No exodus to state sector after VAT added to private school fees, say English councils.

[FruitPolos]

Article in today's Guardian. Interesting to note the comments from Surrey in particular given the discussion on Mumsnet about this particular area.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/mar/10/no-exodus-to-state-sector-after-vat-added-to-private-school-fees-say-english-councils

"Surrey, which has large numbers of children in private education, recorded a dip in the proportion of families getting their first pick of schools for September. But Clare Curran, the county council’s cabinet member for children, families and lifelong learning, said: “Surrey has not seen a significant rise in the number of applications for a year 7 state school place for children currently in the independent sector compared to last year.“For September 2025, 664 on-time applications were received from Surrey residents with children in the independent sector, compared with 608 for September 2024, a rise of 56.“While the percentage of applicants offered their first preference school has decreased for September 2025 [80.6%] compared with 2024 [83.1%], the 2025 figure is not dissimilar to the 2023 figure of 81.3%.”

True, the Tories allowed millions of young people and other working age people to fester on benefits, bill now approaching £100billion, allowed to continue.... unique in Europe.

Labour set up the Welfare state to provide a safety net, between jobs for some, to provide support for those unable to work for others.

It cannot continue to support 25% of the working age population.

The Tories ignored this issue, allowing in 1m migrants instead.

Economy avoided recession in Q4 2024, unlike Q4 in 2023.....

I think some will defend cuts no matter what because it's Labour.

Most will start to realise anti growth policies end up hurting the lowest paid or on benefits most.

Yes, same here. Absolutely shocking raid on the poor and middle classes to the benefit of the elites, and profiting from war killing whilst destroying education.
I wonder why they are still called Labour.

Do you support having a Welfare bill of £100 billion pa & 25% of the working population on benefits? the growth in welfare is completely at odds with what has happened across the EU since the pandemic..... so it would appear that our policies have encouraged this....

Odd if you do support a growing Welfare state.

Do you ever consider that some policies can and should have general support?

On anti growth, we've avoided recession, which we didn't do under the Tories in 2023.....

This happens at a local scale within the UK too. If you are trying to attract professionals (eg GPs) to an area of deprivation with failing schools then the presence of private alternatives means those with families or who might plan to have families may consider the area when otherwise they would not.

I'm not surprised as it was clear they'd go for 'the rich' in a bid for votes and it would batter funding. Hence wiping out headroom entirely.

It's interesting to see Labour scramble for support whilst people on welfare are scared posting on here.

“In the meantime however those rubbing their hands with glee will ignore the massive divide in the state education system, that is the real travesty here. Those mc parents flexing their muscles, buying houses in outstanding state school areas, sending their children to subsidised religious schools and grammars, subsidising the schools with fund raising. At least private school parents are honest about it!”

It is not that simple. Educational outcomes are more determined by the educational level and engagement by the parents from a very early age. Everyone knows this and everyone is buying a peer group, one way or another. The key question is how do you actually elevate the poorest to value education and really promote that from an early age? The middle classes have inherited that from their parents, because they were parented that way and it can go back generations. I still have books from my grandparents and classical music as well as their grand piano.

For some reason, many economic migrants (of certain groups primarily) into the country seem to intrinsically understand that education elevates and they make sacrifices accordingly. This is about underlying educational values and early years intervention and very early childcare for all - but it needs to be at a high quality level and parents who did not have the same from their own parents, need to be supported all the way, to really turn this around.
If you look at some of the Nordic countries - they have really high quality skilled early childcare, not young school leavers on minimum wage who would rather not be there.

Of course - how else will we train our next generation of politicians if not in elite ivory towers?

Such twaddle

Again twaddle

What exactly do you contest?

https://www.cityam.com/millionaires-leave-britain-in-record-numbers-since-labour-took-power/

Twaddle

Some great fact-based, well-articulated debate going on here 😄

That article is blaming the exodus on non-dom changes @labraradabrador

But Non Dom status is only worthwhile for the super-rich. Non-doms pay a £30k annual fee if they've been here 7 years, £60k annual fee if they've been here 12 years. In return they don't pay UK taxes on earnings outside the UK. But they still pay tax on earnings in the UK - the average tax take is still £120k in tax annually from each non-dom individual.

Non-dom is really not for someone who is just a millionaire - which is what that article is measuring.

There's a really interesting paper here which looks at historic non-dom tax changes impact on migration, which suggests that tax doesn't change behaviour in the super-rich (top 0.2% of income) https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cage/manage/publications/wp630.2022.pdf

But those exodus numbers for more 'normally rich' people in your article are high, and will certainly affect everyone in the UK if they continue. So it's probably not the non-dom tax changes causing it, but all Labour's other anti-growth, 'hurt the rich' policies.

@strawberrybubblegum agree - I read a much better analysis when the data first came out but cannot remember where, but it isn’t all about non+doms so much as wealthy professionals (lawyers, business owners, finance, etc). Basically it said that these wealthy professionals were leaving because of a combination of what many feel is punitive taxation and low service levels. That’s the education in a nutshell - poor / declining state options and a highly punitive tax if you go private.

The tax take overall is masking the departures at the top level because of fiscal drag. So people in the 40 per cent bracket are just going to have to pay more tax, and for longer.

As are people in the 20% bracket... Who has been governing the UK for the last 14 years and introduced these tax threshold freezes?

Who gave us Brexit? that is and will continue to cost the UK 10s of billions per year? a 4% drop in GDP..... money that could have been used to increase THs and avoid VAT on fees.

Having been both a 20% and 40% tax payer, i can assure you, those in the 40% bracket do have more head room to pay more tax, i doubt too many people in this bracket are using food banks or on In Work benefits.

@Alexandra2001 VAT isn’t driven by financial necessity so much as ideology. Even optimistic estimates don’t suggest a major tax haul, and there is a very likely scenario where it raises nothing at all / costs more than it takes.

Exactly so what’s the point?

It only disrupts dc and closes some schools. Plus damages the sector.

What I do not like about private school VAT is that I think they smaller private schools are not the fat cats that need targeting. They are just small communities like most state schools. The fat cats at the elite levels - I am all for taxing them, somehow, if they are not contributing to wider society and milking the parents on top of that. However, it seems to me that a lot of the biggest names do actually contribute quite a lot to Education overall. I would have welcomed far more regulation on private schools to protect parents and stop unreasonable fee increases and waste on facilities and marketing, but not this.

Most private schools are dreading the end of this term, when notice for September will be delivered. It is too early to know either way.

My ds school are very nervous, they are a small day school. Lots of year 11s planning to transfer to state system, my ds is staying on, got my fingers crossed that there's enough of them staying 🤞

DC will be going to state sixth form. I have drafted a letter giving our one term's notice to DC private school, will be sending it in the next few days.

Every state sixth form we applied to told us that they are seeing unprecedented numbers. DC were only interested in one particular sixth form but felt we had to apply to several others because of the concern that everywhere could be severely oversubscribed and it would be worse to end up with no place at all.

One of the state sixth forms held group interviews - DC counted about 24 applicants in their session, of which half were from their school!

The overwhelm at Sixth Form was completely predictable and what is more, current year 11s were those who missed end of Year 6 due to Covid! Shame on the Labour Party messing with this cohort further for political gain, with no regard to the mental health of these DCs. I hope they end up paying for it, it’s unforgivable!