Is anyone else worried about the effect of rising private school fees on state schools?

[BabyIcecream]

Where I live there already aren't enough school places. Three big state secondary's, one is catholic, they are all over subscribed and bursting at the seams using old buildings with not enough funding.

Ive seen reports that at some private schools upto a third of pupils might leave if the fees go up due to VAT.

I'm worried about all these extra pupils needing places, DS already finds his school overcrowded and whilst I don't agree with private education putting extra pupils into the state system is just going to further disadvantage our children.

Unless money raised by increasing private schools costs is going to be used to fund state education? Does anyone know?

It's to do with perceived needs to provide extras and enrichment like sports and music and academic "stretch." With private schools, they can provide this stuff onsite and it's like a one-stop shopping trip. With state schools, replicating something like that would involve a parent, probably mum, driving kids round in the car to all these extra things after school, which would require shorter working hours. Although an au pair with a driver's license could probably do it if you really wanted to do it this way.

For all of you that are against private schools due to inequality: I live in the Netherlands where private schools are extremely rare. Even the king didn't send his kids to a private school until the children went abroad as 16/ 17 year olds. It doesn't matter because rich people still do better. They can still hire private tutors for the subjects that they need extra help in. Some rich use au pairs so the kids are brought up bilingual. Money creates inequality, abolishing private schools won't change a thing.

Yes and no, it is a factor on our secondary decisions list but not the biggest one by any means. I don't think it will be 20% more like 10% and I imagine some creative accounting will happen with the 7:30-9 and 3-5:45 offer suddenly falling into childcare parents can't opt out of to avoid the VAT.

This won't create some utopia in all state schools. It's likely like one of our options the kids who would have gone private will be focused onto a few high performing secondaries that then get significant parental donations.

We are choosing between fees and a higher mortgage to live in catchment, it's likely that if fee do deter parents they will just move so still the same issue of some kids getting a batter education. This will then disadvantage the squeezed middle who are pushed out as they can't afford the houses.

Something needs to change in the state sector but I don't think punishing private will help in the way people are hoping it will.

It’s not just an extra £5k though. The VAT would be in addition to already high fee increases, especially over the last year. Families often have more than 1 child - so £5k becomes £10k with 2 children. That’s almost £20k of extra gross income required, just to pay the VAT.

I can assure you that a huge amount of families at private school would definitely not find it easy to find an extra £20k a year.

Even if they can find the extra money, that is likely to be money which would otherwise be spent elsewhere in the economy - discretionary spending on which VAT would be due. Have the estimated gains from the policy taken into account thIs reduced spending? I have found nothing to suggest that it has.

In addition, the estimated gains will not be enough to improve facilities at state schools. It equates to around 1% of state education spending. Apart from that, a lot of the problems in the state sector run far deeper than lack of funding. The best equipped state schools in our area have the worst outcomes for children and the worst behaviour.

Music, tennis, dance, gymnastics, swimming, cricket, rugby, football, hockey, golf, karate…I could go on.

The above are all available at my DS’ prep. It means that they can stay at school and do all their extra curriculars without being ferried about from one place to another so I can work long hours in my job and pay lots of lovely tax to help fund state schools. The other option for me was giving up work, sending my kids to state school and taking them to all their activities myself.

As for the school holidays, my DS’ private school also offers great camps.

Threatening VAT on private schools is just gesture politics by a party which clearly has no real plans to reduce the gulf between the richest and poorest, just methods for accelerating the accumulation of the world’s wealth into the smallest number of hands possible. On that basis, yes I fear for the impact it may have, because it does not appear to be linked to a worthwhile plan or philosophy.

😂you speak like you have choice over which GP you can see and will treat you. Just in case it has escaped your attention - there is a staffing crisis and increasing levels of dissatisfaction amongst doctors due to the way the government treats them.

Many people work to fund a specific lifestyle choice and would work less or stop if they did not need to. The only people losing out if doctors quit or drop their hours are the public

The attraction is teaching by specialist teachers. DC prep has drama, dance, sports, French, Spanish, art, IT, coding, music etc all built into their curriculum and all taught by a specialist teacher. They also have the opportunity to go to clubs taught by the specialist as part of their wrap around care so I don’t need to take them at the end of the school day and can work instead.

