Whitehall “braced for private schools collapse” 7

[ICouldBeVioletSky]

Continuation of previous threads discussing VAT on independent school fees. The thread title is a headline from a Times article last autumn.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5237575-whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5242586-whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse-2
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5280646-whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse-3
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5301690-whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse-4
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5317397-whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse-5
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/education/5337850-whitehall-braced-for-private-schools-collapse-6

Yes they think that 600 kids will leave this year? Considering 25K left after Yr 1 🙄
8 x as many left in Yr 1 than predicted but only 600 will leave in Yr 2?
It's just fucking lies and lies and Starmer put in writing that the money was going on housing.
They are just spiteful twats who love harming the education of children. In a nutshell. There is zero justification at all.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy8xyrwkgwo

How is it OK to bash small, SEND and/or otherwise specialised private schools in this way? These quotes are ridiculous:

‘Ms Phillipson said: "The taxpayer shouldn't be subsidising private businesses in this way. Instead, we're putting money into driving up standards for children in state schools."
She added: "With more money in state school budgets and a better-equipped Ofsted, we're supporting every child to achieve and thrive."

Private schools inspected by Ofsted are known as "non-association" private schools.
According to DfE data, external, 63% of non-association independent schools last year were special schools. They tend to be smaller schools that offer support with pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (Send).

Faith schools made up just under 20% of non-association schools.

The UK government introduced VAT on school fees in January to pay for more state school teachers in England.’

Honestly this government’s bias on SEND kids is disgusting and constant. I don’t even know where to start.

It’s just massive sleight of hand, I hadn’t heard this housing ‘promise’, how awful to mislead people like this. It’s like all the Boris bus lies about money going straight to the NHS after Brexit. It absolutely corrodes public trust and I am disgusted to see Labour doing it so constantly on this issue. Since not winning that discrimination case it seems they’re doubling down.

His account wrote it on an X post the day before the verdict came out ie he knew the verdict ahead of time and was basically gloating

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/oct/31/stalled-newbuilds-labour-social-housing-target-out-of-reach-uk

The housebuilding is a complete shambles. Add in the mansion tax etc, it is not looking good. Whilst hardly anyone is hit by mansion tax, the fact that they will revalue a lot of properties, means that everyone is scared the mansion tax will move downwards and that depresses appetite to buy/move, plus all the tax rises via the fiscal drag.
Housing is the key thing these useful idiots should have sorted out. Clearly they are massively behind and in breach of a lot of their promises.
Seems to me they know there days are numbered so we can expect a lot of socialism in the next couple of years before a complete change of direction in the next election. Does not bode well for stability whatsoever!
I am just hoping for peace in Ukraine and a good deal for both sides. If either side is bullied into a shitty deal, history tells us it will explode again in just a few years.

these useful useless idiots

here, fixed it for you

I am just hoping for peace in Ukraine and a good deal for both sides.

I'm wishing for piece in Ukraine and putin and his ilk go to the deepest depth of hell. The entire world politics and all sh.t like Reform, AfD etc would evaporate shortly after without stirring from russia

TwistyIzzy a friend has told me their school is closing but I don’t know if it’s public yet so I won’t post names, are you still keeping a tally these figures?

Exeter Cathedral School
announced the closure of its prep school y’day, it’s on the website.

BBC radio 4 covering this issue on the More or Less programme today

Government discussions to date set out here.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czjg8j4g981o
How does incentivising a school to accept SEND pupils support kids who need a smaller quieter school environment? Or can’t manage school at all and have to be Home Ed or have tutors under an EHCP?

I don’t see any off ramp here for parents already paying privately because there is no state provision for their child. That of course means there is no state provision at all coming for the parents who can’t afford to pay fees.

This education policy rigidity and lack of vision is affecting all kids, state and privately educated and with or without SEND. Unmet needs affect everyone in the classroom.

From what I can see reported here: https://www.schoolmanagementplus.com/bursars-finance/vat-is-in-the-rear-view-mirror-but-whats-on-the-road-ahead/

There’s the closure of Exeter Cathedral School’s prep; Warminster School is moving its prep to the main site to generate funds;
mergers between Harrow and Lockers Park and St George’s Ascot and St Albans Education Group. Palmers Green High School; the prep at Royal High School, Bath; and Rendcomb College are all closing.

