• This increase will price low income families out of private education, destroying the current diversity at most private schools.
• The impact will be felt most by low income families, leaving many with no choice but to remove their children from school.
• The children are the ones who will suffer, being forced to leave their school, friends and teachers.

Not all children in private education come from wealthy families. I am a single parent, and have made many sacrifices to send my son to his current school. He is thriving, due to the smaller classes and access to open spaces. He has sensory processing disorder, and many of his peers, along with other pupils at private schools, are there because they did not thrive within a mainstream school setting, and their parents are making huge efforts to pay school fees to provide their children with a school environment that offers a better fit for them personally. 

The increase in fees will inevitably mean many of these children will have to be taken out of their current schools due to lower income families simply not being able to afford the increase. There are students with bursaries and scholarships, and many families at maximum capacity already. Are these children being considered? The disruption of having to leave their schools, returning to schools that they may well have previously attended and had traumatic experiences (hence them being at a private school). Where will these children go? The increase comes in January, in the middle of a school year. We know that the majority of mainstream classes are full, so some children may be left with nowhere to attend at all. The impact on the mental health of these children (and parents) will be detrimental to many. 

At present many private schools have a diverse mixture of students. This fee increase will simply make private education unobtainable for anyone but the wealthiest of families, creating a huge segregation within the education system. 

The ones who will suffer most from this are the children who come from low income families. They will be removed from their schools, removed from their friends and teachers, with many private schools feeling more like extended family to these children, and the state school system will then have to accommodate these children AND fund their pupil premiums.