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

It sounds as if even without the VAT increase it must have been extremely stressful for your friend to have afforded private school for her son. Maybe this will turn out to be a blessing in disguise as they will no longer be under this huge financial pressure. I would never have considered independent education without a comfortable contingency, as you never know what life will throw at you.

What about looking at an online school like Minerva while she waits for a good state place to come up? It'll be a lot less than she pays now she'll have extra money for extracurricular activities etc.

Also, why doesn't your friend just join Mumsnet and post herself? It must be annoying for you to have to relay all these messages to her.

It is not a policy I support especially. I wish state schools had the money to support kids with SEN properly (although in my experience state schools are actually better at this I concede my experience is not all encompassing). Let's hope that changes, but yes there is a group of kids who will be affected right now. It's the parents' duty to mitigate that.

This last minute panicking is down to parents not preparing for the change properly and not the policy itself. I'm sure many parents do scrimp and save to send their kids private - many families couldn't do this if they wanted to - but if you decide to rely on a system that depends on your income when there is a state funded alternative then it is your duty to your kids to have a contingency in place. If you can't afford in a year an increase that amounts to a new boiler and a major car repair or your cat needing dental surgery then you couldn't afford to send them in the first place.

There are a good number of parents who really scrimp and save to pay for private, often because the child has SEN requirements that are better met by the private sector

Alas children will be harmed by this policy whichever way it's applied.

That sounds about right for private senior school

If you know you can't absorb a 20% hike - whenever it happens - you either save up a couple of terms' worth of increase when the policy looks likely to give yourself time to find a place or you take the place offered to you early on. If you can't save up 20% of 2 terms over 3 years I would wonder if you were in too precarious a position financially to send your kids private. After all, life happens doesn't it.

@Another76543 - true but before the summer term started last year it was clear it was coming in this year and the idea to start year 9 knowing you couldn’t afford year 10 or 11 rather than try to move to start year 9 in a new school seems reckless.

@2010louises

why would anyone think starting a new school in year 10 would be better than in year 9? At best they’d finish this year before the VAT charge came in and then what, try to find a school that’s offering the same gcse choices as their boy was already going for? Most schools will have made their students pick gcse options and set groups and timetables before the school year finishes in year 9, anyone joining in year 10 may only be able to have the gcse combination that have spare spaces.

anyone who had thought about it would have started moving at the end of year 8. For 6 families to make the same poor decision is surprising.

Yes, most state schools start teaching GCS in Y9, too, ie they deliver the syllabus over 3 years, starting in Jan after options have been taken. Sep/y10 may be too late.

Many children in the current year 9 will have been in the private system since 2015. The possibility of VAT has only become a real possibility over the last 3 years or so. Whilst parents will have budgeted for fee increases, many wont have budgeted for high inflation (affecting fees and living costs), cost of living crisis, covid implications, plus an overnight 20% hike in fees. The 20% hike is the final straw for many families. Blaming families for finding themselves in this position is rather unpleasant.

Contact Bromley admissions and ask which schools have in-year spaces in Year 9. There is a form you complete and then it gets sent to the schools. The schools should then contact you to get admissions meetings organised. The reality is that you'll need to do some chasing to keep everything moving as it should.

If a place comes up after being on a waiting list, you then have to decide immediately whether or not to accept it. You can’t just keep it open. Parents do not want to move children unless it was absolutely necessary. Parents could not really start making firm plans and decisions until they knew what was happening. Many schools still haven’t announced their fee increases for January.

I do agree, this has been on the cards for years, although only heavily publicised this last year.

Many private schools, like mine, have done our bit too, knowing it was likely ahead we have increased fees more over the past 3 years than we would have, meaning we can now reduce the fees, thus reducing the VAT and therefore making it only about 10% actual increase to the parent.

Our head and bursar have held a few parents talks, the first this time last year, advising of what was likely to come.

