has anyone turned down a massive discount >=50% to private school?? why?

[tidybooks]

We have been offerred half price prep school for our sons, (discount is related to my FIL's profession).

Obviously we would still have to pay quite a lot but it is much more affordable with the discount and we could just able manage it.

Wouldn't have considered private before secondary otherwise.

Not sure what to do, feel that perhaps it is too good to turn down, but then it's still a lot of money.

I am going to bed now
Good night scottishmummy
You dont think of me,so no worries. You will start me with a clean slate tomorrow!

tidy books was asking about people in this category - I am - turned down the huge discount for a better private school with less discount for the relevant scholarship. Like most people you decide what is best for your child. There is certainly more competition at 11+ than earlier in the best private schools so it pays to try to get them in younger if you can afford it.

So did your mum work outside the home then Xenia? Because you seem determined that like follows like, so I'm just wondering here and you didn't reply.

Based on another thread she wrote, I think her mum badly wanted to, but her dad or maybe society wouldnt allow it.

Thanks amillion. Plenty of women worked in the period when Xenia was growing up, so I imagine that if her mother didn't work when she wanted to it was family pressure preventing her, not society's. Somewhat unenlightened but still. Perhaps her own mother's frustration is what possesses Xenia to prescribe hers as the one and only path to salvation.

My own mother would have been the same sort of age I should think and she was a graduate who returned to work, precisely to establish some independence.

The idea that intelligent educated daughters blindly follow their mother's path is a nonsense; I had a mind and life of my own and each of my DDs does too.

I must admit that over the weekend DH accused me (laughingly) of mind controlling the children (not just the girls) to be exactly like me in every way. In fact I have not used mind control at all. We are all just very very alike. Poor them.

In terms of parents trying to influence their kids - I do have a bit of a problem with the (I feel) wrong emphasis that is put on one 'area' of learning at one of the kids' schools (I won't say which one)- science is pushed at the expense of everything else, especially the arts (to the extent that when doing GCSE selection the kids were advised not to go for two or more arty subjects (at this school the arty choice was limited to drama, music and art anyway) while at the same time forcing everyone to do 3 sciences whether they want to be a doctor or a scientist or not. It is possible that my disquiet influences the kids but it's also possible my disquiet was prompted by the kids own devices and desires.

I don't actually think there is anything inherently wrong with parents influencing kids, either consciously or unconsciously, but I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with kids finding their own path either, so long as it isn't the path of the supervillain or the lunatic.

Actually, Mordion, "supervillain" is a really good career path - excitement, glamour, untold riches, plenty of foreign travel; also on retirement consultancy work on Bond/Bourne etc films, mixing with slebs etc.

Problem is, as I've had to explain to both DC (definitely potential as SVs), its a bit like football: brilliant if you make it all the way to Man U or Barcelona, but who wants to end up as centre back for Port Vale? Or boss of the second hardest mob in Ipswich?

If they do end up as lunatics, then of course they are following me... [hgrin]