And with those who own properties and are due to remortgage at significantly higher rates, this will add more pressure.
While the exact proportion of parents who are likely to pull their children out of private school is unclear, it has also been the subject of some dispute.
A report last July from the Institute of Fiscal Studies said using best judgment it would be reasonable to assume the VAT rate would lead to a 3-7 per cent reduction in private school attendance.
The most recent figure bandied around by some news organisations a few weeks ago was that as many as 42 per cent of pupils would be forced to leave private schools.
But this figure was heavily disputed by research firm Baines Cutler, the company attributed as being the source of the data, which has conducted private school financial benchmarking surveys for 28 years.
In 2018 Baines Cutler was commissioned by the ISC to prepare a report looking at the potential impact of VAT on the sector.
The report was drawn from surveys of tens of thousands of parents in around 150 schools. Baines Cutler said it took great care to ensure the schools it used for detailed analysis were representative of the sector as a whole.
That report concluded that 10.7 per cent of pupils were likely to be withdrawn by the end of the first year of VAT being introduced, with a further 6.4 per cent drop off over the subsequent four years.
Since the pandemic, Baines Cutler has been commissioned by more than 80 independent schools to conduct further parental surveys, for use by their senior management and governors to model and understand the potential impact of VAT on parents and schools.
In May 2024, Baines Cutler published some consolidated findings from these surveys (based on returns covering 35,000 pupils) to provide information to the sector to manage the threat.
However, it said various media organisations misrepresented its work as indicating national drop-off rates, equivalent to its 2018 research, leading to some alarmist headlines – most notably the 42 per cent figure.
Baines Cutler added: “Our research did not indicate this, and we distance ourselves fully from that statistic, which is likely to be wholly overstated.
“However, since our recent surveys were never conducted to be used to estimate national drop-offs, we decline to speculate as to what drop-offs would now actually be, beyond what we said in 2018.
"While time has moved on since [2018], not least with Covid and the cost-of-living crisis, we stand fully behind [the 2018] research and its conclusions, which remain the only report on this subject based on real schools, parents and their finances."
Parents thinking of paying fees in advance to avoid paying the 20 per cent VAT bill face further uncertainty as many bursaries have said that if it becomes legislation, depending on when it comes into force, parents may still have to stump up the additional amount.