It’s been on the cards for much longer than Labour have been in power. My husband and I were looking into private school for our son who is autistic and has ADHD - he would have really benefitted from smaller class sizes and a smaller school for secondary. This was for Sept 23, so we were looking about a year before that. My husband was very worried about managing the fees for 5 or 7 years and kept saying “when Labour get in they’ll put VAT on fees and they’ll jump 20% in one go” - so it has been a risk for quite a few years now. Granted it may not have happened, but it was a sure thing Labour were getting in this year after the past 14 years of chaos.

My son didn’t go to a private school in the end - they all turned him down - gave some stupid excuse about him needing full time 1-2-1 (never had it in his 30 class primary) and that he would struggle with moving classrooms on their “big campus” - he is managing fine in his 240 entry state school!

My experience with private schools and the amazing welcome my son’s state school gave him (they told us how excited they were to have him join them - I could have cried after all the rejections we got) has really changed my view on eduction in this country. I am supportive of the VAT on school fees, I think all education should be state run and more money invested in it.

i wish these 6 boys well in finding a place. A neighbour of mine had to move her son out of private when she split from his dad, about the same age as these boys - he’s done fantastically at the local state school and just gone off to a RG uni to do a good degree.

You can get on the waiting list for schools without leaving your current school. It's called preparedness, something parents who send their kids privately surely ought to know more about than most (I'm ignoring the other points in your post, which are fatuous at best). There is literally no excuse for parents who find themselves without a plan at this stage.

Sorry I thought it was pervert. Blimey, those fees are astronomical! Still think it could be worth taking out a loan. My ex boyfriend had to leave private for state and it hugely affected him. He was badly bullied and had been brought up to see state as inferior and so felt his parents had let him down. He had such a chip on his shoulder about it.

@2010louises a poster above makes a good point. Speak to their existing school about bursary assistance. I know some schools have said that they will not see any child having to leave for financial reasons; they will step in and provide assistance. Admittedly that tends to be the wealthier schools with large endowments.

about £25k which is average for the more economic end of private secondary

About £27k based on those figures. Not unusual for secondary school. Many families at private school with 1 child use pretty much an entire salary on paying the school fees.

Check out all options.

1. look at grant making trusts, they might be able to help, unlikely but it does happen. Even if it is only until the end of the academic year.

2. check out other schools for scholarships / bursaries. I know these are disappearing at a rate of knots but some are still around.

3. Consider boarding. There are state boarding schools, education is provided by the state but you pay for boarding. Link to one near me, they were private until about 1 or 2 years ago https://www.theroyalschool.co.uk/state-international-boarding-wolverhampton/fees Boarding is under £6k per term.

4. Ask the LEA to pay for the term or to pay for the VAT, it might be cheaper for the LEA to fund them.

5. Consider a tutor / governess. You cannot have a tutor teaching more than 4 children as then it becomes a school but parents could hire tutors to work with half of them at a time.

6. FE colleges can take children from age 14, not ideal because often they only provide a couple of GCSEs.

Good luck, I'll be back if I can think of any more options.

The average VAT figure will be about £4K a year at secondary level, per child. Many families have more than 1 child. A lot of families with a couple of children can’t just find an extra £8k per year. They might not be able to take out a loan. Many are already stretched because of the cost of living and interest rates on existing borrowing.

The VAT is an extra £450 per month? £5.4K PA?

How much are the fees?

There’s no application period at end of year 9 tho. I agree with others, much better to move mid year 9 than at the start of year 10, for reasons to do with GCSEs as already mentioned.

@2010louises all your friends can do is apply to the LA and take the place they are offered. A long waiting list is unlikely to get shorter in year 9 IME, but the LA has to offer them a place once they are out of education.

They can always appeal for their preferred school, if that’s appropriate.

It was suggested by the Labour Party that the VAT wouldn’t apply until next September. It was only announced a few weeks ago that it will apply from January. Before then no one knew if Labour would actually win the election (let’s remember that Labour only won 34% of the vote share). There was no point in disrupting happy children if there was no need. For families who couldn’t afford the VAT, most will have been planning to switch next September, once the election results were known.