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.

Great , my kids got excellent grades in a state school. My youngest is on track to get 7 8 and 9s in GCSE in a great state school where I can assure you there is no knife crime or violence. Plus my kids have a more realistic view of life than a kid caught in a private school bubble

Places in all of the ones near me, one even had to drop from 3 to 2 classes. Low birth rates there's plenty of room

May be you can recommend your area so that people move there? I can’t recommend mine sadly.

clearly not too busy to be on Mumsnet commenting on threads about topics you “don’t care about”!

@BagFullOfNoodles does your one and only local independent secondary school ha e a purple blazer, by any chance?

But, a main point here is that people who signed up for private may not have done so if they knew that 20% would be charged in tax on top of fees (that in themselves increase yearly) would be applied. It's a bit like suddenly deciding to increase pension age without any sort of phase in period or notice. It's cruel, it's wrong and unfair.

The best solution would simply to have a scenario where VAT is applied to any family who decide to apply to private now, not those who are already in the 'private system'.

Yes!

Most parents paying for private will be able to absorb the increase. All this talk about how people are going to move to the better areas en masse, pricing others out is just stupid. That’s almost like saying we will make sure one way or another that we get the places in good state schools and sod everyone else. Absolutely not the way to garner support from the 90% + of parents who have kids in state schools. It just sounds like entitlement and no one gets behind that.

There will definitely be some that have to leave. But the point is, it's just not right to introduce a tax midway through a cycle, is it? You must see that it would be much better, less of a logistical nightmare for both parents, state schools and indies if they phases it in.

@gowiththeflow67 do you think private schools still will have nerve to keep increasing fees after VAT is introduced?

As if houses in the catchment for good schools are sold for peanuts at the moment :)) why are they trying to scare us?

We live quite near the former site of the other, girls only, one, which went bust a decade ago without any warning to the parents and without a VAT inspector in sight. I might have suspected 'not quite local' parents moving their DC out,, finding their home address newly 'IC' for the grammar schools with the new, Admissions Code compliant admissions policy coming in, thus saving their fees and petrol money, but the year groups had been tiny for years.

(We are a 'green grammar' family, apart from DD's initial year at one of the 'less desirable' - but for her stream, absolutely fine - comprehensive schools. And her inexplicable defection to one of the 'blue grammars' for sixth form, which she regretted).

Apologies for the sidetracking, folks

Totally.
I think these arguments are being used to try and gain support from the general public and state school parents. Vat on private school fees will affect you too ( and we’ll make sure of it) so get behind us on opposing this. But it is not the right approach, has the opposite effect.

I live in the London Borough where all secondary schools but one have been oversubscribed.

I live in a London borough where local people can't get into local private school because it's so popular that all places are taken by siblings ferried from outside the borough. So even in private sector people learn to compromise you know.

which borough is that?

Superselective private schools are everywhere in London.

And why would siblings criterion matter in private school? It is 11+ result that matters.
Are you sure you didn't have in mind state school?

@TheChipmunkSong it's not superselective, just Thomas's Fulham primary. What I'm saying it's not only state that schools get oversubscribed, plenty of private schools are so no big deal.

well actually it is a big deal if the state schools are oversubscribed. New schools or expansion to the existing schools should be built.

You’ve inferred incorrectly as I’m interested in the policy and the reaction to it (lots from private school parents & largely indifference from everyone else.) I don’t think it will have the negative impact on a large scale which many private school parents are trying to paint. I can’t get worked up about a policy that I don’t perceive as damaging and which ultimately will be helping children. I know that’s not what people who are going to have to stump up more cash or go to Plan B for their children want to hear, but that will be the position of many people in the country.

Thomas's Fulham primary.

it is a very small school. No wonder all siblings take spaces.

In a big city whether it's private or state you just go to the next available school. Of there's none it should definitely be built.

But they won't because there is space in the less popular schools.

not in my borough. There are no free spaces at secondary level. Every single school has waiting lists now and only in one all preferences were met. 26 children were not offered any school on the 1 March despite of selecting 6 schools. They would need to travel more than 1 h sometimes to the school

That is exactly what I am saying. The additional state schools are already needed.

In general it's a shame that there are blind spots in schools' catchment. In Scotland you just know what school your child will be attending if you live in the designated area in Y6. In the US it doesn't even matter what year you move into the area - you are getting a place in local schools (but you have to free it if you move outside of catchment, or parents can get prosecuted iirc).