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%.”

Agree- I laughed out loud at 'the litmus test has always been...' as the first response. Classic conspiracy theory appproach.

There is a big difference between 9% and 100%.

Many areas have schools which don’t finish until 13 (especially those schools who tend to send children to the secondaries which don’t start until 13). It’s a mix where we are.

@Moglet4 but 2025 intake offers haven't been published yet?

Surrey for example will publish tmw

And many have raised the bar this year.

DD's comp now asks for 6 x 7-9 incl English and Maths. Last year it was 6 x 6-9. They have 200 places available, 160 are ring-fenced and 40 for external, and the Y11 PAN is 450.

But if 160 internal don't get the grades those spaces are added to the 40. The external spaces are allocated according to best results ranking.

Sorry have to confess haven't RTFT, but are there figures for In Year applications for state school , and whether they have increased over the period, or not?

That’s incorrect. If you want Westminster, St Paul’s, Eton and others, the option is only to stay at the local private until the end of year 8.

The PP specified 'for girls' - are those 13+ only schools for girls? Obviously Eton isn't.

every county publishes PANs and admission distances. Surrey’s are here www.surreycc.gov.uk/schools-and-learning/schools/admissions/arrangements-and-outcomes/previous-years#a25

@strappyshoe to add, the figures for 2025 entry are not available yet so not sure where @Moglet4 got her 0.8 miles from.

@Mielikki thanks I aware just queried this years offer info

am aware!

Our council publishes all of the schools two days after offer day on their website. I’m guessing most councils don’t do this.

My son is at an independent school that doesn't have a sixth form. He has got a conditional place at a more selective state school for sixth form. We have turned down the private school place we also applied for. Most of his year have not even applied for private school-they have all applied for the selective grammar school and the other state schools around as a back up.

Not so much when you see that the number of applications in total have decreased from 12,815 in 2023/24 to 12,241 in 2024/25.

So those 58 kids shouldn't have a problem finding a place, what with there being an overall drop in numbers of 11 year olds of 574.

No - they don't publish in year application data. The only way to get a real feel for it would be to compare the balance shift when the school census data is published.

Ours have already been published. I assume it differs by council

@ZookeeperSE - I posted this data earlier

Have you read my post before commenting?

Eton is not in London, Westminster and St Paul's are not girls school. I was actually interested in 13+ for DD but there were no academic options available in London.

These are not the "norm" schools anyway.

Our London cohort has just done 11+, no one I know of (and we have lots of friends in various PS) was staying till 13, including boys.

@Moglet4 What council is that? I've never heard of one doing it so soon.

I know it's just anecdotal but in my son's private year 6 class over a third are going to state secondary this September (6 pupils). Historically that number has been between 0 and 1.

It's too soon to say what will happen at the.moment. most schools require 1 terms notice to withdraw a pupil so Easter is a significant time to see what will happen with existing pupils. Further downstream, there is an unknown about new entrants at prep and seniors. Some families may decide to avoid private schools whereas the may have gone for it in the past.

It definitely is area dependent. Where I am there are a few very highly sought after grammars and there has been a huge influx of people from Hong Kong (largely because of the schools and the already large Chinese community - it’s a massively higher influx than elsewhere in the country). Add that to the VAT issue and all the schools’ intakes have shrunk quite significantly and lots of people are not getting their first choices.Suggestions to build another school seem to be falling on deaf ears though…

Suggestions to build another school seem to be falling on deaf ears though…

Is there a genuine shortage of places, necessitating a new school, or just a mismatch between supply and demand for places in favoured schools, with sufficient places in the system overall?

(I used to work in a school
where we heard many, many appeals each month and could easily have expanded by a class or two per year group had we had physical space. However, no new school was needed as there were sufficient places for the population (and some to spare) in local schools overall)