We fall outside of catchment of an outstanding state primary school - not just Ofsted, exceptional in many other ways too and highly oversubscribed. The majority of catchment is properties valued over £1.2M. We debated between moving for the school or going private and chose private for my career. The wraparound is limited in the state option because there is no demand. Almost all the children have one non-working parent or one working very part time so they runaround to multiple activities after school to give them the same exposure.

The idea female GPs have to pass some passion hurdle to see a patient is an odd one.

If they want to work to pay fees, good on them.

In the countryside where we live, two of our local prep schools have already closed due to lack of pupils. Over the last few years people have been struggling to find money to pay fees.

@Lingar 5K extra on fees per year would drive us out of the private sector as we just couldn't afford it because you would have to also add on the yearly fee increases too so could be looking at 7K extra per year.
You are under the impression all private parents are wealthy, we may be top of middle earners but we definitely are not wealthy.

What was the effect on the local state schools?

I don’t think one size does fit all. I think selection is important and streaming is important. Grammar schools were brilliant as they suited the more academic. It doesn’t benefit anyone being homogenised

What you will find is that bursaries reduce drastically. Why should parents who are paying full fees + VAT subsidise cheaper education for others? Our school has already stated that they will end bursaries. This will affect approx 15% of kids at DDs school and potentially a similar % across the whole sector. Something for those parents who currently receive a bursary to think about and I would advise against any new applications for next academic year.

@Grandjany but the grammar system is totally corrupt and created the private tutoring sector! Patents have theor DC privately tutored for 2 yeaes+ to ensure they get a place at grammar school. This is socially divisive as only well off patents can afford weekly tutoring for 2 years at approx £30+ per hour ( i have heard of some tutors charging £100 per hour) . You only have to read the 11+ threads on here, it is a very lucrative business.

The Times is reporting this morning that Labour would introduce VAT on school fees in the 25/26 academic year. I can imagine the pressure for places on our local super selective Grammar schools will increase even further and as a previous poster said only those that have had extensive tutoring will get a place.

“I imagine some creative accounting will happen with the 7:30-9 and 3-5:45 offer suddenly falling into childcare parents can't opt out of to avoid the VAT.”

Yes I suspect that is true. When we looked at private schools but ended up doing state in the end, it seemed that most charged eg 18000 at the time (few years back), but that included tuition fees, building maintenance & grounds fees, all lunches, a ton of clubs etc - a whole lot of extras. However, the actual teaching fee was not specified specifically. So if the private schools just offer all the “Extras” separately then they will only have to account for VAT on those to the same extent that other outside providers do? Can they just create little companies within that to do so?
Also, it is a sad state if all bursaries go - private schools become even more elitist.

So the policy will just exclude a few more people from attending private schools. It won’t raise much money. It might produce more inequality in the state sector due to an even higher premium on catchment. We live in a good catchment, I think it will prop up another 10 per cent on my house price so we stand to gain quite a bit of paper cash.

The Labour Party has zilch in its manifesto to actually make a real difference to equality. For a start, they really need to tax housing gains and tax wealthy pensions and they need to start taxing all wealth, not just income. Taxing hard working families working 100 per cent and having kids is so short sighted. But like the Conservative Party, they are just as desperate for the grey vote. Nobody gives a sh.. about the young and Education. It is all NHS, house prices bollocks as usual.

I agree. There were problems with the grammar/secmod system, but they could have been sorted out by, say, improving the secmods to offer GCE courses etc, or create "pathways" so secmod pupils could transfer to grammars. Throwing the baby out with the bath water to scrap the system was a huge mistake. The same kind of "politics of envy" that Labour are proposing with their stupid idea of charging VAT on private school fees.

What we need today is a modern equivalent of the secmods for all the kids who aren't academic and who are being failed by the one size fits all comp approach.

That's mainly because state primaries don't teach the content of the 11+ exam by the end of year 5 (11+ taken at start of year 6). If primaries actually taught the 11+ content by the time of the 11+ exam (like they used to do!), there'd be less need for tutoring and a more level playing field for the kids whose parents can't afford tutors.

