How many kids do you know definitely leaving private for state?

[Quodraceratops]

I'd be very interested to know how many children people know of who are definitely leaving their private school for a state school - not people with plans to do so in future years, solely those definitely going now / in 2025.
For myself - large Scottish all years school, I only have knowledge of my early primary kids's classes - no-one leaving so far (but I'm guessing early primary may be less affected as Labour have been signalling this policy for a while so you wouldn't start if you couldn't afford VAT).

One statistic I would love to see is how many parents who have DC in the private sector also have or had DC in state. We know from the ISC census that 31% have come from state already.

If the percentage is high I would argue that movement back to state will be much more likely.

Most economic change happens on the margins. You don’t really know how many people have taken their family budgets to the limit to afford private school. For families with more than one child it’s a big hit.

Yes private school fees have risen quickly, but often after stagnating during the pandemic. Many schools are catching up with teacher pension requirements now that the economy has stabilised. The fee rises have been difficult for families paying out of income, but they’ve coped. 20% all at once, mid year is a shock. It doesn’t look like a measure to raise revenue but a vindictive hit against people who have different values and won’t submit to the attitudes and opinions of educationalists at state schools.

Your comment was:

"They're not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, are they? They are doing it to try to retain charitable status, which benefits them."

Ie you don't care about the result of what they're doing. Any good they might do only counts if they do it with a pure heart.

My comment was that the it's what they actually do that matters. The outcome - good or bad. Their motivations (or purity of heart) don't really matter.

Ok, let's look at the outcome - they are paying less tax which is bad.

That's the way you do it, right?

Less tax than what? Than the 'right' amount of tax? You're still stuck in good vs evil thinking. Than they could have extracted? Are you sure?

The economic outcome is broadly the change to how much money the government receives in taxes minus state-funded costs: including all impacts, eg employment changes, and spending choice changes. Hard to predict: but that doesn't mean you should give up on any effort to analyse it and say 'it will all be OK because we're doing God's work!'

Is the net change in government income-minus-costs positive or negative as a result of this policy? Nothing else. No value judgement. Just: does the government get more money (net) or less.

Of course there are also non-economic outcomes. Economics isn't the only thing that makes citizens' lives better. But it makes a big difference, since you need it for healthcare, state schools, welfare, pensions, security, green spaces, roads, street cleaning, libraries, national security, urban rejuvenation, transport...

Less tax than they would pay if they weren't exploiting the charity status loophole and doing the bare minimum or less to justify it.

This isn't difficult.

I do wonder if the VAT on fees policy would have been less popular if there hadn't been such a general perception that private schools were totally taking the piss there.

Yes, populist rabble-rousing certainly did make a difference.

Less tax than they would pay if they weren't exploiting the charity status loophole

There is no charity status loophole.
Not all private schools are charities, yet even those do not have to charge VAT on their fees. This is because provision of education services is VAT exempt, which labour is planning to remove.

Labour is not planning to remove charity status (well, they were originally, but have backtracked on that, see here www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66942985 ).

The indepdenent schools that are charties now will retain their charitable status post-VAT changes.

As for whether provision of private educaiton service should be VAT exempt (or not), it's not a moral question or about closing a "loophole" (how about VAT on private tuition, private medical services, university fees, or private daycare? should those "loopholes" be closed?). It's a political and economic decision.

For a topic that arouses so much passions there is surprising amount of confusion surrounding the proposed policy even among its supporters!

Oh, I know she hated the comprehensivization policy. The point I was making here was not about Thatcher's politics per se, but more "Parents as a whole mostly do not want grammar schools; they go off the idea once they realize it could be their kid going to the school that has "exam failure" stamped all over it."

So less than some imaginary amount, which never has and never will exist. Because policies change behaviour.

This is the opposite of outcome-driven.

there is surprising amount of confusion surrounding the proposed policy even among its supporters!

