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.

Yet across the country the number who have already left this term exceed the projected number for the whole year, with more to follow.
This is not evenly spread across the country. This policy won't affect truly wealthy families, it disproportionately impacts local, rural and small indy schools. It won't impact the top public schools or those in affluent areas.

How is the state stopping anyone from working?

Because allegedly all of these high earners would rather sit on UC and homeschool than have their little darlings mixing with the plebs in state school.

That is the argument, it is obviously a load of bollocks.

I experienced the issues of lack of school places some 30 years ago, as the policy of building without secondary schools was already underway in London and the issue has since spread. It isn't just the VAT / private issue, it is the lack of local well performing secondary schools and local authorities (or all ilks) shutting them down, selling off the land for development, when school rolls are low, thinking that money in the pot short term is the way to go, and then having no provision, no land, no money when they need the places or schools and developers don't build secondaries, they build the cheapest options of primary / community halls! It is infrastructure that's needed, being able to respond to parental choice and Surrey bussing students out is not a plan, it is planning to fail, as the local adjacent areas will have the same issues. Our governments over decades, local authorities, have really not being smart about populations and their demands and it will get far worse.

Exactly yet Labour are using indy schools as scapegoats and the panacea at the same time. It is disingenuous and creates division as well as being smoke and mirror for the real issues.

@twistyizzy I do not live in an affluent area
Both of my examples are rural disadvantaged areas - one in the NE and one in the SW and none of our local ones are 'top public schools'

Capacity in the state sector also fluctuates funnily enough as 2008-12 were bulge birth years, capacity issues have followed that cohort but flattened behind them. I have a child in that group and one younger than that so am acutely aware of the effects on class sizes regionally.

Respectfully i would disagree with your analysis. Regardless of people's views on the merits of the VAT policy, it is inarguable that the vast majority of private school users are in upper income deciles.

The UCL research considered how the minority of lower income users could access private education. Busaries were not the predominant reason. People's financial circumstances are influenced by both income & wealth.

Another way to look at affordability is to consider how fees relate to household income. As the description below shows fees are very high when considered as a proportion income. Fees are not affordable for middle income families in typical circumstances.

The average annual senior boarding school place in 2022 cost £36,417, up 10 per cent in real terms since 2012. The average annual sixth form boarding school place in 2022 cost £38,898, up 11 per cent in real terms since 2012.
To put these fee rises in context, UK household median income was £28,481 in 2011/12 and was £32,349 in 2021/22, a rise of 14 per cent. This means an average senior day school place (annual) increased from 41 per cent of median income in 2012 to 51 per cent in 2021/22.[37]

Source: https://www.civitas.org.uk/2023/02/24/private-schooling-in-britain-a-snapshot/#:~:text=In%202022%2C%20the%20top%20fifth,10%20per%20cent%20income%20group.

Home counties here... We've had a fair few of these types visit our school. We've also had some lovely, heartbroken parents.

The first type have been told in very clear terms to manage their expectations, that they're in a school with one SENDCO and 100 SEND children and that they will wait their turn, that the teachers are not to be harassed. One set of parents gave it large to the point they were told that while they understand that little Timmy is his parents priority, he is no more important than any other kid in the school and that resources will be managed fairly amongst all 500 children based on need, not on the loudest shouter.

The head is gearing up with behavioural policies!

Err where has anyone said the savings will be made in 5 years time and beyond?

Medium term, in finance, normally means from year 2 onward.... Which is accepted by the Govt and IFS, both of whom say 400m saving in 1st year, 1bn + in subsequent years.

Yes problems in the state sector are legion but so far no one is saying where the money lost, if VAT on fees scrapped, would come from.

No one likes to pay extra tax and in a perfect world, i'd reverse Hunts unfunded NI cuts BUT politically, thats not possible, it would cause a shit storm but i have to hand it to Hunt/Sunak, by cutting NI, they ve created a real problem for Labour, which is, of course, why they did it... but who has it really impacted?

If you really want to apportion blame for the crisis in state schools and this VAT rise, then place it on the Tories doorstep.

about 50% of the children who got pulled out of my kids’ private school have fairly severe SENDs . They also have parents who know that their children can achieve in a decent school - and these parents are angry. I don’t envy the teachers/ leadership teams of these kid’ new schools. There is nothing to loose for the parents, so they’ll make sure if their child doesn’t get an education, nobody else will either

What lovely people private school parents are then, no wonder they've "problem" children.

