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.

To repeat

Not all kids will move out of private and an estimate will have been made as to how many

I’ll never understand why people so bored by threads on a particular subject still find the energy to open them and comment on own bored they are by them. Nuts!

There's enough space for your kids to join the shitshow OP. Maybe if more people's kids join the state sector someone somewhere who can effectively f change might make a small effort to improve our education system.

Most teachers are crying out for it, as are parents and pupils. Most of them even agree on the changes needed. The awful situation isn't any kind of secret, it's clear and obvious and no one is even stories anymore. But none of the decision makers care enough to deal with it.

Maybe, just maybe if the option to bypass the shit show via private education is removed from more parents things might start to change.

Nobody cares when it happens to poor kids.

Ugh- typos! "no one is even stories anymore" should say "no one is even surprised anymore... "

Got to laugh at private school parents who insinuate that the state school community should be grateful that their wealthy offspring are being privately educated, lest the plebs have to share their gruel.

Their children will always, always be welcome in the state system as a matter of principle. Stop pretending you're doing ordinary families a favour by giving your child unearned advantages 😆

Yes, and that estimate is tiny. And, as the IFS concedes, it's based on guesswork.

What do you mean? When does it happen? Of course people care. I do. I certainly wouldn’t mock it.

This

I bought my house 3 years ago in a very specific place to be within the catchment of a specific school that was very oversubscribed. My son starts school this year but both this year and last year the school was no longer oversubscribed.

Same with a few other primaries as well. This is the reason they are changing the now empty classrooms into nurseries. Dds

Gillian Keengan said 25% of my county's pupils are in independent schools. Some are at special schools and wont move, some are boarders from far away, so wouldnt be our LAs responsibility to educate, and some will stay at independent school anyway. So it won't be a case of expanding the state sector by 25%

On that basis I am confident that they can be accommodated from about year 3 down easily as so many schools have reduced PAN over the last 3 years, by whole classes. It varies a bit around the county a bit but with a bit of a shuffle they'd fit. Some of the schools with reduced PAN are lovely village infant schools that 13-10 years ago were oversubscribed.

I am less confident from year 4 onwards that it would be easy, but possibly doable.

I think the current years 8, 9, 10 and 11 are pretty close to full with just random 1 or 2 places coming up a year per school per year group, as people move around. Plus the odd less popular school.

Less than 6% of students are currently privately educated. And of those, a relatively small proportion will pull their kids out. 🤷‍♀️

Our outstanding -rated ( inspection was this year) state primary is actually under subscribed and has spaces so no bother.

Our outstanding rated primary school is under subscribed too, even after taking in DC from the neighbouring town and villages (because it is the best school according to ofsted, not because their good rated schools are oversubscribed). They'd certainly welcome the extra money that would be ploughed into the school if more DC attended.

It appears there are enough school places in some areas, but some areas will struggle. I did some googling, and found this dataset which shows number of places available versus number of applications received, for some areas there are more applications than places available eg Ealing, Croydon, Greenwich, Lewisham - so this is a real issue. If it is not an issue for your area, that's good for you, but there are areas which will be impacted, and we can't just pretend that it will be all fine. There are already shortages of school places in certain areas, the councils and the schools can't miraculously create more classrooms for more kids. This is not scaremongering...

https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/9b0f1a4e-682e-49ce-9cd8-08dc8a203a6d

@Macaroons you have to remember that some place planning goes on to try and roughly match applications numbers.

I'm not saying nowhere is actually oversubscribed in terms of physical space as some are. Particularly in the bulge years, but schools reduce thier places available to help with budget planning.

So the school I worked in used to have 90 spaces In each group. But now it has 60 places. They don't need to magic up extra classrooms. They are already there. This happens in loads of schools at the younger end now.

Our primaries are all at capacity, but the local senior schools have plenty of space.

There is very little 6th form provision locally.

Loads of spaces.

People round here are more scared of immigrants taking school places. But they also think all immigrants are single men who should have stopped in France. Mind you, they also think our local schools are prison camps where staff routinely abuse the children, so I'm not sure round here is where private school parents are going to want to send their kids.

Spaces - lots. Just not in schools they'll want

🤔 You are reading something that isn’t there.

Nope . Local schools have waiting lists already- for every year!!

@Macaroons in Lewisham the schools are not all oversubscribed. My DCs secondary school has places and has reduced its PAN to match its intake, as a PP said this helps with budget planning. If necessary they could increase the PAN again.

There’s lots of spaces in schools in my area, they just wouldn’t be first choice schools. But if private school pupils apply now for this year then that’s what they will be given, and it will help those undersubscribed schools as they’ll get more funding so it’s not a bad thing if they get placed there.

There's spaces here, and it's a good school, very few choose private anyway because it's an hour by bus or a 45 car journey to the nearest one. My friends grandkids are at the private school and are a little worried but as it will only really affect the younger one (eldest is GCSEs this year so by the time the law is enacted it's one year max) they will just have to pay, they chose to privately educate despite local comps being good or outstanding

It'll literally be fine. Most schools aren't oversubscribed. The poor lil rich kids will find places in state schools, most likely good ones cos let's face it, people who can afford private schools don't live in deprived areas.

@paasll

There's 6400 students in private school in Bristol this year apparently. There's 82000 children (some obviously younger than school age) whilst that's quite a lot in private school, remember many of the children in those schools will actually live in N Somerset or S Gloucestershire, possibly BANES. My friends gdc live in n Somerset by school is Bristol and the school bus picks up from Weston Super Mare then winds its way through the villages.