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.

I am (like everyone else) getting fed up with these threads but the last few posts pulls this together nicely. .

so, in terms of the schools, this won’t impact Eton/Winchester - they are fine - but it will impact the marginal schools, with lower fees who are borderline. So the weakest schools.

in terms of parents, it won’t impact the wealthy (many will move abroad anyway due to non-dom taxes and general taxation). It will impact those who are borderline and putting every penny toward school fees. So the financially weakest parents.

in terms of children who have to move, it won’t impact the intelligent, well adjusted children, they will thrive everywhere. It will impact children with undiagnosed SEN, they ones who are shy and easily bullied, so the weakest children.

genius!

I think many private school parents will opt for online schools and tutoring rather than send their children to an 'inadequate' school.
Can you imagine the bullying and jeering a private school child is likely to face from certain groups of children? Through no fault of their own. The gleeful spite shown on here by adults enjoying the fact that children will face huge disruption to their education will be replicated by children en masse.

My dc's school has waiting lists so there's not even room for a little budge. One student needs to leave before another one on top of the waitlist can start at his state school.

When the VAT gets added and even if a few pupils end up going to state due to being unaffordable, there is still no guarantee that many private schools will survive in this climate. I know 3 private schools completely shut down nearby in the last 2/3 years for simply losing a few students due to covid times and hybrid working where families moved away and then I guess some other reasons but the whole school completely closed which meant 400 pupils between reception-yr 3 and reception-yr 6 had to find either alternative private schools or state schools in 3 months. So there is also a risk that families who can afford can suddenly find out that their lo's school is no longer existent which means they will have to go on waitlists for other surviving private schools and then state schools.

My dc got a place at a highly sought out state school and then a popular private school. Despite being able to afford private, I chose the state route after his nursery shut down which was attached to a prep school especially when the talks about vat being added since last year made me think twice as I saw how stressful it was for parents trying to apply for other schools.

You're either not a very talented s-t stirrer or simply don't realize how applications work.
If school gets very popular every responsible parent within 20 miles distance will mention it as 1 of 6 in their application. It's not uncommon for a sought-after secondary to receive over 1600 applications for 180-240 places. Obviously all those applications can not be satisfied and parents will have to accept place in their local area.
There's no lack of secondary school places in Ealing and around.

@Trikey not the most secure children though, they will probably be fine, especially sporty boys. It will be the children why are shy and insecure (and with less sharp elbowed parents - moving, online tutoring, appealing)

As I said, they cannot get the Etonians but they can get the bullied /undiagnosed SEN children of less wealthy- and probably overwhelmed parents.

i guess you have to celebrate where you think you have a win?

I think private schools are victims of their own greed. They kept increasing rates every year and a lot of parents had to adjust though no one was crying about it all over newspapers. I've read there was 55% increase in fees in the past 10 years.
Now it's the same group of squeezed parents who will have to leave. Labour's decision is just the last straw.

The small school we send our kids to, is seriously worried this policy will cause the school to close.
It caters for children who have suffered EBSA. It is a 'budget' private school.
There are 2 such schools in our small city.
Two thirds of parents have said a 20% increase would mean they would have to reconsider.
These families will absolutely not send their kids back to the schools that gave them trauma, they will home educate instead, resulting in less working parents.

I doubt this is the result Labour hope for, but it's a huge vote winner. Pitting people against each other, creating more division.

I want the tories out, but I won't vote for a party that is creating more friction in our fragile society.

@Rehab4rightmove
How many times did your school increase fees in the past 5 years?
I think both Labours and Tories are now a joke tbh but 20% would be absorbed both by schools and parents if not for the previous hikes in fees.

If we are talking about working families paying private school fees, does everyone in your family gets salary increased "in line with inflation"? We work in private sector and it's not a thing for both of us.

Very oversubscribed. Only 2 have places. One is on the edge of the county with bad transport links. The other requires improvement.

