To not want my personal financial affairs to be pored over by randoms?

[MxGrinch]

i am looking into getting DC into a private school as he is way too clever for his state school.

I knew of one in the next county and discovered they had academic scholarships for Yr9 entry. Had to register with them (non returnable £100 fee! we are a low income family) and arrange for DC to take the entrance test and scholarship assessments which he’ll be doing next month.

I’m obviously nowhere near as clever as DS as I thought a scholarship meant the fees would be paid! It seems they are only 10-20% paid so we will need to apply for a bursary.

I was sent the application form last week and need to return it tomorrow.

They want so much personal information such as 3 months bank statements, full income and expenditures, children’s income and expenditure. debts, car reg and value etc.it’s really flipping complicated and will take ages.

I know they need to assess whether we can afford the fees but seeing as there is no guarantee DC will even pass the entrance test, this is not information I want to share at this point as it may not go any further.

Theg have said if we don’t return it by tomorrow DC may not get a bursary at all.

AIBU to not want to give loads of private info until DS is actually offered a place?

The idea that " bright children thrive wherever" is a) false b) responsible for an awful lot of suffering. But hey, they're clever kids and everyone hates them, so who cares, right? 🙄

Bear in mind if successful a bursary may not help towards very expensive uniform requirements and as they progress into senior years , eye watering school trips that all of their friends go on and are deemed beneficial .

I guess I need to get onto the private schools I’ve worked for to ask for the extra pay they should have given me then. In both I warned less than for the equivalent job in state. Private schools can attract teachers due to the smaller classes which result in reduced workload. (And the freedom from the political interference in state).

Show me a private school with a lesser workload! I've spent 23 years in the independent system and despite the smaller classes, never worked less than a 70 hour week. That's because the long teaching day (8.30-6 pm, generally) is just the start. There's compulsory evening duties until 10 pm, Saturday morning classes, followed by games until at least 4 pm, Sunday Chapel...Ok, an exeat every so often, but I always used to say, at my first school, that we worked a 6-week week...6 weeks of 61/2 day weeks, then an exeat. Not for the fainthearted.

Depends entirely on the private school. It obviously makes a huge difference whether it's boarding or day! I make significantly more money in the private sector than I would working in a state school (and have longer holidays too) - I'll never go back. I don't work anything like 70 hours a week... not even remotely close.

Yes, academic scholarships at private schools are 10% if you're lucky. To be honest, in the superselective ones (which you're presumably looking at since you say that your child is "too clever for state school" - not sure what that's supposed to mean) every single successful applicant will be at the very top, so why would yours get a full scholarship above anyone else?
Mine did attend one of these superselectives and it was extremely good for him to be near the top but not at the very top (which he was at his primary, which was considered very academic). There were always others who were even brighter, and that was very healthy. He went on to get an academic scholarship at university (now that one DOES pay out a significant amount).
And the ones who had gained scholarships weren't always the ones who ended up in the top sets (much to their parents' annoyance) - and shock, horror, they didn't all get offers to Oxbridge either, when others did.
Seriously, anyone who gets into one of the superselectives could qualify for a scholarship depending on the day - hence why they mean very little beyond a token monetary amount.
Yes, if you can prove financial hardship you MAY qualify for a bursary. Assuming your child aces the entrance exams. But you will have to get your head around sharing your financial information to be in the running.

This is the regular tripe trotted out by the anti-private school mob. Not all kids in private schools are loaded, a lot use the second hand uniform stores in the schools, and trips are very much not compulsory. Loads of kids don’t go on the trips. Also, bursaries can include uniforms. You don’t have to spend huge additional sums, it’s a myth perpetuated on here by the clueless.

I agree with you OP, private schools have to comply with data protection laws and arguably this is 'excessive' processing if the OP's child hasn't even passed the entrance exam. You can't process personal data just because it 'might' be needed in the future!

We are paying our debts off with a debt management plan. Our annual financial reassessment call was at 9.45am this morning. They require the same info as what you have been asked for. I got a pen and piece of paper, logged into our online banking and wrote down our income and outgoings from there. I started at 9.10am and was done by 9.30am and had rime to make a cuppa before the call.

You know your income and outgoings, you can check your outgoings through bank statements or even paper bills if you recieve them, it doesn't take long at all. Even when we first set up the plan and had to send the actual evidence of bills and payslips, it only took a few hours to collate, photograph and email it all in.

If you want tens of thousands of pounds of free school fees paid then get it done. Or don't and have your son miss out. The financial side has to be sorted before a place is offered, or it may be too late for another family to take that place after the exam results are in.

You are being massively unreasonable.

But what you are describing is proportionate to the service you are using. The OP's situation would not be considered 'fair' it would be considered 'excessive' under data protection laws. There are principles in the law that 'all' organisations in the UK have to follow, it is irrelevant whether the private school thinks they 'should' be allowed this information, the law if applied correctly to this scenario would highlight they are 'not' entitled to it at this stage.

@MxGrinch please let us know if your gifted child passes the test 😂😂😂😂

Some people are missing a key part of the jigsaw here, which is that quite a few schools offer their bursaries before the entrance tests. It sounds like the OP's school might be one of these. Of course the bursary is then dependent on the child getting in, but the bursary amount is not conditional upon the entry tests (so you don't need to be extra clever to get a generous bursary). In fact the richest schools are increasingly seeking to be 'means-blind' - ie they want to offer their places irrespective of how much parents can pay. (I don't think any have fully achieved this yet.)

In that context, it's perfectly proportionate to ask for this level of detail now, because the school can't make that assessment without it.

