To wonder if Private School parents think we can’t read?

[Captainmycaptains]

Work/volunteer in Education so following the whole VAT debate.

SM is full of private parent groups ‘organising’ to get the proposed VAT on fees cancelled - fine you would, wouldn’t you esp.if you’re used to getting your own way.

They’re advocating hassling local schools, councils, demanding stats and figures that don’t exist, wiring to MPs - telling people to ‘claim’ their state place to ‘disrupt’ the ‘system’ while also saying ‘ Obvs we won’t be taking Charlotte and Hugo out of school, we’ll find the money’ etc strive harder, getting granny to chip in’ but this might make the council ‘panic’.

Do they think that people in support of the VAT aren’t seeing/hearing/reading all of these plans???

the funniest one yet is the poster who said ‘ well going to claim our state school places then! See how they like that! We’ll going holiday, pay the mortgage down, shop at Waitrose and save £700k in the process, ha!’
I. no you aren’t 2. Okay - go for it! Who on earth would think £700k is worth it?? Behave like a normal person then…

YANBU - yeah, they’re noisy as expected but the rest of us are as think/ concerned as they seem to think. Also - it’s too late for Sept - waiting lists only…

YABU - applying for school places you have no intention of using is daft, and of course everyone can see what they’re trying to do.

Lots of sad face private parents on SM claiming that they’ve moved their kids out of private schools so instead of the ‘state’ getting VAT £££ they’re now actually paying extra to educate these kids…

Great! That’s what we pay taxes for. Plus they’ll be helping schools in some areas stay open, as the school popn is dropping all over the U.K.
Our kids infants and junior classes are dropping to single form entry, and in the next few years the plan may be to merge the school into one primary… perhaps an influx from private schools will change this. Perhaps not. Either way it’s a positive for the community.

Almost ALL of the private schools in our area are ‘charities’ including the one that charges £30k day fees and over £50k for boarders…

So presumably IF these ‘charity’ schools ( the cheapest day fees are £18k) do go bust or can’t function fully as a private school - they would have the option to actually be what most people would consider an actual charity? Providing services to those who need it without charging?
The buildings, land etc could be repurposed to serve the local community or education on some way without selling everything off?

That would be interesting… I know our council has the funds for a new PRU but have been struggling to find a suitable /building for one.

@Captainmycaptains how would a charity run without income?

I run a scout group, a charity, and we have to charge parents fees otherwise we couldn't run.

70% of private schools have charitable status.

The Tories have a long history of selling off state amenity land including school playing pitches: between 1979 and 1997 they sold off 10,000 playing fields and the current government (well sometimes in coalition) has sold off more than 200 state school playing pitches since coming into power.

That's on top of closing down one o'clock clubs and closing down or eviscerating sure start centres.

@Aladdinzane

PED for private educations is highly inelastic though, far more than even the IFS estimates.

This is my understanding too based on what I have seen in DD's school's fees rises and how parents' responded. I think few will leave post-VAT

From the policy maker's perspective, best outcome obviously is if no one leaves and the private sector continues to educate 7% or more.

But, my experience is obviously narrow (central London) and a sharp 15% rise is not same as much smaller fees rise over years, especially now when mortgage rates are high. IFS admits too that they have very thin data to estimate elasticity (their worst case is 7% leaving, I think?)

So there is some uncertainty on how many will leave. Only the ideologically inclined (either way) are certain of VAT impact.

Maybe a gradual VAT rise would be better. Low single digit rise every year, collect the revenue, observe its impact and then decide. Meanwhile, schools can plan and parents too. Also gives a chance to measure the impact of additional funds in state sector, if any (I have doubts about whether it will make any difference).

But evidence based policy design is out of fashion in U.K. for a while now and it will disappoint the ideologues. Obviously not going to happen!

I think due to the socio-economic group which privately educates it's children, the numbers will stay relatively similar. Most parents who privately educate their children regard it as a necessity, not a luxury, and the proportion of their total income which will be taken up by by the VAT increase is relatively small.

Most will probably just make some other decisions in discretionary spending.

