Sam Freedman

And the marginal cost of each of those pupils is very low.

If you imagine a primary school in London, which has a few additional students from a local independent school, but whose numbers were dropping anyway, they don't need to hire any new teachers to accommodate those pupils.

They don't need to pay for any more space.

So the actual cost of accommodating those pupils is very, very low.

The government will collect a little less in VAT than they thought they would because numbers are down a bit more than they were predicting.

But again, it's fairly marginal in the scheme of things.

And of course, the people who are not spending that money on private schools anymore will be buying other things with that money, most of which has VAT on it as well.