to think it was a mistake to give a damn about education?

[AbbyLubber]

Ok, I know some will really disagree about this, but I am fed up. Really furious. I earn a solid, not great wage; so too dh. We have two children. We've scrimped and struggled and sweated to pay for them to go to independent schools, because they are both bright and because here in Oxfordshire the local state schools in our area are dreadful, really dreadful. We're almost at the end of our rope financially. My son has a scholarship, but the schools say we earn too much to qualify for a bursary, though they also admit that we don't actually earn enough to pay the fees over the long term.

WTF? AIBU to think that if we don't earn enough to pay the fees then that should BE a benchmark for help? I get that it's political, that they want to keep their charitable status, but surely this is madness? Perhaps I should add that we don't have a fine art collection we can sell, or rich parents... as per the ludicrous inquiry form the school sent around.

Isn't ANYONE else cross that soon unemployed single mums and the rich will be the only ones able to send their dcs to a good school of their choice - unless of course you pay in the other way, by buying a 675k house in the tiny Cherwell catchment area? Not that I'm against unemployed single mums and their kids - the more the merrier - but I wonder now why I worked full-time when my dcs were small to earn a decent wage.

A child's entitlement to a decent education shouldn't depend on the parents ability to pay.

Every child should be entitled to a good and proper education (even, gasp, those who aren't seriously bright).

Parents' income shouldn't come into it at all.

You do actually have a point. I believe everyone is entitled to a decent state education.

However you are very unreasonable to mention that single mums are more likely to access a bursary than a couple. This is simply not true and very offensive to us single mums who are trying our best, just like you.

It seems you have applied for a bursary and been turned down. That is not the fault of a single mum who may be in receipt of one. She will still be expected to work full time before the school will consider any financial assistance. If she is not working full time then her award will be scaled down accordingly. I speak from the voice of experience.

Just to mention that a single mum is also less likely to have any other assets, such as equity in property, shares, savings etc to pay fees from, which the school will expect. There will also be only one wage in the household.

It is very hard to get a bursary these days. The cut off point is very low, which may seem unfair, but that is so the school can distribute limited assets to as many deserving cases as possible. It would be unfair for the school to be seen to spend the hard earned money of fee paying children on those deemed able to afford the fees themselves.

Finally an extremely gifted child is not always seen as a particular asset by a school. This is beacause they can be a pita. Schools are far more keen an bright and hard working children

why don't you just have a go at sending your kids to the local secondary and see how they do? if they have a poor Y7, you'll have every right to "scream at the house of Commons".

don't knock it till you've tried it!

Welcome to the real world - you thought you'd managed to do enough to not have to worry about it, but it seems your efforts were in vain.

It's not about compliance or aquiescence -it's about doing what you can where you can to improve the school you end up with, and about doing what you can where you can to give your child good learning experiences outside of school.

And I absolutely refuse to believe that that schools that 93% of the children in your area go to are uniformly dreadful.

Oh, sorry, Otter. Never answered your question. Flight to home ed, is what I meant. And think this was also implicit in some other posts.

And I can't believe I'm now being flamed by people who do live in Cherwell catchment area. How long ago did you buy your houses? Well done, and I'm not sorry or cranky - well, not very - it's just a really really divided town.

I don't think this is quite the equivalent of not being able to live in central London because you like it.

And I totally see that you can't have everything. I don't WANT to moan because you kinda see it as self-pitying and I'm not at all moaning - I'm CROSS. I am happy with all the below - they were CHOICES. We don't have holidays, more than one tv - ours is seriously old - or daily papers ever, magazines ever, meat more than twice a week, and then I don't eat it, and certainly no theatres, cinemas, concerts or the like. The diswasher has been busted for months. My car has a flattish bald tyre nthat needs daily pumping. I wihs I coudl seel it but there's no bus int eh village and it's four miles to the nearest bus stop. My bet is that most of us could come up with a list of stuff like this that we'd more or less said goodbye to to help our kids.

I wish I could cut back my hours, but it's in the nature of my job - it's part of a very long-hours culture. Not a posh one, though.

My prob is I'm tied to the Thames valley because of dh's job, so there aren't many cheapish places to move to...but thanks, bonsoir. And oddly, thanks to all of you. I'm learning. That's always good.

