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.

DS sometimes refers to boys as being 'bumout', but I don't think that's what he means .

"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".”

I can assure you HG, the world I inhabit is as real as they come. This is the world where the Eton uniform is the smartest, classiest, and the most talked about and admired anywhere on earth. Take a trip to the School any day during term time and you’ll see the world at large coming to admire the School by the bus loads. There’s no other school in the world, let alone UK, that attracts such admiration that I can think of. Can you?

”Uniform was a deciding factor in our choice of school . . .”

That’s a most disingenuous statement coming from you; didn’t you visit and attend a talk by the Tutor for Admissions at Eton when looking for schools for your son a few years ago? What were you doing there if uniform was a deciding factor in your choice of schools? Or perhaps you didn’t know Etonians wear ‘ridiculous’ uniform at the time?

”I think it's fair to say that hg and peteneras represent the two extremes of the uniform debate.”

Quite frankly Indrid, I don’t give two monkeys about uniforms. A uniform is a uniform is a uniform. Though I must say DS looked absolutely dashing (stunning) in his tailcoat and gown - everyone of my friends and relatives wanted to have a picture of themselves taken with him!

But why would anyone makes such an issue about uniforms so much so it became ’a deciding factor’ in their choice of schools is beyond me. Like I said in my last post, I’d wear a tablecloth or even a duvet cover if that’s what is required of me, to go to Eton!

No, I then began to look much deeper into this “issue” about uniform (if that’s an issue at all) and can find absolutely nothing untoward except one of sour grapes. For the third time of asking, I want to know who is actually wearing the uniform, the child attending the school or the parent?

I have actually looked into the anatomy of an Eton tailcoat and a regular men’s jacket and can find no difference between the two except that the tailcoat is some 10-12 inches longer, rather like the length of a raincoat/overcoat.

So, is the wearing of a raincoat or overcoat being ridiculous?

Far from being ‘ridiculous’ one wears a tailcoat on the biggest day of his life when he wants to look his absolute best, his wedding day, or when he goes to meet The Queen at Buckingham Palace.

peteneras tourists love seeing the traditional costumes and uniforms of the British, they also go and stare at the horseguards or beefeaters. Eton represents unchanging British pageantry. The tourists would n't regard that as the real world nor would the boys when they are out of school.

There are no pageantries or any spectacular displays or pomps of any description at any time at Eton, summerends. The only two big celebrations in any one year at Eton are the St Andrews Day celebrations and the Fourth of June and these are only internal affairs not meant for the public. So your tourists coming to Eton hoping to see ’unchanging British pageantry’ I’m afraid, will be sadly disappointed.

And if it’s an old medieval school that the tourists are staring at Eton, then they have chosen the wrong school. Instead, they should all be headed towards Winchester where the school there is a good half-a-century older than Eton. But I’m not aware of Win Coll being swamped by tourists at any given time.

Indrid - I've never heard 'bumout' - I'll have to ask Ds what it means (though slang changes all the time and it may be after his time, as it were. I've only just learned ' wagwan').

Your right peteneras I did attend a talk at our prep by the tutor for admissions and I attended the afternoon guided tour. I met the boys who were all charming and watched the video, on the video the boys chilled out with their tutors and ate pizza in what frankly I consider to be penguin suits, they ate in a dinning room that to my mind looked like an upmarket motorway service station in the same penguin suit, and they caught minnows and tadpole from a pond in the same penguin suit. That may be a very regular occurrence in your world but in mine. I was advised to look at it by our prep school head, I went with an open mind, and came away knowing that it wasn't for me or my DS (who also doesn't like uniform and meaningless ritual by the way). I believe as do I suspect many people that if uniform needs to be worn it should be first and for most practical, medical staff for example increasing wear scrubs, gone are the traditional white coats, ties, and long sleeves, nurses no longer wear ridiculous hats and starched apron, judges no longer wear wigs in family courts. Uniform for me reflects ethos, one very big name school we looked at has a very simple uniform in the lower years and no uniform in the 6 th form, boys looked like teenagers (which is what they are), it's an enormously successful modern multi cultural outward looking school, the whole school felt like a university campus, boys were allowed to be individual and were very clearly being prepared for the 21 st century. Uniform is not worn in other many other countries, my DH works in Scandinavia, no pupils wear uniform, it's doesn't seem to be doing them any harm, ditto Germany.
As I've frequently pointed out being able to pay for education broadens your choice, it enables parents and children to choose a school that they believe in and that works in more ways for them than a school in the state sector, where choices about your child about your child's education are made by faceless bureaucrats. What ever school you send your child too you have to believe in it, feel your walking in step with it's ethos and policy. We as parents are a liberal, informal, and very strongly non conformists, I'm suspicious of tradition, many see uniform as an equaliser, I see uniform particularly ridiculous as a barrier to effective communication in many professions, I see uniform likes Eton/Harrow etc as sending out a message of elitism and segregation.
To those who love it, fantastic I hope you get lots of pleasure out of it, if you think it's important; great. But I walk to a different drumbeat and it just simply doesn't do it for me so I exercised my freedom to choose somewhere that I felt was more in tune with my outlook on life.

