Whitehall “braced for private schools collapse” 4

[ICouldBeVioletSky]

Continuing the discussion about the impact of VAT on independent schools…

They are however likely to be very expensive in terms of SEND support.

100% this.

From the parents I know with children in my DD's year group (Y11), I don't know a single one who isn't tutoring in at least 1 subject.

These are all kids in Outstanding London comps with middle-class, educated parents.

DD now has a tutor for 4 subjects - plus all the additional support school lay on.

It's not even hidden - we all openly discuss with teachers what tutors are working on and ask for suggestions of what would be good to focus on next. Schools actively suggest getting a private tutor.

Who said they were? What’s that got to do with my question? (And FYI, a few may well be.)

I’m asking you whether improving social cohesion by further widening the social divide between independent and state schools by pushing the least wealthy 10-20% out of private schools will improve social cohesion?

Do you mean that it’s better that a tiny few of the middle and working classes who got ideas above their station and got their DC into private schools via bursaries or scrimping, are better off back in the state sector? So the really wealthy who can pay the extra VAT with no problem don’t have to mix with a few bursary kids? Is that the kind of improved social cohesion you mean?

I’m asking you whether improving social cohesion by further widening the social divide between independent and state schools by pushing the least wealthy 10-20% out of private schools will improve social cohesion?

Because it still improves social cohesion within state schools. It’s not about the gap between independent and state schools, given that the wealthy will always have the purchasing power to maintain that.

Parents that are ‘scrimping’ are still coming up with on average £16 - 18k per year per child day school fees out of disposable income - these children will not be on FSM on joining the state sector.

Even if they are not on FSM, how do these extra 2 students per class make a difference? What if they are bursary students? EHCP or serious SEN without an EHCP?

I probably tick the box for being a parent that could have afforded private but opted for state.

Local options were all a bit useless so I spent 2 years visiting schools and targeted aptitude places like a military campaign.

I am extremely good at advocating for my child. I email teachers as soon as I think there is any issue. The SEN department probably can't wait until DD leaves as I'm a thorn in their side. Suspect I probably take up more than DD's "fair share" of time and resources.

Not sure we exactly improve the social cohesion... DD has mastered the glottal stop though.

How will a couple of extra children in a state school improve social cohesion?

Your figures are just not true. My DD has a 60% scholarship and bursary so it’s perfectly possible to “scrimp” the rest, which is not remotely near £18k a year. But many families with bursaries can’t afford the VAT on top. They are the ones who will be pushed out. It’s possible to get a part bursary earning around £50-60k household income (which is quite a normal household income) but still not be able to afford the VAT on top. Are a couple more of those kids in state going to improve social cohesion in any radical way?

There were absolutely tons of parents in our state primary with a household income easily double £50k or more. The local house prices start at £650k for a 3-bed (we live in rented - we can’t afford to buy). If my DD went back into state she’d not even be remotely close to the highest household incomes in the school. How would that that be increasing social cohesion except for making sure her independent school has fewer of the less well off pupils?

For what it’s worth, DD has an unusual gift for maths and for languages not offered in state schools, so all that would happen is that she didn’t get the opportunity to do subjects she loves that are usually reserved for the wealthy. Doesn’t sound like a win for social cohesion to me.

Lots of private schools charge far less than £16-28k - my niece is at a small private secondary which is £3.5k a term. She has mild SEN - probably high functioning ASD, sensory disorder and dyspraxia. Not quite bad enough to get an EHCP, but she can’t function well in the big comp that is her state catchment school. Her parents do scrimp to pay full fees, but they aren’t that able suddenly to find an extra 2k with little notice. If she goes back into state, what benefit to social cohesion is it to have an anxious girl in a big school who is too upset to interact with anyone, falls behind academically, has to wear ear protectors to function, and gets bullied as a result? Is she bringing enhanced social cohesion to the local comprehensive?

However, you have a fixed idea about how much YOU think the less well off pay at independent schools, and that somehow stopping kids from taking up bursaries is a socially great and just thing. I’m not sure you’re explaining to me how this is the case, but there you go.

How will a couple of extra children in a state school improve social cohesion?

Are these the equivalent Schrödinger’s figures - tens of thousands of private school children being thrown on the state, but in reality only a couple per school?

Your figures are just not true.

£16 - £18k is the average day school fees published in the ISA 2024 census.

