…In thinking that parents would welcome cheaper, less flashy private schools

[Newbutoldfather]

This is (obviously) occurred to me over VAT, but also in thinking that the cost of private schools has gone up way way beyond inflation.

The school I went to (ok, left 40 years ago) is now 12x what it cost when I went. (General inflation is 3.3x over same period for reference.

So, where has the money gone, given that they can’t make a profit? Not class sizes, which are actually, on average bigger, certainly pre sixth form. Not teachers’ salaries, which have failed to keep up with inflation. I think a lot is around the overall offering and a bloated, overpaid SLT structure. When I say the overall offering, I mean flashy facilities, wrap-around care, a myriad of available sports, a loss making 6th form offering subjects with only a few takers etc etc.

AIBU in thinking there would be massive demand for a ‘basic’ private school, which would maybe cost 1.5-2x a state school (minimum 3x where I live), have excellent academics and good pastoral care, but ‘ordinary’ facilities, a normal 6th form offering and good but limited sports. Or AIBU and most private school parents want expensive facilities and a huge choice of A levels, wrap around care and co-curricular and have no issues with how much it costs?

Why don't the 93% of parents who already attend state school do this? Because it is easier to spend other people's money.
I am already saving the state 7K per year so I don't feel the need to fund something we aren't using above and beyond the taxes we currently pay. If push comes to shove and it was a choice between VAT or income tax we would choose income tax.
Why is it always the responsibility of private parents to improve state schools, there are plenty of wealthy parents in the state sector. Why aren't they already contributing? Don't say they are because we all know the majority don't make additional voluntary donations.

Because that wouldn’t remove problem children from the school. The point of private education is not that it’s expensive and well resourced. The main benefit is that it’s selective and they can refuse admission or expel pupils for bad behaviour.

If your child displays challenging behaviour their feet don’t touch the floor at the local private schools here. Harsh if it’s your child but it’s what the other parents are paying for I guess. State schools get penalised for expelling pupils so their bar is way lower. That’s why you can’t really compare the two it’s apples and pears.

My children are going to a no frills prep school. Still 14 in a class, good range of subjects and extra curriculars, excellent wrap around. Just not particularly flashy facilities but there are good facilities in the town e.g pool which they use with their own swimming teacher etc. The £9k is easily worth it for the wraparound and impact not having that would have on my career. A nanny would be more expensive.

I hope that would be clarified in the final manifesto.

But I think it's because there are no tuition fees at state boarding schools, so it's the "hotel" costs only that parents pay.

In which cases, it would be consistent for the "hotel" element of fees to be separated in all schools, and VAT placed on the tuition fees - this is easily done because the vast majority already admit day pupils, and it'll be those fees that represent tuition.

There are very few schools now which do not admit day pupils at all, but I'm sure they'll find a methodology (probably based on boarding sector average)

It won't be in their manifesto so far because they have only just realised that they needed to exempt state boarding school.
They now will have to exempt private boarding fees otherwise that would be inconsistent and potentially discrimination because the boarding cost is not tuition cost in private schools either.

Op I was thinking exactly this the other day. Private schools are all competing against each other for flashier and more innovative facilities, the latest curricula, impressive events and open days with corporate-style hospitality for prospective and existing parents, expensive prospectuses and associated colateral, even the best quality school dinners. All this comes at a price and is sold via a specialist marketing and admissions team. When I went to private school, it was simply a case of my parents wanting to send me to somewhere with smaller classes and a greater emphasis on the creative arts. There was a Headmaster and a couple of deputies but apart from that no expensive leadership team. There certainly wasn’t a marketing department, just a registrar, adverts went out from time to time in the local press, and the school prospectus (if it existed) was probably written on the back of a cigarette packet (not literally).

it’s interesting how so many schools have buckled under the pressure to demonstrate ‘value for money’ via all these extras when really I don’t think they represent value for money at all. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if the obscenely bloated bubble of private schools charging such high fees bursts and parents find themselves demanding bog standard private schools again that simply offer limited spaces and smaller classes but none of the bells and whistles.

The small classes are a huge part of the cost though. Teachers’ salaries are generally the biggest part of expenses at almost any school.

I can see how kids with varying levels of SEN might benefit from small class sizes due to things like being overwhelmed by large numbers of people, but other than that, the actual data suggests that reducing class size really doesn’t bring children any advantages. Certainly, I’d expect reasonable able “selected” kids to be able to cope fine in large classes - grammar schools generally have big classes with no apparent ill effects on the kids.

