Queen Ethelburga's Harrogate anyone?

[TessTing]

We just had another prospectus brought home from DD's state primary for QE. The idea is quite appealing but not within our budget. It seems very expensive but mentions possibility of discounts through various bursary's and scholarships. Does anyone have any experience of this? Is the school to be recommended? (middle and high school age)

aga sums up the anality of it

Other schools have far, far more vitriol thrown at them than QE - those nice Westminster boys that posted a while back for example.
That school clearly saw that threatening Defamation Act proceedings against posters would not be in their best interests.

My original comment - which is still there - merely implied that in my opinion the school had an over-active legal department.
Subsequent events reinforced that opinion.

If QE did not blanket post lots of random people with a prospectus that still contains spelling errors which were joked about in MN threads years ago, threads mentioning their name would get less attention.

DD loved their ads in the Pony magazine - spelling mistakes there too ....

Re: 2. QE is owned by a Trust; not a private family.

Queen Ethelburga's College Limited (which operates QE College, similar arrangements exist for the Faculty, Kings Magna and the Chapter House) is a profit-making company (in the year ending August 2012 it made a profit before tax of £741,279); it is owned by another company Buckedge Limited which in turn is owned by Care and Recreation Holdings Limited; all these companies are registered in England and Wales. Care and Recreation Holdings Limited also has interests in property, insurance and philatelic sales.

Care and Recreation Holdings Limited is owned by a company Foxlow Limited registered in the British Virgin Islands. It is possible that this company is in turn owned by a person or persons which in the laws of that territory are considered a Trust; it is equally possible that the beneficiaries of that trust are members of the Martin family.

It is in my opinion misleading to summarise these arrangements as "QE is owned by a trust". Is any representative of the school, or of the family, prepared to make a statement about the true ownership of the schools, and what total benefit the Martin family ultimately derives from the schools by whatever means (including payments for service or services including for example insurance)?

the school is advertising for a number of teachers on TES at the moment. i requested a visit to get a feel of the place prior to applying. this has been denied so today methought i'd have a go at googling instead + stumbled upon this thread. thank you to all contributors: the emphasis on fact, the helpful links, + the myriad deletions, have enabled me to form an opinion.

A complex structure. All the private schools ours have gone to have been owned by City livery companies like Haberdashers and they really are normal and very very old charities.

There are a number of prep schools that are run for profit and are open and honest about the fact - take a look at Downsend's web site for instance, there on the bottom of the page "Downsend School is part of the Cognita Schools Group". This is of course a requirement of the e-commerce regulations although it doesn't seem to bother QE.

The only other senior schools run for profit I know of are the crammers, and again they are quite up front about who they are and what they uniquely do.

my crammer charged VAT !

Nigella, terribly sorry dear.
However I never recommend wiki as a source for anything

"my crammer charged VAT !"

You're showing your age - the Education Act 1994 changed the definition of a school (which earns a business VAT exemption) to include full-time education commenced before the 19th birthday (previously it was school leaving age).

Nigella, terribly sorry dear.
However I never recommend wiki as a source for anything
well judging by your misuse of English cliches, I thought it was about your level sweetie....

reddidi
I did O Levels .... I'm ancient
but then at least my Crammer were honest about the balance between business and education

A Question that has been bugging me ....

Why has the DFE allowed QE to artificially split their school so that the bright kids show as one set of results

if state comps were allowed to designate their two top sets as a separate 'institution' the league tables across the whole country would look rather different.

Why is QE allowed to do what no other school has been allowed to?

Because they have actually split the schools into separate legal entities - QUEEN ETHELBURGA'S COLLEGE LIMITED Company No. 02573843 and FACULTY OF QUEEN ETHELBURGA'S LIMITED Company No. 03252470.

Without changing the legislation to allow DfE to apply some kind of substance over form discretion to school registrations they have no choice but to register them separately.

Oh and even then the schools have separate heads, and at least some separate classrooms and teaching staff (lots of schools have some shared facilities) so there is even an argument to be made that the separation is substantial.

But they share a website, they share a prospectus, they share a campus, they even appear to share teachers
it is an entirely artificial split
the 6th form prospectus media.qe.org/pdf/sixth-form-prospectus.pdf treats all of the year 12 and 13 as one group
in fact they share an A level options form ...
that does not sound like two schools to me

TalkinPeace I'm still not sure that even the 'bright school' results are that great, as if you strip out Maths, Russian and Chinese there isn't all that much left. (Well there might be other MFLs, but as they refuse to publish the stats, we can't tell.)

I didn't say it was a strong argument... it is moot anyway as the DfE has no discretion AFAIK - could always do a FoI request if you were on a mission...

You don't have to be in the tables anyway if you are private so you can join them on any basis you like. For example there are many schools with girls and boys schools- Haberdashers etc. They give results separately.

QE's results are nothing like as good as Leeds Grammar so no one is fooled anyway.

Laura No one in the UK.

Have you seen the Header ad. "Best Private School"

Wonder if they are paying?

This thread looks like a released "Top Secret" document from the American Government about the existence of U.F.OS

It's behind you Soul (or above you anyway)

"Redacted" is the word........

Laura
The various Askes schools are not in the same buildings and the same options form.

reddidi
I'm not aware of any other schools that run parallel schools of the same age group and both mixed sex on the same site
( allowing for a couple of secondaries that have PRU or SEN units in their grounds )
I'll save the FOI for if it comes to court

Soul2000
For the record, MNHQ have "redacted" a couple of my crosser posts for the purposes of keeping the thread in place. I support them completely in that approach.

The Harrow School Foundation.

If anyone is really worried about all this just put a complaint in to the ASA and local trading standards.