How's the Private School VAT increase impacting you?

[mumsthewordi]

To private fee paying ...are kids/s still in private ? Are you comfortably still able to afford and happy paying it ?

To state, how do you feel? Have you been impacted by more kids in class or would you expect that to play out this year? Or perhaps you weren't supportive ?
Do you think state schools will improve ?

Full disclosure
A struggling fee paying parent of one kid only other is at state and my oh is an amazing secondary school teacher - we are a divided household indeed at time, but we've made choices best for us.

Two pre preps have closed locally at short notice, it’s such a shame for all of the staff that worked at those schools. Both were small provisions and cited the VAT and NI rises.

Luckily there isn’t really a chance that our school will close, it’s very popular and expanding to take in children from the schools that closed.

@Mirabai

Of course state students are getting their predictions, they always did. But there was definitely more of a bias towards private schools back in the day and certain private schools in particular.

Yes, there was an unfair bias and with the more widespread publication of admission statistics the universities have had to work to remove that bias.

But part of that bias was also through private schools knowing how to navigate the arcane admissions system. State schools have upped their game in this respect. Plus there’s been more outreach to state schools and more incentive for state schooled children to apply.

You say “less so now” but Cambridge’s dropping of admissions targets for state schools was only announced last spring.

Yes it’s a recent announcement, but it’s recognised the issue and is addressing it.

I'm not talking about you at all. I'm actually referring to my own DC and their friends who all excelled in their grammar schools and many of whom got 4 A stars at A-Level, mine included. They have all unsurprisingly gone on to very competitive courses at top universities (not exclusively Oxbridge) and are being awarded exhibitions and similar now they are there. Not because they got any leg up. Because they are very academic, very motivated and have a whole raft of other things going for them besides. It p**s me off no end to hear comments like they got a 'leg up' to get in because they went to state schools. Someone actually said to me at a dinner party that their DC didn't get into Oxford because the odds were stacked against them as they went to private school. They assumed (as is usual) that our DC must have been in private education given our professions. Their DC had got an A and two Bs at A level and had done badly in the Oxbridge selection exams. Still it was because all the state school DC were taking all the places. Total delusion and the peddling of such myths doesn't help. But let's leave it there as it is off thread.

We have dds at a north London prep. They will be staying there as we can afford the increase, although I'm slightly worried about the school's long term viability as it's small and roll numbers have decreased anyway due to lower birth rates. There are plenty of other preps within commuting distance though, if we had to leave, and also plenty of undersubscribed good state schools due to lower birth rates and families leaving inner London. If the school did close, we'd likely choose another prep rather than a state school, and a private secondary afterwards. I expect the selective secondary schools will be just as competitive to get into in the future despite some parents being priced out.

I feel resigned to it - it's an inconvenience but we save most of our income now. It won't impact on our lifestyle but we'll save a little less, but our investments have done well and we've had promotions as well. I'd be upset if the school closed as the dcs are happy there.

There are a couple of preps which have closed nearby, but they were generally not sought-after and had falling rolls for a while.

The fee increase is not a topic of conversation amongst other parents and most of them can comfortably absorb it (often just one child, lots of lawyers and bankers). No one in the year has left or has plans to leave, except one child who moved abroad.

Butterfield is awful. He's gone to work for Jordan Peterson's private university in the USA, which tells you all you need to know.

But even his resignation wasn't about lower offers. Oxbridge were never giving lower grade offers to state students, their standard offer is just that. Butterfield was unhappy that those filthy state students were actually achieving their A*AAs.

Of course, Oxford did used to give EE offers to preferred candidates from, er, certain schools. Think that stopped in the 90s but I'd probably still a point of mourning for some.

Of course, Oxford did used to give EE offers to preferred candidates from, er, certain schools. Think that stopped in the 90s but I'd probably still a point of mourning for some

They gave 2 E offers to favoured students who passed the exam and interview process - state or private.

Well, I got one myself, so it clearly wasn't all down to backroom chats over sherry, but also I went there with a not small number of people who, to put it kindly, wouldn't get in there now but were at their dad's old college or were a lot better at rugby than academics.

That doesn't happen now, but it's not like it's swung the other way.

I mean, come on, of course people move their kids to state schools to boost their Oxbridge chances. This has been a ‘thing’ for a few years now. We’ve been discussing it and our daughter’s only 10.

It’s a shame Oxbridge are seemingly rowing back on this policy. But, then again, it’s also a shame Oxbridge monopolise university education they way do.

You’re not being punished. It’s just a correction of a generous subsidy you previously benefited from.

