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.

There is an alternative - the child can attend state school. You can be any religion, both boys and girls can attend. You can go to state school if you are good at sports, music or a good dancer.
You can attend state school if you have SEN (the majority of children with SEN do attend state as most private school will only accept mild SEN that won’t affect their exam results and who aren’t especially disruptive).
Private school is a luxury (it’s not essential as there is a free, state alternative) and most people can’t afford to buy their child that advantage.
A child might well do better at private - pretty much all children SEN or not would - but it’s obviously not true to say there is no state alternative. There is, just maybe not as good. Welcome to the real world that most of us inhabit.

That’s not sound logic I’m afraid. They could both be equally intelligent. One could be more intelligent than the other. They both got 4x A*s. Why should one be penalised.

Actually with the reduced grade offers - the intelligent state kid could get 1A BB but still gets the place above private 3As. Or whatever. None of it makes sense, because it’s impossible to manage. Social engineering never works.

ps. I went to state school myself. A particularly crap state school in a crap city. But I still got good grades, unlike most of the rest of the year. A few of us did. I didn’t expect lower offers from unis. Nor should I have done, frankly.

They had state school targets. They failed

https://ukstudycentre.co.uk/blog/cambridge-university-scrap-target-state-school-applicants/#:~:text=from%20state%20schools.-,Cambridge%20University%20has%20announced%20that%20it%20will%20be%20scrapping%20its,inequality%20on%20access%20to%20education.

There will be kid who had to carry a heavier desk than you’re ‘very bright’ children, so what? what are you suggesting? That we have different grades for how heavy a desk we lift at secondary school? how does this relate to introducing an education tax? A grade is a grade, do you care what your surgeon’s secondary school was like or how qualified and able they are?
If the school is that bad, then look into independent schools. Bare in mind they are 20% more expensive than they were 12 days ago though.

https://feweek.co.uk/ofqual-wants-admissions-flexibility-for-students-with-one-or-two-lower-grades/

And finally… there a paywall on the times article so this one will have to do..

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8561347/amp/Oxford-accept-brilliant-pupils-struggling-schools-fail-expected-grades.html

Unfortunately there are many cases where there is not a state alternative as in everyone agrees state mainstream is unsuitable but there are no specialist spaces available. I know several families that have been more or less forced into home educating while waiting for a rare spot in an appropriate specialist school. It isn’t legal, but it happens more often than you think.

depending on the nature of the school and the send, some private schools can take students with more complex needs. Our Indy school has children in @EHCPerhaps ’s situation who ultimately found places in specialist send schools.

I know there are many families who cannot fund an alternative, but it is hardly a luxury to pay to keep your child in school when the state have told you they don’t have a suitable place.

Another one who doesn’t understand how WP works. You can have state school targets and still not give contextual offers. State educated DC can hit the top grades too.

Thank you I agree with you Labraradabrador.

Neither Oxford nor Cambridge make contextual offers where students are admitted on grades lower than the standard offer or without passing relevant admissions tests.

Oxford: Applicants from the most disadvantaged backgrounds will be strongly recommended to be shortlisted for interview, provided that evidence suggests you are likely to achieve the standard conditional offer for the course, and that you perform to a suitable standard in any required admissions test.

Cambridge: However, academic achievement remains central to all admissions decisions - ‘flagged’ applicants won’t necessarily be invited to attend an interview, be made an offer or be made a conditional offer at lower grades.

Both have a foundation year programme for state educated students that meet specific criteria - around 50 places at Oxford and 40 at Cambridge.

You’re not living in the real world if you think the SEND system is working in the way you claim on here. I can tell you it’s not. As will many other parents on here.

But just so we’re clear. You’re arguing that you’d have kept your DC at home for months, in no education at all and just waited more months or years for a suitable state school place to come up, even if you had an alternative not to do that.. ?

(During which time you would lose your job because you couldn’t work. So you would not be to continue to be able to pay your mortgage, the meaning lack of school places would have become the least of your probkems.. )

OK then

Thank you! If people choose to educate themselves from Daily Fail articles, it’s no wonder they get the wrong end of the stick.

no one said state school children don’t get top grades? You misconstrued @Sasskitty ’s original statement which had nothing to do with contextual offers.

The Daily Mail article posted upthread related specifically to the 2020 Covid affected A level exam year that used the dodgy algorithm to determine grades.

