Whitehall “braced for private schools collapse”

[ICouldBeVioletSky]

Whitehall ‘braced for private schools collapse’ due to fee rises

Worth reading the whole article, it’s not quite as alarmist as the headline suggests. But as you’d expect, gov sources are talking it all down while the ISC is ringing the alarm bell.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/e6465c9e-d462-48cb-a73e-74480059a1f3?shareToken=05bf599cd4a2376fe3ce83cdce607100

I’d be quite surprised if some of the schools near us don't fold tbh. There will definitely be a contraction in the sector, I just hope those that hold on can remain a viable concern.

Thats surprising, the 3 schools mine attend of course fulfill the schools needs first, and then allow access to a designated school. It depends on what facility as to how much time and whether more than 1 school ls curriculum benefits.

If I take my youngest, they have swimming everyday before school and then 1 swimming lesson per week. They are 2 form entry and prep only. They have 45 minute lessons 9 per day, 45 per week between 8 - 4pm. So across the whole school, a maximum of 28 lessona of swimming per week. Leaving free for a state school to use the pool, for example, 17 lessons per week minimum as I'm pretty sure A level PE is a small group and not 2 forms.

State school are not through schools, 17 45 minutes of free swimming pool per week is available for free for them to use, surely that is sufficient?

My other daughters' school would allow for more use of their pools as their educational offer extends only to 13.

Would love to see your figures.

@Catshit
Oxford dictionary definition of public school -
in the UK) a private fee-payingsecondary school, especially one for boarders.
"they didn't go to public school"

Yes but this is different isnt it, whag you are describing is generally a low intake year. Where as thid affects all years, at the same time. Schools are not privy to parents financial information unless the student is bursery, so its hard to predict which and how many students will leave.

At one of our daughters schools the fallout has mainly been from teachers' children leaving, while they could afford 50% fees they seem to struggle with the additional VAT predicted costs.

Those places have been taken up now by wealthier families, and thus the gap widens.

Which schools didn't provide education for their pupils? State and private mobilised pretty quickly to educate and lots of adjustments were made post pandemic to ensure pupils were provided with opportunities to catch up. State schools as I understand it from friends also adjusted curriculums post covid, were provided with additional funds, all sorts.

According to the ISC:

1. 103,000 pupils at ISC schools have special educational needs. 55,000 pupils are identified as having Specific Learning Difficulty (SpLD) and 7,000 pupils have an Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plans
2. Almost 30% of pupils receive some form of fee assistance through the school, and the average value of a bursary has also increased to £11,800. There are 39,358 pupils receiving means-tested bursaries and nearly half have more than half of their fees remitted. Bursaries are valued at over £465 million per year.. These numbers are underestimates for the whole sector since not all private schools are affiliated with the ISC.

The issues of children with SEN (but without an EHCP naming the school) and children from modest backgrounds only able to attend with financial support (much which is likely to be removed due to financial pressure) are not sideshows or red herrings - they affect a large percentage of pupils.

As for "[they] don't offer assistance out of the kindness of their hearts- they do as little of it as possible because it affects their bottom line", I was at a school open day earlier this year (before the election) where both the teachers and pupils spoke eloquently about the bursary programme (which they were trying to extend past 25% of the intake). They described it as the "beating heart of the school". Some of the teachers said it's why they worked there. Some of the pupils spoke about the fund-raising they were doing to extend it to more pupils. There was nothing token about it.

7000 private school children have an ECH? in the state sector, England alone, the number is 517,000.

Bursary assistance? this could mean full fees paid or help with the uniform.

Of course bursaries come off the bottom line, they are businesses.

The "beating heart" nonsense is a bit like a company saying "our employees are at the heart of our business" & we all know what that really means.

Its funny how we get to hear all about their charitable works now....

If no VAT on fees, how would you otherwise raise the £6bn over the course of this Parliament?
1.5m children being taught in sub standard classrooms, how many PS children are taught in similar circumstances?

Wrong.

