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?

The logical upshot of this statement is that no one should ever change education policy as that is always “using our children as Guinea pigs”

Is that what you mean?

Your 32,000 includes all nurseries etc. There are around 4000 secondary schools.

It is highly area dependent - can you say where you are? If you’re somewhere with good transport links to several private schools (or somewhere to which the private schools run a coach service), the impact is likely to be more significant. Bear in mind a lot of private school pupils will commute for up to an hour, sometimes longer.

Having said that, because it’s so localised I think it’s going to be really hard to predict and councils will inevitably be playing catch up if it turns out there is much higher demand for state school places than expected. It’s not just about movement from existing schools, but also whether you have a private school locally that might close completely. There are some posters who look at the accounts at Companies House for schools, to try and work which are financially vulnerable, so that could also be a clue.

Crossing my fingers it all works out well for you, OP.

@SheilaFentiman obviously my post does not mean that education policy should never be changed. I don’t think there was anything in my post indicating that is what I meant.

Additionally, this is a tax levy, not a change in education policy. It is a tax policy that could be implemented in a staged way, if they are set on it, rather than with immediate wholesale implementation.

You are furious with Labour because their policy (agree, it is a tax policy) will impact education and use “our children” as Guinea pigs.

All policies relating to education have some group of “our children” as Guinea pigs.

Hence, my post.

Worth remembering that not every private school pupil is even resident in the UK - many are boarders from overseas. Those pupils will never be going to a local state school in the UK.

@SheilaFentiman

Not all policies carry the same risk. Many are small, many changes to education policy are or should be backed by academic studies, some are introduced by pilot schemes, etc. It’s not really possible to generalise and that wasn’t the gist of my post.

In relation to the proposed new VAT on private school fees, the outcome is unknown and untested, and it is being introduced wholesale for political reasons. The impact will be a social one as many families may need to move their children to different schools. In relation to the OP’s post, I don’t know how it will impact catchment. Where I live, I expect there will be quite a big impact because the families sending their children to the local private schools are not rich but more of the squeezed middle types. I feel it’s all a big experiment and am concerned about that. What makes me angry is that I feel it is politically motivated. Taxing education doesn’t make sense and I am concerned about the many hidden implications (not least for those who send their children to private schools for SEN support, thus taking the burden off the state sector).

However you don’t have to agree with me, we are all entitled to different opinions and debate on this topic is surely a good thing.

true, and the kids who do drop out of the private system will disproportionately be from the cheaper schools, next to none from e.g. expensive boarding schools, so the 20% vat will be getting earned on a slightly higher average fee rate than the current average.

My understanding is that boarding isn’t education, and therefore the boarding elements may not be VATable.

I was wondering whether they would be able to claim the VAT back if it was charged @SheilaFentiman

Do you mean overseas parents might be able to claim VAT on education back?

@SheilaFentiman yes. Didn't know whether there was a loophole for them

I’m not sure. I know that you can get a receipt on goods to reclaim VAT if you are travelling, but the goods are going back to your home country then.

Tourists can’t reclaim VAT paid on meals eaten here, for example, and the education would be “consumed” here as a service.

Have you factored in all the schools reclaiming VAT for the last 8 years for capital building projects and everything else they have to pay it on?

@OhCrumbsWhereNow I wonder whether Labour have.

I bet Labour will also say in the first year how much has been saved (without explaining how state school funding is lagged so the first year will look better). Never mind the budget stretched state schools trying to cope with additional pupils and no funding for them

There are so many variables that the impact will be likely to be very different in different areas. Your example shows an expanding catchment, likely correlated to declining numbers in the cohorts transferring to the secondary phase. Keep an eye on how the PAN and oversubscription criteria changes over time, some schools have latent capacity so could potentially increase their PAN if needed.

Interested you mention class, what will matter is whether people choose to pay the fees, working class people use independent schools too. Lots of parents target alternative state options such as uber selective grammars, faith schools, schools which select partially on aptitude (e.g. languages, musical), and those that use fair banding tests (perhaps with an earlier deadline or more motivated parents to take children to the test - look at FSM rates).