“ they’ll be helping schools in some areas stay open, as the school popn is dropping all over the U.K.”

I invite you to London OP. You really have no idea.

The problem is, this money from VAT on school fees is just an easy election headline. It won’t touch the sides.

I think some sort of ‘mansion tax’ will come next. It will disproportionately affect London / SE and particularly houses in the catchments of grammars and the most sought-after state schools.

This London?

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/londons-falling-rolls-crisis-moves-into-secondary-schools/

Facts not your friend?

On the plus side for those in independent schools - it has been announced that unis such as Oxford and Cambridge are now dropping their quotas for ‘state school’ and ‘independent school’ intakes. It was a blunt instrument.

These targets / quotas have been running for some years and they have found that regardless, they basically get the same demographic of students coming from state as independent - ie. there is next to no discernible difference between families who are able to move into expensive catchments or use grammars and those who stay put and pay fees.

So no doubt this finding / policy shift will filter through into govt policy and those using grammars or the most ‘outstanding’ state schools in certain areas will also have to pay some form of additional tax to fund the poorly performing schools in other areas. I’m sure you will be rushing to be first in the queue and raving about it OP. I look forward to your thread. Good luck! More tax is coming to everyone, one way or the other.

It’s no good quoting national or even London-wide statistics to people, like us, who know full well we wouldn’t get a state school place anywhere nearby if we had built an apartment in the playground.

As I said, schools in the U.K. are a total postcode lottery. That is the real issue. If everyone had equal access to a good and safe local school, there would be no need for independent schools, would there. It’s a vicious circle.

So who doesn’t the money when private school buildings and land is sold anyway?

Captains
Who doesn’t what the money? That sentence doesn’t make sense

Nobody’s going to be paying for their DCs state school. What next? Charge obese people and smokers and alcoholics to use the NHS? Scrap the state pension for the rich elderly?

Personally I will also be surprised if the Labour Party manage to implement VAT at 20 per cent on private schools. It’s so left field and anomalous. I don’t think the moral police will get to private schools. It’s just a bark and a bit of smoke. Or else they are truly as nuts as the Tories.

They are going to have more points to view though, more contextual than just state vs private which is what they should have been doing anyway.

I don't think this is actually good news for private schools at all.

I did once challenge an Oxbridge outreach person who kept going on about their state school admissions, and they weren't able to answer the question about grammars.

However, something I read recently did say that it hasn't just been all kids from "naice" backgrounds getting through.

And never mind not being able to get into a state school for year 7, you can’t barely get them into a private school either! Take the independent schools within two miles of our house - School A (co-ed) 1,500 sit 11 plus for 120 places. School B and C (both girls schools) it’s about 1000 for 100 places. Same with the boys school on the end of the road. And even the so-called ‘back-up schools’ still have 4 or 5 applicants per place, so not particularly ‘back-up’. And it’s becoming more competitive year on year. Some kids sit exams for maybe 6 schools and don’t get a single offer.

Then there are state schools like the London Free School which have their own admissions system and nobody is quite sure what it is.

Or try one of the grammars a bit further out - 15 applicants for every place again.

Or, most lunatic of all, you could apply to one of several Catholic schools around here but …. admission will be based on how old your baby was when they were baptised. Yes. So if you had the foresight to do the christening on the way home from the hospital - yay, you may get a school place. But perhaps you had other things on your mind in those early weeks - sorry, back of the queue for your child in year 7 admissions.

The whole school system is madness and it won’t be sorted by a few extra maths teachers, sadly.

What on earth do you mean, ‘the cheapest day fees are 18k’? No they’re not.

You said, "I invite you to London, you have no idea"

So I showed you the data for London.

BTW I live in London, and have found that parents often use the "no good schools" thing as a cover for wanting to send their kids to privates.

I've had the OFSTED outstanding school were I worked for more than a decade described as a "sink comp" by a private parent looking to make excuses.

I've had the Ofsted Outstanding then good school that my DC went to described as similar.

I don't always believe London parents about not getting into good schools.