@GreenTeaLikesMe ,

I despair at those who think that secondary private school classes are small. The model around here is 24 per class, 80% of state school classes, so using simple logic they should cost 1.25x a state school.

In reality, the teachers are probably paid 20% more (at least) and also teach a smaller percentage of their time, to allow more time for lesson preparation (good) and adhering to detailed marking policies (waste of everyone’s time).

But, when schools say 70-80% of the cost is ‘teaching staff’ they also include SLT, some of whom might hardly be teaching at all and are generally on 80k + (+++ in some cases). SLT size has exploded in private in the last decade. Is it worth it? Personally, I see no great improvement in experience or outcomes.

But some private secondary classes ARE small. Just because you haven't experienced this doesn't mean they are all the same. In DDs school max in Yr 7 classes are 20 and they go down to 15. That is according to DD herself. For GSCE the classes are smaller again

It is true. I am French and my kids went to a French private school. One of them boarded for a while and it cost about 500€ a term. Yes, these schools are ‘subsidised’ by the government. I have just looked it up, apparently French private schools are given 67% of their costs by the state and public schools 74%

Well the big benefit is that the teachers aren’t stressed, can concentrate on teaching and aren’t leaving in their droves. There are massive issues with teacher shortages in state secondaries that are only going to get worse. Any school with problems has more problems than others.

Also the private secondaries local to here have class sizes of 20. That is a huge difference to 30.

Hence me saying "unless it has external finance". The French and English systems are therefore not directly comparable.

We live in Cambridge, there are independent school offerings at all sorts of different levels.

We have:
1.
A minor public school and its feeder school. The Prep goes up to Yr8. The public senior school has a Yr 7 entry of 15 girls and 15 boys to attempt to attract joiners from state school. Main cohort arrive in Yr9 and a high proportion come from feeder Prep having sat the entry exam in Yr6 to secure future place. The senior school sixth form is small - parents want the kids to leave to save fees; children want to leave because of Saturday afternoon school and having to wear smart clothes in sixth form; school wants those with less good GCSE mock results to leave; Cambridge has a top sixth form college that many want their kids to go to.
2.
Famously outstanding private schools (Perse/Stephen Perse) Who creamed off the top 11+ kids for free places, back when we still had the 11+ here (mid 1970s). These 2 schools were then only senior/secondary schools. They now have feeder schools in their franchises. One calls their feeder a prep although the transfer year is Yr7. They are considered academic. They have more success at getting kids to stay for sixth form, although one has very limited subjects.
3.
Independent schools that don’t go beyond GCSE. We have a variety of these. The 2 city centre ones don’t have any sports facilities and have arrangements with other private schools re using theirs. One is quite academic, the other is not so much. There are 2 international schools both small, both quite mixed reputations. There are a few private schools offering SEN that have decent reputations.

So we basically do have the something akin to the variety of types of private education and price points the OP mentioned.

I’d say the wrap around care is a major plus for many who go for private education for their kids.
Sport is attractive to some, but it doesn’t suit everyone and at the trad Prep/ Public School you may well be on the sports field when you’d rather be in the classroom - we found this in yrs 3 and 4 and went to state primary in what felt almost like a detox.
Small classes is generally a reason for choosing to go private. The best academic private school here has classes of 24/25 so not much different. Overall size of school - esp at sixth form level - can be a factor. Our famous state sixth form college is huge with a Yr12 cohort of 1200. That’s not for everyone, but there are various small state and private sixth forms on offer as well as a couple of larger state sixth forms.

I know this is an old thread but I've been reading with interest. We're in an area that has a few really good comprehensive secondaries, but we wouldn't get into any of them based on our postcode, so would be stuck with options which are pretty rough. The other really good state schools (quite a few) are all faith based and so we wouldn't be able to get in. There isn't even a good range of private options (especially for boys) without a substantial commute, other than some that are very academically selective and one relatively 'low frills' local private we will probably go for as it's probably cheaper than moving house!

I think a wider range of private options would be popular, but I really disagree that any schools should be able to set up with their own admissions criteria whilst at the same time the cost of attendance be (part-) funded by the state - that's basically what faith schools are already doing, and I think it's fundamentally wrong that tax-payers' money gets used in a discriminatory way.

