Flooding of state schools by ex indie students fails to materialise

But if it's too expensive how can they afford it?

Is that you Bridget…?

There's lots reasons a school catchment can shrink quickly. If there were eg three decent state schools in an area and one (A) gets a bad ofsted and one (B) has an ok one whilst one (C) is outstanding, application preferences switch.
Suddenly the outstanding one gets all the first preferences
Or another school A or B reduces PAN due to low numbers and people have the apply to C
Or a bus route stops so people can't get to school B / A and same applies.
Or council stops free bus passes
Or A / B has poor exam results year and C becomes more popular
The 5 mile thing could be a red herring too.
Maybe 99% lived within a mile but school not full then one child was further out and got a place.

Don't forget parents with children deliberately moving into the area because the school is outstanding.

can you really conclude on causality from one data point though ?

What are the other plausible possibilities for an outstanding school to have a shrinking catchment year on year despite falling birth rates? It's either private school fees or new builds being built in the area which just happen to have a lot of kids born in 2013-2014. The first one is much more likely.

can you really conclude on causality from one data point though @roses2 ?

Round here the furthest offer varies hugely year on year. A primary school near us has an 8x further furthest distance this year compared with a few years ago. There's a lovely little private school round the corner too. Something like a less favourable Ofsted in a nearby school can massively change application numbers. One year they had over 50% siblings and a couple of pairs of twins. All sorts of reasons.

The 5 miles was based on first round offers because I checked the data in March of each year. The document on the council website providing offer details wasn't updated after March each of the years.

The outstanding rated school we applied for went from a 5 mile catchment in 2023 to 3 miles in 2024 to 1 mile this year. The birth rate also fell. Stating "ex indie students fail to materialise" makes no sense based on this data.

But was the 5 mile radius after places from the waiting list had been allocated, though? Because that won't have happened yet.

The outstanding rated school we applied for went from a 5 mile catchment in 2023 to 3 miles in 2024 to 1 mile this year. The birth rate also fell. Stating "ex indie students fail to materialise" makes no sense based on this data.

Not sure which states schools kids going to independent schools applied in 2023 and 2024 but the 2025 data makes no sense if there isn't a private school exodus.

Love this!! Sums up the current government's attitude to education perfectly
Shocked more posters haven't sensed the sarcasm😂

Oh you’re being sarcastic, FixItFi. 🤣

Had me there. Tbf, there are some very extreme views on schools threads.

Out of interest, @FixItFi , are you on glue?

😂 This is ace.

The point is you shouldn’t have had the choice, your child’s education should be decided by the council. All education choice should be limited or totally removed for parents via taxation and the closure of schools. The Government knows what education best suits your child, it’s arrogant to assume otherwise.

FixItFi

You are missing the point, you shouldn’t have had the choice for your child’s education. It should be solely decided by the council or are you suggesting you know more about what is best for your children than the council?

Eh? Do you have the wrong poster? Not sure what your point is?

Of course parents have a choice over their child’s education.

You are missing the point, you shouldn’t have had the choice for your child’s education. It should be solely decided by the council or are you suggesting you know more about what is best for your children than the council?

Of course it does. Was never going to happen.

Read lots of “oh, but wait until sixth form” comments on another thread. Ours were in independents. We moved them to state sixth forms because their offering was better, as did many parents. It’s always happened because most independents have very limited options.

I think the important thing which I’m sure you’ll agree with me on, is that we limit education choices for parents as much as possible. Even if parents fund their child’s education totally themselves, we should seek to make it as difficult as possible for them to exercise any choice in the matter. Ideally (and I hope to see this one day) we don’t want any education choice for 4 to 18 year olds at all, it’s one size fits all and parents should be happy with that.

@zaxxon Oh sorry I didn't mean that to come across as having a pop at you, I thought you might be interested as there's a lot of discussion on there. 😊

There's already a long thread on this from yesterday OP: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5291082-no-exodus-to-state-sector-after-vat-added-to-private-school-fees-say-english-councils

The doomsaying was always obvious nonsense. Private school pupils are only 7% of the population (although if you went by Mumsnet you'd think it was 70% 😂)most of them will be able to pay the increase so won't move schools.

That leaves a tiny amount of children who will easily be absorbed into regular schools, I think it was 2012? Where there was a baby boom and some schools had to make extra classes, they coped then and would of been able to cope now

Beyond your telling language and tone, not really the case:
"In France, for example, it is only for the very thick and the very rich" - in fact, some of the French private schools are amongst the ones with stronger results.
"Most other European countries have an educational system that disincentivises private education" - only partially if you refer to the fact that the quality of the state education being better does not provide such an incentive to seek and alternative. In fact, many European countries actually support the private sector either to introduce choice and competition between the private and public sector (eg Denmark) or to cater for the lack of space / infrastructure in the state sector (Spain).