For six weeks, politicians have been vying for our votes with promises of jobs, houses and a strong economy – but for one demographic, there’s only one story in town: Labour’s pledge to remove tax breaks on private schools, and the resulting rise in fees.
At the school gates of Britain’s private schools, everyone’s having the “VAT chat“. And as election day arrives, some are encouraging more extreme tactics on WhatsApp groups and forums.
A screenshot from one parents group that went viral recently advised the group to “register their child for their local state school…the National Union of Teachers (NUT) are getting worried about not being able to provision children joining state and they will lobby to government. It’s important they start panicking about the flood of applications coming in and the reality of the situation – even if you have no intention of moving your child.”
Along with this so-called “swamp the comp” strategy, parents are writing to local MPs, penning missives to Sir Keir Starmer and shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson and submitting Freedom of Information requests to local authorities requesting information on the number of state school places available.
“I think we need to tap into changing votes by explaining the impact on state school, council funding for lunches, transport, teachers etc” one parent wrote on a group I am in. “If you have had a conversation with the LA [local authority] or submitted an in-year transfer and received a response back which shows low availability of spaces could you provide a screenshot of it?” asked another.
One group has begun crowdfunding to finance a group litigation order. There has been suggestion of a demonstration planned for 9 July in London.
Camila, a mother of two in Islington, whose daughter is starting at a local state secondary school in September, says she’s frustrated with the anti-VAT plotting she’s come across on local parenting groups on WhatsApp and Facebook. “There’s a lot of talk from private school parents about advocating hassling local schools and councils, telling each other to take up their state school place to unnerve the council, even though they say they have no intention of taking their children out of private school.
“I saw some parents discussing the approach of sending an email to the local authority pretending to be interested in a state school place because of the Labour policy, and aiming that this would ’cause a political backlash’. It has caused some tension because there are parents like me on there who think this isn’t fair.
“I don’t judge parents who pay school fees but I think this is cynical and entitled.”
Groups such as Education Not Taxation: Parents Against School Fee VAT say they have discouraged such tactics.
Anecdotally, some local authorities are confirming that they have seen an increase in enquiries about places at their state schools in recent weeks. But what will really happen if Labour wins and follows through on its promise to start making private schools pay VAT? Will England’s comprehensive schools be “overwhelmed”, as Conservative Education Secretary Gillian Keegan has warned? Or will private school parents stay put and cough up?
One contributor to the Education Not Taxation Facebook group reports “students not returning in September (even though the parents have paid, they are giving notice now so as to not be liable for the spring fees)”. Several other parents post about giving notice to their children’s private schools, wanting to get ahead before the election “in case there’s no places left for them”.
Still, it’s difficult to estimate how many parents the proposed changes will affect. Labour, using figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), calculates that removing the VAT exemption will generate roughly £1.5bn per year, which it says it will use to fund 6,500 more teachers. The additional removal of business rates would, it estimated, bring in a further £104m, pledged towards a “catch up” programme for those children who fell behind during the pandemic. The IFS’s calculations concluded that a “relatively limited” number of families would be affected, with a mere 3-7 per cent reduction in children attending private schools.
However, a report commissioned by the Independent Schools Council and carried out by the educational consultancy Baines Cutler suggests that the actual tax take from VAT would be more like 15 per cent, once schools had claimed the tax back from things like supplies – and the actual number of children who would have to move schools as a result could be more like 25 per cent, or some 135,000 children.
Labour has promised every child “a welcome in a brilliant state school”. An analysis by the Financial Times using 2022-23 data suggested “the majority” of state schools in England have enough places to absorb the exodus of private school pupils. It is also widely agreed that the demographic bulge caused by high birth rates in the 2000s (which resulted in schools expanding the number of places available) is due to peak this year and then decline, which would leave more school spaces available.
However, the report acknowledged that some areas might find it harder to cope than others – especially at secondary level, and especially if the exodus is more than 7 per cent.
In shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ own constituency of Leeds, for example, all 46 state schools are at full capacity for Year 11 students, with just one school accepting pupils in Year 10 for the next academic year. According to the Department of Education there are 4,807 private school pupils in the city.
In the London Borough of Bromley, all secondaries have waiting lists for Years 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 bar two schools with no pupils on the waiting list for Year 7, one with no waiting list for Year 10 and two with no waiting list for Year 11.
Across England, nearly one in four secondary schools are at or over capacity, according to government figures for 2022-23. “I’ve got four times as many applications for Year 7 than our PAN [Published Admissions Numbers] and that’s without Labour’s policy,” one head of an oversubscribed secondary in north-west England says. “In our district at the minute we have a higher number of children than school places available without any potential influx of private schools. I spent days of my life last months pushing appeals away – I just cannot take any more.”
Certainly, private school parents may have more time than they originally thought to plan their next moves. Ms Reeves has said the changes would be announced in Labour’s first Budget in the autumn; they would become law after being passed in the first finance bill, meaning the earliest they’re likely to be implemented would be January 2025, although experts believe the new policy would not come into effect until the school year beginning in September 2025.
But many are already gearing up for battle.