I think it would be fundamentally wrong to move to a system where the "state" funding element for any given child can be given to a private establishment and then have topup fees charged, which a lot of countries have. But @TiggerSnoozer you misunderstand the background for the status of state-funded religious schools. These are generally schools that were founded as an act of charity long before the state took any interest or responsibility for education, and were founded specifically to provide an education within the principles of that religion (usually Christianity). When the State decided to provide universal free education they could have built enough new schools to educate everyone, or they could have bought all the existing religious schools to integrate them into a uniform system, but that would have cost a lot more money. In theory there is no harm at all in the reasonable solution that the religious schools got absorbed into the new universal system with a remit to prioritise children from religious families, with the State building as many new schools as is required for everyone else. Your objection only arises because on average the kids that qualify for the religious schools get better qualification outcomes than those who don't. However, an entirely secular school with no selection criteria in the same building would almost certainly just get the same average results as any other secular school with no selection criteria taking in the same demographics. The school isn't providing any kind of privileged magic. However, if you want to eliminate the difference all the taxpayers need to do is buy these school buildings from the charities that founded them. It would cost billions and have no discernible benefit, but at least we could have purity of secular education.

@Newbutoldfather

“AIBU in thinking there would be massive demand for a ‘basic’ private school, which would maybe cost 1.5-2x a state school (minimum 3x where I live), have excellent academics and good pastoral care, but ‘ordinary’ facilities, a normal 6th form offering and good but limited sports. Or AIBU and most private school parents want expensive facilities and a huge choice of A levels, wrap around care and co-curricular and have no issues with how much it costs?”

This describes my DD’s primary to a tee. Unfortunately not so many similar options for high school.

A little bit outing, but we used to live on the Wirral that had two lovely private schools that cater to the nice but dim kids.

They would also attract the highly intelligent but not pushy parents too so it was a really lovely mix.
The facilities were a bit rundown the buildings, old teachers absolutely lovely, Children did well there.
Needless to say they’re both closed down and the glass fronted crappy red and black uniform with a hat private school has scooped up all of the surplus children because there was nowhere else for them to go.

Friend looked at private schools at Companies House. He said it was teacher's salaries (even though they aren't great), teacher's pensions and capital expenditure mostly. You want skilled, experienced teachers? They are more expensive than newly qualified ones.
Most private schools are making very little profit. It costs a fortune to keep buildings up to date with the latest Health and Safety Regs especially if you change the use of a building for example and it (quite rightly) needs a new fire escape.
This is the reason that if you look closely, you will find a large number of private schools have been bought by massive educational enterprises although the school name remains the same.

@DexaVooveQhodu how the situation arose may explain it (and I agree the solution is potentially expensive), but it doesn't justify the outcome IMO which is discriminatory. My objection is not in the academic outcomes at all - but it is the following things:

1. Children from families of faith have more state-funded school choice than others
2. Children with no faith may be placed in faith schools against their wishes with the council considering that a full discharge of their responsibilities to state educate
3. The schools can (and very much do) use their status as a backdoor to impose admissions criteria that are actually more socially selective than faith-selective (but under a guise of the latter) in order to exclude pupils / families they don't want to have to deal with. This is the main reason for the academic outcomes being higher - they are selective schools.

It's point 3 which is relevant to this thread and the suggestion from others that state funding should be able to be used for private provision. The other 2 are just additional downsides of the current way faith schools fit into the 'state provision'.

I suspect what people are calling 'flashy facilities' are often paid for at least partly from alumni donations. Wealthy alumni don't donate large sums of money to pay for running costs like teachers' salaries, but schools can more easily persuade them to contribute to a new theatre or auditorium. Which then hopefully attracts more pupils (albeit not necessarily the children of people on this thread!). And they can monetise these facilities by letting them to the local community as well.

I’m pretty sure the teachers pull a very nice wage… my mate was a teacher at a primary school pulling in £50k during her first 5 years of teaching.

And they will work longer hours, potentially weekends etc.

So you really mean, what parents want is to be able to put their children in a rarified environment, excluding any children with SEN or basically any academic or social struggles.

And make it cheap so that state schools become basically sink schools for those who can’t get their children into these “no frills” private schools.

YABVU

We need to concentrate on improving state education for all, not opting more and more middle class children out.

If it were up to me, I’d be like Finland and ban private schools.