately is taking on personal responsibility for their education so it's up to you to make sure you can weather any storms that make it difficult. That is the point of the system. That this storm comes in the form of a tax that will be paid into the public purse should not alter that.