However, you have a fixed idea about how much YOU think the less well off pay at independent schools, and that somehow stopping kids from taking up bursaries is a socially great and just thing. I’m not sure you’re explaining to me how this is the case, but there you go.

Quite the reach there, I haven’t mentioned anything about bursaries.

@SabrinaThwaite you’ve been asked directly eight times to explain how adding VAT to private school fees will improve socio economic cohesion in state schools and yet you still haven’t actually answered the question. You’ve just repeated your statement. Repeating a statement ad infinitum does not make it true.

@SabrinaThwaite It’s been pointed out many times that it’s the parents who are less well off, eg. those with part bursaries, who will have most difficulty paying the VAT.

£16–18k might be the average, but how averages work is that some values are above the average, and some values are below the average. The “famous name” boarding schools might charge £40-50k; but equally, in order to produce the average, many (more) schools have to be charging well under £16-18k. Many small independents and preps, especially in the north/south west charge around £10-12k.

How do you think a parent with a household income of, say, £50k and a child on a 50 or 60 percent bursary will manage the extra VAT? It’s obvious that it will be those parents who have to take their children out.

Or parents who earn, say, a household income of £70k and only just manage to pay full fees for one child for a small day private school.

Are the children of either of those parents going to be surprise super wealthy additions to the local comp who will radically shake up the social matrix by poshing out all over the place? (Just for context, in the area of the south where I live, you can still qualify for shared ownership social housing on a household income of £70k, it’s that low for the area 😆)

It’s all just back to the nonsense fallacy of the “sharp elbowed middle classes will improve the local schools” which is just a fantasy, I’m afraid. It’s not the parents who join the school: it’s the children. And the idea that slapping VAT on independent schools will suddenly deliver an influx of horsey Penelopes and Hugos to raise the tone of the local state comp is total fantasy.

Penelope and Hugo will stay right where they are. But maybe Kate who is a bit of a loner/mildly autistic and gets bullied for it, has to go back to a big school where she has no friends and becomes a school refuser. Or Tom, who happens to be really good at physics and Latin, ends up having to move school, but is so frustrated and bored with the state curriculum he starts getting into fights and developing antisocial behaviour. Because their parents aren’t wealthy enough to just pay the extra tax.

These are individual children you’re talking about, not their parents or their parents’ incomes. Why should they suddenly be used as some kind of social cohesion tool (a very suspect idea in itself), when what is needed is for all of us to pay more tax to fund the education system properly?

Are these the equivalent Schrödinger’s figures - tens of thousands of private school children being thrown on the state, but in reality only a couple per school?

There are lots of schools in the country. The figures a poster provided upthread is around 55000 children, so averaged at a couple per school — but note that, as above, THIS IS AN AVERAGE, so in reality they won’t be as evenly distributed as that. (Because that’s how averages work.)

You’re wasting your time, you’ll never get a coherent answer as there isn’t one. It’s purely envy, ignorance and spite. Although to be fair, it is fun reading the mental gymnastic posts dressing up closing down schools as some moral act.

I have (at 18:38 since you ask - the attainment gap). Plenty of information available - you could start with the Sutton Trust and research at Durham University’s School of Education.

Ah, so you’re back now.

You’ve forgotten ‘stupidity’ and ‘jealousy’, although ‘ignorance’ is a new one.

Or should we just say ‘flat earthers’ now?

Does this research specifically address the impact of adding VAT to fees rather than private schools generally?

If the government think this tax will only produce any revenue if less than 10% of children move from private to state, is that the specific number that the Sutton Trust et al specifically address? Why would pricing out the bottom 10% of the private school cohort make a difference to social cohesion? What if fewer kids move? What if mainly SEND kids move?

Could you quote some of this research that says social cohesion will be improved precisely by adding VAT to fees?

its taken unfortunately, maybe something like ‘METs’ Mums for Education Tax ? ‘PAECs’ Parents Against Education Choice? Nah, I’ll work on it and get back you.

Research shows that schools with higher levels of poorer pupils have lower levels of attainment. Where that socio-economic segregation is lower, the attainment gap is lower.

@SabrinaThwaite Have you pointed out to posters on mn who dislike privately educated children that having them at their children’s schools will improve the standard of education?

PP asked for reasons why a policy that moves privately educated pupils to the state sector could have a basis other than ‘stupidity, jealousy, envy and spite’ (can also add ‘ignorance’ and ‘flat earther’ to the list now).

Reducing socio economic segregation to reduce the attainment gap in state schools is one reason.

