How oversubscribed are your local schools? Will they be able to take on students who are currently privately-educated?

[Macaroons]

One of the headline Starmer kept talking about is charging VAT for private schools. This would make private school fees unaffordable for many who are not mega-rich, pushing more students back to the state education system. Would the state schools be able to take in the extra students? Many schools are already over-subscribed, are there enough schools, classrooms and teachers to take in the extra students? My fear is that the extra VAT they get is not going to be enough to provide education for more students under the state system, as well as the additional 6500 teachers they claim they can provide.

@potionsmaster it's like house prices will drop dramatically say from 1mln too 700k and all the scum in the area will be able to afford it? :)) oh what a ghetto.

They can't afford an extra five grand on fees, but they'll be able to afford a more expensive house + solicitors' and mortgage fees, removals & decorating costs (the average of which is, according to Halifax, twelve grand)?

And the 'loss' of them to the area - which would already be a 'nice' one to have had them there in the first place - would cause it to become a Ghetto, with all of the negative and frankly racist/Anti-Semitic connotations that phrase carries outside an A-Level Sociology lesson?

@Sirine1708 and @NeverDropYourMooncup absolutely spot on.

They can't afford an extra five grand on fees, but they'll be able to afford a more expensive house + solicitors' and mortgage fees, removals & decorating costs (the average of which is, according to Halifax, twelve grand)?

@NeverDropYourMooncup you are looking at it from the wrong angle. The increase of 20 percent will drive only a small number of children that already are in private schools to the state schools. But it will greatly affect Y7 choices.
And yes, parents prefer to spend money on solicitor and tax rather than a lot of money on private. Especially, that a morgage in a great school area is a good investment.

Here were I live people move in y3 ,y4 y5 to get into the catchment. It drives property prices up the roof. Investing in a house is an investment that will return when they sell the house, and private school is 150 k spent.
I am afraid it will drive the house prices even higher up

You're right, ghettoisation was completely the wrong word to use - sorry, written in haste. The right phrase would have been economic disparity. I stand by the idea. There was an interview recently with a doctor who was saying that she only lived and worked where she did because of a good local private school. If VAT comes in, she'll move area to somewhere the state schools are good. So the more deprived area loses her skills and her wealth. Over time, if the private school sector dwindles, then I do think that will lead to greater economic disparity between areas with good schools and areas with less good schools. Unless of course Labour's policy suddenly leads to a big improvement in the quality of state schools, which I seriously doubt.

Of course it will lead to an improvement in state schools if Labour follow their plans for greater investment in the state sector and more teachers.
I was teaching before and after 97, and believe me, the impact on state education was significant.

I'm very dubious that this policy will raise enough money to make any appreciable difference. And I'd love to know how Labour are planning to recruit lots more teachers in the current climate. But we'll see. I'd genuinely love to be wrong. If Labour are going to go through with this policy, which will have a very negative impact on a lot of families, children and private school staff, then I'd much rather it was at least beneficial in the long run.

Because - as happened before, the pay and conditions of service improved so they could recruit and retain more teachers. There was more support and smaller class sizes. Oh, and more resources and we could actually go on cpd courses.
It's really not that hard to understand. Labour supports state education.

Great, and that may happen. But if it does, I don't think it will have anything to do with this policy.

Maybe it will, maybe it won't.
Time will tell. However, the important thing for the whole of society is to have a decent standard of state education for all children because we all benefit from that.
So improvements are going to happen, which is good news for the whole of society.

I agree with you on that. But where I disagree is that Labour somehow makes that job easier for itself by increasing the number of children it needs to pay to educate. Blair understood that perfectly well.

Labour doesn't pay to educate anyone.
The taxpayer does.
Often we get extra children through peaks of migration or a bit of a birth increase.
If they come to us in other ways, we will do the best we can, which will be easier with a government which values state education and which will plan and invest in accordingly.

Hey, I'm not defending the Tories' record on education. Never voted for them, never will. And yes, pupil numbers fluctuate. But if a percentage of parents want to save the state 7k a year by paying for education, then that reduces the tax funding needed to pay for the rest. Blair knew what he stood for. Starmer is trying to play to all sides of the gallery. An ideological tax on private schools to appeal to the left, while telling the right that he has 'nothing against' private schools and that his top priority is wealth creation.