Private school acting unfairly shocker

The clue is in the term 'private'. They can do pretty much whatever they want; their motives are not exactly altruistic, you know...

They offer bursaries for single mum's where you are? Really? I may move there as I don't get any help with ds's school fees where we are.

smallwhitecat I agree that this is the OP's point, and that others seem to have missed it.

BUT I don't think it's necessairly absurd. It's not disimilar to the way DP and I earn too much for anything substantial in the form of Tax Credits and that this is why we cannot afford to have another child. had we bought a house years ago rather than more recently we'd have been able to get by. We've been unlucky with house prices and making the "wrong" life choices at the wrong time - I suspect the OP has been too. But it isn't really absurd.

re home ed- sadly I think you're right

I thought- before I actually did it- that HE would be full of lentil weavers, greens, lefties and other ne'er do wells. I find however that there are an awful lot of people who are doing it to get away from Them (ie local people- insert your particular stereotype here)

To be truthful, it sounds to me as if you are making too many sacrifices to keep your DCs at private school - that private school has become a priority out of all proportion to your household budget. Holidays, television, good food, newspapers etc are also an integral part of a child's education. Do you really want to teach your DCs how to be poor?

Expecting a private business to behave fairly is absurd, though...

Smallwhitecat - no, not really. It's just that it is clearly not a 'no deserving child will ever be excluded from this school because of inability to pay' policy so much as a 'we will distribute our bursary money where we think it will do the most good' policy.

Suppose OP's total income was 30k and she would need 40k to send her dc to the school. The school could still say, if it wanted, 'We will only give bursaries to people with less than 15k' without being illogical - they might just decide that on balance the value-added was likely to be higher for the child from the poorer family, on the grounds that the child with the parents on 30k was more likely to have educated parents, enough money to pay for out-of-school lessons to supplement the state school curriculum, etc.
Obviously that sucks if you are in that 15-39k bracket but it still makes sense from the perspective of trying to do most good with a given amount of money.

I think that point would be clearer if the OP hadn't decided to shoot herself in the foot!

If she had simply come on and said that part, without mentioning the idea that "unemployed single mums" were somehow being given a better chance than her to send their child to a good school of their choice then she might have got a little bit of sympathy, though probably still not that much.

It's quite hard to feel sympathy for someone who has had an easier time than many, but still feels the world should keep working to her advantage.

Private schools differ in their cut off incomes though. Ds's is 50K (I don't earn anywhere near this though and we were not offered any help despite him being very bright), others have a lower cut off point. Have you tried looking around?

somebody, I only meant that if you were a single mum your income was likely to be lower than if you are a couple and both working. Yes, most bursaries do go to those at the lowest end of the income scale - and I'm actulaly wondering if that is good enough if you/they really can't afford anything knt he wya of uniforms etc...

AmuminScotland, why isn't independent school the real world? I mean, I don't think you are livid because it's unrealistic or some sort of fantasy, but because you think it unjustly offers something different to those who can pay....and it sounds even less realistic to me to think your local school can be improved. How do you go about it? My bet is that there must be very ddifficult constraints - budgets, class sizes, the need to provide for all abilities.

And I also wonder about you, springheel.. why do you assume OFSTED and I are wrong? God, what if we are right? (BTW, my children are beyond year 7.)

And thanks, smallwhitecat, for being the only one to notice what I actually said.

I agree cory, I think around 90% of a child's education is the parent's influence at home.

Bonsoir I wholeheartedly agree.

Use the fees to fund better food, holidays, The Discovery channel (I am kind of joking with the last one).

There are more obvious education-oriented things you can do. Pay tutors is the obvious one but there are others: for example my friend's school funds short OU courses for some of the brightest sixthformers - adds a lot of weight to their UCAS applications apparently. These course cost about £150 each - perfectly affordable if you're used to paying school fees.

Also meant to add that in defence of the posters who are not smallwhitecat, it is fairly easy to read the OP as suggesting that those of us who don't pay for our DCs schooling care less. I read it that way a bit, too.

So all the schools in your area are OFSTED level 4s? All of them?

To be fair, otter, the title implies that.

I'm not livid about anything And I'm not saying that an independent school isn't the real world. I am saying that only being able to have what you can afford is how things work in the real world.