Fee paying schools but not £20K a year kind

[CookieDoughKid]

Can anyone tell me why we don't have fee paying schools where parents can contribute. I can afford £2000 a term (just plucking a realistic figure for me) not £5000 a term. I'm thinking that this would contribute to better facilities, resources, buildings, teachers, IT, books, labs etc. I'd even vote for some kind of entry test and whereby the school could allocate stream classes from day 1 and have 33% of each ability to keep it ''inclusive''. I'm not from the education sector and I don't have any experience in teaching at schools but I think there is a gap where high earning professionals like myself could and want to contribute to a quality school given that there are so few good quality state schools about (especially secondary).

[JasperDamerel]

I went to a similar school as a day pupil and am very happy to live in an area with excellent state comprehensives, but if my local schools were all dreadful, I might consider that as a last resort.

[JasperDamerel]

You could always send your child as a boarder to a Northern Ireland grammar school for around £10,000 a year. Low on snob value, but very good value for money if you want that kind of education.

www.victoriacollegeboarding.org.uk

[Grazia1984]

Particularly if you both work full time and earn £30k each you might well get a bursary.

Could he win a music scholarship? My 3 sons all did at age 12. They did tend to have 2 or 3 grades 7 or 8 by that stage though so it does require a lot of hard work.

[Iamnotloobrushphobic]

And for every school I have heard of, people with income above final cut off point can actually afford it, if it's their priority.

I totally agree with that. Those on sliding scales bursaries have to make sacrifices to afford the top up fees. Those on 100% bursaries also sometimes have to make huge sacrifices because the bursaries don't always include uniforms, trips and travel to and from school (which can be quite expensive). It is a case of prioritising for almost everyone at private schools except those who have very very high incomes.

[Gruach]

Mmm ... You would need to be thinking of not day school to stand any chance of a bursary I guess. As Lurked says, they're on a sliding scale so you never know.

Though I can't recall if you said how old your DS is - I suspect you may be too late to begin the process.

[Lurkedforever1]

I don't understand the 'earn to much for a bursary' logic myself. No school I know has an either/or policy. They're on a sliding scale, which varies according to their fees and your income/assets/ usually outgoings too. And for every school I have heard of, people with income above final cut off point can actually afford it, if it's their priority.

[CookieDoughKid]

Someone said luxury grammar. That's what I'm talking about :

[CookieDoughKid]

Spelling typo! Not b type... Just type. I am sure kids do well at my local boys comp but I would prefer a grammar school. The area I live in is OK. Don't feel I need to move as socially, the area is fine even though it's a mix of folk.

[CookieDoughKid]

My dc is Magdalene College b type material. He is very bright and would really benefit from being with a cohort like him. He is nerdy and very technically minded especially in music and computers. I don't feel our local state boys school which got less than 55%GCSEs A-C including English and Maths is right for him. Yet we earn too much to be claiming a private school bursary (60k a year) and we are not in a grammar school area. I would pay to have him at a state funded grammar if there were such schools near me.

[Grazia1984]

Haberdasher's Herts is
Junior School £4,507 per term (£13,521 pa)

Don't assume all of the best schools charge £20k.

Newcastle Royal Grammar iJunior School fees for the academic year 2015-16 are £3, 270 per term (£9, 810 per annum).

[Lurkedforever1]

That's what I was getting at, same problem as with state grammars. Although tbh I think in areas like mine (no grammars) the bursary system is even more unfair. Not because of the schools, just because they are so limited and full ones are extremely competitive. And parents who could just about negotiate the state selective process are going to find it harder when it's the kind of big independent with the funds for full bursary. Dd got one, but near me the state secondary options aren't great for most people, so the competition is fierce. Dd said one of her new friends only got in as a late reserve bursary award without a scholarship, and between them they've established the other girl would have aced the maths/nvr/vr like dd, but is 'only' high end level 5 for writing and spag, thus very nearly missed out. Dds other friend who is equally able as dd was nervous on the day and probably dropped a few points because of it, and therefore didn't get past exam stage, unless the parents wanted a full fee place. Which is pretty bonkers really, although not the schools fault.

[Iamnotloobrushphobic]

It was the selection system that was flawed but also (like with state grammars) middle class parents knowing how best to navigate the complicated applications system.
My son is a recipient of a bursary at a very selective independent school and also had an offer from a state grammar school. I wouldn't consider us to be middle class (and we certainly don't have a middle class income) but I am educated to degree level and have the ability to navigate the system which is something that I think many working class parents are unable to do. The assisted places scheme needed reform to ensure that the most deprived but bright children were able to benefit from the scheme (same reform as is needed in the current state grammar system).

