Eton, Winchester etc. planning for the future

[WelshParent]

Dear All,

I am new to MN and this is my first post. So please be gentle with me if I do something wrong. I don't have one specific question but a bunch of related questions which I hope I can get some answers to.

OK, so we live in South Wales and DS is in yr3 at the moment at a local indie in Cardiff. It is a very good school but it is a full 3-18 type and produces very good A level results. DS is a bright kid and does lots of extra curricular activities including piano, tennis, swimming and ofcourse football. Teacher thinks that he is very good and is working at a level higher than expected.

Like many other parents we aspire for DS to be able to move to somewhere really good like Eton or Winchester. I have spent months and months reading about the admission procedures of each of those schools and some others like Harrow, Radley, Abingdon etc.

My first question is that if DS takes the pretest at Eton or Harrow and is offered a conditional place when time comes, I imagine they will want him to take CE. Now being in a 3-18 school he will not have been expressly prepared for CE. We do not have any good Prep school in S Wales, so that is not an option for us. Where would that leave us? Both of us spend a lot of time to guide him with his academics and would not have a problem preparing him for CE purely from a syllabus perspective but we do not have CE preparation experience. Would some private tutoring be enough over the normal school work (which is at quite a good level). What about subjects like Latin which may not be part of DS's school curriculum. Is dreaming of KS or Election a dream without being in a very good prep?

Secondly we are managing to afford school fees + other activities + uniform + childcare etc. of about 12k per annum as of now. We might be able to afford another 4-5k by really pushing ourselves. Now our total yearly take home is about 52k (gross of 79k) both working f/t. We do have some other commitments like financially supporting DH's mother, who lives abroad. So even though the 52k looks alright. We don't live too luxuriously at all, we do have a biggish house and pay a mortgage of about 1200. We don't have a huge lot of equity in it though. I know it is a speculative question but based on this are we likely to get a bursary if DS gets an offer or will our income work against us.

I will be ever so grateful for any replies.

Entry into a Eton is very competitive regardless of what school your DS is at, for the pre test (yr 6) I suspect you can be at any school as it's a computer generated test, a very short interview and a reference from the current school. For CE or not you would have to take advise from Eton itself on what exams they would expect him to sit, probably once you've got a definite place.
Your DS sounds very young and you might be keen on a "progressive" school at the moment but come yr 6 and if your successful in getting a place you might feel differently and thinkthat a good more "traditional" prep would be a good preparation for Eton.

Good luck.

To be honest I suspect the combination of Montessori school and time spent living in the US would make any clever child quite attractive at pre-test stage.

Is the Quaker school state or independent - as this is the school he would be going from? I'm not quite sure if the separate state school entrance exam is the only allowed option for boys preparing at state schools.

To an extent I agree with HG. If he passed the pre-test I suspect you would want to hustle him into a trad prep for CE.

Thanks for the good luck- I think we might need it! You are quite right that it's a long way off and might not be the right place at all. For both of my children, my first preference would be for a good, independent day school, which was a great education for me and many of my peers. However, there is a bit of family pressure and I know that there has been money out aside.

Also, from what I've seen of 21st century preps (that regularly send boys to E) "traditional" means being extremely hot on the basics and wide ranging and forward thinking alongside that. Because that's what the senior school wants.

Maybe you are right about a couple of years in a prep school. One of the local ones seems to produce lovely children, some of whom go onto what I think of as the big, posh schools. It just doesn't quite float my boat. I went to a very academic day school on an assisted place and this feels like a bit of a different world to me. That'll learn me for, erm, marrying up.

Far as I've seen all the "lovely" children are being rejected and going elsewhere. The ones that get in have quite a considerable amount of oomph.

(And fwiw the most sickeningly nervous on pre-test day are those with a family tradition of attending E or W or wherever ...)

Been watching with interest as we're aiming for Win Coll for our DS, although not for a while as he's only yr 2.