@Aladdinzane - yes, unis will look at wider indicators (as they should and are already anyway). But the difference, as I understand it, is that they won’t have specific categories / targets for simply ‘state’ and ‘independent’ anymore. It will be POLAR, ACORN and regional quotas, rather than simply school sector.

Oxbridge are in a global educational arms race.

They are looking for the people with the best potential, not the best A levels, so they try to ascertain those people. They always did this, but far less. When I was at Cambridge, a fellow student came from a council estate and had CCD A levels. He actually did fine in Natsci and then made a lot of money in accounting, so they clearly didn’t get the screening too wrong.

But people always game systems. Some students go private until GCSEs and then pick an average school for A levels and add in some tutoring, in order to get a better offer. But it is hard to cheat a good interview, especially in Maths and the Sciences.

Which is great.

But still not good news for Private parents.

The results will probably be similar.

The real issue with declining private school places at Oxbridge is that even in the leafiest of comps, or top grammars there aren't the resources that privates have for uni applications. What Oxbridge has become much better at is looking beyond the polish.

‘The real issue with declining private school places at Oxbridge’

It’s an issue? The only issue is the fact that it’s still disproportionately high…

Ah, on MN there seems to be an issue when PE parents don't get the places they think they were securing with a private education.

That's what I meant.

@justanotherdaduser ,

‘I wouldn't say they are unusually small though.

Out of the nearly 1,400 schools that are members of Independent School Council, half have less than 290 pupils. A quarter have under 155 pupils. Only 7% have more than 1,000 pupils.

From what you are saying, after VAT change, most such schools will become unviable? If so, that will decimate the sector and cause numerous redundancies probably.’

The average senior school size is 496, according to the ISC.

https://www.isc.co.uk/media/7496/isc_census_2021_final.pdf

This is pretty much the number you need to carry a heavy SLT, a decent size site etc, and make the numbers work.

Schools have been increasing in size for years. Like most businesses, smaller ones are either becoming part of chains or merging and, again, some have always gone out of business and other new ones have started.

I don’t really know enough about prep schools to comment on the economics, I am afraid.

@Aladdinzane - yes, some parents are a bit ‘shock horror’ about schools that are perfectly ok, but it can also work the other way. As I said earlier in the thread, one if mine went to a brand new state of the art state college (must have cost millions) and there was a fatal stabbing on the premises and tragically, it was nobody’s imagination. That kind of horror stays with you. And no amount of extra funding would have prevented it because the real problem was external to the school. The problem was knife crime in society, not teachers or school funding.

But my point is that these kids would not go to socially diverse schools. In the main, they’d just end up taking up all the spaces in schools that are ‘comprehensives’ in name only; like my own catchment school.

I teach in a state secondary in a very deprived area although I mainly work in Pastoral these days. I love my job and feel passionate about helping the kids in my care to do as well as they can. I want them to break out of the poverty trap and have a productive and fulfilling life. Our school would massively benefit from an influx of middle class kids. But, it will never happen. There’s no way these parents would send their children to a school such as ours. And tbh, I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t expect anyone to sacrifice the education of their kids for a greater good social experiment. Behaviour at our school has improved dramatically under our current HT. He has turned it around but that doesn’t mean it’s now good. There’s still very high numbers of low level disruption and lessons are regularly slimed down to fit just 45mins of the hour because that’s what you’ve got if you’re lucky. These are the schools most in need of education policy that actually achieves something. Not this nonsense which will bring in very little revenue and achieve precisely zero for the cause of bridging the gap. A gap which isn’t, btw, between my daughter’s sporty private school and my catchment state school.

And, yes, it would happen over time, which is probably worse as nobody would notice until it was endemic.

I think the average is skewed by a small number of large schools.

It's like the average income of 10 people with one earning a £1 million and the rest earning £1 is just over £100,000

Page 9 in their latest report has a frequency distribution chart for school size - https://www.isc.co.uk/media/9316/isccensuss2023final.pdf

Majority of schools are below the size you mention.

This gives me food for thought. Daughter's school though not so small, is smaller than the minimum size you mention for viability. Maybe we need a plan B!