[Lurkedforever1]

I could be wrong but wasn't the assisted places scheme supposed to be for kids in areas with no state grammar? Therefore any stats on intake would be similar to state grammar intake at the time? In which case it's the selection system that was flawed rather than the fact it was at independents iyswim.

[Iamnotloobrushphobic]

I think the research I read might have been from this extract:

My concern about the pounds 105m spent on Assisted Places was based on independent research, not, as he says, "assertions". I refer to the dedicated study published in 1989, The State and Private Education: an Evaluation of the assisted places scheme by Tony Edwards, John Fitz and Geoff Whitty (Falmer Press). It states clearly that fewer than 10 per cent of the selected children had fathers who were manual workers, compared with 50 per cent in service-class occupations such as teaching, and that although children from single-parent families made up the largest category, other disadvantaged groups, notably the unemployed, and black and Asian families, had poor representation. They also found that two-thirds of those taking up places for the first time at 16 were already fee-paying pupils in the same school.

I think I might have read it when I was a student studying social policy but I think the article needs a subscription to read it in full.

[Iamnotloobrushphobic]

Another newt- I can't remember the article that I originally read on this topic but this one is a good start point for evaluating the effectiveness of the assisted places scheme:
eprints.ioe.ac.uk/5937/1/Whitty2010Private23.pdf

[HeighHoghItsBacktoWorkIGo]

Aren't there some state schools, around London (often faith schools and grammars, such as QE boys) who ask in a very heavy handed way for monthly top ups from parents? Is this effectively what you are thinking of OP?

[AnotherNewt]

Could you link that research, Iamnotloobrushphobic or if it's pre-Internet, say where it could be found?

Because although there's lots of anecdote floating round, I've never seen a proper survey and would like to. The abolition of the scheme was one of the first actions of the Labour government in 1997, and they always cited political principle as the reason, not problems with how the scheme was running.

[Iamnotloobrushphobic]

The assisted places scheme was a farce and research showed that it didn't reach the disadvantaged children it was aimed at as most places were filled by children who had parents in professions such as teaching.
Republic of Ireland has very cheap private school fees because all teacher salaries are paid for by the state. It isn't a model that I think we need in the uk but I understand that Ireland want to keep it because people there are used to it and might flock to state schools if they changes the system and parents had to pay full fees.

[caroldecker]

There is nothing to stop you topping up any state school - this is why the PTA raise funds. As Jasper says, making it part state funded but only available to people with top-up funding would be wrong.
Thatcher did have the assisted places scheme which put 6,000 children a year into private schools with the state paying the fees. This was only available in selective independents.

[JasperDamerel]

I think it varies from school to school. The state school my children go to probably has roughly that balance at KS1, although with fewer opportunities for music and drama, with reading, spellings and times tables for homework. It's harder to gauge exactly how the time is divided up, because literacy and numeracy will often be linked to work done in history, geography or science. There isn't PE every day, but there are sports clubs at lunchtime and after school, so most children end up doing sport every day. In my experience the main differences are probably less music and drama, and no compulsory foreign languages in KS1.

[Needanadulttotalkto]

OP, what is it you're looking for in particular that you don't feel you can find in a State school? Is it mostly the facilities and extra curricular?

I was having a conversation with someone about the differences is state vs private school days, and I was saying that my DC's private pre-prep does about 2hrs a day of English and maths and the rest is humanities, music, sports, forest school etc (highest achieving school in the county btw, so it's not that they don't take academics seriously) and the other person was saying that her good state school's year 2 does almost all of the day except for about 1 1/2 hours as maths and English - so an opposite structure to mine! Also, they got far more homework than we do.

[JasperDamerel]

I'm not quite sure what you are suggesting? Is it a cheap independent day school? That might be possible, but is unlikely to be better than a properly run state school. My local Steiner school has low fees, but they keep their feed low by having only a minimum of facilities and getting the parents to volunteer for just about everything (running the office, fundraising, catering, maintenance, decorating etc) as a condition of entry.

Or are you suggesting that there should be state-funded schools which are only available to children whose parents pay a top-up fee of several thousand pounds a year? Because that's pretty outrageous, and would pretty much destroy the state education system, which works very well in most parts of the country.

[Parsley1234]

Holyport admissions is on "as the crow flies" even for boarding unless The child is Termed LAC and has only been open since 2014 so too soon for league tables.