Surrey council has been playing politics here. When there was a boom in school age children in my area, the council got all the schools to take bulge classes at some point and some expanded permanently. Surrey can easily do this, and it won't be very many bulge classes either. However, the council needed to wait until it had a stronger handle of numbers because so much hype has been given to the enquiries (if we chose to 'down-grade' to state, would we get a place and the lovely, outstanding x school), rather than actual number of children who will make the switch.

Sorry I am firmly blaming Labour for this. It's a divisive smoke and mirrors policy that's built on class hatred, won't raise much but cause harm to many kids. There were other options, Labour chose this one.
It's not the fault of indy schools that state sector has been massively undefund etc. We are told we have broadest shoulders yet more millionaires use state schools than indy schools so the broadest shoulders are actually in state system getting free at point of use education for their kids.

We used state for primary and will again for 6th form. So I am invested in state education. Just because I oppose this policy doesn't mean I'm a Tory.

It must be horrible for the dc who were settled in the PS especially if they were SEN.

I think Labour should be ashamed of this stupid policy and I sent my dc to state schools

I'm not sure why you think that Surrey CC is playing politics. They simply responded to a FOI request asking them how many free places they had in specific years and a journalist spun that into an article.

Nice to see all the cliches of “ loudest shouter” and “private school parents”. They are not some alien species. Like many posters say there are many many people, maybe even the majority, who mix and much state and independent education - sometimes for one child, sometimes based on need. This Government has incentivised them to go back in to the state system and we will all be paying for it.

There's not much point basing thinking on two families starting

Surrey County Council does not get much funding although they are a rich council with people who pay a ton of tax. The real shocker is the fact that those of us who live in councils where we collectively pay far more tax are getting much less funding. It is unfair. So if anyone thinks this kind of policy will not lead to further demands/implications from councils and powerful people demanding the cash for their state schools, seeing that they have been disincentivised to purchase private education, is naive.

This is the crux of it.

Entire boroughs failed to provide decent schools and effectively were better off for it because they didn't have to provide funding for those kids and they were able to sell off assets. I'm not talking about the day to day amount allocated for each kid. Its all the additional stuff around the edges. This has allowed these councils to be able to fund other things whilst those who weren't full of aspirational middle classes struggled more.

It almost allowed them to run down schools knowing that anyone aspirational/pushy would fund children through the private school system.

Now when the shit is going to hit the fan they are going to bus kids - probably the poorer ones in the longer term - to neighbouring areas citing a lack of school places when they should actually be cutting everything to provide the schooling that should have been available in the first place.

And all these parents bought into this, and went private, rather than demanding adequate schools in the first place. So I have little time for either the councils nor the parents complaining.

The ones I do have time for are the kids who otherwise would have gone to the local state school but will be pushed out and we're never going to go to private school.

That said, looking at the birth rates, I don't think this is going to affect too many areas for too long. I believe the 2014/2015 cohort who are currently year 5 are the last year before the birth rate jumps off a cliff.

At this point, there will be enough spaces available and it'll probably prevent the closure of some state schools. Certainly they are projecting a decline of over 30% in the numbers of kids where I am in the north. It's insane. Not everywhere is as bad as we are but those numbers are massive.

I think the government should have waited eighteen months for this reason. What's liable to happen is that it's merely going to be a couple of difficult years for numbers followed by availability of places which does actually benefit state schools rather than them having to deal with a reduction in income due to failing numbers. So it will allow state schools to stand still financially. It won't make them better off, but conversely it's liable to protect them financially.

And a bunch of kids will have to travel further to go to school - but I also think that was likely to happen anyway due to what's happening with the birth rate. This may mitigate it slightly.

The biggest questions lie with SEN issues and home schooling. There needs to be a massive crack down on homeschooling. There's far too many kids being 'homeschooled' and actually simply not getting an education at all.

No, I am not blaming my Council. I am blaming Central Government for hogging my tax money which should be going to my Council! I don’t want my taxes wasted on the next vanity project Central Government have planned whilst they ideologically yo-yo between Blue and Red. I want a much larger proportion of my tax money to go to my local council! The shocker is the centralisation of it all. And I don’t mind sharing with poorer councils. What I want is decentralisation. Power locally and funding decisions locally.

Tangent, but you might enjoy the book 'Failed State' by Sam Freedman, which covers the shift of power from local to central, amongst other things.

This - the degree of centralisation of government in the UK is off the scale. The mayor of a 300 person commune in France has more power, and more ability to execute, than the leader of a county council tasked with delivering services to millions here.

Who will homeschool her child?

If they don't have space then they can't. The government will have to build more schools. I remember trying to get my child into secondary school it's not easy finding a place.

Err… the point was the poster could send her child to state, but is choosing to homeschool.