Urgent Help - Year 9 school places for six children required asap

[2010louises]

I'm posting on behalf of a friend who would prefer to remain anonymous, could any one help or offer her advice please ?
"Do any parents whose children are in Year 9 know of any local schools whose classes have room for 1 child (or up to 6 kids) ? My son is being forced to change schools at short notice , he is one of six kids in his year who are in the same situation, all the parents are now scrambling for a school that has spaces available. I have contacted my Local Authority (Bromley) and been told despite classes being full , not to worry as by law the local authority have to find him / them a place, so in the meantime we have to join the waiting lists "

Well what is a fair comparison? Seems totally fair to me.

Imagine there's something that would negatively impact your life if you suddenly couldn't afford it.

I don't have a car. To me therefore a car is a luxury I take the bus and trains and the occasional uber. Why should anyone have a car when an alternative exists - perhaps not one they'd like as much but still a viable alternative.

What's the difference? Are you telling me a car is an essential luxury but private education isn't given there are alternatives for both.

What comparison would you make - I'm genuinely interested?

I have one child in Year 11. Years ago when we moved house and couldn’t get a place in state straight away I looked at the fees for the local private. In those days (Year 2) it was just over 10k for junior and 12k for senior a year. Now the same school in Year 11 for senior will be 25k with the VAT included and that is a school that is only passing on 12 per cent.

I can totally understand how someone who started in Reception in all through private school can now no longer afford it. It is a massive jump from 12k per year to 25k! So this is why there will be an exodus. Parents just kept their children where they were and now the Councils will need to get funding from Central Government to create all these extra school places. It better be forthcoming!!!

Charles Darwin is a bugger to get to unless you actually live in Biggin Hill...no train station. Not many direct buses.

has been a Labour Party policy since 2017

In 2019, the party voted to abolish private schools entirely. Nobody thought this would ever happen. The threat of VAT has only been a real possibility for the last 2/3 years.

The Labour Party also suggested they wouldn’t apply it until next September. The January date was unexpected.

Another thought - has your friend checked if other local private schools would be priced closer to the £25k they can afford? While the bigger name schools near me are £25-30k, we have friends who’s ds goes to a school a little further afield and they are paying £17k for year 10.

they may not meet the criteria for a bursery at this school, they might at another.

I cannot comprehend why you would choose to spend £25k a year on school fees, if you cannot afford £30k per year on school fees.

Very poor decision making by the parents, and I feel for the children concerned.

Tbh she generally feeling extremely low and hopeless about the whole situation , her son is also in bits 😢 I’m just being a friend and helping her out , I’m looking at all the links everyone kindly sending and I’m seeing her tomorrow , will update her then x Thankyou

@Another76543 2/3 years is plenty of time to plan.
Changing schools at the end of year 9 / start of yr10 is not a great idea anyway as the students would have chosen GCSE options in yr9 so the new kids would need to slot in to whatever subjects has space.
And £450 a month / £5k for one year to keep their child In school for 1 more year shouldn't be out of reach for someone who's made a choice to send their third child to private school. If it is, the choice was not a very sensible one.

@Another76543 - 3 years ago this child was in year 6. Their parents started secondary education knowing this was a genuine risk and that they were at their limit.

even if it being January was a shock, they knew they’d not be able to afford year 10&11 yet thought unsettling then rather than moving between 8&9 was a good plan. It’s just bizarre selection of choices.

The local authority has a duty to provide a school place, within a reasonable distance (look up what your County consider reasonable). If none can be found, tell your friend to go to appeal for the one she prefers (again, her preference must be reasonable). The appeal should win, if the child has no school place.

@FancyBiscuitsLevel makes a good point, OP.

Has your friend considered Bishop Challoner? You don't need to be Catholic.

People saying that the poster should have foreseen three years ago that Labour would have got in - what? You get it isn't just the VAT, right, but other major payments?

We are just coming up on 2 years since Trussonomics, and the impact of that period (shortly after these boys started year 7) on interest rates and mortgage repayments was certainly not known in the March of year 6 (March 2022), when they would have committed to a secondary school place. July 2022 was the mass resignation from Johnson's cabinet.

(private school parent, Labour voter, support the VAT policy, do not support nonsense berating of other parents)

Maybe they have been impacted by other cost of living pressures like lots of us. I’d baked in the VAT increase to our calculations since the 2019 election. What I hadn’t baked in was the massive increase in our mortgage, food, power, insurances etc. The £400 per month VAT that we are going to have to pay is dwarfed by the £1750 per month extra that we are paying on other bills. If we’d not had those other increases, the VAT would be easily manageable. I’ve managed to get a new job so will be able to cover the VAT no problem but not everyone has that option.

Tbh £26k pa is not really average for a senior private secondary is it?

I just checked the two local private schools nearest to me and one is £16k pa and the other is £18k pa for senior school. So I would say that this school is towards the top end (tho maybe not for the South East tbf).

