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.

Left wing clap trap, as if the middling left aka Labour will do any better. This country is in such deficit that there’s no money for education or health 😞

I think people should be careful what they wish for. What school/academy would not want to offload their underachieving, disruptive cohort in exchange for an injection of well supported pupils who are keen to learn. Easier to teach with the added bonus of wealthy parents to revitalise the PTA and inject some well needed funds.
I would agree with@JustAMinutePleass. Emptying private schools into state will not end well. The parents are a force to be reckoned with, they are used to value for money and will no doubt heap the pressure on an already overloaded system.
Although we are only talking 7% those extra pupils will have to be squeezed in with very little increased funding.

The private sector is worth in the region of 10-20 billion a year ( school fees). That money will not be going into the government education budget. The government will have to find the extra money to teach the extra 7% from its existing budget.

None of the schools estates are state owned so cannot be used or sold off. The government may have the option to buy the estates but many have state of the art facilities that are way out of the reach of government coffers.

It is very naive to think there can be a simple conversion to state as we saw in the 1970s when the Labour government did away with the grammar school system.
I will be surprised if the private schools don’t fight the government in court over the proposed introduction of VAT.

Depends on the area.

In wealthy areas parents farm kids out to State and local schools do accept kids out of catchment. If those private schools close it will be the catchment children who, quite rightly, get priority. So in oversubscribed areas with high birthrates in some years, some tough decisions then need to be made by LEAs including whether older children already in a school but living out of catchment get to keep their place over a child who is in catchment.

(our LEA is already exploring the legality of this for high birth years as the fear is it will lose out on the higher performing students to bigger better performing schools in other LEAs in the event of vat rises. They also want to make expulsions permanent).

Then there are the schools like DS’ who take in the kids of medical professionals. Most of the parents I’ve spoken to about this have said they’d leave the country for private schools and better pay if that happened.

It’s also possible that, like with India, you have existing successful private schools like Eton buying up private schools, acheiving huge economies of scale, and lowering fees for the majority as a result. This would then give us a private school for most budgets.

The topic of private schools have now being discussed and debated at length. The left voters know perfectly well that Labour won’t do better. They would vote for them because they are saying they will end social unfairness. This will not end up well specially for the middle classes. The rich will go to the next place in packs as they do. The poor would stay down and eventually get much poorer while the middle class disappears bar a few ones that can emigrate to start again.

This is pretty melodramatic.
Starmer is extremely centre ground.

The middle classes have seen things become increasingly tough for their income bands over this Tory government too.

I feel just not doing stuff like this will be a start
https://news.sky.com/story/michelle-mone-who-is-she-and-what-is-the-ppe-controversy-swirling-around-the-tory-peer-12762756

thank you. Interesting the selective memories posters in this thread have

It's always useful to be reminded how utterly self interested the rich (or at least some of them*) are

• I actually know heaps of rich people who don't think like this and are very civic minded.

Not really.

Falling state numbers is a chance to use the allocation of funding for fewer dc

Get more out of it.

Instead of a political gimmick that will damage a sector

So you think ‘haha ha no private school’ means the state schools will improve? Or are you just wanting everyone to be in the sh*t system because if lots are, then all should suffer?

@lolo99 no I don't think the state system is shit. It's underfunded. My DC school is brilliant but we don't have the trappings of the wealthy with regards to all the add ons. Academically state schools are often as good,
It's a two tier system.

Be careful what you wish for! Our local private schools offer free - yes FREE education to the night kids who would t be able to otherwise afford it - paid for by those who can. That will be the first thing to go.

Then the pain for the first five years as everyone hustles for positions. It is a great plan long term but the short term will be very painful and will impact on those with the least.

Thanks, that’s an interesting article and a good point. I still worry that the 10-20 billion that’s paid in school fees currently will not go into the education budget however. It’s an impossible situation.

Possibly, though the current lot wouldn't do that. Hopefully a different government will, as well as actively managing the population decline.

However that doesn't alter the fact that the "bursting at the seams" and "where will the extra money come from" arguments are significantly flawed.

Wealthy parents often find ways to include add ons even in state schools. Eg my relative is a journalist - she arranged her daughter’s 2 week work experience project with the BBC shadowing a correspondant: they go to a ‘needs improvement’ state school in Central London with a massive gang problem - she mitigates this by driving her children in and out of school and neither of them are allowed to socialise with their friends after school. So this idea that moving wealthy parents into State Schools will improve standards is laughable.

VAT raised on school fees won't go into the budget for state schools wholesaler. It is ring fenced for disadvantaged school kids only.

Or they’ll move to the more expensive areas in order to access the better state schools……. Alternatively, they’ll temporarily rent in areas within catchment of a good school or grammar school.

Lol at the shit system.

Academically the (non selective) state schools round here all do far better than the private schools.

I wouldn't send my child to one of the local private schools if you paid me and I'm astonished people waste money on them. I can only assume they are terrified little Henry might mix with riff raff, because they certainly aren't spending the money to ensure he does better academically.

People can leave the sector at any age. Not just reception.

There will be students finding it hard to get a place.

And many smaller private schools will probably close.

Students will need a place, and it’s not great for them to be disrupted. But overall it’s a poor outcome that just damages a sector for little gain.

Ok so let people pay fees and tax and feel happy with your state outcome

Yeah I've got no skin in the game, I'm pretty ambivalent. And indeed fairly confident the labour party won't find it that easy to implement based on their battles last time round. I just find some of the assumptions and claims on this thread intriguing and nonsensical

Nothing can be done about privately purchased or arranged privilege. Humans in a free society are free to arrange things.

Organisations like the BBC often have strict rules on placements these days, if they don't yet they should do as a publicly-funded body. It may be that the correspondent was freelance, and outside the jurisdiction of the BBC itself.

But the VAT subsidy is not defensible. Private schools are not really charities, we all know what their purpose is. They should pay their own way without state support - and a special tax loophole is a form of state support. They provide a non-essential service, so VAT should apply.

The only thing I've said is that the argument that the state sector, overall, couldn't accommodate an influx of private school students leaving the sector in the years ahead is flawed.