Peteneras you do have a tendency to be very literal in your use of English on here rather than take the subtexts.
Ok,instead of pageantry substitute quaint British custom.
Even a right wing traditional (pro British royalty and class system) French paper says that the uniform makes Eton seem old-fashioned and unchanging (not classy). Eton with its connection to royalty and next to Windsor Castle attracts the tourists who love all that. I am sure that the boys partly find it amusing and partly are quite chuffed by the attention. Perhaps it helps that sense of not being ashamed of being exhibitionist when needed later on in life.
It is really no big deal that somebody like HG might not admire it and prefer a school where the children wear normal clothes (as in mainland Europe).

Five years of tailcoats haven't helped DH's sense of style at all. He instigated the year-round dress down policy at his firm and didn't even wear a suit ( let alone tailcoat) for our wedding. I've never seen his brothers in suits either and they are pretty establishment nowadays. I somehow can't imagine raising the sort of children who are excited about dressing up. If DS does go the uniform may be something we just have to live with. Please tell me that we wouldn't actually have to do anything with the shirts, coats etc. I can just about iron a school polo shirt!

Anyway, I'm going to stop thinking about it for a while. A lots can change in the 5 years before we need to give any serious thought to it. Although I am halfway (optimistic) though a doctoral thesis so it's nice to muse on someone else's educational journey for a while.

Boris Johnson and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall are hardly dapper OEs.

TheBeekeepersDaughter, I'm happy to tell you that the school does all the laundry/dry cleaning and that the tailors will sew on the name tapes. Sorted.

I wouldn't have said excited about dressing up in the recent past though I've never known anyone who actively hated it.

OE friends and colleagues of my own generation seemed, post university/early career to fall into two camps; either throwing themselves immediately into the uniform of polo shirt and chinos or falling into a deep trunk of random cast-offs and emerging with everything inside out and upside down + Boris hair. (Which was kind of gorgeous ...) Some took a couple of decades to either loosen up or civilianise themselves.

Boys I know now are positively relishing the extravagant fun of it all. But, as someone said above, entry is increasingly competitive. I don't know any boy who is going simply because his parents want it for him. They're very deliberately grasping the opportunity for themselves.

zero we can at least manage the Boris hair. Boris has been my son's nickname since birth and bushy, bushy blonde hairdos are something of a family speciality. :)

Zero the 10 years olds are in a position to take the test because their parents think it's a good idea or occasionally they are in a school (facilitated by the parents) which suggests it is a good idea. However later on I agree it is the boy who will be taking up the opportunities.

For sure, happygardening, I would without an iota of a doubt, dash straight to an upmarket motorway service station for my food anytime rather than going down with food poisoning with some grotesque sub-standard food at Win Coll. No, I wouldn’t even let my dog eat that kind of food!

But I’m afraid you’ve lost me there with your argument that you only went to the Eton tour because your prep school head advised that you looked at it. What, even though the ‘ridiculous penguin suit’ was a deciding factor of your choice of schools and you still went along ‘with an open mind’? I’m thoroughly confused with your logic.

Conversely, in my case when I went round to see my son’s Headmistress for a school report to be sent to Eton (that’s because I was asked to do so by E) and she, being what she is, an anti private school bigot and judging by her body language was quite reluctant to do so, asked me sternly, “Are you sure that’s the right school for (name of DS)?” I paused for a few seconds and then looked her in the eye and asked equally sternly, “Why not?”

She, of course, had no answer to my question and we left it at that. My point is, (unlike you) you do what you feel is right for your child regardless of what the Headmistress or prep school head says. You shouldn’t have gone to tour Eton if you’d felt so strongly about the ridiculous uniform. But you went.

And I’m also confused about the ‘meaningless ritual’ you mentioned. Please enlighten me what ritual you’re talking about.

As for all the liberal studies and whatever non conformist etc. of a school, those don’t mean a bean to me. I judge a school by the product at the end. Certainly not the uniform it adopts. And whatever Scandinavian kids wear or don’t wear is of no interest to me either. I’m more interested in the Etons of the World, i.e. supreme schools of individual countries the world over all trying to emulate, but none came anywhere near, the real ETON!