Well we shall see. Whatever the Labour government does for education, it'll be an improvement. It's quite a kow bar after these 14 years, but there you go.

Not good enough, sorry. Vote for us because we 'care about state education' (what party doesn't say that?!), and because the previous Labour regime that got elected nearly 30 years ago actually did good things, but we won't provide any proper detail about what we're actually going to do or how we're going to achieve change. Vote for us because we're not quite as bad as the other lot. And because we'll push through a dog-whistle policy that's been written on the back of a fag packet that even our own ministers don't understand, to pretend we're doing something radical - but we don't actually know what impact it's going to have, because we've done bugger all research. No.

Quite apart from the policy itself, the way that Labour are handling it is outrageous. They've said it will be brought in 'as soon as possible' but won't give any time line, and they've hinted at exemptions but won't say what those are. There are families whose kids will be breaking up for the summer on or before election day who have no idea if they're saying goodbye to their friends and teachers for good, or whether their parents will still be able to afford to send them back next term. Parents who have no idea whether they should be applying for a state place now, before the schools break up and it's too late. If Labour had a shred of compassion, they'd announce now that this policy will take time to implement properly, so they won't start it until next September. But that would lose votes on the left, so they won't. I've voted Labour in almost every election since 1997, but no way I'm doing it this time.

What party doesn't say that?
The Conservatives.
Reform.
Vote for who you want to. I just think we need a government with a commitment to public services. That is uniquely Labour (I don't think the Greens will form a government).

There’s not many private schools in my area, plus a number of state schools that are typically undersubscribed - particularly primary schools because of falling birth rates - so I reckon that the state school system in my area could probably absorb the extra pupils without too much trouble even if all of the private schools closed down.
Not that I think it likely that all the private schools would close. Some of the smaller ones perhaps, but not all.

Although for most of the private secondary school pupils, if entering state school as a in-year transfer, they’d would probably be offered places at those undersubscribed schools rather than at the more desirable popular schools.

Also I know of a couple of schools in my region that used to be private schools, but they converted to state schools some years ago. I think when the government was encouraging that free school academy thing. Is that sort of thing still an option for private schools?

Of course the Tories say they care about state education! Have you read the manifesto? 'Education is the closest thing we have to a silver bullet'. 'Giving every child the chance to go to a good school.' Could have been written by Labour. It's all empty words - on both sides - without both the policies and the money to back it up.

I agree with you that Labour are more committed to public services. Which is why I'm genuinely sad that I don't feel I can vote for them. Don't know who I'll vote for yet.

Yes. I have read the Conservative manifesto. I don't believe it. They do not now, nor have they ever, effectively supported the public sector.
Labour made a difference to state schools before.
Significantly. They'll do so again.

Maybe. As you say - we'll see.

With what? The magic 1.5bn they think they're going to make out of this made-up-on-the-hoof bit of red meat for the hard left?

All the parties say they care about public services - but doing anything major costs a lot of money and no government anywhere has that right now or any time soon.

Strangely enough, investing in public services is appealing to many people. Not just "the hard left".
If you read Labour's manifesto you can see how they plan to generate income. However. It will be a hard slog after the economy has been so devastated by the shocking mismanagement of the previous 14 years.

In the case of education, the only plan to raise money is the VAT policy, which (as discussed at length on many threads) they have no proper data on, so no real idea whether it will raise any money at all - it could even lose money. They'd better hope not, because otherwise (according to their own manifesto), they don't have any money at all to bring about these promised changes in education.

No, that's not their plan.
It's the other fiscal decisions.
I think that this VAT thing has distressed some people and created - how many threads?, however it isn't the alpha et omega of the situation. It's quite interesting to read how the revenue plans are laid out.
"Fag packet" (sic) they are not.
Anyway, I'm off to school now! Hoping we'll be firefighting at work for not too much longer. 🤞 Ciao.

Of course it's distressed people! People who are worried that they'll have to uproot their child from school or find money that they don't have. And people who are worried they're about to lose their job. For those people, it is quite legitimately a massive concern.