We will be those sickeningly nervous people Zero Fun Dame describes - every male in DH's family for generations has been a Wykehamist. Apart from the added pressure on DS I wonder if the school might be put off by it.

DH's family had a similar tradition of all going to the same college afterwards but by the time his younger brother applied they told him to apply elsewhere as they didn't want to have so many members of one family go through. He applied to a different college at the same uni and got a place, became a scholar and then got a 1st so it wasn't that he wasn't bright enough.

There is so much scrutiny of selection at prestigious, old institutions now that I suspect having a family tradition of going to them may now be a disadvantage.

We're moving DS into a selective prep with a history of sending boys to Win Coll and flexi boarding options from yr 5 to hopefully help the process but I do feel sick when I think about the pressure there will be on DS to go there.

That sounds so unfair to ask a child not to come just because members of his family have been. If it is a true meritocracy, then why discriminate? That child should have the same opportunity as any other!

Off topic again, what is the average ethnic mix in E and W? I imagine there are lots of overseas students from China but what about boys from the UK? DS's school has a very diverse ethnic mix which we really like. Would really like DS to grow up knowing about different cultures, appreciate and respect the differences in traditions etc.

Eton is pretty diverse these days, certainly a lot more so than our local community college, which is practically mono cultural. Chinese and Russians are there obviously, but many other nationalities too including Korean, American, French and Italian, and even Palestinian. I believe about 10% of the boys are from overseas. But there are Many British boys from various backgrounds too, including several from immigrant, or even refugee, backgrounds.

Thank you IndridCold - that sounds like a fairly diverse mix. Good to know.

One more question, what tends to be the average extra(s) expenditure on uniform, study materials, school trips, memberships and anything else beside music tuition (whose cost is more or less well specified).

Wandymum I think the only pressure should be to make sure that he is not pigeon-holed into the wrong school because of the tradition in the family. However bright he may be you may feel later on he would do better elsewhere.
I don't think it will count against him, knowing of several boys in DS's house whose parents are old Wykehamists.
Basically Winchester has a tradition of academic selection and bright successful parents IMO are likely to have bright DCs. Eton used to be much less selective and therefore the Etonian family line must be more difficult to preserve for this generation.

WelshParent at 2012 prices we paid just over £1000 for all his uniform, formal change (ie blazer and smart trousers) and sports kit, and he is still wearing nearly all of it well into his third year, although he will need some new shirts this year. This also doesn't include shoes and sports footwear.

Looking back at the last couple of bills, extras come to about £250 per term (not including music lessons). This is for things like house subs, dry cleaning of uniform, house and tutor group outings (cinema, theatre, go karting etc) and subs for the school magazines and the OEA. CCF is £220 per year, and there are occasional one-off payments like the futurewise careers advice service, which is about £200 as well, although it is not compulsory.

Trips seem to range from about £600 for the smaller trips (say for a trip to the battlefields in France) to £2000 ish for the bigger ones. However, these trips pretty much all-inclusive, so they only need spending money on top of that.

WelshParent, there was a whole thread on Eton Extras started by someone almost exactly a year ago. I actually posted a couple of genuine bills typically that an Etonian parent might receive albeit a few years old now.

The bill doesn’t include the school uniform, of course, which is something one buys before entering Eton. IndridCold’s estimates are roughly correct at 2012 prices no doubt they will go up by the time your son enters Eton. To the world at large, the Eton uniform is about the smartest and the classiest anywhere! True to form, everything that Eton does is nothing short of class and panache wrapped up with total excellence! You would no doubt, want your little darling to be properly attired the Eton Style, far removed from the mundane school uniforms of the world.

Thank you IndridCold for linking the many hours of Eton music up thread. To see each and every Etonian performing on stage with their uniquely smart uniform almost brought a tear to my eye.

