Will catchment shrill by due to VAT or am I overthinking

[Gogage]

I am trying to guess how much the catchment area for a local secondary school will decrease by when VAT on school fees is introduced.

My area is in outer London (zone 6 - west London). The area is a mix of mainly ‘working class’ (the edges of a large estate fall into the catchment area) and a few pockets of much, much nicer / expensive ‘middle class’ pockets. I think the mix is 75 (working class) : 25 (middle class).

The school is by no means brilliant: 66% of students passed GCSE maths & English but it is one of the better schools in the area

The previous years catchment were in metres:
2024 - 1543
2023 - 1550
2022 - 1434
2021 - 1369

The PAN last year was 186

i think the catchment area will decrease as some people won’t be able to afford the increase, but I have no idea by how much.

However, in 2024 the catchment area was stable and most parents would have known Labour would win and add VAT.

Also trying to move your child after year 7 would be almost impossible as the good schools are full. So the catchment area should have shrunk in 2024 as more parents moved their kids to state school?

am I over thinking this and should just assume the catchment area won’t change? Would parents sending their kids to a private school really want to send them to a school were 1/3 don’t pass maths and English gcse?

Shrink**

I doubt it will have much effect. School numbers are decreasing too due to population so I don’t think there will be an issues. Also a PAN of 186 is really small for a secondary.

Depending upon which part of London you're in, there could be more problems actually meeting PAN than anything else - one near me had a total of around 5000 in the entire borough, never mind in the general area and around 6000 places before the privates, out of borough schools and large academy chains offering well over PAN were taken into account.

66% of students passing English and maths is fairly national average. So if this is a school where the more able are creamed off to private schools, that would suggest it might be doing rather well (obviously you'd have to look at the statistic more carefully to deduce that).

Otherwise, it's impossible to know. Do many local children currently go to private school? Are their parents likely to think twice? Is the number of secondray school children in the area going up or down? Lots of factors.

I think probably lots of people will apply and get the places so the catchment will shrink on the first round of offers but when it comes to it they will 'find' the money (maybe by stopping smoking or cancelling their sky subscription or only going on one foreign holiday a year) and so people will jump up the waiting list very quickly.

Sorry, what is PAN ?

I'd also be looking at the birth rate for the particular years too.

Lbc was claiming it could push 75,000 kids back to state school. Even if these figures are true there are 32,000 schools in the uk. So less than 2 places per school. And that's split between 7years. So I don't think it will make a difference whatsoever

75,000 kids at a cost to the tax payer of 8k per child per year sounds expensive.

I think its possible it will shrink slightly and parents will push for improvements but you can't predict how much. Some people will move house to get a better school, others won't. Some will find ways to fund fee increases, others won't. Population may shrink.

If you look at the distribution of private schools across the country, this is wildly simplistic and extremely misleading. There will be some areas hugely affected, and others won't see any difference at all.

OP I'd imagine you might see a bit of a shrinking as it'll be people that were thinking of starting private for year 7 but don't want to commit to it now. All depends on whether it's an area where kids tend to go private though.

I don’t think you can read much into a steady last distance admitted, as birth rate has fallen and so the two forces may have balanced each other out.

VAT is more than an extra £4k per year per child in London, @Spinet. Our Sky costs a lot less than that. Yes, parents will find the money for kids already there, probably, but for those yet to start, different decisions may be made.

(private school parent and Labour voter here)

when is your DC due to start secondary and how far away do you live?

not really. you'd need something hugely unlikely like a 30% switching rate for this to cost money.

75k new new state school pupils at £8k a year would cost £600m p.a.

479k residual private school kids paying 20% VAT on £16k p.a. would pull in £1.5bn p.a.

Published Admissions Number - the number of applicants that a school says it will admit into a year group as it enters the school e.g. the figure of 186 for year 7 starting at a secondary school mentioned upthread.

Thank you x

Not when you take off SEN numbers if they do exempt SEN with EHCPs and then you add that number to the number of leavers.
If >10% leave then the net income is approx £0.

I don't see why one third not passing would have any bearing on mc sending their kids there. Because they'll assume that unless their child has learning difficulties they'll be in the top two thirds surely?

It really depends on the concentration of private schools in the area. Where I am it will absolutely impact the local schools because the private schools are just the professionals trying to do the best for their kids and there are 30 % pupils private school uptake Certainly not the schools that spring to mind that have cash to burn like eton/ harrow etc . Multiple parents have already signed their kids up for the local schools in their area. Having said that if you only have a small number of private schools and plenty of local schools to scoop up the flux it should be manageable. To the poster who said people will manage… some really really won’t. The sacrifices for many are already being stretched to the max to afford it. On the flip side it might be a blessed relief to some to not have to struggle to pay the fees anymore. Money for property instead or more in the pension pot perhaps.

Also to add the fact that this is unlikely to be parents having to move their child in isolation there will be some strength in numbers which would make a move to a new school easier for new pupils. In addition remember also some private schools will definitely close down if the threshold of parents unable to take the hit on VAT means cash flow trouble for the school. It doesn’t take many parents for that to be the case.

I teach in a very middle class area.
We are a one form primary school, we have had 4 families join us from the local private school this year and no families leave for it.
On an average year we have 1 family arrive and 1 or 2 leave.

Where I live the current Year 6s is a “boom year” (apparently caused by 50 Shades of Grey) whilst the current Year 5s is a smaller year.

This was played out with primary admissions for my kids’ primary school:-

Normal is All Catchment, All Sibling, Few on distance
Year 6 was All Catchment, Few Sibling
Year 5 was everyone got in and still only 88 out of 90 places filled.

I think what people are forgetting, when they merrily claim parents will find the money, is that for some private schools just about holding on with falling numbers on the roll, a handful of families leaving will sink the entire school. Often, these will be the smaller, cheaper schools. If a school goes under, that local area will see an influx into the surrounding state schools.

It won't affect the country in a homogeneous way. You need to look at the educational facilities in your local area, and assess on that basis. I suspect London will be hit hard. Rural areas less so.

Secondary schools are not being hit by falling birth rate in the same way as Primaries are at the moment. In fact many Secondaries have some bulge years

OP, I don’t know but I’m furious with Labour for tinkering with this and using our children as the guinea pigs. In truth no one really knows what the impact will be.

I don't think it will make the slightest difference. The Tories are very good at s are tactics.