State school 6th forms oversubscribed

[LordGiveMeStrength]

AIBU to be concerned about the impact the new VAT on private schools will have on state school 6th forms?

Our local 6th form open days have been jam packed with so many year 11s moving from private schools.

Issues I see:

1. kids who have been at the local state secondary school since year 7 have been told their space in the 6th form is not guaranteed and if they don’t get as high GCSE results as other potential pupils they will not have a spot. The nearest private schools have amazing GCSE results so very likely to displace existing students to other state school options a far distance from their homes.
2. infrastructure - the local school is already heaving so accommodating a huge influx is not possible, buildings are already crumbling and it will take a long time before investment actually happens to improve the facilities.
3. false economy- currently kids in private schools don’t cost the government to be educated. Government’s plans are that money raised from VAT will pay for additional teachers (but I don’t see that happening immediately). If lots of private schools kids move to the state system not only will government not collect that VAT, but they will all be liable for educating pupils who previously were in the private sector. I believe the current cost from central government to educate in 6th form is £5k with additional payments for more academic subjects (eg further maths A level pupils will equal an additional £900 per pupil per year in the state schools). Apologies if these sums aren’t correct.

https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/private-school-parents-vat-state-sixth-forms-3473062?srsltid=AfmBOopXOi5842QMq-qO1NqHGR9g9-4BOi6Gc0v_dlhBbFBTMmU5Prsi

Good, I'm glad you have accepted that your points about photocopying and chairs were hyperbolic.

Of course if a state school 6th form suddenly has a 20% increase in numbers that would be difficult / impossible to cope with short term at least.

But is that actually happening?

There are more state 6th forms than private ones so ex private pupils can be spread out. Many parents will stay private.
In certain areas there may well be glitches of extra high demand, but where I live it isn't uncommon to travel for an hour to 6th form. (My DD is an hour door to door for her college.)

VAT on schools is idealogical more than financial for Labour. We need to accept that.

And finally - where do sixth formers want to go? Do they want to go to the school with no sports provision, 30 in a class and the canteen outsourced to Sodexo where they will just be “bums on seats” funding fodder? No — they want to go to the schools with great facilities, small class sizes and a more individual experience.

And, inevitably, the ones with higher grades and more middle-class parents will be more likely to get the sixth form places they want — pushing kids who are less lucky or advantaged into the schools which just see them as bums on seats. Those will be the kids at the less good schools and sixth forms with less good facilities and less good provision overall. Which is exactly what this thread was originally about.

I can say for my DD she would have left her school and gone to the local college if she'd had to do sport. She took a packed lunch so wasn't interested byin the canteen.

Where I am (Hants) the A level students tend to end up in one of 2 places, either the outstanding one with ~2000 in a year group, or the other outstanding one with ~2000 in a year group. They are seen as excellent half way houses to university with much more freedom and flexibility of options than schools. Other smaller colleges are also available but state schools with a couple of exceptions don't have 6th forms.

Good, I'm glad you have accepted that your points about photocopying and chairs were hyperbolic.

@TeenToTwenties <sigh> no, these are EXAMPLES, in order to explain to you how exempt charities funding works. All of these things are real costs, not hyperbolic. Does your DC’s school have a photocopier? More than one? Do you know how much these cost to buy, or rent and service? How much the maintenance is? I bet you don’t. Even one of them costs a fortune. Those babies are expensive. Just because sixth form maths doesn’t use it, doesn’t mean it’s not a substantial overhead. This is what I mean. The sixth form funding doesn’t somehow come overhead-free as extra amounts. Same for all the rest of the school costs.

I guess a special magic fairy pays for the kitchen staff salaries and the sports field then. Which a lot of FE/sixth form colleges don’t have anyway, so by your logic better value for money? Why didn’t she go there?

She liked her school with the exception of sport. So as she didn't have to do sport she stayed.

I don't see how she incurred additional costs for sports facilities or the canteen as she didn't use them.

However that wasnt what I was replying to, you asked about if sixth formers wanted to go to schools with no sports and outsourced canteens and my point was that sports facilities and nice canteens wouldn't have interested her in the slightest. I hope that clarified it for you.

Actually the local FE college has better sports facilities than her school and the catering students produce some excellent food at reasonable prices. You don't have to do sport or eat there so again irrelevant to her

Taking on an A level MFL student doesn't increase the costs of the sports field.

It probably doesn't increase kitchen costs either unless there is a contract related to exact number of pupils in the school.

So your DD doesn’t, but why would everyone else be the same?

It’s testament to how blinkered people are, that in this thread there are large amounts of people who seem to be Labour/state school supporters, essentially arguing that: much larger A-level class sizes are fine, extra workloads for teachers and staff is no biggie, and state sixth forms shouldn’t provide decent facilities for students? Or that because x happens in their area or DC’s school, everywhere else must be like that. And that this is all somehow a good thing, just because they blindly like the idea of private school parents paying VAT? Even if the obvious consequences are that the knock-on effect on state school students will be marginal at best and potentially quite adverse at worst.

Hey, I suppose it’s yet another example of how people can be made to vote against their own interests by plying them with inaccurate ideas (cf. Brexit); but I still fail to see why the overall picture is so hard to grasp. The system isn’t just YOUR school or YOUR kids. It’s the whole system overall. If there is more pressure on state schools but not really much extra funding (or the costs end up higher than the money the policy raises), one individual school might get a few more bums on seats, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good policy, or one that does anything for the state sector or less advanced kids overall — other than increase funding pressures elsewhere in the system.

To listen to some people on here though you'd think that private schools will be empty come September. That isn't true either.

