Whitehall “braced for private schools collapse” 3

[ICouldBeVioletSky]

Starting a third thread to discuss impact of VAT on private school fees, as the topic looks likely to run (and run). Though probably best to finish off the second thread before posting here, thx.

So they're expecting 8% migration now? Bit of a jump from the 3% they originally predicted.

Did they outline how that that affected the revenue model?

The Adam Smith institute gives the zero-revenue point as 10%.

Any more will cost the taxpayer money. Or, more likely, reduce the money spent per-child in the state education sector, making state education worse.

How is the tax stopping your choice of education?

Simply pay the tax and you can choose to go there.

Can't afford it? Like everything else in life, live within your means. I still can't get over the sheer entitlement here that people think private education is a right.

But the VAT isn't denying you that choice.

Your ability/inability to pay it is the issue. Earn more money or cut your cloth to live within your means.

Private education isn't a right. It's a privilege for those who can afford it.

It’s not that difficult to understand, it’s a targeted tax that reduces people’s choice of education. It’s reduced everyone’s options including yours and your DCs.

You seem to struggle with the concept of negative rights. A negative right is something the government isn't required to give you, but they aren't allowed to take away.

Do you think you are entitled to the government providing you with a spouse and children?
(No. This is not what the ECHR right to family life requires)

Do you think would be OK for the government to deliberately make it harder to get married - something you personally believe is important before having a family - by adding a high charge? Not because it actually cost them so much, but just to discourage people? Simply because they disapprove of the institution of marriage: they think it's unfair for some people to join their lives that way when not everyone can.
(No, this is not OK. This would violate the ECHR human right to family life. Because the government is deliberately interfering with you having the family life you have achieved for yourself.

It's the same for the Labour education tax.

No one expects the government to fund private education. We pay for our children's education 100% ourselves.

But we're really pissed off at the government interfering with the education which we are absolutely entitled to give our children.

Creating a tax which will raise no money and only exists to reduce uptake and damage a sector is government interference.

Doing that to education - which is a public good - is absolutely outrageous.

But the point is they are not being shut down. The tax loop hole has been closed.

A universally agreed principle across Europe + much of the world is not a tax loophole. Unless the price of food is a tax loophole, or designer kids clothes are a loophole

Agreed - tax loophole is when the details of a law are used against the original intention.

It's very much a deliberate intention across Europe - and most of the world - that Education should not be taxed.

Just like food isn't taxed. It's not a loophole that you don't pay VAT on salmon.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/children-fail-secure-place-secondary-school-london-b1214415.html

Some of the rich areas are affected, including where some of the Labour MPs live and their mates. I am sure they will have been fine, but if not, you can live in hope. When their friends are displaced, that is when they will wake up and smell the coffee.
The crunch point is going to be Sixth Form places. And there is no time to sort that bottleneck out if there is one, as allocations are done within hours/days post GCSEs. Some kids do not get to study their subjects required for uni? Not enough Maths teachers? I wonder who is going to get their first A level choices. It certainly won’t be the poorest children we are hoping to access university. What are they planning to do to sort that risk out? Any due diligence would have identified that as a material risk to be mitigated, at the very least.

Quite lucky for this year's cohort that they are part of a demographic drop:

The number of births in England and Wales fell in 2013 by the largest annual amount in nearly 40 years, official figures show.
The Office for National Statistics said live births decreased from 729,674 to 698,512 in 2013, down 4.3% which is the biggest fall since 1975.

Interesting that despite the 4% demographic fall, the article you linked still had only a 1% overall increase in children getting their 1st choice school.

And predictably, in areas with more kids at private schools:

The number of successful first-choice applications fell from 77.8 per cent to 65.6 per cent in the City of London, from 72.3 per cent to 66.7 per cent in Kensington and Chelsea, and from 71.2 per cent to 66.9 per cent in Westminster.

It also became harder to secure a first-choice school place in boroughs such as Camden, Barnet, Sutton, Bromley and Croydon.

Despite the 4% fall in demographics in the current Y6 cohort. Hmm.

As you say, it will be very interesting to see what happens for 6th form offers.

You said that grammar offers were out. Do you know whether the stats are out for percentage offered and pass rate? I think that will be telling too.

@strawberrybubblegum - I cannot really generalise on grammar schools for you. They are all different. The superselective boys we applied for do not even tell you what score you got, ever. Apparently they do not want the boys starting knowing where they came in the test, which makes sense.
We got first choice and we would have qualified for our out of county Kent back up choices too, that is all I know. Some of the Kent schools publish the out of county scores required. Kent CC publishes all the information and this year there were fewer children in the top categories achieving near full marks, but then the test may just have been harder. Newstead in South East London for example seems to just always put the top 10/20/30/40/50 kids on a certain score, on a bell curve. It is all hugely complicated to be honest and whether you get an offer or not, depends very much on how you ranked your top choices. The Sutton grammars are a whole science of weighting Stage 1 and 2 in set ratios onto themselves. It is not something you can easily get your head around. The only data you may be able to gather is how many offers made to those coming from private preps vs previous years. But it does not really tell you much in London because many many people do state primary and intended to go independent, but this year went state. And I do not think any independents will openly admit to taking in weaker cohorts this year for bums on seats (if that is even the case, I do not know). Cohorts can really differ from school to school, independent and state grammar too.

Good point re 6th form.

My ds is currently in year 10 and in Surrey his cohort was one of the bulge years and places were an absolute shambles for reception and then year 7.

Linda Kemeny the then chair for education in Surrey is on record as saying they rely on parents sending their children private.

Well this bulge year is heading for 6 form in 2026 and I imagine it will be chaos again as I know quite a few who be leaving private and going to the outstanding local 6th form college. These parents are all feeling the pain of the VAT but just holding on until a natural transition point.

