Children in Angela Rayner’s constituency risk being forced into ‘inadequate’ schools

In the Greater Manchester borough of Tameside, the vast majority of state schools are full for September 2024 - Leon Neal/Getty Images Europe

Children in Angela Rayner’s constituency face being pushed into “inadequate” state schools because of Labour’s tax raid on education, The Telegraph can reveal.

The party’s pledge to end the VAT exemption for independent schools – which could add 20pc to fees – has prompted fears of a mass exodus from the private sector, and a scramble over state school places.

In the Greater Manchester borough of Tameside, which includes the Labour deputy’s Ashton-under-Lyne constituency, the vast majority of state schools are full for September 2024.

There are only five schools with capacity to take on more Year 7 pupils in the borough, with a combined total of 101 places, according to data from a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.

Of these, only one place is at a school rated “good” by Ofsted. The remaining 100 are at schools rated either “inadequate” or “requires improvement” – the two lowest ratings.

Of the 16 state secondary schools in the Tameside borough, there are just 35 places (7pc) in schools rated “good”, while 263 places (52pc) are at schools requiring improvement.

The remaining 204 places (41pc) are at a school rated “inadequate”.

Private school fees rose by an average of 8pc for the 2023-24 academic year, while the inflation rate for the 12 months up to last September was 6pc.

Last month, the Telegraph revealed that many parents forced to pull their children out of private schools in the face of Labour’s VAT raid face a black hole of “outstanding” state schools in their local area.

Cambridgeshire has warned it has “no available spaces in secondary schools in the Fenland area”, and in Oxfordshire there were said to be several areas that have “very few or no” places.

Sir Keir Starmer has promised to spend the £1.7bn he claims the policy will raise on recruiting 6,500 new state school teachers.

However, the IFS estimates that 7pc of private school pupils – around 40,000 – could be forced to pull out if Labour follows through with its promise to strip private schools of their charitable status.

The Independent Schools Council, which represents the private education sector, has claimed that the true number could be up to 100,000, as parents struggle to afford the fee increase.

A Labour spokesman said: “The next Labour government will break down the barriers to opportunity by investing in all of our state schools and recruiting over 6,500 new teachers through ending the tax breaks for private schools.”

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