The families leaving British schools over VAT are rarely your market. The ones deciding at 16 are.

In January 2025, a family in Hong Kong opened the spring-term invoice from their son’s boarding school in the south of England and found VAT on it for the first time: 20% on tuition and on boarding. Since then, many people in Swiss admissions offices have asked themselves the same question. Will families like this one come to us now?

I do not think most of them will, and I think chasing them is the wrong strategy. The figures explain why, and they also point to the families who are worth the effort.

What happened in Britain.

From 1 January 2025, education and boarding at UK private schools have been subject to VAT at the standard rate of 20%. Many schools tried to soften the blow: 584 of those surveyed by the Independent Schools Council, two thirds, cut their underlying day fees in January 2025, by 5% on average. Even so, the ISC census counted 545,640 pupils in January 2025, nearly 11,000 fewer than a year earlier, and another 3.5% fewer in January 2026. Boarders fell 4.0% in 2025, to 63,035.

The international boarders, pupils whose parents live abroad, fell 2.6% in 2025 and then 11% in 2026, to 22,940. Mainland China and Hong Kong remain the largest sources. The ISC is careful about causes: VAT and greater difficulty in obtaining student visas are likely to have contributed, but it says the changes cannot be attributed to specific causes.

Why that exodus will not come to Switzerland on its own.

The average ISC boarding fee in 2025 was £14,365 a term before VAT, about £43,000 a year, or about £51,700 with VAT. One of the best-known boarding schools on Lake Geneva publishes a fee of CHF 164,400 for 2027-28, before mandatory extras. A family that left over a rise of around a fifth is not, as a rule, a family that will now move into a different price category. I have not found any data showing that these families are moving to Swiss schools, and I would not build a recruitment plan on the hope that they will.

A school that sells itself as the escape from VAT is selling its price, not its value.

The families who are deciding anyway.

There is a different group, and the British census describes it well. In 2025, 54% of international pupils whose parents live overseas were in Years 12 and 13, the last two years before university, and 93% of them boarded. Sixteen is the age when families compare countries and curricula anyway: A levels or the IB, England or Switzerland, two years of school or a preparation for a university abroad. That moment existed before VAT. VAT simply made more families look again.

European families are the second group. In January 2026, around 1,960 German pupils and 1,110 Spanish pupils whose parents live abroad attended ISC schools, against 2,074 and 1,218 a year earlier. For these families, England now means 20% VAT and a student visa process that the ISC itself describes as increasingly difficult. Their conversation with a Swiss school is not about saving money. It is about what their child gets for the money they were already prepared to spend.

The detail British families rarely know.

Since 1 January 2021, the Swiss migration authorities have treated UK nationals as third-country nationals. For a boarding school, that means a British child goes through the same student permit process as a pupil from Hong Kong or Dubai. Location matters too. Under a directive of the Zurich migration office, pupils from outside the EU and EFTA who are under 18 are, as a rule, not admitted for education stays in that canton, with exceptions for exchange pupils and proven exceptional talents. A school website that answers this before the family asks earns trust early.

My position.

Swiss schools should not chase the family that left England over VAT. They should own the moment of reconsideration: the year before sixth form, the summer before the IB, the parent in Madrid or Munich comparing three countries on a Sunday evening. That parent searches in English, German or Spanish, compares totals rather than headline fees, and leaves any site that hides the full cost behind a request form. The school that answers the real question first, in the family’s language, is the one the family visits.

What this means for the website.

• Pages built around decisions. “England or Switzerland at 16”, “The IB in Switzerland after GCSEs”, written for the parent who is comparing, dated and sourced.
• The full annual cost. Tuition, boarding and mandatory extras in one figure, in the family’s currency and language. Families who pay this much compare totals.
• Permits by nationality. EU and EFTA, United Kingdom, other countries, with the canton named and a contact for questions.
• The summer programme as a first step. In a small peer-reviewed study of wealthy Chinese families, five of the seven mothers interviewed had sent their child to a Swiss summer camp before full enrolment. The sample is tiny, but the pattern is worth designing for.
• An enquiry form that asks the right things. Current school system, year group and nationality, so admissions can answer the real question in the first reply.

None of this needs a bigger advertising budget. It needs content that meets families at the moment they are already deciding, and a website that respects how carefully they compare.

Imagine a mother in London with a fifteen-year-old son and a new spreadsheet since January 2025. She is not thinking about Switzerland. She is thinking about the next two years. What would she need to read, and where, for your school to enter the conversation before the GCSEs?

And if she has already found you, what does your website tell her that a brochure does not? In that gap lies the difference between a family that compares and a family that comes.

If you would like me to review your website and your admissions process with these families in mind, start with the Strategic Diagnostic.