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.

3% increase for DS's school, still waiting to hear for DD's school (will be more expensive anyway as she moves from junior to senior in Sept).

I got 0% pay rise for the second year running, DH got 1.5%. Fortunately, the next set of investments matures in October.

Not surprised about the fee increases (inevitable). I'm pretty pissed off that despite all the news headlines about wages rising, I got nothing. Again.

No I know they haven't, rabbitstew, but it's been a while since they treated their principles with quite so much disdain. They do tend to make much of them in their PR, so the hypocrisy is worth pointing out.

At DS2's school from what I understand no class is bigger than 18 most are 12 or less smaller for an MFL. Many are paying for and expect small classes and low numbers pupil to teacher ratio. It wouldn't matter what evidence there was to say that the benefit of this is unproven parents will still want and expect it. Also at boarding school it's not just about the number of pupils in each lesson it's about the ratio of pupil to teachers outside of the classroom as well thus is a school running 24/7 is also very important.

I agree schools haven't lived up to founding principles for centuries although I think we do have to consider what a term like "poor scholars" means. I don't think they were educating people right on the bottom of the Mediaeval society. But many of the wealthy big names are now increasingly trying to open their doors to the under privileged. Of course it's not going to happen over night but it's happening. But we mustn't forget that their sizes mean that numbers are always going to be limited; if you take the three big names Eton Win Coll and SPS, all committed to widening access you're only talking about less than 3000 places across 5 academic years and places at the first two are of course highly desirable to international parents who I'm assuming are also eligible for financial assistance.

Well, we looked at SPS in the other thread and saw that amongst the underprivileged the school was proud to have assisted with fees, according to its website, was an "NHS worker" who we established was likely a consultant.

I don't want to revisit that discussion on this thread but it's worth pointing out that the schools don't walk their talk and have found themselves in a crazy place where they're having to offer bursaries to parents with very substantial salaries. Their funds were not established for that purpose and will take years to grow big enough to satisfy it.

Having quickly looked at DS2's schools accounts; fees generate nearly 21 million pa, but total annual expenditure is just shy of 24.5 million, wages cost 7.5 million and in 2013 new building work, consisting of upgrading existing building (many of which are grade 1 listed) rather than building new building cost 1.4 million. As I've already said approximately 15% are on bursaries, over 2/3s are receiving more than 50% and the schools long term vision is to have a "needs blind entry policy". But if fees make up the vast majority of your income then you have to secure an alternative source for this before becoming completely needs blind. The school are not claiming it's currently widening access for all but they are determined to move in the right direction.

The school could move faster in that direction if it made greater efforts to reduce costs, happygardening. It could start by making class sizes a bit bigger (eg 12 to 16). That much is obvious.

If one third of parents receive bursaries of less than 50%, these are people who can pay £17k per DC pa without hardship. Those parents are by no stretch of the imagination "underprivileged". Do donors realise much of their money is going to extremely well off families?

Fees inflation has brought many schools to a point of lunacy.

Sorry, should have said "if one third of bursaries are for 50% of fees or less, these go to parents who can pay £17k ..."

It's late.

One way of reducing salaries that I would be wary of is an over reliance on younger teachers. IMO retaining the right proportion of more senior very experienced teachers is worth paying for.

I know that larger classes can be very effective with the right teachers and the converse is also true when small classes actually don't deliver any more because of lesson content and teaching style.
However, having seen the advantages of further setting (and therefore smaller class sizes) in certain subjects with excellent 'freestyle' teaching, IMO it is one of the luxuries that I would choose to pay for (but only at certain schools).

I do wonder whether in some schools the extra salary costs may be at least in part due to a mushrooming of posts that are more focused on the PR / fundraising / business profile of a school than delivering quality to the pupils.

granola yes you could reduce costs by having bigger classes but in a full boarding school this would have a knock on effect in all other areas as teachers are involved in all aspects of school life. The relationship between the boys and staff is one of the schools unique features.
Div, the schools daily non examined subject is I suspect also very dependent on smaller classes to make it what it is.
Also as I said up thread subjects don't have to have a certain number of applicants to be "viable" less popular subjects run with only 1-2 in them, if you reduced teacher numbers again this might not be possible.
Significantly change these three aspect and you significantly change the school ethos and it ceases to be what it is this what parents like me pay for, let's not forget a full school enable bursaries to be offered to anyone, it's no coincidence that it's over subscribed schools that are even trying to move towards a needs blind admission policy unattached to scholarships. The school obviously wants to widen access to it's current ethos/approach to education not a watered down version.
If it did water down it's ethos/style of education simply save costs and to widen access plenty would them happily shout "ah since it's widened access it's changed it ethos because it doesn't believe the "under privileged need the same style of education". As the saying goes dammed if you do dammed if you don't.

I understand the dilemmas, happygardening, and with a 2.5% fees increase, as opposed to twice that in other schools, your DS's school is clearly making some sort of effort.

To become truly "needs blind", though, it would have to make greater efforts and even start reducing fees because the bursary funds it would need would become unattainable. The school's alumni dept is going to have a tough job explaining to potential donors that millions more are needed now that the fees are out of the reach of well off families.

The school could command more respect from alumni and new parents if it did make some cuts, even though in the short term it might be able to get away without doing so.

