Sam Freedman

The fall according to DfE data was 5.6%.

Yes, yes.

I actually did think it might be a little bit lower than that, but I'll take the win.

Yes, obviously it has affected some families, some young people who've had to move school.

But most of the fall has come from in the entry years.

So it's people not starting school who otherwise would have.

Most parents have kept their children in school rather than move them around.

But you have seen a drop off in the numbers applying to private school as a result of VAT.

That's where most of the fall is happening.

And those young people will mostly be going to state schools instead.

And that's what 93% of the population do already.

So we have very good state schools in this country.

So yes, it will have affected some people, but it's mostly children not going to private schools from the start who otherwise would have done.

So the state sector has seen a drop of just under 2% over the same period.

If you take that into account and assume that

levels are dropping equally on both sides.

That suggests that about 3.7% of the drop in private school pupils is to do with VAT and the rest is just because numbers are falling across the system because we've had lower birth rates over the last decade or so.

It's quite difficult to figure that out for two reasons.

Firstly, because the numbers in the state system have also fallen, because pupil numbers are going down generally, the transfer of pupils from the independent sector to the state sector...

is pretty marginal in the scheme of things.