Bucks parents try to pull children out of private schools before Labour VAT on fees

Buckinghamshire parents are trying to move their children from private to state schools before the government adds 20 per cent value added tax (VAT) onto private school fees from January 1, 2025, the council has said.

Labour said earlier this year that it would end tax breaks on private schools to help fund 6,500 new teachers at state schools in England, which are attended by nine out of 10 children.

Labour’s VAT plans were discussed by councillors during a meeting of Buckinghamshire Council’s children’s and education select committee on September 5.

Conservative Councillor Diana Blamires said: “As councillors, we are getting parents coming to us who are concerned. They are trying to move their children into state schools because in January they are expecting the VAT on private schools.”

Richard Nash, the council’s director for children’s social care, said that the council was not seeing additional ‘pressure’ on its services related to the incoming VAT on private schools as he responded to a question from Cllr Blamires about whether this was occurring.

Michael Jarrett, the council’s education director, added: “Thank you for the question in relation to VAT on schools.

“What we have seen so far is that we had, as of yesterday, 92 applications from parents to be able to transfer from their current independent school into mainstream school.”

Of the total, 23 have been allocated their preference to the school that they have applied to and 10 have been allocated to a school that was not their preference.

Four have also been allocated to another local authority, neighbouring local authority or an academy, while 19 parents were offered places but turned them down and 36 were still awaiting placement.

Jarrett said: “We are concerned with the fact that there was likely to be a deluge, however given the figures we are talking about today, we are not as concerned as were before that announcement was made.

“It is a very small proportion of the overall cohort of children and young people in independent provision.”

Jarrett also confirmed that children moving from independent to mainstream schools or vice versa tend to do that at a ‘phase stage’, such as between primary and secondary education.

In a follow-up question, Cllr Blamires asked whether council officers thought that parents had not understood Labour’s policy and whether the unitary authority would see more parents wanting to take their children out of private school in the run-up to January.

Jarrett replied: “We anticipate that there will be more contacts as we get closer to the January threshold.”

The education chief said the admissions team was anticipating this by looking at available places in schools across the county.