Whitehall “braced for private schools collapse” 5

[ICouldBeVioletSky]

Starting a continuation thread in anticipation of the fourth one filling up…

www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5301690-whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse-4?page=39

Unbelievable. I’m often surprised by the blind belief in these Labour policies when they are so blatantly bad for education.

So 13,300 move to state... at £7k each, that's a cost to the Treasury of £93.1 million a year (and a lot more if SEN).

Treasury anticipated 3,000 leaving and making £460 million

Perhaps there’s a thread where you can directly taunt the children whose schools are closing ? 5 year olds might actually believe all the ‘equality’ virtue signalling nonsense, probably not though.

It’s never been about raising money or improving anything, it’s simply getting at people they don’t like through their children. Other than being pretty despicable behaviour, limiting education choice and forcing schools to close can only hurt education as a whole. It’s mad to suggest otherwise.

So what cost to the Treasure is going to be acceptable? How will it be swept under the carpet?
Everyone I know personally is switching State, including some quite rich people, out “of principle”. I think it is the double whammy of VAT plus uni prejudice plus cost of living etc. but I actually think surely if you signed up to private school, you should care somewhat about the jobs in those schools that you have indirectly created.
The private education sector as a whole may be inefficient, but it is certainly not unkind or commercial. And that is what Labour seem to have completely missed entirely. Most private schools especially those with charitable status focus on creating and maintaining employment primarily. Perhaps the Government is ashamed at how badly it treats the state sector, on the whole and what a rat race they have created for many teachers so do not want alternative competition. If that is the case, it is a very sad state of affairs for children and teachers.

So, the treasury underestimated the numbers who would leave in 2024-25 by a factor of 4. It's interesting to extrapolate to a scenario where their longer-term numbers were also underestimates by a factor of 4.
They estimated 34000 would leave long-term. If off by a factor of 4, that would become 136,000 or around a 25% contraction in numbers. That's pretty much what Baines-Cutler predicted in their 2018 report: " Our calculations are then that a drop-off rate of 17.1% is inevitable, a rate of 20.4% is probable and a rate of 25.4% is reasonably likely."
https://www.bainescutler.com/media/2umbzz1c/isc-vat-full-report-1018-for-circulation.pdf
And as the Adam smith institute noted (here: https://www.adamsmith.org/research/vat-on-private-school-fees-adam-smith-institute-submission-to-hm-treasury-consultation), a 25% falloff would lead to a 2.5 billion loss to the exchequer

Oh bloody hell. This is terrible.

This sounds like it could be huge. I guess the question is, will the end result be to remove any avenue for parents to force the education sector to provide for their children's needs? Or will it be for all children have their needs met, without having to go through the expense and difficulty of getting a plan?

Hmm...

Given that the driving force for making the change seems to be budget... and LAs currently routinely refuse EHCP forcing thrm to appeals which are usually won by parents... I'm not feeling optimistic.

What is their eventual aim on this? What do they want education to look like? Genuinely. They're setting fire to the status quo. I just don't see a credible plan for what they want to replace it with (given the current funds, which they are showing no signs of increasing)

re: What is their eventual aim on this? What do they want education to look like?
My guess - see attached.

So much for the "Hardly anybody will leave private schools because nobody changes behaviour in response to financial incentives, therefore £££VAT moolah bonanza" posters.

I predict a seamless slide to one or more of the following:

• "Ah but you can't know whether the decline is only due to VAT because there are other factors, therefore the VAT policy is still wonderful"
• "Well my aim was to destroy private educational choice anyway, so if we have to break several thousand eggs to make my dream single-flavour utopian omelette, those eggs have to suck up their sacrifice"
• "I'm alright Jack because I have a great state school with amazing facilities"
• "People who disagree with the VAT policy have used incorrect tone/vocabulary"
• "Look, squirrels!"

The supporters of the policy will all claim that the decline is due to other factors such as the falling birth rate.

What these fools fail to realise is that any children moving from private to state is an additional cost to the tax payer.

That is very depressing @lebr I'm sure that vision (what is the Labour Party equivalent of the little red book?) is worth the £2.5billion cost to the state if 25% of private school kids do move across.

And the personal cost to the thousands of children whose education is damaged by disrupting their education and putting them in an educational setting less well suited to them, more crowded and less funded.

And the additional downstream cost to the state of the impact on them as future taxpayers.

