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.

Very valid points @Goldbar. I have a very high achieving and ambitious 20 year old DD who also wants to have children some years down the line. I have already had the conversation with her about the importance of her choice of partner if she wants both without burning herself out. I have had the same conversation with my sons. They are lucky that they have had their dad as a great equality role model. I attribute my own post-DC continued career success to a significant extent to the support of DH.

I'm not sending my August daughter for this high achieving culture , she's not in a private anything like you describe.

I am there to give her the enriched curriculum offered, smaller and more nurturing environment. She is flourishing , albeit she's only on reception

I just know she'd have been overwhelmed in the state she got into - it's a class of 30 and the teacher was clearly overwhelmed when we had a visit.

Why begrudge me my choice, we don't have the same kids
The same needs

And how will they all end up in the same jobs ?

You can’t argue with stupid. @Jemimaaaa isn’t that the saying?? All these private school parents demanding their tax money back from the government because they’re saving them money.
Clearly they’re all unaware how taxes work. My Dsibs are childless, yet have never complained about their tax money going towards education. Or funding nursery places. I’m as fit as a butchers dog, and have barely troubled the NHS in 40 odd years, and have private health cover via work, but am not complaining g about my taxes going towards education NHS.
I’ve never claimed a benefitting my life, but am happy to pay into a system that provides a safety net to those who need it… and in and in…
The private school whingers are alienating all around them with their incessant bleating about losing a tax break in a service.
You can’t pay? Or don’t want to pay? Then don’t! Use an alternative.

Let's not forget about another aspect - some private school parents I know ingrain in DCs' heads the idea that state schools and children are terrible (dumb/rough or both) and their little darlings would be eaten alive there. A lot of these parents don't even have a first-hand experience with state education.
So I feel really sorry for the kids who have been raised like this - they must be truly terrified moving to the state - I would be.
So some parents are now freaking out that their snobbery backfired.

It’s bizarre isn’t it?! As if no-one else in the country cares about their children’s education and safety. A couple of years ago on a night out, kids had just all found out about secondary places, I overheard friend saying to someone else that they ‘had’ to go private because the alternative choices were just all awful. The ‘awful’ choices presumably being one of the 4 good local schools that the rest of our group’s kids were split between!

I just thought that was so weird! The snobbery, though that parent was themselves privately educated.And that one kid now travels over an hour, sometimes an hour and a half to a school in the next town and is missing out on so much not being part of the school’s community.

Wow have you got evidence for this or are you just projecting your own prejudice? Do you pass that tolerant attitude onto your kids?

FYI most indy parents mix and match state

One of my daughter’s friends has moved to (not a grammar) state school last year, her parents divorced it didn’t make sense financially.

Aside from the fact that her parents divorced, the new school is awful. She’s bullied, there are fights most days, she has to use unisex toilets where at best boys have pissed all over the toilet seat (at worst sex-related bullying), teachers seem utterly demotivated (and who can blame them), etc. Very little sport. The child wants to return but there’s no chance. She’s certainly missing out now.

Didn't I mention that I know some families who do this? Do I need to rephrase it somehow to convince you that some people are like this?
My child doesn't know that children are divided into private and state.

It's one of the issues I have with boarding schools. I don't think boarding schools are intrinsically awful for older children if they want to go, but they do remove children from their home environments and put them in an environment which is entirely geared towards their achievement and which doesn't require them to contribute towards the home that they live in or their local communities (beyond formal programmes). It's a very individualistic way to learn - the focus is all on academic and extracurricular achievements. And then on to university and the world of work, where you have to continue achieving.

I don’t agree actually. I’m not a fan of boarding schools unless the kids really want to go - but they’re very communal. You do have to learn to be around other people & get on with them even if you don’t like them. Helicopter parenting and indulgence of little darlings at home can be much more individual-focused than being in a boarding school where individualised attention is limited, you are one of many and no more special to your teachers than any other student.

Too many kids get away with introverted reclusion spending hours gaming in their room and you can’t do that at boarding school - not least because they have screen time limits. Formal community work is a lot more community work than many non boarders bother to contribute in their own area.

Equally there are so many different kinds of boarding schools - they’re not all achievement focused. Some specialise in being supportive, nurturing, non-academic etc.

