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?

Wouldn't the answer to that to be to make the state schools better? If the state schools were any good, no one would need private schools.

Of course, I'm American, so I believe in merit.

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.

Hmmmm ….there are endless threads on mn about how privately educated children take drugs, have eating disorders, are entitled bullies, are far less intelligent than their state school counterparts, are sent to boarding school because their parents can’t be bothered with them etc.
Yet these parents and these children are apparently going to turn round state schools.

"Is planning policy in London determined by the Tory party donors? Isn't that a matter for the councils and for GLA? "

Do you not recall Robert Jenrick rushing through planning permission for Richard Desmond (Tory donor) and timing it to avoid paying a community charge?

amp.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jun/24/robert-jenrick-planning-row-the-key-questions-answered

@HoneyBadgerMom

"Wouldn't the answer to that to be to make the state schools better? If the state schools were any good, no one would need private schools. "

+++

Ah but that's difficult to do and costs money. It's far easier and cheaper to get rid of the good schools so we level down to the lowest denominator and everyone gets to go to a bad school which is much fairer.

I recall Sadiq Khan calling in major developments.

The flats aren't cheap and are in fact well done. It's a city state so of course the houses will be more expensive. Land is scarce there.

It was speculated that an economic disaster would cause a significant drop but there wasn't one. We are now discussing a specific policy that would force school fees up. Looking at very different things.

That really sums up how some parents think. State school = crap education

I did not mention standards, I was talking about equipment. Simple things like glue sticks, pencils, library books.

It is society's job to educate children, so we have skilled adults in the future working, paying tax, undertaking all the jobs we need.

I don't have children, but my taxes pay for education.

@Barbadossunset why the attitude? Sorry I didn't spend all of yesterday waiting for your sarcastic post.

As for people reducing their hours / working less, well good for you, maybe someone else can be employed to work those hours you have dropped. Better for everyone.

Tutors? If your child doesn't need a tutor in private why would they need one in a state school?

Privately educated children are not more intelligent than kids in state schools. It appears their parents are not either.

Well you might not have found it to be an economic disaster. Lucky you. But I think a global economic crash does count as fairly disastrous. It was for my business and many others 🙄

Labour have back-tracked on removing charitable status from private schools:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66942985

Do you accept that this isn’t the case in most areas though?

Where I live state primaries are all under subscribed but the state secondaries are full. We are surrounded by private schools and there would be nowhere for 11+ year olds to go if they had to leave their private schools.

Tbh if the fees jump by 20% then for us it will be enough is enough. We pay a fortune out of income that is taxed at 50% and lose all of our personal allowance to do so.

We will see ds through to the end of GCSEs but dd won't be going to private school. We will send her to the outstanding faith secondary school instead.

We are now seriously contemplating that anyway. This thread has been a real eye opener if we don't need to pay the school fees, having run the figures we can put a load of money into our pensions to avoid the 50% tax rate or get our mortgage paid off sooner. Both with the goal of being able to retire earlier.

So a win for us but a big cost to the government. We won't spend that money on other VAT able goods that's for sure.

How are you paying 50% tax?

Do you live outside the UK, since the highest rate in the UK is 45%?

I would think it’s fairly obvious why you wouldn’t need a tutor at private school but you might at state school. Our state schools are bursting at the seams, there is a lack of basic equipment, teachers are leaving in their droves so that physics classes are being taught by PE teachers, and behaviour is the worst it’s ever been.

None of these problems are going to be fixed by labour tinkering with private are schools (and I say that as someone who objects to the private school system).

I don’t see why they wouldn’t use the drop in the roll for their favour

You get more out of the same budget with fewer students

It’s more the gimmick of this policy they like. Hence mucking around with the charity part as people liked the they can’t be charities angle

@sashh and you obviously believe that every state parent is poor. Lots of wealthy parents send their kids to state school without being expected to contribute to pencils etc. Why aren't they already contributing?
However you need to accept that private parents won't send their kids to poor performing or under resourced schools, they will send DC to the best state schools.
As far as tutors go, outside of the London excellent state schools (not all London schools are excellent but there is the highest % concentrated in the capital), a lot of private schools out perform state schools. Private school class sizes are approx around 18-24 pupils as opposed to up to 35 in state schools (that figure is from one of our local state schools). Add in the real issue of disruptive behaviour in many state schools and you can see why private parents moving to state would be keen to supplement with tutoring.

@Barbadossunset why the attitude? Sorry I didn't spend all of yesterday waiting for your sarcastic post

Sashh - sorry, it wasn’t particularly directed at you - it’s just that every time there’s a thread about private education there are loads of posts saying that private school parents would somehow solve all state schools’ problems but what these parents are going to do which state school parents aren’t already doing is never made clear.
Also, see my earlier post about how many posters on here have a very low opinion of private school parents and their children so surely even less reason why they will work wonders.

@jgw1

In the UK salaries are taxed by income tax like other countries plus national insurance (to cover healthcare) so the marginal tax on salaries above £56k is 49%, anything between £112k to £141k is 66.6% and bizarrely higher than that it then drops back to 49%.

ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-data-item/combined-marginal-rates-income-tax-and-national-insurance-contributions?tab=tab-594

If you have a student loan it gets worse which adds a further 9% so anyone earning over 56k with a student loan has a marginal tax of 58%. Anyone between £112 and £142k is at 75%.

Labour drops plan to strip public schools of charitable status www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66942985

They were never going to remove charitable status, it was too complicated and would have been a legal nightmare. They either knew this and cynically used the line because it plays well in public, or they hadn’t thought this major policy through. Neither looks good, especially when the education of thousands of children is at stake.

It doesn’t stop them adding VAT.

They were never going to remove charitable status, it was too complicated and would have been a legal nightmare.

Posters here have been pointing this out for years. Why didn’t Keir Starmer look into the potential problems earlier rather than saying Labour would remove charitable status?

‘Sir Keir told the Sunday Mirror in 2021 that “we can’t justify continued charitable status for private schools”.’

Pretty hopeless

@Barbadossunset because as with the VAT, it was a good soundbite to persuade gullible people that Labour are left wing and that they care about equality of opportunity for all. Which they blatantly don't! I don't think they ever thought they would be in their current position so they could basically promise anything without doing much, if any, research.

My brothers children went to a top private school, despite a very good state alternative, i asked him why and he said its not about education, its about networking and contacts e.g his children will be mixing with the children of the wealthy.

The very rich will always want what they consider "the best" and of course the money raised will go into state schools for the minority who genuinely do use a private school because their local state schools are rubbish.

My prediction is that house prices near outstanding and popular / academic school will continue to rise sky high and the competition for grammar school places will become fiercer and fiercer. Many parents already send their kids to prep with the plan to get them into grammar. In the past many might have stayed in the private system but now I see lots of families leaving private and moving into a state grammar. Prep schools have a huge advantage when it comes to passing the 11+.