Politicians have created problems by messing around with things. They always do. It's because they never consider the "unforeseen" consequences of the cack handed changes they make - well entirely foreseeable to the average person, but "unforeseen" to the politicians and "experts" in the civil service who advice them! Just like this crazy plan to add VAT to private school fees - it's obviously not going to improve the state sector, so yet again, just politics of envy to appeal to the thick masses rather than any hope of it doing good!

The other massive unintended consequence that will flow from this policy is that turning all these private schools into actual businesses will potentially create monopoly/cartel type issues for the government to regulate. Because it is entirely reasonably foreseeable that they will get into clubs together to manage these issues via things like service companies. And create their own exams etc - entirely outside the current more genteel charitable set up that they enjoy. Selling off lands etc., more and more being bought up by private equity and Chinese companies.

They said this would happen in the global crash. Did it?

tbh if you believe MN every parent who sends their dc to private school is on the bones of their arse to scrape the money together to send them. I’m not sure I either a. buy that or b. think that’s the case for most fee-paying parents.

I now expect to be inundated with people who’ve only had dry toast for breakfast and no holiday since 1974 to pay for DC’s school fees 😬

What we need today is a modern equivalent of the secmods for all the kids who aren't academic and who are being failed by the one size fits all comp approach.

Comprehensives are not "one size fits all." They offer sets and streams. The difference is that kids in the lower sets can benefit from the same teachers and schoolwide culture as the other kids. Secmods are always going to have a smell of failure around them and fail to attract good teachers; there is no way to make the model work in the way you are thinking.

Are you actually going to quit your job to do this, though?

If you are very wealthy, I can't imagine that the VAT rise would be enough to make you pull your kids out of private school. If you are merely comfortably off and the VAT rise is actually going to be painful for you, quitting your job doesn't sound like a great plan because it will mean that you now have to fund all those expensive extra curriculars and enriching holiday camps from a single family income.

On the other hand those children coming in will on the whole be children who are capable of functioning in a classroom environment. Anything to reduce the percentage of disruptive children in a classroom must be a positive.

There are so many misunderstandings on this thread I am getting a headache.

Some people seem to think that Ind school parents are going to waltz in with their perfectly behaved, 9* DC and demand better standards, with little Giles setting the behavioural example, and everything will all be lovely.

IT'S NOT LIKE THAT AT ALL

Firstly, not all private school DC are clever, disciplined or motivated. Nor are their parents all interested. I know of 10 DC in my eldest year from his prep school. Only 2 of them, including my own, does any work and got good GCSE's. Same with my youngest, he's in all the top sets as the others are sent there, but arent really interested in school.

As for behaviour and disruption, well we've had DC bringing in knives, vandalism, bullying, racism, threats made...you name it, we've seen it. The school does very little about bullying because the first thing a parent does when Bertie is accused of bullying is threaten to pull out their DC and thus ££££.

Also, my eldest tells me that at least half of his year have special circumstances where they get their own room, extra time, iPads to do exams as they have a SEN. So, they will also need that at a state school too.

It's not just about the money now. It is going the way that private school DC will be discriminated against soon, especially if Labour get in. It is happening already. My eldest will be out of 6th soon, and my youngest has already said they want to go to the local state college and I'm happy with that. It's also about the principle of the thing. I am not paying more tax, end of. My DC have proven they can make it on their own, so I'll send the youngest to local state 6th form. Both DH and I are from estates up north and were discriminated against when we moved down south as we weren't posh. Now we've worked hard, and sent our DC to great schools to give them a good head start, and we are now getting it in the neck for doing so.

Only in Britain. Every one thinks you are poor because you are lazy, try to do something about it, and get shot down for trying to get ahead of everyone else. It is so fucked up.

We wouldn't pull our children out of their prep but would move to state sector at 11 and I will drastically reduce my working hours. We will still be able to afford extra curriculars and tutoring comfortably from the PT income (plus DH FT).

The jump in fees from prep to 11 is huge so the VAT raise will tip over the edge from the quality of life perspective