@usernother "Only 2 have places" means there's actually a choice of schools in your area. A lot of private parents don't live within walkable distance from their current school either or just prefer to drive so it's not a problem for them anyway.

That's the real reason https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-charts-that-shows-how-private-school-fees-have-exploded-a7023056.html

I'm interested to know whether online schools like King's Interhigh will be hit with VAT rises.

Was hoping the manifesto might provide more information on exactly what is being defined as private schools but there is very little detail.

I have friends with children doing PA BTECs at 6th form which are state but with 'top up' fees - are they going to be hit with an extra 20%?

What about diploma courses for 18+ that aren't CertHE or degrees and so don't come with funding?

I think the online schools may well see a big increase in applications for secondary - one parent stops work or does WFH, lessons online and then vast amounts of extra curricular alongside.

@Sirine1708 there have been no increases in the 3 yrs we've been with the school.

I get a discount for being a key worker. My pay inflates as per nhs terms.

They've closed a school in my area due to falling birth rates. Hope that helps.

School fees are already hardly affordable to working families ( and it coincides with Tory government) - people who don't have external sources of income need to think twice while choosing schools.
In general working people got poorer so if your parents were able to put you through private school doesn't mean you can give your child the same thing - thanks to you know who.

I live in an area with very popular oversubscribed schools but there are plenty of school places in the less popular schools. Even the oversubscribed schools tend to see a lot of movement and spaces opening up after year 7 when people discover the reality of having a child in that school due to long commutes and other factors. It shouldn't be an issue.

Then the brilliant news for the economy is all the money that will be released when kids move into the state schools and their parents can spend lots more with all the small businesses.

Area with lots of good schools. Locally undersubscribed so children from other areas are bussed in. So it won’t be an issue

I think the issue here is that taxing education is just wrong, and is not something that happens in other countries including socialist / left leaning ones. I understand that Greece introduced VAT on private schools and the outcome was awful, a real mess.

Also, the kids who will be most affected by having to move at potentially short notice - tbh introducing this without it being a phased-in system is cruel on kids - are those in key years at secondary, GCSEs (Y9-11) and A-levels (Y12/13). The birth rate started to fall around 2013, so the school years with places are not relevant when you talk about those in GCSE/A-level years.

Should we pay VAT on private healthcare too? University education?

No, the simple truth is that Labour knows this is a vote winner which affects a relatively small proportion of the electorate (around 7%). Ideologically it would make sense for them to introduce VAT on private health but lots of people (including socialists/those on the left), especially the young - use it freely.

Children with undiagnosed sen do not thrive at private schools. Most are expelled through behaviour policies. If they are quiet and are going through their private education undiagnosed, then the private school they are at is failing them as they have not picked up on their difficulties. They may find they thrive at a state school where teachers have more experience of sen.

Nationally, demographic trends mean that there will be more school places than prospective pupils.

But it's very likely that there will be difficulties in some boroughs (those where there are a high level attending private schools and limited scope for expanding state schools). Edinburgh has already been mentioned, several London boroughs are in a similar situation and it could affect other cities too). Plus there might be other local pockets where the national trend does not apply.

Hard to predict exactly, but I think it's very likely that there will be places where it is bumpy. Not necessarily from people deciding to leave the sector precipitately, but deciding not to join it (eg 8+ instead of reception, 11+ instead of 8+, 13+ instead of 11+) and that could mean shrinkage of admission distances.

my local catchment schools are already massively oversubscribed and now refuse all placing requests. I think this policy won’t help although it will obviously vary from area to area.

I doubt very much that Greece introduced a sales tax on school fees as EU forbids it.

Taxing school fees as a headline policy is a clear demonstration that Labour in uninterested in looking to re-establish a common market (which in days of EEC required sales tax harmonisation) let alone rejoin EU

Distance doesn't seem like a big deal for private school parents in our area - they taxi their kids to schools already.

@RoseAndRose Yes they did, in 2015. But it was such a shit show that they revoked it fairly quickly.