I doubt the ethos would change significantly. It's more likely that in the last 20 years or so extra luxuries and squeezing people out have already changed it.

granola the school doesn't have a dilemma, it has a school vision to become needs blind but not by reducing fees/changing ethos and infra structure but by raising an exceedingly large sum of money from one of its assets therefore offering the same type of education it offers now to current boys to all regardless of back ground. I don't agree that the school would command more respect from alumni and parents if they made cuts, alumni and parents contributing to the bursary fund are doing this because they believe the unique education they received or are paying for their DS's to receive should be the one that those requiring financial as substance should be receiving. If I were to contribute towards the bursary fund that certainly would be my hope.
You also seem to be determined to ignore the fact that one of the reasons the school is oversubscribed and currently full and therefore able to offer bursaries to anyone is because of the unique education it offers, this unique education means it's fees are one of the highest in the country. My DS could have gone to a slightly cheaper school who presumably are cheaper because they've made the financial cuts that you think could be made but I wouldn't waste my money on them. If you send your DC Win Coll and a few others of similar ilk you pay for what makes them unique.

OK. Win Coll, fair enough.

Win coll? overrated IMO, no?

We pleased with it it's does exactly what we want so for us not over rated but I'm sure some do think it's over rated. There are many schools frequently praised on here that I personally wouldn't touch with a barge pole.

Precisely! We choose the school that suits out DC. YMMV. I am very happy with my DC school, that is often misrepresented on thread by people who do not have DC there, just received opinions with no foundation. However - it suits us, and more importantly suits the DC, and we are happy to pay the fees - money completely well spent.

Our increase is 3%, which is the lowest we have known since being there.
The letter explained that it was above headline inflation rates due to teacher pension and NI costs increasing.
Personally I was pleasantly surprised as was counting on 4-5%.
I think that if you embark on private education, you need to forecast ahead, building in at least 5% for inflation and to remember that very early large increases will obviously have a bigger effect overall. We did calculations showing cumulative increases of 3%, 5% and 8%, as well as building in the points when fees rise due to entry to upper school or senior school or whatever.

I don't like the big increases driven by fancy new buildings, but increases above inflation just seem a fact of life.

What is interesting to me about discussions of this sort is the feeling that we ARE witnessing a social change in which - particularly pronounced in London with house prices - there really is a new class of the "nouveau poor" as one poster put it.

The whole private versus state debate will take on a completely different complexion soon if school fees continue to rise, not above inflation, but above wage growth in the middle classes...

I hadn't really thought about this until I saw this thread so I just went to check what the fees are doing in September and was really (pleasantly) surprised to see they're not changing at all. Reading this thread I think this must be unusual and we're very lucky.

nlondondad I suspect fees are already rising faster than MC wages, hence what appears to be the desperate scrabble for state sector places in good schools, the reported growth in HE and the enthusiasm for grammars.
My in laws solidly MC with MC professions put two through top London schools and lived in a nice large house in a West London, I know there is no way on Gods earth that a MC couple in the same profession could afford the house now however much they scrimped and saved and I suspect that they couldn't afford the school fees either if they'd had the sort of mortgage that people living in a London must now need.

My daughter is at a private girls school - 10% rise last year, 9% this year. If this goes on we will be selling our "forever" house and downsizing. Theyhave a big unnecessary building project so I hope it's just that and will calm down in a year or two

The 'pricing out' of the middle classes has been going on for a decade or more. The time of the big NI hikes of the early 00s was notorious for this.

Here's an article from 2007 from Scotland (as it's happening across all of UK) with examples of professions who once would have been able to afford it, but who were starting to ask for assistance.

@hg,

So it looks like only those schools with large endowment and huge fund raising capabilities with survive in the future, the likes of WC, Eton. Anyone knows how much Eton has increased its fees this year?

I suppose if the increases are one off (due to the pension/NI changes) then I suppose parents can adjust for it. I doubt we will get an increase inline/below inflation next year and never in a thousand years a decrease.

We have had a 6-7% rise letter. One of the key reasons was teachers pension contributions

It's just pathetic of the schools to blame teachers and their new pension contributions.

Businesses face costs increases coming at them from different quarters all the time. Successful ones factor these into their prices, making cuts elsewhere, keeping an eye on their customers and making efforts to retain their loyalty.

Some badly led independent schools, which aren't lucky enough to have massively valuable land and assets acquired 500 years ago which they can sell off or exploit, have chosen simply to pass these pension increases on to parents without taking brave steps to cut other costs.

They get away with it because "the market will bear it". Well, yes, a diminishing sliver of the market will bear it this year and no doubt next year but give it 20 years or so and these schools will be finished because they won't have any supporters left, not amongst their alumni (who were educated for the professions and will be sending their offspring to good state schools), not amongst MPs (because their salaries are to be limited to £67k) and not amongst the civil servants in the Charity Commission (because they can't afford to send their DC to London indies any more).

Chinese and Russian money might help these shortsighted schools for a little while but it's people, not money, who created these schools and made them what they are, people with values which were very different from those now espoused by heads who are proud to put up signs proclaiming that their once proud institution has been named "Sunday Times" school of the year and who tell the BBC that the Tatler schools guide is "important".