😂 you’re so transparent. You said Oxbridge don’t do contextual offers. I said they do. They do.
You said Oxbridge don’t offer lower grades to state pupils. I said they did do. They did do.
I knew someone with little ammunition left would grab the ‘daily fail’ 🤭 article ref and run with it. Even though I explained why I’d used it. It was you, of course..

I said the times article had a paywall. I’d read it through Apple News. Also paywall.

1 kid in private school. Our fees have gone up 8% with vat passed on. We’re in the final year so I’ve only the increase for two terms. All the kids in our year have grammar school places. In previous years a lot of the kids did pass 11 plus but went to the private schools instead.

I wasn’t considering private for secondary as we have no middle ground where schools are concerned: one basic private school where imo the classes are too small - and the other one, twice as expensive but unfeasible due to distance (plus don’t want to pay any more).

The only parents I know taking kids out of the school are the ones with multiple kids in the lower school years.

1/10 places.

Would any state school parents pick private if they could afford it ?

So, kids with all A*s are being turned by Oxbridge, while other kids are being let in on three As and this is not dropping standards because 3 As is Oxford’s “standard offer.”

@mumsthewordi Surely you need to differentiate your state schools. Grammars and schools in very wealthy areas, are incomparable to sink comprehensives in dumps.

I know it’s not in labour’s interest to highlight the differences but still..

Although of course the answers a categorical no, I suppose.. of course it is.

Opportunity Oxford makes 200-250 offers per year.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/oxford-accused-of-lowering-standards-to-meet-diversity-target-hgjnw8lf0

A don involved in admissions said: “The part about being admitted ‘on the same rigorous basis as all other students’ strongly implies that academic standards are not being compromised by this scheme, which is simply false.

“I have known students admitted under this scheme who could not write essays in grammatical English, something previously unknown in my experience among Oxford undergraduates.”…… < >

An admissions tutor at one of Oxford’s most prestigious colleges, who asked to remain anonymous, said: “Saying that the students who are admitted under this scheme ‘might’ otherwise miss out on an offer is a fudge.

“In order to make a difference to how things were done before, the scheme has to ensure that students are admitted who ‘would’ otherwise have missed out on an offer.

This is exactly how my colleagues interpret it. The scheme admits students whose academic potential is judged inadequate for admission under normal standards. These students displace other students with greater academic potential who would otherwise have been admitted.”…. < >

A university lecturer involved in Oxford admissions this year said: “It is important to remember that this scheme occurs on top of other access-related accommodations.

“It is already a routine part of the admissions process to look at ‘contextual factors’; these can straightforwardly make a difference between candidates who are roughly on a par, and even give the edge to the slightly worse-performing candidate.”

An associate professor involved with admissions at another college in Oxford said: “The liberty to decide which students to admit, and the ability to set exacting terms and conditions on that admission, are two core tenets of academic freedom.

“The Opportunity Oxford system exists to undercut standards and take control away from academics. In doing so, it undermines the integrity of the university as a centre of academic excellence.”

I’ve read the Times article too.

“Our academic bridging programme, Opportunity Oxford, helps prepare some of these talented UK offer-holders from under-represented backgrounds for successful student careers at Oxford, supporting their transition from school or college to our university.”

”All Opportunity Oxford students must meet the same conditional offers for their course as other offer-holders. The development of this programme forms part of our access and participation plan, a requirement of the Office for Students, in support of equality of opportunity for all talented students.”

The candidates are still required to meet the standard offer, as per the Oxford admissions criteria on its website.

Well, we have now engaged lawyers to go to tribunal to fight for my SEN child to receive an EHCP to cover the costs of the specialist private SEN school we have been funding for the last 5 years. I always felt that we were giving to society by covering the cost of my child’s education (just affordable for us), however have now been stabbed in the back by this thoughtless government, so just not willing to continue.
They have two choices: provide the 1:1 support which would be required in the state sector mainstream school (££££), or pay for small classes in the specialist private school she currently attends (£££). Let the lawyers fight it out at huge taxpayer expense and see where we end up. If all the self funding SEN families follow the same path, it will be interesting to see how much net gain there is from this new tax on education…..

In theory, but the admissions tutors have commented above that in practice academic standards are being compromised and undermined. The scheme admits students whose academic potential is judged inadequate for admission under normal standards.