How many kids have left the school? (VAT)

[limeandwater]

It's been long enough now that I think we can make a reasonable conclusion on how bad it has hurt school.

To be honest at our school I only know 3 pupils that have left because of the VAT so not as bad as many feared.

Still heartbreaking for the kids though.

Education is 100% an advantage, and independent schools generally offer a superior education for children. Not always however, grammar and other selective schools (selection can be by house price in the area) can and do out perform independent. It’s not always private over state. Now seeing that the argument is we must penalise the children at the good schools ( luxury schools?!?) in some way (and for some reason nobody can explain this is a good idea) then why just non tax payer funded schools ?

What is a bigger advantage for a child in the long run? Parents pay at least 300k private education. Or they invest that money now and hand over more like 450k to a child later on to pay uni fees/house deposit etc and set them up for life? And use the local state schools, often very good and the free state benefit there at a cost to the taxpayer of close to 110k per child now (not including additional needs).
It is really not that clear cut where the advantage lies. Especially for most people who can just about afford it. Hardly anyone can “very easily” afford 300k per child out of post tax income.
The State is just nudging people in the take the state benefit way. Like they are trying to get small time landlords out of providing a service. But in the end we will all be paying for it. The maths is not clear cut.

The legislation excludes state schools at paragraph 1.2 so to try and claim it affects all children is disingenuous

I'm in Scotland so it's either state or private, there's no in between options. Which makes it either easier or harder!

State schools are organisations not children, the tax applies to all children. The children are liable for the tax on full time non tax payer funded education or vocational training.

Pay your taxes!

@PurpleThistle7 - do people not move house in Scotland to get into the catchments of the best schools?

Stop flouncing, it’s not you’ll be telling me you support the family farm tax next

paragraph 1.2 is clear. You have an agenda fine, you are creating slogans to further that agenda, that is basically what nige and Donald do. Stop it.

It would be a beautiful irony if local councils and housing associations purchase the disused school buildings and turn them into social housing.

My understanding is the ISC keep a Census so the figures will be out. Just looked on my LinkedIN and they put out a post that 25000 have left. So yes, it looks like it is going to be a net cost to the taxpayer, especially in Scotland where they are expecting it to cost sooner.
I suppose the people who campaigned for this did not care about the cost to the taxpayer. It was all ideological anyway. Question is how much cost to taxpayer is going to be too much? Until they have to Youturn. Break even OK, but big cost?

I'm sure people do, I just meant that there's no grammars or 6th forms or anything else - there's your catchment school, a vanishingly small number of children who get an out of catchment place, or private. I think around 20% of the children in my city are at private schools.

“It would be a beautiful irony if local councils and housing associations purchase the disused school buildings and turn them into social housing.”

More like private equity and then charge back to the Council at huge cost and we will all be paying for it. The Council does not have cash to purchase or turn into housing that is acceptable according to Regs.

Ah, bingo. There we go. Took a few pages but I knew someone would eventually do the Tarquin thing. How about I say all the Waynes and Shanices at the comp are murderous little thugs and hairdressers or teenage mums in waiting? Is that ok too? No, thought not. My DS was held down by his bullies and threatened with scissors. It was folmed and put on YT. And the school did fuck all. So I wont apologise for removing him from that environment and knowing that he's safe and not too terrified to go to school.

@PurpleThistle7 - so Sixth Forms are not selective in Scotland? I am in London and all academically best Sixth Forms have intense entry requirements based on GCSE results. They won’t even let you take an A level in some schools without an 8 at GCSE type thing. So it all ends up selective at 16 plus ultimately in the most well regarded schools that are splashed all over the papers for high attainment. There are some grammars that are fully selective at 11 plus, but more and more schools with weird 10% selection on things like aptitude for language/music etc or religion. It is all very complicated.

There's no 6th form as such. High school goes from S1-S6 with options for children to leave any time after they are 16 - so S4. I 'think' you can leave high school earlier than that if you're going for an apprenticeship or similar as well but I'm not sure. So at my daughter's school, they have 200 kids in her class for S1, but will likely be down to 100 kids by S5 and often even fewer in S6 but it's all in the same building and same school.

Pretty much all catholic children left as they all got into the catholic primary/secondary in town - which are also the only decent local schools and surrounded by very expensive houses.
Pre-VAT the school was mostly for Catholic children whose parents would have never been able to afford private school, and lived around 1-5 miles away. Now it is pretty much exclusively for 100k + incomes (both schools are surrounded by really expensive houses, so to. e in catchment now means you have to be able to afford a house worth at least 1 million).

The government is injecting £39 billion into social and affordable housing over the next 10 years🙂

@Notthegodofsmallthings - sure but repurposing old rickety private schools is not cost effective. Purchasing some of the land might be if in the centre of town.

My kids always did lots of sport and music at the local private schools during the week or on the weekend. They are fully utilised all weekend for all sorts for state school kids. If they went bust, it would really limit sports locally especially swimming pools, hockey, netball, rugby, dance, drama, all sorts. Hoping that if they go bust someone will buy it anyway and offer extensive after school and sports facilities.
Whilst I cannot pay for private school, I would have paid for eg Saturday school all day doing really interesting extracurriculars on one site or a couple of days a week after school.

Yes we are, or similar, as are all of our colleagues. None are able to afford private fees out of their incomes.

I am surprised you know so many bog standard professionals who can 'very easily' afford fees from incomes. If that were the case across the country then no one would be worried about private schools closing or about the added cost of the vat?

My experience is that many families who would previously viewed private education as the norm are no longer able to consider it. (These are families where the parents and grandparents all went to private schools and maintained solidly middle class lifestyles doing the same sort of jobs that their families do today). That reduces the pool of customers to the point that it endangers the schools.

I agree it can be, but from my experience, if done at primary age it’s often not a problem at all. The new kids at our school settled extremely quickly.

I think with older children it would depend on how it’s managed and the other options available. A bit like a divorce - if the parents can manage it maturely, the kids generally can adapt well. If it involves a lot of drama, uncertainty, animosity etc, then kids can be traumatised.

It’s sad when parents situations change but kids are more resilient than we give credit for. Moving from a private school may not be ideal but people lose their jobs, move around, situations change all the time. They may prefer their new school!

That sort of violence is possible in private schools too.

At mine one boy almost lost his eyesight as a bully superglued his lids shut. Another had another bully carve their name into his chest with a compass.

Just be aware that going to private might not be the fix you're hoping for. But I really hope it is for you

I often wondered why private schools don't offer more paid for outreach type stuff. I would happily have paid for 1 day a week type stuff or revision classes in the lead up to exams

@Araminta1003 that is actually a good point. We had 2 private school closing in our area, and as a consequence a dance school, a judo club and a girl’s football club closed as well (not sure that’s all, but that’s the ones i know about).

Was it an axe attack at Blundells?

And what happened at Millfield with the electricity? Was that confirmed an accident?

@TartanCurtain - hardly anybody can just do 300k per child without worrying about it at all! I think some people do state primary and years 7-11 private now as a compromise. And some who would have done expensive boarding school will now do local day school etc. A big extra cost displaces everyone one notch down and the people most displaced are the poorest at the bottom of the rung that can no longer get into their local good school.

No parent who was going to spend 20k per child for secondary but cannot now stretch to 25k is going to be sending their kid to some crap school. They will find an option to send them to a good state school and top up in other ways instead (tutors, holidays).
If you suddenly make something 20 per cent more expensive of course it will affect people’s behaviour over time and very much so. Especially when life is otherwise more expensive anyway. The only thing to mitigate it is the boomer generation shedding their wealth to avoid inheritance tax.