Public schools are feeling paying schools ... They are open to the public, ie anyone who can and wants to pay to go there. It's not limited to pupils, for example only the sons of brewers or whatever. The money raised is spent in running and improving the school, not profit making for share holders/owners etc

Private schools are things like language/sports schools/camps. They're being run solely to make profits for a private owner.

Hello, I’m fully aware about what the definition strictly is. I just don’t like that terminology.

There rate of ehcps is pretty similar in the private to state sector There's 9 million odd state pupils, v 600k odd private school ones.

If we want to raise 6bn to improve schools we could create a tax that affects a bigger group of people rather than a small group of people using one specific service, when many other people with similar incomes are not being asked to contribute to improving state schools even though they use them directly or simply have the same income/capital as private school users.

Well, you might not like it, but that's what it is ...

"how would you otherwise raise the £6bn over the course of this Parliament?"

1. close all the loopholes and clamp down on ultra-wealthy tax avoiders.
   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/30/britain-margaret-hodge-commons-tories-economy-labour
   https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/mps-margaret-hodge-tax-parliament-labour-b2529889.html

2. tax wealth
   https://taxjustice.uk/campaign/taxing-wealth/

Both would raise far, far more than 6 billion

“If no VAT on fees, how would you otherwise raise the £6bn over the course of this Parliament?
1.5m children being taught in sub standard classrooms, how many PS children are taught in similar circumstances?”

@Alexandra2001 the only impact the VAT will have on substandard classrooms is that it may lead to more children being educated in them given pupils transferring from independent schools. The money that Labour hopes to raise from it has been earmarked to fund 1/3 of an extra teacher per school (assuming they can magic up more people who want to be teachers at all). It will do precisely nothing, therefore, to improve the lot of state school children .

PPs have pointed out ways to raise meaningful amounts of money to improve state education. As an additional rate tax payer I would much rather pay an extra penny of income tax, even though it would likely cost me more. It would be much fairer than this shit shower. (That said I must admit I would have zero faith in the competence of the current government to spend it wisely).

Labour could also think about additional stamp duty for the people who have paid £1m-£2.5m+ to move into catchment area houses near our local state secondary. Yet they will benefit from independent school parents paying extra to state educate their kids!

No

And as new joiners, we probably would not be allowed our previous legacy let-outs on VAT, adopting the euro or anything else.

I do think the popularity of this sales tax policy shows that people do welcome what Brexit brings, even if they can’t bring themselves to admit they are a supporter.

OP while I agree with most of your last post, I'd say stamp duty is about the only tax that is comparably unfair to this one. It's a tax on mobility and divorce. As such it's almost as stupid and unfair as taxing education.

The money that Labour hopes to raise from it has been earmarked to fund 1/3 of an extra teacher per school (assuming they can magic up more people who want to be teachers at all). It will do precisely nothing, therefore, to improve the lot of state school children .

It’s also being spent on cornflakes. Many of those children will be in great need of a free breakfast but many more won’t. Who knows if they’ve worked out who’s serving the breakfast yet.

Labour’s total lack of a plan is what infuriates me the most. They will raise a tiny fraction of the costs needed to overhaul and improve the state sector solely by getting private school parents to pay a second time for provision they don’t use. Where’s the rest of the money coming from? What are they going to do to improve provision for SEN children, so that families like mine are actually able to access state education? Yes, the Tories completely screwed up state education. No, Labour doesn’t seem to have any interest in or plan for turning it around. But they’re making the ‘poshos’ pay thousands of pounds per family for provision they don’t or can’t access, to make an infinitesimally small difference.

I would gladly pay a little more income tax. Funnily enough though I do object to only private school parents being made to pay thousands of pounds to barely improve a provision we don’t or can’t use.

Christs Hospital is not typical though, it is one of the few historic 'public' schools that has stuck to its original aim over the centuries of educating the 'poor'. One of its current stated aims is social mobility. And as it has a substantial endowment built up over centuries it can afford to ignore parental income in their admissions process.

Using that as an example of independent schools is like using a Derby winner as a marker of how fast horses in general can run a mile.

