Private schools to go bust in the coming recession

[ampletime]

The mother of all recessions is coming in my view. The world economy is pushing towards a large scale and deep debt crises. This follows the explosion of government deficits, borrowing, and leverage in recent decades and now that debt is growing due to high interests. Governments are in eye watering debt, individuals are in debt and so are private schools.
In the last 5 years private schools have been on spending sprees with new builds and new facilities mostly for marketing appeal rather than need. But it’s all been funded on debt. I work for a building service solution company and the number of private schools in the last 5 years have exploded on our books all funded by debt.

I know of one boarding school now in trouble and they have sold off their build and it will be converted to flats.

Be careful folks out there. Times are not as good as these schools portray.

OK so I do not see things in black and white, I live in the real world where grey exists.

I hate the system, but if I were in a situation like the one you describe and I was rich then I would pay the fees.

That said, I am not and never will be rich enough to spend thousands of £ every year on education so this option may as well not exist for me.

I think it if it were me in this situtation I would remove the child from school and home school.

All children deserve a good education and all children deserve to feel safe when they go to school. If private schools all close down, there will be no tears from me.

Foreign holidays are not essential.
A good education is.

but they have no private schools

This is wrong. They do have private schools. I don’t know why this keeps getting wheeled out as “fact”.

They are not allowed to profit from the basic element of education though. The basic element is state funded, ie the private schools are state subsidised.

I would welcome a similar system in the UK. I’m sure most private school parents would happily pay VAT on fees if the government provided them with the equivalent funding which the state school enjoys.

Finland also has issues with mental health problems.

I'm surprised how many think that Labour will fund schools properly and state schools will bounce back.
The VAT policy isn't going to solve problems in the state sector and it shows that Labour MPs don't use or worked in schools. There's a long thread about student behaviour in state schools with the recurring theme that schools are discouraged from permanently excluding pupils and there's no alternative provision like PRUs and Special Schools to send children with behavioural issues. Added to that, many parents are telling schools that they can't impose detentions and do not accept that their children behave badly so the behaviour escalates. So many stories of teachers and support staff being physically and verbally abused and nothing done to support workers.

All this policy will do is increase house prices around desirable schools and increase application fraud when sharp elbowed parents buy or rent the closest houses to school so last distance offered shrinks.

The big famous academic schools will be fine and just build new schools abroad for the extra revenue. They will still have long lists of parents who can afford increases in fees and become even more exclusive

That’s clearly not what I said.

My point is that if you are going to close down private schools, commandeer privately owned land such as golf clubs, along with other policies under the guise of “equality”, there will come a tipping point where wealthier people will leave the UK and go to other countries which can offer them a nicer standard of living.

Hmmm l was a teacher for 25 years. Taught under Tory, Labour, Tory.

The difference between Labour funding and Tory funding was a million miles wide.

Labour: smaller classes, more funding for materials, equipment refreshs, loads more support staff, loads more teachers, reasonable salary to retain staff. Pots of money to tap into everywhere, Sure start.

Tory: sweet fa. The only thing that’s risen under them is ckass sizes. And I’ve seen it twice.

This 💯

State schools are full to bursting and struggling as it is. Closure of private schools will put even more of a huge strain on these schools.

Birth rates are dropping & many schools are facing closure or amalgamation.

I didn't claim any of that.
None.
I know what a free market economy is, thanks.

Out of all the things in your OP @ampletime , private businesses that have been subsidised by the state (via charitable status and no VAT on fees) in order to benefit the already wealthy and privileged, going under is the least worrying by a long chalk.

And anyone who wants to tell me that not all private school parents are wealthy and/or privileged is wasting their breath because no matter how much you say you've had to scrimp and save to send your kids detracts from the fact that no amount of scrimping and saving on a zero hours, minimum wage contract, or on benefits, would be enough for school fees.

I do think the whole col & falling birth rates are going to create more polarisation of schools in general. State schools are funded re head counts so you want a full school, the best states will end up even more oversubscribed & the ok ones will decline imo.

If private schools are part of the free market economy @SoySaucePls, how come they don't operate under the same rules as other businesses?

Not sure how you can blame Blair/Brown for this

@Another76543 Our golf club has many retired (early) state employees on very decent pensions. Golf clubs won’t be compulsorily purchased for anything. If we go down the route of taking things away from the middle classes who have worked hard you actually get less integration overall. Just at the margins. The rich will do what they want. They will use what remains open to them. Grandparents will help more. Attacking a minority rarely goes well. I don’t want to live in a state that removes incentives to do well.

No. There is still a lot of wealth and people still want the service.

I don’t want to live in a state that removes incentives to do well.

I think this has already happened to younger generations, uni fees, housing costs, wage stagnation, frozen tax bands, state pension age moving out.

That was not the responsibility of the Labour government, any more than vile bullying now is the responsibility of this government. It happens in the state and the private sector.
I'm very sorry to hear that this happened, though and I hope they are recovering.

You don't have to be "blinded by hatred" to think that private schools, which after all are just businesses, don't deserve charitable status.