Why is pointing out that private school uniform is (generally) more expensive than state school uniform (some state school uniform is eye watering as well) and that private schools tend to have more expensive trips (a reason some people like them!) anti-private school? It's simply advising the OP to check what the fees/bursary include. Most of the people posting this advice actually have children in private schools or know people who do. (And the downside of second hand uniform shops is that they may not have anything in your child's size and then you are forced to buy full price.

SIL (private school children) and myself (state school children) ended up in a conversation about uniform costs once. Even with her using the 2nd hand shop as much as she could, her uniform cost were significantly (think double or more) than mine.

I think it's just that there's a lot of variation between schools. Some have great second hand shops (that not just the poorer families use). Some bursaries include uniform. Some have lots of clubs etc as extras, others have them all included. Yes, there are expensive trips, but then our local state secondaries also have geography trips to Iceland, cricket tours to Barbados etc. Perhaps fewer kids go on them, but there are often still plenty who don't go on many trips at private schools. By all means the OP should do her homework, on the particular school, but it's certainly not a given that the extras make private school unaffordable, as some posters suggest.

Thanks Lemonella .
Both my children are in a private school and have been for the last 10 /8 years . I am speaking from personal experience . Next year one child is going to Indonesia at £4.5 k and same child has now been asked to go to America in the same year .
The uniform is more expensive in my experience , that’s all I was sharing .

The uniform and trips argument is repetitively irrelevant. As I said up thread when we had both children at independents the total fees were £37k from net (taxed) income in 2013. The facts that the initial uniform outlay was £500 and the sports tours were £2,500 were neither here nor there. A drop in the ocean compared to the overall outlay.

If people can't afford the uniform and the odd trip, they can't afford the fees. Those things need to be regarded as part of the overall outlay. The perce take annual increases were often far higher than a new blazer or a trip to Bologna.

Sorry but I am absolutely calling bullshit on this one.

Your child won't even have been taught the syllabus yet for GCSE material. It starts at year 9 or year 10 usually. There's no way he can already be getting top marks in material he has not yet been taught, and there is no way even the brightest year 8 kid in the country is going to have already taught themselves trigonometry, quadratic equations, atomic structure, bonding, organic chemistry etc (to pick just a few areas at random) and to have self taught this to such an extent that they are already getting 9s....the highest mark available for even the brightest year 11 students in the country.

And frankly, if your year 8 son is already self teaching to that level, then they are such a child prodigy that a) you don't need to worry which school they go to and b) you don't need to worry about whether they will pass the entry exams for the private school and thus the entire concept of this thread (why fill in long forms full of personal information if there is a risk he won't get in anyway?!) is otiose.

No way is thus correct. OP is either a fantasist or a journalist fishing for a Mumsnet troll story.

I agree that the GCSE curriculum doesn't start until Year 10 (possibly Year 9) and it's very specific. So even if a very gifted child has niche interests, they still would still need to cover the curriculum.

OP, the school probably want to be sure about whether you qualify for a part / full bursary before they make any decisions. This is because, in borderline cases, they may still offer a fee-paying place. Or perhaps they are weighing up whether to offer 10% or 100% of the fees? This is very common.

Also, a word of caution regarding your expectations of an independent school. Two of mine are in some of the most selective independents in the U.K. - but they are still doing the same GCSEs to everyone else! Certainly nobody is asking to do GCSEs in Year 8. No school is going to let him jump the curriculum.

Also, if it's a very selective independent, it's probably best to not go in talking about Oxbridge in Year 8. Be very careful about being 'that parent' with 'that child' going in. Some of the "prodigy types" (or parent-declared prodigy-types) in Year 7 / 8 do not continue on this trajectory, while others come into their own higher up the school. It may even be that the best degree course for him is not offered at Cambridge. Nothing wrong with aspirations and good luck to him because he sounds like a bright boy. But just encourage him not to be too fixated. Good luck to him in the entrance exams.

:biscuit:

Sorry but I am absolutely calling bullshit on this one. Your child won't even have been taught the syllabus yet…

You sound like the school headmaster who insisted that my gifted nephew (age 4) wasn't reading even after he demonstrated that skill to the headmaster using a book chosen at random from the school library. "He can't possibly be reading. He's not old enough!". My brother said, "Well if that's not reading what the hell do do you want to call what he's doing?" Nephew went to a different school and graduated from university last year, aged 20.

From Oxford, with a first in Physics and Philosophy of course?

It’d be horribly disappointing if your nephew who you feel is so gifted ended up doing Economics at Bournemouth.

Nothing to add here, but that was my course, so I'm rather pleased to see it being held up as a pinnacle of academic achievement! Didn't get a First, though.

I was on a 100% scholarship to an independent school. First from either side of my family to go to either private school or university. I've picked up a few more degrees since then. Genuinely no idea how my life would have turned out at the local state school; probably just as well?

DH attended a state comp in an ex-pit village, and he too did P&P, at Oxford, which is why I picked it.

He went on to theoretical and then particle physics, helped find the Higgs and then became a trader in the city.

So, possibly you’d have done the same at the state school. Hard to say of course.

Small world (and tiny course; I probably had the same lecturers as your DH unless we're very different ages). Yes, I don't think my drive to study that subject came from my school? But it might have done. Now I'm a teacher; success or failure? But at least I do get to teach both subjects.

If you take pleasure from it, then you are definitely a success. Even if you don’t you’ll have made one hell of a difference to many lives.

It’s a shame that so few with “elite” degrees nowadays make their way into teaching.