UK School Guide
What Happened to Hong Kong and Thai Families After the UK Added VAT: Five Reports
Since 1 January 2025, 20% VAT has applied to UK private school fees. Here is what five published reports say, retold briefly, so you can see the picture before talking to schools.
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Retold from published reports. These are not Scholar Gateway families.
Five reports
Each retelling below is our summary. Open the link to read the original.
1. Hong Kong numbers fall
South China Morning Post (William Yiu), 11 July 2026
The SCMP reports that Hong Kong enrolment at UK private schools has dropped by 17% since 20% VAT was added to tuition and boarding fees in January 2025, and that new Hong Kong admissions are down 26%. It describes this as a five-year low. A UK student-recruitment consultant told the paper that numbers have returned to the level before Hong Kong's emigration wave, and that parents are choosing more carefully as costs rise. The paper also cites the ISC January census, in which overseas pupils of all nationalities fell from 61,750 to 57,214, or 7%.
What a family can take from it: the fall is described as a change in how carefully parents choose, so comparing several schools on total cost is a normal step.
Read: South China Morning Post (William Yiu) →
2. The whole sector shrinks
The National, 23 June 2026
Using the same ISC census, The National looks at all pupils, not only overseas ones. Total enrolment at ISC schools fell 3.5% to 526,611, and boarding fell 8.2% to 57,836, which is 11% of pupils. Pupils from outside the UK whose parents live overseas came to 22,941, down 4.7%. The article adds that the ISC says tighter study-visa rules may also be a factor and that it cannot pin the changes on one cause.
What a family can take from it: falling numbers have more than one possible cause, so ask a school directly about its own place numbers and fee changes.
Read: The National →
3. Who is leaving, by country
ICEF Monitor, 9 July 2026
ICEF Monitor reads the same census by country. For pupils with no parent living in the UK, it gives 5,580 from mainland China, down 11% and the first fall in two years, and 3,620 from Hong Kong, with a decline it calls steeper than China's but does not quantify. It lists VAT and harder visas as probable contributors, in the ISC's own cautious wording. It gives no separate figure for Thailand. Its total for non-British pupils is described as down 8%, while the SCMP rounds the same fall to 7%, so counts differ by how each outlet groups pupils.
What a family can take from it: published totals use different groupings, so check which group a figure covers before comparing it with your own situation.
Read: ICEF Monitor →
4. What agents predicted in 2024
The PIE News (Simone Rensch), 24 September 2024 (a forecast)
Before the VAT took effect, the British Boarding Schools' Network surveyed its recruitment agents; 180 answered. They expected international recruitment into boarding to fall by up to 28% in September 2025, with a 52% fall projected for Thailand and 38% for Hong Kong. They also expected fees to rise by 8 to 15%, though schools would differ. The article notes that these were opinions from a survey, not enrolment data. The 2026 reports above show a smaller drop for Hong Kong overall than the agents projected for new recruitment, but they measure different things.
What a family can take from it: a forecast is a prediction, not an outcome, so weigh it below what schools and census data show now.
Read: The PIE News (Simone Rensch) →
5. Two Thai brothers at LVS Ascot
isbi School News (school-promoted profile), 16 June 2023
This is a school-promoted profile, written before the VAT change, not an independent report. It follows two Thai brothers, Jaturapat and Pattarapon, who joined LVS Ascot five years earlier after attending a school in Pattaya. Their parents wanted them to make friends from many backgrounds and valued the support for overseas pupils. The profile says they found English culture hard at first, that boarding staff and their Guardian helped them settle, and that they now feel more independent. It does not give their current year groups, results or any fee information.
What a family can take from it: it shows what support such as a Guardian can mean in a child's first years, but it says nothing about cost.
Read: isbi School News (school-promoted profile) →
How to read these reports
News and census data describe pupils who were already in school, not your child. The ISC census is a January snapshot from member schools, and the ISC itself says it cannot attribute changes to specific causes. Forecasts are not outcomes. Outlets also count pupils in different groups, so figures can differ slightly.
Read on
UK private school VAT: what the official pages say →
See UK boarding school fees and entry routes →
Not tax or legal advice. This page summarises published reports and may be out of date; check the sources and the school before you decide.
Sources (read on 17 October 2026)