London borough to see classes oversubscribed as private school closure leaves parents scrambling

Staff
By Staff

Bromley councillors descended into a row over the reasons behind a private school’s closure, as the borough faces making a number of classes oversubscribed to accommodate pupils into state schools.

With Conservatives at Bromley Council blaming the Labour Government’s VAT hike and Labour stating the problems for Bishop Challoner School went as far back as 2019, the meeting descended into political mud slinging.

One Tory councillor even likened the current state of private education to “a man struggling to stay afloat in challenging waters” and said Labour’s tax reform was like “holding the head underwater until the body stops moving”.

At a full meeting of Bromley Council on July 7, several councillors requested a statement from the council’s Portfolio Holder for Education and Families—Cllr Kate Lymer—on the recent closure of Bishop Challoner School.

The Bromley private school officially shut down at the end of the academic year on July 4, citing Labour’s VAT hike, falling birth rates and rising living costs as contributing factors to the closure.

Cllr Lymer said that in the first 48 hours following the closure announcement on June 12, the borough’s school admissions team had been contacted nearly 100 times by parents and it had now received 42 applications to transfer pupils to Bromley state schools.

She also revealed that the council had enacted the Bromley Fair Access Protocol which meant that local schools were asked to go over their published admission numbers to ensure Bishop Challoner pupils had a place come September.

Cllr Lymer said: “Regrettably this means that class sizes in many of our state schools will now exceed 30. However, I am pleased to confirm that all schools approached have engaged positively in relation to the admission of these pupils.”

Cllr Lymer blamed Bishop Challoner’s closure on the government, agreeing with the school that Labour’s VAT hike for private schools was the key factor.

She said: “What is the human cost of this ill-perceived plan? At the challenge in the High Court recently, we learned that the Chancellor forged ahead with the plan, despite being warned by her own civil servants that it would harm poorer families.

“The Treasury knew that a quarter of families set to be hit by the tax were below the average wealth level, the scrimpers and the savers, but they imposed it anyway.”

She stated that the government “had no idea how many SEND pupils would flood into state schools” as a result of the tax change. SEND is a particular issue when it comes to Bishop Challoner as just over a third of its pupils had SEND provision last year.

She continued: “As a consequence of this policy, the state sector is not only having to cope with the influx of private school pupils, but an increase in the number of SEND children now requiring state support. Whereas before the parents were supporting their extra care, now this will fall to local government to pick up the bill.”

Cllr Lymer said that none of this policy was done “with the children’s best interest at heart” and that it was really about “class warfare”. Se said: “This policy was never designed to provide funding to improve the state sector, it was designed to destroy private education.”

After Cllr Lymer had finished her statement, Labour Cllr Jeremy Adams responded to what he viewed as her “remarkable political statement”.

He said: “I was wondering if Cllr Lymer actually looked at any of the facts in terms of the financial history [of the school], like £340,000 losses in 2019/20, £260,000 losses in 2020/21, £100,000 in 2021/22, £140,000 in 2022/23. Accumulated losses of £840,000.

“I’ve been a school governor. You only set a deficit budget in extreme circumstances and with a plan to repay it. That hasn’t happened in this school, and to lay the blame at a policy that came into action in 2025 when the root cause was as far back as 2019. How does that make any sense at all?”

In response, Cllr Lymer said the policy effectively started in 2023 when Labour started discussing it would be part of its manifesto. “They knew that this was coming down the line,” she said.

Tory Cllr Adam Jude Grant was a Bishop Challoner student himself as a child, had “a lot of love for the school” and was in contact with staff there over the past few years.

He said: “Just for clarity, last year I was told that they made £40,000 surplus so it was heading in the right direction. It is the VAT. That is the cause. That’s what the teachers say, that’s what the headmistress says. It is quite apparent.”

Cllr Grant asked Cllr Lymer if she agreed with him that Beckenham and Penge’s Labour MP Liam Conlon owed local parents and pupils an apology for backing Labour’s private school VAT policy. In reply, she said: “I don’t want to get involved in that.”

Labour Cllr Kathy Bance asked Cllr Lymer to explain how her party was responsible for the drop in birth rate, a factor the school said contributed to its closure. Cllr Bance’s question provoked laughter from several council members on the blue side of the chamber and Cllr Lymer didn’t answer it saying it was “facetious”.

Labour Cllr Ruth McGregor asked Cllr Lymer whether the lack of SEND pupils with Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) at Bishop Challoner was down to “the council trying to block families from getting EHCPs and forcing them to tribunals”.

Cllr Lymer replied: “How can we be blocking them when we have the second highest number of EHCPs in the whole of London?”

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