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%.”

I can see that a ‘highest absolute grades get places’ offer approach would indeed discriminate against prospective students from non-selective state schools.

Why? When so many on this forum seem to believe that a school's results are driven (almost) entirely by it's selection of students and that "a good student will do well anywhere"? If so, why wouldn't that good student get the same grades regardless of whether they attended a selective or non-selective school?

No the opposite at the state school we use. A more difficult financial situation, with requests to parents to voluntarily pay and cuts to staff.

It’s probably worth making the point that almost all school budgeting and funding is in a structured annual process. Even if additional funding is allocated to some or all schools after VAT imposition, it would never have been on a ‘we have collected £x this month so will immediately disburse it to schools next month’ basis.

In the US I think most undergraduate courses are 4 years, but the first year is often very generic.

Most A level courses are comparable to first year university courses in the US. Indeed, most US universities will give credit for freshmen courses for A+/A/B on A level exams, in the same way they will for 5/4 on AP exams or 7/6 on IB HL exams. An increasing number of well prepared US students are finishing their "four year undergraduate degrees" in three years because they've taken 3 or more AP exams successfully.

However, that is far from the norm in the US. In fact, the average time to complete a "four year degree", is now closer to five years of full time study than four years.

Could someone please explain to me how Labour raising income tax by 1% for everyone would have been "political suicide" (despite being the fastest/easiest way to pay for everything with minimal pain). Aren't decisions they are now taking leading directly to political suicide too? I can't ever vote Labour again. Each week it's something worse.

The education VAT appears to be the canary in the coal mine in that it's revealed a government happy to make huge decisions and destructive changes with absolutely fuck all consultation, impact assessment or engagement with stakeholders to minimise consequences.

Because it was a manifesto promise to not raise direct employment taxes (i.e. income tax and employee NI). Just like it was a manifesto promise to charge VAT on private school fees. People knew this, and voted for it.

Because Labour's primary goal is to reduce the number of students in private education as, in their minds, this will reduce the inequality in society. Raising revenue would be a nice bonus, but they'll settle for it not costing too much.

The manifesto outlined hoped-for outcomes (promises) but no detail of how they would achieve it. The way they are going about it now is what has my back up. There's also no way to track certain promises (amount of VAT money raised for example) so how do we even trust manifesto pledges, especially if education budgets deteriorate regardless.

I also don't agree with "reducing inequality" if that means everything is just simply equally bad rather than equally good. Direction of travel is just towards equally bad.

I'm also reacting to cuts to disability benefits and the pushing of SEND into mainstream schools - they are pretending these needs are made up and don't exist, so no need to fund them. No assessment of impact and more humane roadmaps of delivery so that problems are minimised.

It’s probably worth looking at the tried and tested admissions processes of our most selective universities to see that they do indeed allow for family and school effects on the ‘absolute exam grades’ attained by students who are of similar underlying ability and will go on to graduate with the same class of degree.

Oxford, for example, says that most successful applicants will have mostly 7s, 8s and 9s - old As and A*s - in their GCSEs. They don’t, however, exclusively take those with all 9s in preference to those with a more mixed profile, and they do take school context into account.

I don’t have any problem with selective 6th forms following the same approach- acknowledging that a student getting an 8 in a subject in a totally mixed ability class where teaching is therefore stretched between those striving for a 2 and those aspiring for a 9 might well be of a similar ability to a student getting a 9 in a group of selected like ability peers with teaching pitched exclusively at that level.

Yep on this. Agree with your other post too.

State schools don’t pay this increase out of the funding per pupil, they get extra funds from the govt ie the taxpayer.

Iirc, this isn’t true re pension contributions and NI increase - the funding formula applied to stare schools that was supposed to cover these additional costs has left a significant shortfall for many, further eroding many state school budgets in a way that has become familiar within the sector and necessitating staff redundancies as stare schools continue to cut their coats according to their cloth.

“I don’t have any problem with selective 6th forms following the same approach- acknowledging that a student getting an 8 in a subject in a totally mixed ability class where teaching is therefore stretched between those striving for a 2 and those aspiring for a 9 might well be of a similar ability to a student getting a 9 in a group of selected like ability peers with teaching pitched exclusively at that level.”

You would have to reform the whole Sixth Form Admissions process first. And staff it properly and find a way to second guess all the external tutoring currently going on as well. So none of that is ever going to happen.

Well, I didn't. Anyway, the introduction of VAT in Jan was cynical so that they could say nothing had changed as people will fight tooth and nail to finish the school year to minimise disruption to CHILDREN. This year 6 also a lower birth rate year. They are calculating and manipulative ideologists. Im not a Tory either so find myself voting Lib Dem and hating all politicians.

Barely 20% voted for it.

I gave an example above of a (very successful) selective state 6th form’s approach, which works very much along the lines I have stated.

Offers are given (for a minimum level of GCSE points for top x subjects, not anywhere near all 9s or even all 8s) to applicants on the basis of predictions, ranked with a flexibility according to school of origin and a range of other factors. Exactly the same offers are given to internal candidates.

It isn't a hypothecated tax anyway so the money will never go directly to schools

@cantkeepawayforever - I can only comment on our local grammar schools that are quite selective. The one that offers to the very top candidates by GCSE scores - ends up creaming off the best candidates from the other grammar that offers a more “fair” approach that you describe. At GCSE level the results are quite similar, at A level the competitive one wins hands down including on Oxbridge offers. To make it fair between all schools and not create unfair competition, surely they should all have a more similar process.
If you take top grades in August only - you will get the strongest candidates.

Agreed.

In the area I know, it is the most selective/ highest performing state school that operates the policy I describe, and it well outperforms other state and private schools. But I agree that a common approach across all schools would be significantly fairer.

They chose to make that manifesto promise.

Not long before the election, when it was pretty obvious they were going to win anyway.

Well, manifestos are only ever published once an election has been called and in the UK system this is at most 8 weeks before the election so nothing out of the ordinary here - although it has been a Labour party policy for much longer.

They made manifesto commitments, and they stuck to them as to re-neg on them would be, in the words of the OP who I answered "political suicide". Of course they are finding plenty of other ways to commit political suicide, but VAT on school fees is not one of them as, realistically, most people either don't care or are broadly supportive.

That's a criticism of the UK electoral system, hardly relevant to whether or not the government have a mandate to carry out their manifesto promises.

It’s a bit early to tell. They promised more teachers etc and if by the next GE people find state has got worse it won’t help them.

Plus all the other stuff you may be thinking of with the plenty of other ways part.

Yep, 6,500 new teachers as manifesto commitment along with the VAT. Time will tell.

I think people need to remember that most people don't actually care much about schools at all. The majority of voters do not have school age children and once their own children (if they have them) have left school, they don't give education a second thought. This is going to be become even more of an issue as the birth rate continues to decrease.

But it is also not true that the electorate voted for it.

sigh OK then. “Under the peculiarities of the first past the post system more of those who bothered to vote at all voted for this manifesto than for any other single manifesto (even if in aggregate more voted for other manifestos). Notwithstanding of course those who voted tactically, habitually, or for a specific candidate despite their party manifesto.”