to be concerned that British fee paying schools are now 'little more than finishing schools for the children of oligarchs'?

[wildswans]

This is the view of the head of King's College School, Wimbledon, according to the Sunday Times. My IT skills aren't up to linking, but the gist of the article is that fees have quadrupled in 20 years, so that ordinary 'middle class' families such as nurses, teachers and lawyers, can no longer afford to send their children there.

On the one hand, all the investment must be good for the economy, and market forces must prevail. It seems that a lot of schools are run like businesses - this is not a criticism, by the way - so it's supply and demand, inevitably, and the rich global economies such as Russia and China, can afford to buy up big name public schools.

However, AIBU to have a sneaking sentimentality for the days of 'Goodbye Mr Chips'? It's as though the slice of quintessential Englishness (sorry Britishness) is now just used as a marketing tool to flog off something that doesn't really exist anymore.

No, not really, but I am guessing that teachers earn upwards of £40k and nurses less than that.

I've been teaching for 18 years and am on the upper pay scale. I earn £36k. Very very few other teachers in my school earn anywhere near this!

KCS Wimbledon's basic fees currently £19,455pa

Hula are you seriously suggesting those fees are accessible for all.My dh is on a higher tax rate and we couldn't.

One set of fees alone is more than my entire wages a month.

I think some people seriously have no idea what raising kids and paying a hefty mortgage whilst not being loaded is like.

They see figures and think I spend that on holidays ergo anybody could afford private.

It just isn't the case.

Name changed for this to avoid outing myself.
I was rather surprised to see such a generalisation from the Head of KCS. There is certainly a growing number of foreign boarders at many UK boarding schools. But if my DCs school is anything to go by, they are drawn from a range of nationalities: Russian, Chinese, Thai, Nigerian, Korean, European. It's just part of the wider phenomenon of globalisation. Some of the Russian children come from oligarch families, but some are also from the growing business community where an English language education is valued as a way into a European/US university. Some of the Chinese children come from relatively poor backgrounds where several generations of a family will club together to give a clever child (usually a boy) what they see as a chance in life. They join an equally wide range of British children: hugely wealthy; expats with fees covered by the firm; families who choose to spend money on education rather than housing/holidays/cars and children from poor homes on large bursaries. While I rather enjoy watching Goodbye Mr Chips, I cannot help but feel that like the Empire, it belongs firmly in the past.

LePetitMarseillais Of course I'm not!

However, I was responding to other comments on the thread: not all independent schools cost £30k a year and actually some are less than half of this. Also, that in some areas it is possible for the professions the OP mentions, namely teachers and solicitors, to send their children to independent schools, especially if they only have one child. I know this is possible as that is my experience of people I know.

Also, please do not assume I don't know what life on a lower income is like.

My friend's son is at Harrow. Last term's fees were 12k. That's for a term!
faints

Honest to god story. One of my friends sends both her DD's to private school. Fully funded on her income as a rather successful stripper.

Believe me I think the other parents would rather a Russian oligarch

It's not really something that would concern me very much. I don't think it worries me that middle earners are now too poor to send their children to private school.

I wouldn't want to pay upwards of £25k a year to a school where my son or daughter feels like a cultural minority in their own country even if we had the money. We can do that perfectly well for much less and often far better long-term results within in the state system. The cultural heritage that the schools try to inculcate is simply sneered at by the families of many of the children. They just want the posh accent and the prestige that goes along with the names of the institutions. They're welcome to it.

As wordfactory alludes to the fact, fee-paying schools are actually taking more pupils than ever.
No, ordinary mc families that traditionally sent their children private can no longer afford to do so, there are plenty of others (through a variety of funding strategies) that can.
In our area, it tends to be families of British Asians, and Asians that send their children to fee-paying schools, usually with multiple generations contributing to the fees (grandparents, uncles, etc).

I don't think
It really matters TBH

The higher the fees the smaller the group that can afford them, the more competition for places at state schools.

Hula it may be just about possible on a teacher's salary if said teacher has 1 child is mortgage free or paying a peanuts mortgage/rent- and even then it would be beyond difficult and I suspect debt would be involved.

KCS fees for yrs 3,4 & 5 = £15,5k pa (exclusive of extras I would imagine)

DS's fees for the year are the same (home counties).

DH's DF put 4 kids through private in the 60s/70s/80s. Worked in retail. You couldn't do that now. Everything has moved out of proportion to earnings.

Very silly and inaccurate over exaggeration.

London day schools are actually very reasonably priced compared with other big name schools. Think around £12000 pa instead of £30000.

I work in a private prep that feeds to around 20 big name public schools. About 85% of our children are British and about 95% live in the UK. Most of the Prep schools in our area have a similar demographic. Between them Prep schools must fill most of the Public school intakes. Public schools are certainly not filled with international students.

Plenty of our parents have traditionally middle class professions - teachers, doctors, dentists, accountants etc.

LePetitMarseillais

I can only talk from own experiences at school where my own child goes and of teachers I have known (was a teacher for several years and still work in schools) who have a child at independent school.

May be the Oligarchs are only sending their children to schools in and around London! I've seen none in the Midlands. I know a lot of people in public sector professions, and the only one's I've come across sending their children to fee paying schools are those with one child and/or richer parents to subsidise — most just manage to pay the mortgage and other 'normal' expenses. Fee paying schools cost more than the average mortgage payment, which for most people, is their biggest expense.

Public schools have always been for a 'select' few and in my view, Oligarchs fit within that group. In the 80s, I remember seeing what were once 'working class' families sending their children to private schools with their new found wealth and some private schools have high proportions of children from ethnic minorities, and have done for some time — I wonder if OP thinks that's a loss of 'Britishness' too? Romanticising privilege sounds a bit rose-tinted.