But of course, there will be one or two people out there who’d say the Eton uniform is ‘ridiculous’. Well, no more ridiculous than for example, the uniform of a High Court judge, wig and all. But I’ve often wondered why the school uniform specifically, is a deciding factor for a parent whether to send her DC to that particular school or not. There’s more to this than meets the eye, surely.

The big question is:
Is the parent wearing the (school) uniform or is it the child who is wearing the uniform?

All said and done, OP, for going to a school like Eton, I would gladly wear the tablecloth if required of me.

"To the world at large, the Eton uniform is about the smartest and the classiest anywhere!"
I dont know what world you inhabit peteneras but in my world few people think it's the smartest classiest anywhere" Most agree with me it is "ridiculous".
Uniform was a deciding factor in our choice of school I personally believe that whether children are being asked to wear tail coats, doff boaters, walk around in gowns or have those weird tag things things hanging out of their socks then this is part of the school ethos and it's not an ethos Im personally am comfortable with. I don't wear uniform in my job (although I could) and I do the job perfectly well in home clothes.
We can all have are irrational dislikes that is what makes us so interesting as humans.

Op,
I would endorse darkling's statement that WinColl is v helpful to those not coming from traditional preps. They could not have been more helpful.

I would ask about how many boys go out on a Sat or Sunday pm. In one of our cousins' experience, most of his house was either far eastern - great for non mono culture and being around - or came from London, so although back for Sat pm and Sunday chapel, if you didn't fit into the former group and you didn't have parents in London, you could be a bit stuck. It will vary house to house, and child to child, so a question you should ask.

No substitute for talking to the housemaster ( or successor) and deciding if he is the sort if person you get on with. Really, what these schools provide is a huge level of personal attention , and if you think this guy does not share your values or priorities, you need to find another house or another school. The facilities can be fabby, but it is the teaching and pastoral care that is really important. Will your son thrive there is the key question.

So if I say 300 per term for general extras, 1500 for uniform over 2 years, 300 per term for music tuition, 2000 for trips per year, that seems a reasonable estimate I imagine. That comes to about 5k per year give or take - would that be right?

I see there is a strong difference of opinion regarding the uniform of Eton or Harrow. To be honest I don't know what to make of them at this point in time? I think as most of you have advised, school visits sometime in the future will help us form an opinion.

ancientbuchanan, It's good to know that Winchester are good at helping boys not coming from prep schools. Yes, we have to wait for those visits and discussions with the schools to find out about various aspects of boarding life.

Welsh I think one trip per year is a lot, more like 2 for the whole 5 years. Sport or choir trips may push that up a bit though.

I think it's fair to say that hg and peteneras represent the two extremes of the uniform debate. I can't say that it made any difference to us either way, although the boys presumably like it. DS announced that he really likes wearing waistcoats!

My only comment about the E and Harrow uniforms is that they are hugely more expensive than what we spent on the W kit which is pretty minimal, even the sports kit for those in teams. But that probably would n't be a factor for most.

It is useful to know because if DS gets a conditional offer and we fill up the bursary application we need to take account into the extras involved rather than just the fees, when we declare expenses.

At this point in time, honestly I can't bother too much about the uniform as we have to evaluate the schools as packages. I think the detail will probably come later.

Wonder if there's any research on the correlation between shamelessly flamboyant school uniforms and the apparently high proportion of public school thesps constantly gracing our screens.

I know that one OE author wrote 'you couldn't spend five years dressed as a godamned opera conductor without it doing something to you.'

Millwall fans had T-shirts saying "No-one likes us and we don't care". My DS said he wore his Eton uniform in that spirit.

I do think that learning to put up with the crap (including the occasional egg) that the uniform attracts is all part of the experience (at both H and E) and helps increase the cohesion amongst the boys.

I don't think my DS had particularly strong views on his Eton uniform. He wore it and so did all the others.
I, on the other had, had strong views on his non uniform, especially a yellow T shirt with 'yummy mummy' scrawled across it and a pair of jeans, the top of which sat three quarters of the way down his buttocks.......