Private schools can't read inflation figures

[roguedad]

Is anyone else getting notices of extortionate fee rises right now? I had been hoping for maybe 1-2% in the light of inflation being zero, but I have just had notices from a Oxfordshire junior and senior of about 5.9% and 6.7% from this year to next. Both letters laden with excuses of course, neither really acceptable.
Those not able to access private ed might well say "serves you right". We have already said that to ourselves so please, no posts stating the obvious.

I think parents stumping up very large sums of money and foreign parents in particular expect state of the art facilities.
If you can't attract these parents with your fantastic exam results/university destinations then you have to be offering something else. Interestingly DS2s school is not embarking on never needing building projects and many of the building are very far from state of the art, I couldn't care less wonderful facilities don't necessarily mean better teaching or a happier child.

education I want him to get therefore for us it's money well spent.
yy Happy Gardening - us to. DC at leading day school, very happy, don't complain about being surrounded by oligarchs (mythical creatures seemingly conjured up by granola muncher) whom I have never noticed at the numerous school events we have attended. Staff are fantastic - and many of them have their DC at the school heavily subsidised - I am completely in favour of this and the bursaries that the school provides. I am a teacher and DH works in business, no big bonuses or family inheritance - our family were blue collar working class. This is how we choose to spend our money so the DC have a happy and fulfilling childhood. W have never had any interest in fancy holidays/designer clothes or gadgets or fancy cars and that we have in common with many other parents of DC a the school who do 'normal' jobs. We always factored in that school fees would rise ahead of inflation - foolhardy to assume otherwise.

We've got oligarchs probably loads of them with fees our size but as I rarely see the other parents expect to smile and wave when I pick him up at exeats etc again I couldn't care less how many there are.

(DS wanted to do Russian GCSE, but there weren't enough takers to make it viable - would have thought all those oligarchs DC would have seen it as an easy option...)

Our private secondary has gone up 2%. It's not really an oligarch school though, no swimming pool, no fleet of minibuses. It does have a fine theatre though.

At DS2's school you can't do Russian GCSE and I'm suppose Russian Pre U if you can already speak Russian fluently because you are Russian. This also applies to Mandarin.
Another advantage of paying high fees is that subjects don't have to be "viable" to be offered, some subjects especially for Pre U only have a few pupils doing them.

happygardening I sympathise with any parents who find half way through DC's schooling they need help to deal with fee increases. My point is these expensive schools are always telling us they help the underprivileged. If the reality is they use the bursary funds to help bankers who could pay £34k but are finding £35k a tad difficult, it's really quite hard not to laugh or cry.

What about if your helping both the "under privileged" and current pupils? Don't you think the school have a moral obligation to keep current pupils? It's not the fault of a child whose happy and settled at a school if his parents find they now can't afford the fees. Assuming some of the bursary funds were raised by old boys then I suspect they would feel that current pupils whose parents are struggling to pay the fees should be given assistance. You are also assuming that yesterday you could cheerfully afford 34k but today you can't stretch to an extra 1k but I doubt very much it's that simple. Maybe parents have lost jobs, become unwell, are being asked to pay for care of dependent elderly relatives etc or give up work/reduce their hours to help them.

Rich foreigners are attracted by the schools' reputations built up by wiser heads. The schools don't need new buildings to attract them. They build them because they pander to these people.

The best help would be to keep fees down.

In the letter I think re the increase in fees it also over 100 boys (15%) are now in receipt of a bursary the average being 66%, the school also has plans to sell off assets in the near and substantially increase it's bursary pot and thus offer help to more "under privileged".

Granola Muncher, you make the same points you made ad nauseum repeatedly in the other thread - it seems like an obsession...
Are you bitter because you cannot afford the fees?
Most people can't - there are plenty of good non-fee paying schools - get over it.

I don't agree granola I think many less prestigious schools who don't have "reputations" built up by past wiser heads do need state of the art facilities especially as I said up thread when they can't offer jaw dropping exam results/Uni destinations.

granola how can they keep fees down? Teachers alone are increasing as are NI and pension contributions. If you look at a schools accounts most of it's expenditure goes on wages. Does general inflation figures measure this I very much doubt it. And what increases in insurance premiums I bet these aren't part of the calculations when inflation figures are done. Running schools is not cheap.