Be that as it may – I cannot see the point of taking out loans etc to get through another year when the DC are in year 9. Year 9 is not a bad year to move esp if possible before Christmas. It's not the case, as a PP says, that “most” state schools start GCSE courses in year 9. Some do pick options in year 8 but Ofsted is not keen and it is becoming less common (thank goodness). So while science, maths and English may start to work on and cover GCSE content, the option choices will not usually start until year 10. Presumably these DC will be covering lots of great content and should be able to slot in to the state curriculum no bother.

I do want to say tho as you mentioned someone having to move in year 11 I think @2010louises – there is no way that I would do this. If I were unable to pull together two terms of VAT then I would take out a loan or do similar to keep them in GCSE year. But that's not the issue for these DC.

while not all schools start the gcse curriculum in year 9, if they are joining the school at the start of year 10, they will get the gcse options that still have places but possibly not the choice combination they’d want. Moving in year 9 is much more sensible anyway. It can be unsettling to moves schools, if that unsettling period negatively affects school work, much better to be in year 9 than 10 or 11.

We pay £22,400 for year 7 in the SE and that’s average in my area. It goes up to £24,507 in year 9. Both of those figures are without VAT. OP’s figures do not sound unusual to me. I only know of one cheaper school in the area but the academics are weak and they mainly have pupils with SEN who couldn’t cope in state or other private schools. I know that there are cheaper schools elsewhere in the country because I’m not from the SE originally and we considered moving away, one reason being cheaper private schools.

Well maybe these figures are average for the south east (I dd say that tbf). This is not an area of expertise for me but I would be surprised if the two private schools most local to me were so very far off the pace in terms of fees. I am in the East Mids.

It's this policy which is the problem or it isn't though.

As a labour voter I'm sure you are not one of those people who talk about how people ought to take individual responsibility when it comes to benefits and the NHS but the truth is that sending your kid privately is taking on personal responsibility for their education so it's up to you to make sure you can weather any storms that make it difficult. That is the point of the system. That this storm comes in the form of a tax that will be paid into the public purse should not alter that.

Appreciate each to their own opinion but I have to back up my friend on this point raised.
She super sensible and of course considered affordability , she could afford the fees BUT over the past couple years the mortgage on their house has literally tripled with the enormous hikes in interest rates , they were just about riding it out until now , but now the government are adding vat to school fees , they simply don’t earn enough between them to pay extra 20% , circa £450 a month .. I don’t think many ordinary working people could find that sort of figure very easily , and by ordinary I mean nhs nurse , electrician etc .. not some whizz earning mega bucks in the city .. I couldn’t magic finding £450 extra every month , it’s a tad harsh to judge another’s circumstances , circumstances that have changed for reasons she has no control over

I don’t think the figures are too far off the pace for your area but lots of things are more expensive in the SE, not just housing. Private schools are one of those things. We found we could save 25-30% in fees if we moved back to where I grew up.

I put mine in private about 3 years ago, so acutely aware of how much has changed in that time period. over the past 3 years school fees are up more than my worst case forecast even before vat, my mortgage will be 20-30% higher when our current offer expires, the weekly food shop is about double, and every other bill has increased as well. It isn’t ‘just’ vat that makes private school suddenly unaffordable, but a sudden 20% on top of everything is the tipping point for many. Especially when your choice has to endure for the entirety of gcse years. Maybe they could swing vat this year, but are worried about the next 2, especially when school fees and other costs are likely to continue to increase?

and for everyone claiming this was a foregone conclusion that we all should have planned for, it really wasn’t. Labour have floated lots of ideas about policy (education and otherwise) that haven’t really stuck. Labour have also proposed banning private schools as well as stripping them of their charitable status - ideas that are half baked and fundamentally unworkable upon further scrutiny. VAT is probably in that category as well, but it looks like they are going to push on regardless. They still haven’t really firmed up the details and we are less than 3 months from implementation.

The fact is both the timing of the election as well as the reckless speed with which this is being rolled out have caught many by surprise. It really isn’t fair to blame these parents for poor planning when 1) so much has changed so quickly for many people’s financial context and 2) the government keep insisting that there are state school places for anyone who needs them.

I’m so sorry for your friend. Some of the comments on here are disgusting. I’ve long said that Labour would have faced far less resistance to this policy if people hadn’t already become so stretched due to the cost of living crisis. Unfortunately, Labour (and some of their supporters on this thread) have their heads up their arses.

Mmm, what a delicious word salad. Thank you, Spinet, I was wondering what to have for lunch!

How rude!

Yes, you were rude, repeatedly, about parents and children who are currently in a difficult position.

And for no reason, as this thread was about seeking information on state school places, not asking opinions on or complaining about the VAT policy.

Good for you for acknowledging your rudeness, though. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.