Dd current year 6 is a much lower birth rate cohort so the pain caused by the VAT imposition probably won't be felt in quite the same way.

Tax loop hole 😀

Understandably, there are many who view private schools as a "luxury", rather than a piece of a healthy educational ecosystem (where variety and choice is essential). I suspect many do not have children currently in school, or the issues don't affect them personally so of course they don't care.

But there are other pieces of the educational puzzle: nurseries for example. There aren't enough state nurseries, so the vast majority of parents have to use private ones. Any extra tax on the sector would be devastating, similar to private schools. Private nurseries are often the only way two income families can exist. The fees for these are also often the same as private schools as they face the exact same pressures: rent, staff costs, utilities, tax etc. Therefore the inflationary pressures on nurseries are the same as that on private school fees, they have grown at about the same rate over the past ten years. People saying school fees have risen faster than inflation simply need to look to nurseries to see the exact same trend and the same line on a graph.

Private nurseries are an essential piece of the childcare provision, but similar to people's posts above, "they are a luxury and should be taxed" as state provision does exist. If the government decided tomorrow that they wanted a behaviour change and only state nurseries were encouraged in the spirit of fairness - and they did this by introducing a 20% tax on fees for private nurseries, what would those same people say? The outcome would be the same: private nurseries would close as they would lose customers and would no longer be able to balance the books. Parents would then need to scrabble for places at the nearest state nursery, but have no choice in allocation - what they are given could be too far from home or work, or with very limited hours. The benefit would be that it's free, but at what cost? What if the provision doesn't suit your baby at all, or there are severe staffing issues, lack of funding, overcrowding, or a child is hitting your baby. But there's no other nursery you can move them to because there is no choice and what's left of private nurseries are only for the very very rich. It's not so different to the schools landscape. Or university provision.

I would much rather the cost of alternative provision be brought DOWN rather that go up via regressive taxation as then lots more people have more choices over how their children are looked after and educated at all stages of babyhood and childhood.

@strawberrybubblegum its been suggested that the starkest changes will come not on National Offer Day, but with what happens with continuing interest/waiting lists.

Historically many (I suspect most) private school applicants will submit state school applications too, but many will have used state as a backup and would turn down the state place offered, freeing it up for another pupil.

So the number of state applications may not hugely increase (taking into account wider demographic shifts). Equally, the minimum score needed to secure a place to a grammar/partially selective state on NOD may not change greatly.

Far more likely is a shift towards candidates now using private as the back up and accepting the state place if they get a grammar/partially selective/other good school (I live in an area with some high performing comps which wealthy parents often pick in favour of private already).

This means state waiting lists will be stickier and there will be less movement on continuing interest. Candidates who would previously have gone private will now take up state places, displacing others (lower scorers, those living slightly further from the school etc) their second/third/fourth choices.

Talking about fairness, maybe Labour should consider continuing shutting down the grammar schools (like what they did before) which then can genuinely make everyone laid on the same page.

@FixItFi good posts. And anyone trying to explain why 'tax loophole' is just.. not the case.

We're outliers on this for good reason. Other countries don't fall into this petty political gain stuff but focus on good sectors and education.

I've said before if Starmer really wanted fairness he would scrap grammar schools and faith schools and allocate places on a lottery.

Because it ends up affecting everybody.

It affects those who lose jobs when schools close (and often they are big employers in a local area).

It affects children from more disadvantaged backgrounds when there are fewer places available in local outstanding and/or selection state schools.

It affects the population in general if parents downsize their work as they don't need to make the same income if not paying fees.

Affects all state schools if they have more SEN students.

Costs the country more if fewer parents are opting to cover the costs of education themselves.

Can you actually name an upside for a policy that is very unlikely to make any money?

Just seen a thread today regarding my DD's comp. Three parents holding private school scholarship offers got offered places there and are taking them. It's one of the most oversubscribed comprehensives in London with Outstanding in all areas Ofsted. That's three children from potentially less privileged background now not getting a place there as kids who would have gone private now aren't.

@OhCrumbsWhereNow - thank you, all correct. And we would have most likely been offered that outstanding comp too plus free music lessons, had we not gotten our first choice grammar. So by all means, close the grammars, and then a whole lot more kids get the best state comps. It won’t be the poorest children though.

Exactly, all the other countries like Germany can, why cannot UK? Scrap those grammar schools and distribution teaching resources and mix all the children equally.

There is no such thing as equal provision.

Get rid of grammars and private schools and parents will just put their resources into tutoring and extra curricular... music, language schools in the summer, educational trips, sports coaching etc

It's what huge numbers of parents are currently doing. The combination of an Outstanding Comprehensive plus Tutor plus Extras is known as 'State Plus'.

Obviously you might have to invest in buying a house in the catchment of one of these top comps, but long-term that's a tangible asset.

And... you still get to go on holidays and can be very smug that your children are state educated. #Winning

So is it still a fair and equal playing field?

What on earth do you mean? Germany absolutely has an equivalent to grammar schools - the Gymnasium. It's fundamental to their university intake.

Err @ThisRedBee - last time I checked Germany very much still has a Gymnasium system and France a lycee system, in most places so what exactly are you referring to? If anything, many European countries have grammar schools - more widely than we do. We have like 4% left and 6% in private and these kind of numbers are small compared to many other countries, in percentage terms. It is just a bee in Labour’s humming bonnet.

A lot of European countries massively divide children up at 14.

Italy you have the Liceo, the Scientifico and the Technico.

Liceo is basically a grammar school. Scientifico a science focused comp and the Technico specialises in what ever the regional industry is... maybe silk printing in Como, car manufacturing in Turin, gold jewellery manufacturing in Arezzo etc. Basically turns out factory workers.