To think good school places will be even harder to find next year because of the VAT on school fees

[Nesca1]

We are are looking at secondary schools for DS. We have our eye on a decent school bang in the middle of a solid middle class area . The school is always over subscribed; this year we would have gotten a place but last year we would have missed out because of how far we are from the school.
Usually, the school offers places to children living 1600m away, last year it was 1400m due to a large number of sibling applications.

Due to the whole VAT issue, i think more parents from the local area are going to be sending their kids to this school, rather than sending them to private schools.

Is this a reasonable assumption? I don't think parents will wait for the policy to be enacted, but they will move their year 6 children into this school.

The average annual fee of private school is £15k. They can’t be that concerned for their children’s welfare if they opt to relocate them on the other side of the planet, presumably away from family and their established friendships, for the sake of £250 a month.

Where I live the people who send their children to private schools don't live close enough to the state schools that are oversubscribed to get in so it won't have much impact.

That still isnt explaining how it will cost.

The average secondary is around £21k when including boarding schools etc. It’s not unusual for fees to be £25k a year for a day place. £25k a year for 2 children amounts to VAT of £10k a year (or almost £20k extra gross income a year). It’s not just £250 per month. In addition, it’ll be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Other countries can offer so much more for these people.

How fortunate that they lived close enough to an oversubscribed state school to get in. If they switched to oversubscribed schools before VAT was imposed I bet they were going to do it anyway.

My heart bleeds for the people who can afford 25k a year just for one child's school having to pay VAT.

umm - you are talking about one child. Everyone I know has three children each which equates to £10,000 extra per year. Over the children’s school life we are talking a staggering £150,000!!!! Not including the nursery or pre school years.

It could be much more as we simply talking about a standard average school fee - many are much more expensive.

Thats without the fee rise of 5% annually.

You are seriously deluded if you think people will hardly notice the difference.

The repercussions of this will be felt everywhere - we will start to see a brain drain as people choose better lives elsewhere. It’s already insufferable here in many ways - why would talented individuals stay when they can be paid more, work less and pay half the cost in international schooo fees overseas!

Our country will go to the dogs under Labour.

If they got into an oversubscribed school, they must have been applying at a normal entry point e.g. for admission into Y7 in most areas in England.

So, basically you are saying that, at a point when all parents consider all schools available to them, they decided to choose the local state option rather than a private school. A decision that many parents make already, even before any VAT rise.

Of course, this decision freed up a place in the private school for a child that wouldn't otherwise have got one, which in turn freed up a place in whatever school they would have otherwise gone to (see what I did there?)

@Polishedshoesalways are private schools cheaper overseas?

I didn’t say the average secondary, I said the average private school. Doctors do have primary school children, you know. Some also have only one child. Regardless, let’s not pretend a relocation to Australia, solely due to a VAT implementation on school years only, is in the child’s best interest. If relocating there offers such a better life irrespective of school fees, then presumably they’d relocate anyway. But let’s not pretend a move triggered by VAT would have anything to do with the benefit of the children, which seems to be the sole reason why private school parents are up in arms.

umm - you are talking about one child. Everyone I know has three children each which equates to £10,000 extra per year.

That's interesting, because the private schools round here have a much higher preponderance of 1 child families than average. Paying for private school for three children is such a serious undertaking, that most families attempting to do it would be in the "very wealthy" rather than the "just about scraping the fees together" category.

Won’t be any worse than what the Tories have inflicted on it. There is literally nothing they haven’t wrecked. The day they leave the entire country will breathe a big sigh of relief. At the very least we’ll have a party that cares about the majority as opposed to Tory mates and donors.

Private schooling in France costs in the region of €500–€1500 per year. They are partly funded by the government.

’Everyone I know has 3 children!!!’

The average number of children per family has been below 2 (between 1.4-1.7) since the 1950s.

We’re not discussing the random people you know at the far end of the bell curve.

Yeah, I grew up in a grammar area and moving from private primary to state secondary was extremely common. The private primaries were well known for cramming children for the 11+.

In my own area, the shift tends to be in the opposite direction. The private primaries are used mostly by parents who can't get their kids into the best state primaries, but since of the kids at the state primaries then switch into private secondary.

As for private school parents buying up houses in the catchments of outstanding state schools...yes, it might happen. But the catchments of the most desirable schools are already full of wealthy middle class families, so it will be one lot of privileged people displacing another lot of privileged people. And the kids from those privileged families will be fine wherever they end up, because they have motivated and supportive parents. Meanwhile, the most disadvantaged families won't get a look-in either way.

In Edinburgh, between 25-30% of children go to private school for senior school. The state schools in Edinburgh are bursting at the seams.

Where is this happening? Can you name actually schools?
I am not disbelieving, just genuinely appalled!

The doctors that move to Australia and NZ are not moving because Labour is planning to apply VAT to private school fees.

They're moving because the Tories have fucked over the NHS, eroded their pay and made their working conditions untenable.

It’s ridiculous when people say things like my heart bleeds for people who will have to pay VAT blah blah. Yes your heart will bleed as this policy will cost us all as regular tax payers a lot of money. It’s not just the VAT implication.

This isn’t setting us on the road to equality or better funded schools, it is fiscally costing us more and the elite will just become more elite. It’s the worst Labour policy ever.

Some 10 years ago we were 130m too far from our preferred secondary school which was our nearest at 1km away. We didn’t get a place and (given the alternative) reluctantly sent DC to a private school. Today I doubt we’d be doing that. Where there is pressure on school places it will increase, but probably by not that much.

Exactly this!

My child goes to private school. Two parents have left and moved to an area with good state schools (the ones near us aren't good) already because of VAT. Yes it may be a problem.

They weren’t going to do it anyway. They sat exams for the private schools, but decided that the threat of VAT was too much. Some decided to move and rent to ensure they were in grammar catchment.

I actually feel a little bit sad for people who have so little faith in their own dc and/or their own parenting that they will turn their lives upside-down to ensure that they get their kids into the "right" school.

Yes, at a natural transition point. Our prep school saw a large rise in the number of children switching to state at 11. They were planning to go private but decided the threat of VAT was too great. Yes, it freed up a place in the private school - a place which is still available because an increasing number of private schools now have places spare because of the switch to state. Many private schools aren’t full.