Hope parents who barely could afford fees before VAT have been smarter than this.
Lack of prejudice should ease the transition.

Have a look on the Education Not Taxation grp on FB if you want some evidence. All those parents sharing stories of their children’s terror at perhaps going to state schools. The level of hysteria in there is laughable out loud laughable! there’s talk of communism and all sorts. Not to mention endless questions of how maybe to tax dodge using businesses or false address and names or offshore thisnand that’s.

Why are you on that group if you opposed to indy schools/in favour of the policy?

Can you give a concrete example or is this just an idea you have?

There’s a strange concept in this thread that private school students exist in an othered bubble separate from the rest of the world. It’s all mixed up with class - which is what this vat is really about.

I park these stereotypes in the same space as the online myths of the upper classes being all battered Volvos, dog hair and naice manners. Ie nothing to do with reality.

These days a significant % of private school students are immigrant origin
(1st/2nd/3rd gen etc) and a good % of boarding school intake are foreign as they’re the only ones who can afford the fees. A large number have parents who went to state school, possibly even most given the small size of the private sector.

Example is literally adults we know and their children (living in SW London, not Croydon!) telling us how terrible state schools are in general and that kids there are dumb/rough.

Wonder why are you implying it's my "idea", when I already confirmed it is a direct experience?
Also, will I have to repeat it for the 3rd time?

Am super confused. When people have the use that private school only represents a small subsection of the population, how is this proof otherwise? Of course people can have money and also be immigrants. Of course people can go to state school and send their children to private school. None of that means anything?

Successful immigrants who pay a shedload of tax already (who were not educated here themselves, nor use many services either) are probably simply more of a flight risk and probably also simply do not understand the British class warfare stuff. And if they are from countries like eg India, where the British colonised and exploited them and underestimated them for centuries, perhaps they have some very strong feelings on the subject that perhaps they may be more likely to vent on Facebook? All entirely hypothetical because I am not on that group, but we do have parents in our grammar schools with siblings in private schools and they are incredibly pissed off, it seems.

And a lot of them work for NHS. But according to some posters on here, doctors grow on trees and are privileged and easily replaced.

You can be flippant but my DS was bullied
It's one of the reasons I won't send my dd to his school
He's overcome the severe bullying now luckily

Yea you can have bullies in private schools too but at least we've the choice to go there or not

I asked you for more concrete data as all you’ve provided is weak anecdote - some of my best friends are black/think state schools are xyz etc

Haven't you posted that the brightest DC don't study Medicine any more as it's far too much hassle for not much gain? So your own posts are not that complimentary about the medical profession.

@PurpleThistle7 Perhaps you could untangle your second sentence?

As to the rest - you seem to have missed the point.

Could you please specify what concrete data you are expecting - ONS-level research? Why?

Obviously it's my personal experience of how private school pupils we know from not the worst areas have been convinced by their parents state=sh!te. And I don't think these cases are unique. These families don't even know each other, have different background, income etc.
So I can imagine how this kind of attitude in some families puts heavy stress on DC who have to suddenly switch to a state school.

@Kittiwakeup firstly, I don’t think the very brightest necessarily make the best doctors as yes you need to be bright to pass your medical degree, but primarily it is about rapport with patients and simply won’t suit many very bright people as a profession anyway. And secondly, what I may have said is that when I was at uni it was the Tony Blair/Brown chancellor era and a ton of medics were being persuaded to go into banking instead - it was the banking boom which the whole country then cashed in on but paid dearly for, ultimately, by the end of 2008.

Lots of medics in the NHS are from different countries, we all know that to be a fact. And if a lot of them do have kids in private schools, well it may well have some impact.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/migrationandthelabourmarketenglandandwales/census2021

• Nearly half (47.5%) of specialist medical practitioners, such as oncologists and cardiologists, were born outside the UK.
• The occupation with the highest UK-born workforce was farmers (97.5%) - quite topical….

Do you really believe that you just have to pass a medical degree and then it's all about getting on with the patients!!! Many medics are studying for years beyond this stage. I can't wait to share this with my neurosurgeon sister. She finds her patients are just a little bit more focussed on her excellent clinical skills than her banter.😂