But hey ho, we aspire to be as Red as the East... used to be... before the East decided not to be Red and became successful instead.

I mean, not that I actually want us to emulate the current version of China either. Especially how they treat their ethnic minorities.

But their most disastrous policies (the Cultural revolution, the Great Chinese famine, the demographic sabotage with the 1-child policy) all came from their communist ideology and state control. (And their current slave labour and re-education camps in Xinjiang are a continuation of their old, Red state-control ways)

Their more recent successes (they are becoming world leaders in electric cars and AI, and moving towards taking India's place in IT provision) all come from a move towards economic realism, investing in the future, and being deliberate about how they place themselves in the global market economy. And will actually benefit Chinese people..

Lefties who for some unimaginable reason aspire to Communism should take note.

Yes the refusal to see the higher cost has been incredible. Labour are so bad for going this, what a legacy.

I agree this policy is Left Extremism.
But you need to talk the language they understand which is the destruction of jobs aka Labour destruction and that is what this policy is leading to. Not just discrimination of children with disabilities but also many jobs, into a challenging Labour market. If the unions were not so conflicted, much more would have been done behind the scenes about that. A lot of working class jobs will be lost because of this extremism from Labour.

I am wondering if they think the solution is going to be to have more Units within mainstream or continue the lie that "all teachers have SEN training".

A half day course on dyslexia doesn't really help - it's not one size fits all. Then there are the dyslexics with comorbid ADHD or ASD or both.

Ditto for every other SEN.

I genuinely don't know what the answer is, or even what education should look like.

It’s all deeply worrying. DS1’s class teacher’s knowledge of SEN was to refuse to believe he had autism and to accuse me of lying and paranoia. Shortly after we left the school, she became the senco.

@Lebr1probably has it with that image.

You can see how Labour get cuts now they did it with welfare cuts.

You get Labour supporters repeating the lines not fit for purpose and broken on SM. Then get the same to dismiss any talk calling it speculation and scaremongering. Then you do the cuts and ignore any concerns.

Why anyone trusts Labour at this point god knows.

So 13,000 have left mid year - are there any predictions of what the next academic year might look like? My kids' school is reducing nursery & class numbers (going from 4 form entry to 3 in primary) so there's clearly a significant drop in numbers starting.

13,000 reduction suggests a loss of £39 million of VAT (assuming average fees of £15000 a year) and added costs of over £100 million for state education at £8K a head.

That number is only ISC schools so there's 700 schools which aren't included in those numbers

How is this not front page news?!!! this policy should be stopped in its tracks by this.
Massive policy failure and massive own goal financially. The only justification they have was that the coffers needed the money.
Now that the policy is saving nothing but COSTING the coffers millions more money, then logically it should be reversed. .

Education policy has been severely overlooked recently. Perhaps Labour are putting the pressure on that.

100%

The Baines-Cutler report, which is so far looking far more accurate than treasury estimates, predicted a fall-off of 56,000 pupils within "year 1" of the policy. They did not explicitly consider imposition of VAT mid academic year. One could thus interpret this as being 56,000 by September 2025 or 56,000 by January 2026 - I don't think it makes a great deal of difference.
What is more significant is that 56,000 is 10% of pupils in independent schools, which the Adam Smith institute reckoned as being the fiscal neutral point, at which point the policy raises no money at all, and beyond which the policy costs the exchequer money.

Re: "My kids' school is reducing nursery & class numbers (going from 4 form entry to 3 in primary)" : I have heard similar local to me. Normally full/oversubscribed schools are only filling 3/4 of their reception places for next year. Schools with multi-form entry may cut by one form. Further up the schools, there are more empty places than usual but numbers in the schools that have so far survived have been buoyed up by mopping up students jumping ship from the schools locally that have closed. Numbers in secondary are holding up better than prep.

If you are considering private school in the current climate (and fees aren't your spare change) then I suspect you will see more of:

State till 8, then send to prep to prep for 11+ and indie secondaries.
State till 11, then sit 11+ for grammar with indie back-up
State till 11, then small classes and good behaviour for children who need that for decent GCSEs.

The big question marks will be whether lower year private primary will survive and private 6th forms.

From people I know in the sector or thinking about it, they're very much focusing on Y7-11 or even Y9-11 in private and private 6th form only if they don't get a place in targeted state 6th form.

10 years ago all these families would have gone private from YR to Y13.