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?

FarFromTheStart · Today 18:45
PhotoDad · Today 18:32
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.
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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.

How I agree with you! One superb teacher can make such a difference to so many, and it has a cascade effect through the generations. I was fortunate to have the Queen of Teachers back in the 60s - a woman from a pit village who achieved a place in a top university in the 40s. Her erudition, her encyclopaedic knowledge of Shakespeare, her ability to identify "something" in every child inspired so many - in her wake, she has left cabinet ministers, barristers, surgeons, educated mothers, but most of all, teachers who took on her mantle - now into the 3rd generation. What a legacy to leave of one's life.

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

As a teacher with many years of experience in both elite private and inner-city state schools, the idea that a child can be too clever for a state school is the most unreasonable part of your post. Absolute snobbery.

Too clever for an Ofsted-graded ‘inadequate’ school which doesn’t stretch or challenge its pupils, sure. But state schools en masse? Wow. Do you actually mean that?

Compare and contrasts OP’s actual words ”his state school” with your straw man ”state schools en mass”.

Then, if you have decency, you could apologize to her.

I take it Lime Twists is not an English teacher! 😆

And yet it is OP who is being accused of snobbery on this thread!

Good luck to your son OP. Hope he gets in.

Anyone who needs to claim benefits has to do this - no one likes it - but you have to do it if you want to benefit.

Well no, not really, because a 4 year old very likely will have had access to normal, age appropriate books and thus may well have learned to read, whereas a year 8 pupil won't have had access to an entire GCSE syllabus-worth of material to teach themselves up to grade 9 standard already. The amount of material required for a 4 year old to learn to read vs a 12/13 year old to already be up to the highest grade ability of a GCSE syllabus he hasn't yet been taught isn't really comparable.

FYI for anyone genuinely in the position OP claims her son is in - very high ability state school pupil with Oxbridge ambitions - I would think twice about private school right now, especially super selective ones where ALL the pupils will get very strong GCSE results. They now use an assessment tool that adjusts for the school your child went to, in order to try to level the playing field for disadvantaged pupils. They won't just look at the fact your child has a mix of grades 7-9 at GCSE, they will look at what percentile they fall in for GCSE results for their school. Bad news if you are at a highly selective private or state school (Tiffin etc) where getting 8s and 9s across the board is par for the course, rather than exceptional!

Of course if you accept that Oxbridge isn't the be all and end all of exceptional university education in this country, ignore this completely and go wherever you think your kids will do best. Plenty of other excellent universities in this country....

If he is so very clever then maybe he can fill the forms in for the OP!

So many people fiddle applications for financial support, my brother got thousands of pounds of bonuses paid in cash so he paid ne school fees, school are registered as charities, rightly or wrongly, and have to account strictly for their funds.

@RoseAdagio In year 8, he probably knows how to use the internet pretty well.

I hope you find the right education for your son, OP!

I don't doubt that but there aren't enough hours in the day to teach himself the amount of stuff he would need to learn outside of school hours in order to be getting grade 9s without having covered any of the syllabus at school yet!