And what is the product at the end? Without going back half a millennium or 300 or even 100 years, the last 50 or 60 years will suffice. I am to name but a few, from all walks of life, 4 UK Prime Ministers (6 if you include other countries), multiple Olympic gold medallist, Nobel Prize winner, Canterbury Archbishop, London Mayor, Celebrity Chef (thank you grovel), Academy Awards (Oscar) winner, etc.

I cannot think of one single prominent name of any significance from the other ‘big name’ public schools. Please enlighten me.

Watch out America! The Etonians are coming!

” Peteneras you do have a tendency to be very literal in your use of English on here. . .”

Sorry summerends, but I cannot read your mind. This is an English language forum and I can only reply/answer you from what you have written.

Like I said immediately above, I’ve no interest in what a French paper says. What it says is only their opinion and I may not necessarily agree with them.

As for Eton being near to Windsor Castle, what I’ll say is that another big name public school, Westminster School, is also very near to Buckingham Palace. It would be much more convenient for tourists to just hop over to see Westminster School after watching the Changing of the Guards instead of travelling 30 or so miles to Eton but they are not doing so.

WinColl do actually do guided tourist tours, but like the uniform, wouldn't be a reason I would choose a school. And it was the Johnny-come-lately Eton which emulated Winchester, to the extent of stealing quite a few of their dons . I think Eton is fabulous by the way and am not sure anyone would seriously say otherwise, just that my DS preferred Wincoll. I'm glad you're pleased with Eton as well, though. .

Not only stealing some of their dons but some of their scholars too. But that was some 600 years ago. Don't get me wrong, I've never criticized Win Coll as a school, it most certainly is an excellent school (perhaps barring its food, so I'm told) but it's just the constant ridiculing of Eton's uniform from a certain quarters that pisses me off. What has a set of uniform got to do with education?

Yes you're right re the scholars. And I didn't really think that you were criticising. I think that whilst some have a strong view , the vast vast majority if choosing between Eton and WinColl wouldn't have uniform on their list either way, but for those who do - well fair enough. There are many intangible things about the atmosphere and ethos of a school which do influence boys' or parents' decision, not just uniform. BTW from the horse's mouth (i.e. DS who eats like a horse) the food in his house has improved hugely over the last few years.

Anyway you missed "future King" off your list of recent Etonians. Even I as a staunch supporter of WinColl couldn't argue with that. I think you are underselling the place .

peteneras. I have to hand it to Eton they've well and truly sold you the "Eton brand" hook line and sinker.
I was advised by our prep head to to lock at it and despite my misgiving I did. As I said above I believe that ridiculous uniform is a reflection of the schools ethos and frankly when I went on my guided that was very evident to me. I felt and still feel that their ethos is not my families ethos therefore the Eton was not suitable for us. We are all entitled to our own opinions. We had already registered DS with two excellent schools that we felt had a similar ethos to ours so having looked at Eton we felt that there was no point in taking it any further a school. It's not my type of place end of story.
I can name many prominent figures who throughout history who've attends other big name schools but although I may be irrationally dismissing a school because of uniform I'm not so shallow as to choose an school because of it's old alumini or to feel a need to list their alumni. I have no desire for either of my DS's to become prominent figures especially not prime ministers, arch bishops, Lord Mayors or even worse celebrity chefs.
Finally if tourists are choosing Eton over other schools as one of their favourite destinations let them, I'm also not shallow enough for that to be a reason to choose a school.
I'm very interested in the Scandinavian education system, the. German one or the even Polish. The kids I have been lucky enough to meet from these countries have been very impressive so I believe a lot that we can learn from them for me no one school however famous has all the answers.

HG, I am (possibly naively) assuming Peteneras is not being wholly serious.

However, if you are Peteneras ,
"I cannot think of one single prominent name of any significance from the other ‘big name’ public schools. Please enlighten me."

I see your Boris Johnson and I raise you - Churchill.
Frankly, IMHO, that's how relevant that kind of thing is.

And not from WinColl, I know, but credit where credit's due. "Manners Makyth Man" and all that, possibly something else apart from uniform which explains the ethos point.

If your point is that Eton has the biggest global brand, I would not disagree. Not sure if that is, any more than uniform, school dinners, etc a reason to choose a school for your son or not.

DarklingJane no. Peteneras is not a satirist and somehow seems to be engaging in a feud with HG (and therefore Winchester by extension) because HG has criticised certain aspects of Eton and does not treat it with sufficient reverence.

Summerends, Ah, OK.

It's fun though. I lurk on the Education boards and one of my favourite things is the spats between Paternas & HG.

One of the wonderful things about OEs, ( or the nice ones) is the ability to takes the piss out themselves. Am sure true of Wykhamists too, but I really recommend the Eton gangnam style on youtube. Not seen such a hilarious schoolboy take off for ages though Ds's school also has some corkers.