I don’t really have an opinion about the policy one way or an other. But I’m sure forming an opinion about the people who think that everyone should care about it because for once it affects them and their kids instead of state school kids. State school kids who have been consistently shafted for the last 14 years, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable but who are only crossing their radar now if they could possibly be used in an argument against the policy. Those poor, morbidly obese, mentally afflicted state school kids.

The ends justifying the means, you would say.

Most people will make a cost v benefit analysis when making a purchase. If you go to the supermarket you might be able to afford to buy fillet steak but maybe you think that the fillet is so expensive that the extra cost isn't worth it and you'll be perfectly happy with sirloin. Everything has a tipping point.

It does amuse me that people think that there are only minor differences between private and state schools, like the thousands of extra pounds of funding per pupil makes barely any impact.

It would always have been popular irrespective of what the private schools do.
Most people prefer taxes that they don't have to pay.

Populist rabble rousing has never benefited the society any time I've seen.

It's politically useful to self-interested politicians and temporarily gratifying to the people feeling they have the moral high ground and know who to blame for their ills.

But never beneficial to the society, because it distracts from the real problems - and so delays action which would actually help - and by attacking the wrong target often makes things worse.

It's so odd, @noblegiraffe - you seem to have formed this judgement that because I think outcomes are more important than motivations, it means I'm morally bankrupt and I want bad things to happen.

It's the exact opposite. It's that I want the right things to actually happen, and I think that concentating on whether someone 'thinks' the right way is the wrong way to achieve that.

“It does amuse me that people think that there are only minor differences between private and state schools, like the thousands of extra pounds of funding per pupil makes barely any impact”

@noblegiraffe I am confident my children’s outcome will be similar in a state school because I plug the gaps (which do not arise often, but I spot them quickly). Which is what the educationally privileged parent can do. At it happens, the state schools we have access to are generally excellent and full of other supportive parents like me.
At this point, I have homeschooled 4 DC during Covid so yes, even homeschooling would be possible, but at the cost of being able to work. It would be very time-consuming.

The one thing I am jealous of in private schools is the amount of extra curricular opportunities they get, in particular, in sports. I find exercise is an incredibly important part of a child’s physical and mental health and I feel some of our state schools are not doing enough. Thankfully my DCs state primary had a large field in KS2 so at least they ran around at playtime. KS1 was concrete, small and not ideal.
There is chat about breakfast clubs - I would have preferred them to incorporate exercise too. We cannot deny the obesity crisis amongst the young. If parents are working full time and kids are at school in breakfast club and after school care it falls on state schools to provide enough exercise for kids rather than cramming a dense curriculum at all cost.

I literally couldn't care less whether you think outcomes are more important than motivations. Having seen your motivations, I don't particularly care for them though.

"I'm confident that my children's outcomes will be the same in a state school as a private school except I will have to tutor them and they won't get to do anywhere near as much sport or extra curricular activities".

Okaayyyy

The selling off school fields is an interesting example.

I think the priorities and results would have been different if the people making the decisions, developing the land, weren't able to send their own children to private schools with great facilities.

When we are all invested in state education because we all use it for our children, better decisions are made for everyone.

There is a reason education hasn't been more politically important for the last 14 years.

I genuinely don’t understand why taxing private school fees remains Labour’s only source of improving provision in state school. I pay 20% tax. DH scrapes into the 40% band. We get the full whack of child benefit. We only entered the private school system in the first place because the state schools available to us were unable to educate DS1 and - by our own choice - weren’t suitable for DS2. DS2 is now in Y12 and it is our choice to stick with the same private school for sixth form because for multiple reasons it meets his needs far better than any of the other local provision. The extra 20% is not easy for us to find and we are very fortunate that my mum is helping.

But why are we going to be paying thousands of pounds to improve state provision when many state school parents who earn vastly more than us, and actually use the state system, aren’t expected to pay an extra penny? I would gladly slightly increase my income tax to help improve state education. But it is beyond me why this falls on the shoulders of only parents who, for whatever reason, do not use state education.

We haven’t had the budget yet.