It is idealogical not financial. Labour want fewer kids at private school. They may or may not wish to pay for the impact that has on state schools. Time will tell.

Do you get that one extra student might not add substantially to the overall school overheads, but that ten per class does?

The overheads fund all the school provision. The funding per student goes towards all of these costs, not just their individual teaching or the things they personally use. Nobody is in the bursar’s office saying “Jenny and Kate in year 12 don’t play any sports, but Barney in year 13 doesn’t do any drama, so we’ll cut the school sports pitch resurfacing this year and have the school play instead.” Or, “Ewan and Katie in year 13 have packed lunches, so this year we’ll make one of the dinner ladies redundant and get rid of one of the cookers.”

Arguing that your DC doesn’t use this or that is nothing to do with how schools fund their resources. If you want your DC to go to a school sixth form, the school still has to pay for all its facilities and subjects. Otherwise, an FE college that doesn’t have these is the obvious choice, no? And even then, the college will still provide maths, even if your DC does English, History and Art, or vice versa.

You are completely overestimating how much IT or other resources are given to sixth form students if you think a few extra would hugely increase costs. Most six formers provide their own laptops, stationary and books for example.

There were 30 children in the chemistry classes at one of my dc's grammar schools. Not ideal but they did get very good results. That may have only been possible because the schools were very selective and all the pupils were academic but you're saying that the schools in London are very selective too so no reason why it wouldn't be possible there too. It wouldn't be possible for 30 per class for music or drama but few people want to do those subjects for A level anyway in state schools. An extra 10 or 20% would amount to a couple of students for those subjects. And if people don't want to go to a selective school with large A-level class sizes they can go elsewhere.

Except that Labour don’t want fewer kids at private school. They want the parents to stay put and pay more in tax. If pupil numbers fall then the policy is pointless: the entire reason for it evaporates. You can’t simultaneously argue that it will raise loads of money, but also that it doesn’t matter if it raises no money but puts more pupils back into state and costs the taxpayer more!

I disagree. I think it is idealogical wrapped up in a cloak of financial.
If kids stay in private Labour wins with more tax.
If they come into state, Labour wins with fewer kids in private and done private schools closing for good.

The big unknown is how many pupils will switch. A few per state school can be subsumed, increasing by 20% per state school can't.

Okay - one last time.

If accounting rules mean that 1/3 of each sixth form student’s funding goes against school overheads, but you think sixth formers use LESS of that provision than each 11-16 pupil, then why aren’t you up in arms that sixth formers are subsidising the 11-16 pupils?

Are the 11-16 pupils, conversely, subsidising the school’s university application support and careers provision then? They don’t use it, so should it be cut? Or sixth form clubs and societies?

Are the sixth formers NOT using loo paper, lighting, heating, etc.? Do you think those costs are just offset by the 11-16 funding and the sixth formers just get them for free?

No - a proportion of their funding is offset against all the school overheads, whether they use them or not. Same for all the pupils in the school.

As above, the school bursar is not in the office saying “oh, Kayla in the sixth form doesn’t do sports so we’ll take that off her account and put it on Johnny’s in year 11.”

I doubt that most six formers care whether the canteen is outsourced. They can usually go out for lunch if they want to anyway. Not many will care that much about sports facilities but if they do then the extra funding that the school gets for bums on seats will be useful for that.

Her school had a limit of 20 to an A level class which is normal where we are. The sports facilities are there for those that want them but once again you asked what sixth formers wanted and used sport as an example. My DD didn't want sports facilities and I don't think she's unique in that. You asked and I answered. Not my fault if you don't like the answer.

I haven't said anything about vat on school fees and you know nothing about what I think about the subject so don't presume to make a decision about that.

Thinking about it GS goes to a local school in sixth form, not the same school as his aunt, he seems to walk down to the local co-op with his friends where they buy meal deals. I think he used canteen before sixth form. He doesn't do sport at school either but he does a lot out of school.

Don’t you realise that if enough kids switch to state, it actually costs the taxpayer more, and finding per student in the state system actually goes down? Because the extra bums on seats don’t actually come with any magic extra taxpayers? Their parents are already paying for the education budget — the funding is already in the system.

If independent schools close, that’s a cost to the economy. Ordinary teachers and staff lose their jobs; suppliers lose contracts; the exchequer loses the income tax and NI from their jobs — but still has to pay out of the same state education budget for even more kids to be educated regardless.

Meanwhile, the more expensive schools and richer parents carry on regardless; more of their funding and income will come from and disappear back overseas; and their kids get an even better advantage in the job and HE market. More state school kids get a slightly worse deal; the rich increase their advantages. Sounds like a real socialist win to me. 🙄

I'm not up in arms because I didn't mind a proportion of sixth form funds going to younger years. Most don’t want to do sports or drama clubs and if they do they are often doing them outside of school. I'm not sure what your point is really.

The point is that it isn’t just magic bums on seats funding?

As my kids all went to the same school from 11 to 18 it wouldn't worry me if some years they were subsidising other years. It all balanced out. I don't know how others feel if they change schools or move to a college. If my DD was subsidising sport I don't care as long as she wasn't forced to do it.

Everyone knows the funding will be allocated to the whole school but why is that a problem?

@neverthelastone Of course I realise it.

However it isn't my policy, it's Labour's policy who were voted in at the election. They will well understand the costs even if they keep quiet about them.

1. It's always been the case that kids that don't meet the GCSE standards for A levels have to leave.

1. The VAT can be used to improve the state school buildings

1. Most of the parents that can afford private school fees can also afford 6th form fees.