I don’t think extra taxation is the way forward though. The whole point is that people are already disincentivised widely to work to their full potential due to the huge taxes we have at certain thresholds and loss of personal allowances. Now people aren’t even incentivised to put the extra into their private pension anymore. The entire tax system requires reforming to incentivise everyone to want to work 100 per cent from those on universal credit right to the top and to want to start businesses here. That is the only way to restore economic productivity in the long run. Successive politicians are simply too cowardly to make proper changes. It’s all dithering on the side. And we are competing with other countries, whether anyone likes that or not. Multiple articles on why companies will list in the US vs here recently. People can laugh about Dubai or Abu Dhabi as much as they like. Dubai realised that if they want people to settle there long term they have to bring in proper culture and they will likely get there in the end. Just as many other countries are starting to compete in the university sector and will poach are public school education model if our numpties in charge destroy the sector. It’s also why we need people in politics at the top who have run eg multinational companies rather than career playground politicians. We operate in a global world and if people care about our country long term they should start respecting our traditions too and what we are known for and that includes the royal family and our public scholols! As well as our unis and our huge charity sector. All these things are linked.

Agreed - stamp duty on 1m+ properties is already hiked up.

If labour want to tax the wealthy exclusively, then they should chose exclusively wealth related goods - a 5% charge on luxury cars for example (off the top of my head - there are probably a billion reasons why that’s not a great idea 🤣) or, yes, a penny on PAYE for higher earners. or maybe they could tax people who have spare £20m apartments in Covent Garden?

I think Labour have gone about this all wrong. The biggest thing they could have done would be to properly fund sen provision. It’s an absolutely disgrace how hard it is to get an ECHP in some counties. My daughter’s class has a high level of need and no funding from the council to support at all. Destabilising the private sector is doing nothing to increase funding in our primary school- if anything the NI changes will make things much more challenging and I fear that they won’t be able to sustain the number of TAs they have. The school can’t afford to replace glue sticks or pay for maintenance without the PTA.

We’re now more likely to switch to private and suck up the VAT as we’re seeing the impact of funding cuts. I really don’t think that their ideological policy of VAT for private is going to do anything other than make the sector more elite. They needed a proper education strategy with a focus on SEN provision, teacher retention etc rather than breakfast clubs and nonsense claims of recruiting an extra 6k teachers.

"The money that Labour hopes to raise from it"

"hopes" is the key word. If 15% - 25% transfer from private to state it won't "raise" a penny because the cost of the additional state places will eat up the VAT levied on those who stay. Assuming you can hike prices substantially while leaving demand unaffected is an economic fairy tale.
Aside from whether one agrees with private schools or not, its perfectly reasonable to be against this policy simply because it will not achieve its stated aims.

https://www.edsk.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/EDSK-VAT-on-private-school-fees.pdf

7000 private school children have an ECH? in the state sector, England alone, the number is 517,000.

You aren’t comparing the right statistics. Just because a child isn’t in an independent school (and the 7000 is only the rough figure for independent MS, it doesn’t include independent SS) doesn’t mean they are in a state school.

According to the most recent government EHCP statistics, 575,963 children and young people in England have EHCPs. Of those, 248,016 are in mainstream school placements. (Although this includes 22,236 who are in ARPs/units within state MS.) Of those 247,016, 6,768 are in mainstream independent schools and 219,012 are in non-independent (maintained, academy, free) mainstream schools.

Only 7 percent of private school pupils receive a means-tested bursary or scholarship.

• About 13% of pupils in private schools UK-wide are at boarding schools.
• Boarding is most common in the South West of England (around 1 in 4 private school pupils), and least common in Greater London (just 3%).

Of private schools affiliated in 2020-21 to the ISC:

• 985 schools (72%) are registered charities
• 339 (22%) are profit-making

@Lebr Come on! 25% of pupils are not going to transfer to the state. These are mainly wealthy families.

What's your source? I have multiple sources putting it between 25% and 34%

https://www.goodschoolsguide.co.uk/choosing-a-school/independent-schools/fees-financial-assistance-scholarships-and-bursaries

https://www.scis.org.uk/blog/applying-for-fee-assistance

https://www.simplylearningtuition.co.uk/advice-for-parents/scholarships-and-bursaries/