Will VAT on private school fees lead to a partial collapse of the sector?

[mids2019]

Will VAT on school fees coupled with cost of living drive a lot of parents from the private sector or will the majority absorb the cost? Are the numbers that potentially end up in the public sector going to offset any gains to the treasury through VAT?

Labour are working at about 4-5% transfer rate to the public sector but is this an underestimate?

I thought it might be what was being campaigned for

On this though

But often those with deeper pockets have an interest in maintaining the status quo - or once they're through the system they're not motivated to drive change. And the current government's position has been a total wet blanket or trying to get any kind of positive change. Fingers crossed people will get fresh energy and motivation if there is the potential for change under Labour.

I live in a Labour borough and parents take access to top state seriously as anything so I can’t see Labour mc parents in particular going for it.

That can’t happen under VAT legislation.

Aye, like I said upthread, it's hard to get people motivated to campaign on this because there are way too many people who are benefiting from the status quo or see it as the natural order.

To add, our school has 2-3x rate of send vs. Local alternatives. In part this is because our school is very proactive about identifying and supporting send, but also local state schools (all run by academies, so maybe just a different kind of private) are awful for ignoring needs and subtly pushing ‘difficult’ children out.

what hasn’t even discussed much is the potential impact on send provision more broadly due to waffling labour stances on how send will be treated in the proposed policy. They’ve asserted that those with an ehcp will not be subject to vat, which creates an incentive for all the private send parents to pursue an ehcp, pushing out waitlists for everyone. I know several parents who are pursuing dual diagnosis- get it done quickly via private, get it done officially via nhs- because policies to prevent the wealthy from jumping the queues just mean longer queues for everyone. Names of good lawyers and consultants are regularly traded on the WhatsApp group. There a lot of send parents that had opted out of state, but are now being pulled back in and throwing everything they can at it. The real losers are those without resources who face longer waitlists and leaner resourcing.

Ah so adding more kids to the problems the state sector faces will help. I see your point.

Very clever.

An eye for an eye...

We need better mainstream schools. I would like to see the end of promoting privilege through the education system.

You’ll need to have randomly allocated housing then.

Would you be happy to be told where you had to live? If not then you are paying for the privilege to access the best state school you can. Maybe parents who do that should be taxed more instead rather than those who save the taxpayer money?

Totally agree. All children of Labour politicians, academics and BBC staff to be barred from grammar schools, oxbridge and Russell group immediately.
its not perfect, but its a start

I think we need to be realistic here. The spending priorities of the incoming government will be skewed to the priorities of the electorate. In an aging population, that’s pensions and the NHS, with a bit chucked at restricting immigration (because although we don’t want to help young people start families by building more homes or investing in childcare, we don’t want immigrants to fill the gaps in the labour market either).
education generally and especially for kids with SN will continue to be low on the list. Starmer has already said he’ll keep the triple lock. In the unlikely event this policy raises any money, it’s the over 70s who will see the benefit, not the under 7s.
welcome to the gerontocracy, people

My DS is starting private this summer, age 10. For various reasons already covered in this thread. We have factored VAT into his fees and could afford it. The crunch for us will be whether we send DD. She will probably be fine at state secondary, better than DS would have been, but we'd prefer to give both kids the same education. The private schools in our area have already seen a dip in new starts this year.
Our state local secondary is at capacity as well as the building of a new secondary to alleviate pressure has been paused due to Council funding so I guess my DD will add to that issue if we can't afford to send her private. The whole thing is a badly thought through mess.

Or randomly allocated secondary schools? Didn’t/dont Brighton do that? Not sure what happens regarding transport. But in a rural county where everyone has to catch a school bus it could work, though i suppose every village would need 5 buses rather than 2 so there would be increased transport costs.

Well parents want their dc to do well and be happy at school and put effort in to access better schools

I can’t see why that’s a surprise

As has been clearly set out, a significant problem the state sector faces is the significant and rapid decline in the student population.

No idea what your final line means.

Reducing state burden - great increase funding per pupil and the budget is the same.

And when VAT results in falling enrolments at private pp and irl pro Labour cast around for other reasons. Contradictory

That surely only works if the government of the day changes the funding formula? And even so for some schools the scale of the decline will cause big issues with what subjects they're able to offer, etc.

Anyway, like I said, I'm reasonably agnostic on this particular policy. On the evidence I don't think it will make the sky fall in, equally I'm not sure it will be transformative for the state sector. There are better things that could be done for the state sector (admissions reform, rebaseline and ringfence the full education budget), so I'll try to stop getting wound up by some of the nonsense that gets bandied around in this debate 😂

There’s an idea. Labour could propose increasing funding per pupil in state instead.

We also seem to have an issue with concrete, which will cost, some amalgamation could be worked on.

Why a party wouldn’t see an opportunity like this is depressing. Why increase state burden when the education budget could do more for state students.

It's mainly falling in London and London has more private schools than anywhere else so it will work neatly.

It's mainly falling in London first, but the impact will be felt everywhere (though will take longer to feed through and impact will be greater in some places than in others).

The North East is projected to see the biggest decrease, followed by London.

(Source:

personally think there is ground here for another party to work to widen school access for uk students to continue to diversify the sector. I’d love to see a party encouraging education enterprise. Some of the new online schools work well for kids with ASN for example. Some are hybrid online and in person. These schools will be hit by VAT most likely.

it’s funny, nhs pays private companies all the time for health, why can’t we allow more parent choice? I’d love to be able to take part of my state budget for kids and choose where it is spent.

It seems an interesting ‘price elasticity’ problem.

Would guess that households deciding against private due to increased cost, eg at key entry or exit stages, will have more resources than most to access popular state provision, eg attending church, paying for housing in the right location, tutoring etc for selective entry.

So more DC entering the popular schools will mean others won’t get a place (unless schools expand).

On the OP’s Q, I think some private schools will become unviable (eg lots of already small / struggling ones), that this will differ significantly by region/location, and that Labour has underestimated the impacts, but don’t think this change alone would partially collapse the sector.

economists are probably best placed to debate this!

Exactly, we need more choice rather than less. It is abundantly clear that the 1 size fits all of comps does not work for a lot of DC. It doesn't work for a lot of SEN, it doesn't work for high achievers, it doesn't work for low achievers.

I fundamentally disagree that education is a luxury, and think we should be encouraging people to spend on it and not making it harder - it seems a very anti growth move to me.

Worth making the point of course that there are large parts of the UK with little or no Private Schools.

I grew up in Bristol that had lots but as far as I can make out places like Nottingham & Bournemouth have very few