As previously discussed on here, this trend of consolidation is really bad for kids. Much like as in private healthcare, it means prices go up for the person using the service, conditions and pay for teachers go down, and homogeneity and narrowness in the offering has to be the norm, service standards tend to fall with this economic streamlining of services, and there will be cherry-picking of the least complex cases to teach. Leave the hard cases.. The state system picks up the expensive difficult caseload- except the state system is already broken and it can’t afford to do so. The smaller private schools often have a significant minority of SEND pupils helping them stay afloat, so they will have to balance that against raising class sizes and making sites much smaller and more crowded and so on.

I’m so appalled to see how Labour have broken the private schools ecosystem. We’re only in the second month of 2026. More to come hidden behind the falling birthrates. VAT is having ripple effects on so many kids, regardless whether in private and state education.

I don't think it's having that big effect at all.
Obviously the effect on some individual children will be huge, but the system wide effect, certainly where I am, is negligible.

Depressing. Such a poor policy from Labour.

How many threads about evidenced harms to kids’ education do you post on, to say that you haven’t seen any such harms. Or do you save that just for the private school ones?

The system-wide effect is the exact opposite of ‘negligible’. As well as being devastating to many individual kids and families whether in state or private schools for all the reasons set out over these threads for months. Which will continue to be evidenced as time goes on, as more and more private schools close.

As I said, of course individuals and families have been impacted, and that is awful for them, but on the educational landscape as a whole, where schools are closing due to lack of pupils, there has been very little impact.
That may not be the case everywhere, but in the city I live in it certainly is. I say that as the parent of a child with an EHCP who works in education. The entire system is broken and needs a full rethink, but not because of this.

But it’s just not good enough to say “it’s negatively impacted some individuals and families, but no effect on the wider landscape”!

This policy was sold to the electorate as a way to raise money to fund real improvements to state education.

Instead we have no noticeable improvements at all, just a number of children and families royally screwed over, for what? Absolutely nothing. As many of us argued would be the case from the outset.

My ire here is really directed at the Labour government rather than you, but I’m nonetheless surprised by your apparent indifference. Not least as the policy was so obviously a distraction technique, to avoid making the type of meaningful improvements that you’d understandably like to see.

Well, there will be even less money available to implement a "full re-think" of the system, as the education tax is shaping up to cost the taxpayer more money than the new VAT brings in.

Although that might be a good thing, given Labour's ill-conceived vision for education. Depends whether you believe their real-terms cuts to state school funding is ideological ("Education Bad") or just a lack of care for any kids - even the ones they consider 'theirs'.

I suppose I am pretty indifferent really. I can't see the case for private schools existing, and the VAT is such a niche issue that I don't think it registers with 95% of the population.
From what I have read, the falling birthday rates have had a far bigger impact on private school numbers than VAT.
Of course I understand that if your family is one of the ones who has been priced out of private school that it must be incredibly difficult.

Do you think we should all shrug our shoulders at policies designed to harm 'only' 5% of the population? With no compensating benefit to anyone else?

Which other 5% groups do you not care about pointless harm to?

I don't think it is harming 5% of the population. Government forecasting shows that at most it will mean that 0.5% of school age children have to move from private to state. I also don't think that state schools are harmful.

0.5% of school children - so 10% of private school children.

The point at which the tax starts costing money.

That's 50,000 individual children harmed, for absolutely no benefit.

Only 6% of the UK population have red hair. Shall we make a law that they all have to dye their hair black, so that no-one is jealous of their natural colour?

94% of the population won't be affected, and some of those with red hair would have changed their hair colour anyway.

There's nothing harmful about black hair, is there?

Government projections say 35,000 max over multiple years. Estimates say 3000 this year across the country.
Schools in my city have about that may spare spaces in them, if not more. In one city. More children in those schools will keep them open. It's a good thing for the schools.

And FFS, of course making a bunch of families £4-5k worse off per child harms the whole family, including the kids. Regardless of whether the kids have the disruption of being forced to change schools - sometimes in exam years and sometimes to schools which had already failed them.

Shall we deliberately make some state school families poorer for no benefit to anyone??

uh-huh, much better for the schools to keep the same funding for the same number of children than it would have been to keep the same funding for a smaller number of children.

Per-child funding is the government's choice.

And it's 11,000 to 16,696 fewer pupils in private schools this year. 5 times more than the government initially claimed there would be. (a court case disclosure revealed the 3000 estimate as a lie - they always knew the polucy would be loss-making)