The councils need to find spaces for all children!!

[HooverIsAlwaysBroken]

https://bmmagazine.co.uk/news/surrey-runs-out-of-state-school-places-for-private-pupils-as-vat-raid-bites/?amp

I am relieved to see that the Surrey is also looking at options to expand class sizes and use transportation to take children to other areas. They really need to get their act together quickly.

all children has a right to state education.

My car is a 14 years old Honda in one of the locations you mentioned.
DC is there on bursary.
I can see plenty of cheap cars around in the car park.

Don't bamboozle them with facts

That wasn't true even for SW.

They will only end up at Oxford if their grades, admissions tests and interviews are all strong enough.

The poster talking about cars in the car parks of the SW schools is presumably driving her kids to matches which are usually reasonably local - a school in Bristol doesn’t play against a school in Manchester, say. It’s quite odd to expect her to do a tour of school car parks before she posts.

This might be of interest - the percentage of pupils at private school by region - p8.

Although the population of the NE may outweigh the SW, I can’t dig into it enough on my phone to understand which has the greater pupil numbers.

www.isc.co.uk/media/9316/isc_census_2023_final.pdf

I work in housing and I don’t know of any social housing that is free. Do people really think that is the case?

My DCs went to a “low performing” state secondary and left with grades better than most of their primary school peers who went private (there are a lot in our area due to the reputation of the catchment state secondary). The school itself was good and the privilege our DCs experienced from the attributes of our particular household (the social capital that comes with relative affluence, even DH’s grandfather was university educated etc) seemed to be the most influential factor.

This is absolutely true.

It is equally as unreasonable of her to extrapolate her narrow experience of a few schools in a wealthy part of the UK and apply that to all indy schools/parents across the UK. That was the point I was making.
Her prejudice and sweeping generalisations are based on a very tiny % of things she has seen, not representative of all schools/parents

If you are the child of a millionaire member of the cabinet, mixing with kids whose parents are lawyers + higher, and at state schools with wealthy cohorts, you are likely bound for Russell Group/Ivy League. You aren't going to the local poly after finishing school.
That's the irony of the PP assertion that Starmer's kids will be mixing with 'normal' people by going state instead of vastly, vastly wealthy using indy schools.

We all post about our personal experiences, and she was clear it was her personal experience. 🤷‍♀️

The biggest lie has to be that this punitive tax will help state schools one jot it won’t in fact it will harm them
by increasing admissions class sizes SEN provision it still will not be an equal playing field.

No. She started by saying "the vast vast majority of PS parents can easily afford the VAT". She extrapolated her own narrow experience and viewpoint across all parents who choose indy.

Err your experience is the NE.. no? you keep going on about it..

Plymouth and Devon generally, are not wealthy areas, neither is Cornwall, one of the UK's poorest areas and lowest wages.

Turo HS for girls fee's, 17k day 32k boarding.

To put this in perspective, 18k is about the average -take home- wage for a worker in Cornwall, so much like the NE, Cornwall Devon don't have an average wage of 100k either, so who is paying these fees?

Just 1% of pupils have all fees paid, 7% on some sort of support but most schools cap scholarships at 5%, bursaries at 50% max..... & nothing at all for the boarding aspect of the fee, unless military.

This idea you keep trying to push that the majority, if not all parents are on the bones of their arses, is for the birds.

Some of the comments here are making me feel quite sick. I don’t think any parent of a child with SEN would consider themselves “lucky” in any way when trying to access a suitable education for their child. My child wasn’t offered a mainstream state education. We had no choice but to pay for private school or for me to leave my job to home educate him until, years later, the LA agreed to a place at a special school. Our life is bloody complicated and can be very difficult. We are incredibly fortunate that our son is alive and making amazing progress, but nothing about the UK SEN schools provision makes us “lucky”.

As for those posters who think the VAT policy is a great idea and it won’t affect them, why the spite directed at those of us with whom you disagree? Yet more examples of ignoring and disbelieving our lived experiences. It’s just plain nasty.

Yes, i stand by that, TES say you'll need to be on or around 100k to send your ONE child to a PS.

Two children will cost you around 36k, plus extras for day, 1.5x that if boarding.

93% of parents at PS receive no help with tuition fees, so yes vast majority.

I've lived in plenty of other places than the NE and work in education so have a pretty solid understanding of the general landscape. Where have I ever said "majority, if not all parents are on the bones of their arses"? Please show me?
All I am saying is maybe suspend your prejudice and assumptions and learn about the sector, it is incredibly diverse. The fact still remains that more millionaires use state schools than indy.

Because they just want to stick to their narrative of this policy rightly punishing wealthy parents. They don't care that ultimately it is kids who suffer in this scenario, both state and indy.

As for those posters who think the VAT policy is a great idea and it won’t affect them, why the spite directed at those of us with whom you disagree? Yet more examples of ignoring and disbelieving our lived experiences. It’s just plain nasty

Really? i ve offered an alternative view and have received nothing but scorn by certain posters...nasty indeed.

Plus i haven't said its a good idea, i ve argued that the narrative that all these PS parents are struggling and poor, even in the NE, is nonsense.

Yes, i'm sure they'll be genuine hardship stories, but IF the policy does actually raise £6bn over the next 5 years, then thats 6bn into state schools... another poster suggested the 6bn could be raised by increasing higher tax rates, so you re band 6 ICU nurse or head of dept in a state school, can pay for the very wealthy to send their kids to PS? all thanks for Rishi chose to freeze tax thresholds for 7 years.

The lack of SENDs provision is down to the Tories, no one else.

So because TES says it then it must be true!
That 100K figure findamentally all depends on your housing costs and what other things you are prepared to forego ie choices.
We have low housing costs and choose not to fritter money on cars etc. Therefore on under 100K we can afford it. 30% of kids at DDs school are on fee assistance between 100%-10%.

It isn't going to raise £6 billion. The IFS never said that! The initial figure was 1.5 billion over the term of parliament.
The £6 billion was all tax measures taken together.

Your narrow experience...

Isn't that what you said to me? a 100k salary is what is the considered a minimum, its NOT what the average PS family earn and does sound about right, taking 36k out of that 66k take home salary doesn't leave a great deal, with housing costs etc and 2 adults.

TES ? So we are now down to which facts do we believe now are we lol!

Wow unless you are throwing away the baby with the bath water🙄. How will you pay your bills?. Are you going to go on benefits to get back at keir starmer?

Do you have alternative stats?

Of course there will be a variation, across schools and areas, but I’m going to assume that TES didn’t pull the 93% without assistance out of thin air and that the £100k is an national assessment weighted by PS population. The report I linked said that around 50% of pupils of PS live in London, south central and one other southern area (forget which and I’m on my phone) - so in areas of high housing costs etc.

If you didn’t like PP using the anecdote of the school car parks, then you need to recognise the situation of your own local PSes is not universal too.

House of Commons Library: Estimates that the policy will raise £460 million in 2024/25 and £1.51 billion in 2025/26

Treasury: Estimates that the tax will raise £1.725 billion per year

IFS: Estimates that the additional tax will generate between £1.3 billion and £1.5 billion per year

So who would you tax in order to make good this £6/7 billion? or should the state sector lose out yet again?

They aren't facts, they are estimations. Estimations which didn't take into consideration the new exemptions/VAT being reclaimed, or the increase in numbers who have now left indy schools so have to be paid for by taxpayer.