Fill your boots with finding specific published research on the effect of VAT given the timeframes involved.

@SabrinaThwaite But this specific VAT policy doesn’t just move all of, or some random private school pupils to the state sector. To work, it specifically relies on as many pupils as possible NOT moving, apart from a few of the least wealthy, who are disproportionately likely to be students with bursaries and/or SEN. So how on earth does this improve social cohesion? It obviously doesn’t.

In fact, it increases economic segregation by making the threshold for private education the preserve of only the more wealthy.

So why do you think it’s a good thing?

Are these the equivalent Schrödinger’s figures - tens of thousands of private school children being thrown on the state, but in reality only a couple per school?
There are around 25000 state primary and secondary schools in the UK. The government's stance is that "very, very few" children will move schools from private to state. Publicly, they were saying 35000 kids, which is just over 1 child per state school. The documents disclosed to court showed that internally, treasury officials were predicting 54000, or about 2 children per state school. So tens of thousands will move, but this will only equate to an average of a couple per state school, because there are tens of thousands of state schools. This is not some quantum mystery - it's basic arithmetic.

The institute of education at UCL researched the likely effects of the policy and concluded :
"research shows that the policy would not make a large difference. The VAT could raise fees by an estimated 15%, which over the long term would shrink private school pupil numbers by between 16,000 and 41,000 pupils – or between 3% and 7.5% of the sector, thereby causing a small proportion of private schools to close. To that extent, the overall inequality of schooling would be reduced but only marginally. Against that, the pupils remaining in private schools would be drawn from marginally more affluent households, thus having a small adverse effect on the remaining schools’ social exclusivity."
and
"The VAT levy is unlikely to meet wider reform objectives to reduce the social segregation associated with private schooling and, in the long run, to ensure a more meritocratic society. To achieve that, policymakers would need to consider alternative strategies to ensure greater social integration of private schools"

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/research-projects/2023/nov/private-schools-and-british-society

So, @SabrinaThwaite, you’ve now been asked a further time (I count 9 now) and you’ve responded yet again with a parroting of your first reason. Can we now agree that social cohesion will not actually be achieved by adding VAT to fees and can we ask, yes again, for any good reasons for this policy that extend beyond spite etc?!?

Incidentally, I have heard from friends that in top public boarding schools, whilst the kids are staying, it is the parents moving abroad. So the VAT will be paid, but not the hundreds of thousands of income tax. So I hope those who implemented the VAT can make the miserly VAT grow on the magic money tree, for all.

You realise that asking the same question gets the same answer?

Local schools would represent the full range of residents more closely, not having a subset of the richest students routinely removed. Socio-economic segregation between schools could decline.

Schools would be more representative mini-societies, and this could have knock-on effects for pupil achievement: less segregation between schools could help lessen the attainment gap between richer and poorer pupils.

That answers your question, whether you think it does or not. Feel free to keep asking, you’ll get the same reply.

But you still don’t answer the specific question of how the VAT policy will achieve this. All you do is speak to an ideological (to some) world where private schools didn’t exist at all, and ALL pupils were educated in state schools. The relatively small proportion of VAT ousted pupils that move from private to state (when spread around the state schools) will have no impact, as pointed out in @Lebr1’s post above.
I keep asking the same question to get to the bottom of my main issue; there being no good reason whatsoever for this.

@SabrinaThwaite So the education tax isn’t a revenue maker to improve funding for state schools, it’s a tool to restrict education choice so that everyone goes to the same school in their community decided by their local authority and reduce funding per head for state schools?

At least you’re honest, most other proponents of the education tax argue exactly the opposite.This is going to follow Labour around for the rest of it’s existence.

I’ve directly lifted it from an opinion piece written by the Professor of Education Policy at the University of Durham last year.

I’ve provided it as an example of a potential reason for the policy being implemented that isn’t (as PP’s assertion) driven by envy, jealousy, stupidity or spite.

I’m surprised that you’ve jumped on Green’s statement that The VAT could raise fees by an estimated 15%, which over the long term would shrink private school pupil numbers by between 16,000 and 41,000 pupils – or between 3% and 7.5% of the sector, thereby causing a small proportion of private schools to close given that these threads are constantly updating the ‘unprecedented’ numbers of children leaving the independent sector and the ‘unprecedented’ number of school closures.

Green has been more focused on ways of closing the funding gap between the state and independent sector - which doesn’t involve the government increasing state school funding.