Private schools to go bust in the coming recession

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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.

Of course not but in an ideal world there’s be peace and no war.

You have to be realistic.

The chances of any government providing enough funding to ensure my SEN kids are safe is pretty much zero.

So I can’t think in terms of ideals. I have to be pragmatic and use my head and seek out other options. The government is not going to prevail on this occasion. Any government.

it's a shame...

I am the first to admit I work within the system I am stuck in, but, given a chance (resources- time and money) I would love to campaign for a fairer system.

If more people were strident about this then perhaps we would see change.

I don’t disagree. A fairer system would be much better all round.

There’s so much that’s wrong with current society and our leaders don’t lead. They’re just power hungry ego maniacs these days. Any sense of decency seems to have evaporated.

I feel like we are in decline sadly. It’s not right I should have to pay, but pay I must. I am grateful to have the choice.

The point I really wanted to make is that private school is not for us about being rich or posh it’s about keeping my children safe.

If I could send them to state school I would very very happily save this money.

They are already disadvantaged in life vs a NT child in a state school.

Only 22% of adult autistics work full time.

Please when people are dissing private school remember that some of us aren’t doing it for connections or to get ahead. We’re just doing it to stay safe and prevent a mental health crisis. Which may even happen with all the support at PS. It’s just less likely to happen there than at SS.

I didn't say I like the free market or otherwise.

We may live in a free market economy, but there are regulations and laws... which is why cigarattes are heavily taxed... and why you can't walk into any old shop and buy a handgun etc etc etc ad nauseum.

I can of course pick and choose what elements of the society I live in I agree/disagree with, as is my right as a voter, tax payer and member of society...

Simply throwing your arms up in the air and saying "well, it's totally shit for (XXXXX insert demographic here) but what can you do, we live in a free market, to hell with them" isn't what I choose to do.

I would also point out that society evolves, improves, worsens, changes over time so you can't say we can't change things. We can, if enough people want it.

Except they won’t be forced to attend. The prices are similar at international schools so the rich can decide to just send the kids to those.

also, politicians who do send their kids to state schools magically appear to be able to engineer entry to the most sought after state schools. They aren’t about to start caring overly about the rest.

Right, exactly... and you absolutely can say "I disagree with this system but this is what I have to do right now"... and it's what we do.

Someone earlier asked if I won the lottery, would I send my kids to private school... I said I wouldn't based on my present circumstances... I do strongly believe in high quality education for all... so if I had millions (in this fake hypothetical world- I don't play the lottery) I would actually use it to campaign for better provision for all children.

I watched a documentary about a state school for autisitic girls, what a wonderful school it was. Those girls had had a tough time at their old state comprehensive schools and were thriving in this specialised environment. This is an option that should be available for all.

Well if they can still afford to send their children when the schools are correctly taxed that's surely there's no problem with closing the tax loophole then?

My comment was in response to a previous poster who said

“also think the same for private golf clubs... or at least they should be converted into public parks. In my area, we are land poor and there's a huge golf club taking up miles of space”

I totally agree with your point that taking things away from people doesn’t help.

That’s the point. The very wealthy won’t have a problem with paying the VAT. The middle classes who are stretching themselves financially, often because the state system has failed them, will be the ones who can’t afford it. The private system will become even more elitist.

That's how it goes. We can't justify a tax bung and the public don't want an outright ban (I personally don't agree with banning things).

Subsidising inequality through tax loopholes is unethical.

Tax subsidy is not the free market. I pay stamp duty for my house. VAT subsidy is not justifiable.

Maybe more private schools need to be non-selective. Plenty of people who could afford it but whose children don’t pass the tests - that would mean teachers who can actually teach a wide range of abilities, though, shock horror!!

Private schools are already increasingly sending students to overseas rather than UK universities.

Only in response to UK universities finally levelling the playing field and not disproportionately giving places to the privately educated.

Or in response to the realisation that it now often doesn’t cost much more to go overseas. There’s greater choice and people sometimes like a more international education.

I went to a private school and out of my friendship group of 7, my parents were the only Tory voters, the rest voted Labour...just saying. It's nowhere near as black and white as people seem to think.

Zero sympathy. People are starving and can't heat their houses. Why should elitist and pompous schools get any sympathy

That’s one take but not the feedback I’ve had from private school parents 🤣

Different people will always have different reasons. The parents I’ve spoken to have said it’s because they realised that the cost was pretty much the same. It’s not as black and white as you were suggesting.

Same

Plenty of politicians were state schooled, and plenty more send their children to state schools. Also, even if private schools ceased to exist, there would still be huge discrepancies in the state education offered to kids in different areas, as is already abundantly evident. So the education system still won't be the same for everyone.

It's not going to be any better under any government. The world is a whole different place post-Covid and no government has cash sloshing around. I mean Labour had enough to be handing out Child Trust Funds back in the 00s.

Also agree with PP's that even if you got rid of all private schools, people will still stick together.

DC is at a state comprehensive. In Y7, we had a zoom call for all the parents in each tutor group. I messed up the times and logged on to the wrong one. Half the parents didn't show up, the usernames were things like 'BigGoldieBitch' rather than 'Mrs Smith', questions in the group chat were devoid of punctuation and written entirely in text speech, and the questions were mainly around detentions and how unfair x, y or z was.

Logged on an hour later for the correct group. Every parent was there, and based on the questions and topics you might as well have been at an entirely different school. And that was just down to form groups being set based on CAT scores! Turns out that year groups are split in two halves and they rarely mix.

We could have afforded private - we were lucky enough to have a great state option, and spend what we would have done on fees on extra curricular - and have some set aside if we need to get tutors in GCSE years to target top grades.

Interested to know what those in favour of scrapping all private schools would do about places like The Royal Ballet School (White Lodge), the Purcell, Chets, specialist SEN schools and how they will provide boarding places for children of Crown Servants and service personnel?

Link to Times article from last year.

Other private school heads said their pupils felt disillusioned at their chances of being accepted at Oxford and Cambridge because of universities’ focus on increasing the number of state school admissions.

And:

Stephen Toope, the vice-chancellor of Cambridge University, said in May that private schools should accept they would inevitably get fewer pupils admitted to Oxbridge and that their “premium” would reduce over time, as more state school pupils attend the universities.

Independent heads say that the message has been absorbed by families, with growing numbers now focusing on the US as a destination.

That a private school education no longer provides a shoe in for Oxbridge places is definitely a significant factor, no matter how you want to spin it.

It really doesn’t factor at all for most! Oxford only has 3500 undergrad places each year. That’s hardly all privately educated 6th formers. Many people choose private schools for entirely different reasons. No one ever thought Dc was a shoe in unless you were from a very academic family and attended a tiny number of private schools.

Let’s also be clear. This is about Labour clobbering the better off and it’s politically motivated. It’s class warfare. Most parents will already pay huge tax bills. Education is a requirement. So it’s been VAT free. I think private health is vat exempt. Dental services are vat exempt. So schools are targets. Health is not. So it’s 100% political.

There’s not much they can do. This is it but it won’t do much, if any benefit over damage to sector