(I find it as well to hear derogatory references to 'foreigners' as 'these people' )

Teachers wages not teachers!

Parental expectations are also much higher gone are the days when children slept in drafty dorms with no central heating, rotten rattling windows and leaking roofs, ate gruel twice a day and only bathed once a week on an allocated day. (My experience).
Boarding schools are also now communities employing a whole range of people not just teachers; cleaners, cooks maintenance staff, admin staff, groundsman, gardeners, IT staff nurses laundry staff etc. all this costs money.

The fee increase letter / email arrived yesterday. around 4%. Nothing to get in a froth about tbh. We knew fees rose year on year, regardless of the state of the nation and so took that into consideration when deciding whether or not it was a viable option for us.

Our fees have increased anywhere between 3 - 6% so far.

All schools with charitable status publish their accounts, you can look them up on line and see how your fees are spent. It could for some be an enlightening read and in some cases when you see how close a school is to covering it's costs or not a worrying read. We get sent them, income and assets etc are detailed as are general overall expenditure including total wage bill.

This year nearly 4% (London)

Eric Anderson, former head of Eton, writes in this week's Spectator that private schools are doomed if they continue on their present trajectory. He says that "Britishness", their USP, is being lost as they abandon their traditional home market.

My own view is that foreign students contribute to the diversity of schools and should be welcomed. However, some of the richest treat these schools as just another luxury and make demands which heads of a previous generation would have rejected because they had no educational value and risked harming the social diversity of the school. I don't blame these people; I blame the weak and shortsighted heads.

Supporters of independent schools can only deplore the ridiculous fee rises imposed by some "leading" schools which should know better. They could be avoided by heads and governors of a higher calibre, as the accounts of other more honourable oversubscribed schools, as filed with the Charity Commission, amply demonstrate.

granolamuncher - you really don't make it clear what it is you think these schools are doing which has "no educational value." I think you must mean no educational value in your opinion... It has not been conclusively proven that smaller class sizes have no educational benefit (although it depends what you mean by "smaller" - the most expensive schools do NOT appear to have tiny class sizes in the mainstream subjects...). It has not been conclusively proven that only a tiny number of subjects are of genuine educational value. It has not been conclusively proven that a school theatre with a leaking roof and broken facilities and staff with the capacity to put on one school play a year is just as educational for students and attractive to high-calibre people to teach in as a state of the art theatre capable of staging 20 plays a year. etc, etc You may not like the fact that schools stuffed full of teachers for a colossal range of subjects, many of which most of the students never study, with state of the art facilities that many of the students hardly use, are hugely expensive, but it just comes across as daft to say they have no educational value. You could argue it's obscenely wasteful and uneconomic in a world with so many people and limited resources to go around, and throws far more at young people than is even remotely necessary to enable them to become inquisitive, well rounded, productive, happy, self-confident, successful people, but it is certainly not of no educational value. We all have different comfort levels when it comes to conspicuous consumption. Some people seem to think it is never lacking in virtue to throw colossal sums of money at "bettering" yourself through education. Some think there does come a point where it is just as self-indulgent as buying yourself a new handbag, getting a brand new car and going on a luxury holiday. But we all do like the freedom to spend our money as we choose, even if we do harm others indirectly or inadvertently in the spending.

While the educational value of smaller class sizes has not been proven, rabbitstew, it would make sense for schools, concerned to maintain social diversity, as they so often profess, to allow average classes in mainstream subjects to go back up by a mere 10% or so (eg 22 to 24).

This would actually assist minority subjects to survive in schools because a wider cross section of people would have access to them.

There was sad news last week that Camden School for Girls might be about to drop Greek. Thank goodness it survives in independent schools. It won't for much longer if these schools continue to outprice their domestic market.

I agree with what you say about virtue and consumption. My point is that some schools are allowing a section of consumers to dictate their offering, which they would previously have resisted in the name of their (founding) principles. Up to them.

These schools haven't lived up to their founding principles for centuries.