Adding VAT to independent school costs has actually stopped working to set off an exodus of students into the state sector in spite of extensive speculation that it would, the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, has said.The Labour federal government applied 20%VAT to private school charges from the start of 2025. They had actually previously been exempt from the tax. Newly published admissions data for England revealed there had actually been no influx towards state schools because then.Phillipson stated:”The forecasted exodus from independent schools merely has actually
n’t taken place and today’s information proves it. Critics alerted state schools would be swamped with brand-new students. They were wrong. They stated private schools would close en masse. They have not. “We are rebalancing the system to focus on the 94 %of kids in state schools, a bulk that has been sidelined for too long.” The admissions information is the first given that barrel was added, drawn from applications to state schools
made in October in 2015 for places in the school year beginning next September.The previous chancellor Jeremy Hunt was among those who forecasted that approximately 90,000 kids might go into the state sector after the addition of VAT. However the figures from the Department for Education (DfE) really revealed a decrease in overall applications for both primary and secondary school places this year, while almost 85%of households received their very first choice of secondary school location, higher than in 2025 and 2024. Local authorities in main London with some of the highest proportions of privately educated kids revealed no indications of an increase in applications. Hammersmith and Fulham and
Kensington and Chelsea both received less applications for places in September compared to the two previous years. But there was a slight boost in Islington, where the share of households getting their very first choice of secondary school dropped from 68% to 66%. The DfE stated that 94%of secondary candidates and 98 %of primary applicants in London got a deal from among their 6 preferred schools and kept in mind:”That is not a system under pressure.
“In Surrey, which was singled out as a most likely hotspot for private school defections, there were fewer applications for secondary places this year, while in Kent there was a boost of 2%. However, experts cautioned that
the falling birthrate and post-Brexit population shifts might partly mask any impact of the VAT increase. The DfE’s 2026 school survey discovered that while the variety of kids in schools of all types fell by 1.2 %, the numbers at independent schools were down by 3.8%, a drop of 22,000 compared with 2025. The Independent Schools Council stated that its members have lost 30,000 students since the introduction of barrel, although the group’s membership includes schools in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
, while the DfE’s figures are for England alone and include numerous independent schools that are not ISC members.The census tape-recorded a continuing increase in the number of private schools operating in England, kept in mind by Phillipson. The DfE census showed a boost of 41 independent schools in 2026, but the figure was improved
by 88 more independent special schools opening, offsetting the 47 mainstream schools that closed.The DfE stated that VAT on independent school fees was raising more than had been at first forecast, and is now most likely to bring in ₤ 1.8 bn annually by 2029-30. The addition of VAT was a Labour manifesto pledge during the 2024 basic election, and the cash raised
was to be put towards working with an additional 6,500 teachers by the end of this parliament. The National Audit Office just recently cast doubt on the DfE’s capability to fulfill the promise, which is targeted at hiring more secondary, special requirements and additional education teachers.