I will grant that the principle is better than the policy; targeting the spender ain’t the right approach, in my view. And if we’re targeting spenders then we really ought to go after gamblers and lottery winners first.

Anyway, on topic. Personally I would ban private education. And faith schools. But that’s not the system we’re in and my partner has different views, to some extent. So we’re taking the private route. VAT made us drop a couple of the more expensive options and has made a couple we have gone for viable only if our daughter earns scholarships. So be it; we’re pursuing a questionable privilege and I don’t feel we have any right to complain.

@Kittiwakeup surely you understand that being lucky enough to go to a good grammar school is a privilege and a leg up, above those at dreadful state schools like the one I went, like the ones my children had nearby, like the ones most others go to?

@durness I wasn’t referring to the vat situation. I’d rather they weren’t introducing vat on education (it wasn’t a ‘subsidy’ btw), but it wont really affect us. It is simply morally wrong. And an envy policy from Labour.

i was talking about the bias against privately educated children, in some unis and uni course admissions.

There hasn’t been an unfair bias in about 20 years.

And it is private students who are more likely to be underpredicted.

https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/8409/Predicted-grades-accuracy-and-impact-Dec-16/pdf/Predicted_grades_report_Dec2016.pdf

I think the state school graduates at Oxbridge are obviously very capable. There just aren’t enough Oxbridge places for everyone who would benefit. Don’t make out that deserving state school students are being shunted out by overpredicted private school students. It isn’t the case.

Er... nobody was doing that? One person (Sasskitty) was saying that state students currently have an unfair advantage and get into Oxbridge with lower grades, which is also not the case.

Yes I understand that better than you appear to understand how widening participation and contextual offers work across UK universities. That’s why DC from high performing state schoolx like these don’t get contextual offers.

@mumsthewordi no, but the implication of your son giving up his money so that his sister could go private because he'd had such a bad time at state suggests that there is a link in his mind between good/private and bad/state but I appreciate that this is not what you meant and, as a child, he may not have understood that this is not necessarily the correlation either.

It certainly Was the case up until last year. As per PP article. 🙈

Until very recently Cambridge had an explicit target for state schools, completely separate to the contextual offers. And yes, they were giving offers to equally-privileged state school candidates who were less strong than private school students they rejected.

And that was reflected in university results. Cambridge detailed that in their own analysis.

Now whether that discrimination by education sector is something we want as a society is another matter. At a society level, you could argue that it's worth doing.

The aim is greater equity (whether it acieves that or not is a different matter). And Oxbridge does typically benefit an equal-ability student with a lower SES more than their higher SES academic-equal, since the higher SES candidate typically has other options, so there's a society-wide benefit there.

But it isn't meritocratic. And being non-meriticratic for more than a small percentage of students does damage our elite universities.

Cambridge have now changed their criteria. Probably as a result of that analysis. Whether the new criteria will work better remains to be seen.

Regardless, people will always find the best way forward for themselves. In many private schools (including DDs) in the last few years, that has included changing to state for 6th form for many students who aspire to Oxbridge. You may not like it @tortoise18 , but that's absolutely the case.

DD is still quite young, but it's something we'll look into the current stats for when we get closer, if that's a route she's interested in.

🙄 grammar school kids don’t need contextual offers. Their advantage and leg up is already there. The fact they had a grammar school as a possibility demonstrates everything. Hence Oxbridge are trying to get away from offering ‘state’ school kids, and finally recognising that not all state schools, are equal.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-68545303

scrapped very recently

I would be interested in views on why UK has decided to tax (some) educational services when no other country in Europe has done the same.

I do not know what the situation is in North America/other developed countries.

What is so special about education in UK?

Do we think this is a Brexit dividend?

Sasskitty explicitly said that Cambridge applicants were given lower offers from state schools, which is explicitly not the case and has never been the case. That's an entirely different point to whether there were targets to reduce the over-representation of private school pupils in the intake (and it was only ever reduction, the over-representation is still there).

I don't deny that people try to work the system by switching from private to state at sixth form, but that doesn't really work unless they switch to a school that gets flagged for having zero Oxbridge applicants, which is unlikely to be what they're doing. GCSEs are also weighted according to the school cohort you sat them in, so while that could also work against the state switchers it also means that eg. QE Boys is already treated the same as Westminster. No state advantage there, just good candidates getting in.

edit that's @strawberrybubblegum

This has absolutely nothing to do with your original claims and you don;t seem to know enough about the process to understand that. What is your experience here?

https://apple.news/A6TTy0rxJRW6aDLeRnv19ZA