Private school fees - have yours gone up for next year and by how much?

[Hulababy]

This is DD's first year at private prep school - in PP1. We have just had the letter announcing the rise in fees for next year, and was just curious if the level of rise is standard.

Not complaining or anything - we knew it would happen most years, but keen tof ind out more!

DD's fees have gone up by about 15%.

hatrick - some state schools DO take on unqualified teachers also. There is a special pay scale for them. Specialis teachers often come under this guise.

Very few private schools take on unqualified teachers to take their actually classes And IME the majority of unqualified staff - in state and private - may not have a PGCE but generally have some form of teaching qualification such as a cert ed, or are working towards that accreditation.

All of the private schools I know publish their teaching staff lists, along with qualifications. Most state schools do also IME.

Oh, great post dros.

Have been following this with interest. The only point I feel I have to weigh in about is 'the state sector copying the private'. Is it a coincidence that about the time OFSTED came about and exam results were suddenly quantifiable and published that private (read: Public) schools suddenly got serious about academia- and oh, HOW many of them suddenly chucked away centuries of tradition to admit that nasty pestilence of the priviledged male upper classes, GIRLS, to meet that new expectation? Because the academically able (note I didn't say 'good') state schools had tumbled to this years before?

Suddenly the correct old school tie/ gentlemans' club etc wasn't necessarily enough to guarantee a lifestyle just like mummy and daddy's. But boy (excuse the pun!) it still helps.

Oh, and there is one more point, how come if our privately eduated children get so much exposure to- what was it?- "drama, music and sport" we can still barely, as a nation stick our heads up above the parapet of world acheivement in these areas? Maybe our private schools should provide all these excellent extra 'oportunities' in plumbing. THAT would be worth anyone's time!
Someone's kidding someone!

Plumbing ironically partly pays my daughter's fees actually as I work for a plumbing company.

My brother was failed by his state school, they wrote him off totally to the extent that my parents removed him and kept him at home. He then started to work for the family plumbing firm and now earns far more than me. You have to know a heck of a lot of maths these days the complex gas formulas and stuff he works out.

The majority of chldren who study drama, music and sport will not go on to make it a career and it does not matter whether they are talented in this area or not, it is the life skills these subjects give that should make them important. The confidence to stand up in a room full of people and give a presentation in the workplace, being able to speak clearly, being able to work as part of a team, all skills learnt through these subjects.

None of that follows. Why not turn out good, moral helpful children who also have the advantages of a private school? We don't have nasty awful immoral children in private schools and future mother Teresa's in the state system.

In fact a lot of private school parents are buying a teaching of morality and ethos, a helping of others, a giving something back, courtesy manners and charm that I just don't think you find so much as the general ethos in many comprehensive schools.

Education in private schools in the 1800s was largely for boys and didn't teach any science at all I think. Amazing how we invented railways etc really. Girls didn't get a look in (and there were no state schools at all in most areas unless a local philanthropist had set up a school for the poor as some had). Then I think it was my daughter's school North London C which was founded by Miss Buss and Miss Beale which started academic education for girls and trying to get them into Oxbridge. At first they were allowed to go but not sit for degrees. Eventually even that changed. So really neither sector served girls well in those days.

There was also a tradition that girls would give up work and have babies or never work so why spend money on their education. Given how many mumsnetters in 2007 do exactly that which is appealling and not the norm in many countries which are more equal and better, perhaps that shoudl still be your plans today. Housewives will breed housewives so what is the point of years of GCSEs, A levels, degrees if by the time you're 30 your principal activity is cooking and childcare?

I thought your morals mainly came from your parents and the way you were brought up, whatever class you were. Or are you suggesting that children who go to private school are taught morals by their teachers?

You really are very single-minded Xenia. Or perhaps that should be dual-minded, because your only topics of conversation seem to be that private schools make for better people and that non-working women are somehow second-class citizens with drab lives.

Many women who choose to stay at home with their children have rewarding lives, and many do re-enter the workplace at a later date.

I am still 'at home' despite my youngest child being nearly 10, and I think I am really fortunate. I am lucky enough to meet a varied lot of sometimes fascinating people in the voluntary work I do, I use my brain, and indeed the area of expertise in which I have a degree, in some of the voluntary projects and research I am involved in, I am around for every single holiday, TD day and day off sick my children have, I am there when they finish school,I have never had to pay a penny in childcare, and yes, I occasionally do a bit of cooking and cleaning too.

My children know I am well educated, they know what jobs I have had, they remember the years when I was a 'full-time mum' in the daytime and worked in the evenings and weekends (now that IS hard! The best and worst of worlds in some ways), and they are aware of all the things I am involved in now.

They know that most of their friends' mothers work, so don't see women as 'just' housewives, and they also know that some of those families have very large household incomes as a result. However, again from their friends' point of view, they also see the downsides of having both parents working.

Housewives do not necessarily breed housewives. In fact in my own case, my mother did work when we were children, and it was one of the factors that reinforced my own choice to be at home with my children.

Education is always valid, no matter whether that child will go on to work full-time for 40 years in a high-flying career, will choose to stay at home looking after children, or as increasingly many do, to have several years not working and then return to work.

To try to turn a discussion about private schools into an anti-SAHM debate is very sad and misguided.

Miljee I see other factors, and I think Ofsted has a lot less to do with it.

Britain has quietly become quite a meritocratic place. The City was once the domain of "chaps" with good school ties. When I first came to the City, I was offered a mortgage with no credit check simply because of my voice and the way I dressed.
The decline in state ownership has meant a sharp drop in the sort of corruption where you can bring in your cronies. Not gone of course, but less, indeed it can undermine your position.
Cronies
It has reached the point where I've wondered about the marketability of people whose accents are just a bit too public school.

I've heard that argument on accent too. Perhaps people need to nuance their accent according to the people they're with or the view of the day on acceptability. May be it's why I prefer the academic private grammar school type schools, not the public schools which often have worse exam results anyway.

"I am around for every single holiday, TD day and day off sick my children have, I am there when they finish school,I have never had to pay a penny in childcare, and yes, I occasionally do a bit of cooking and cleaning too." I would hate that but each to their own. Isn't it just really dull day in day out?

Life is far from dull, it's great. But that's because I have a range of interests and projects that I am involved in, the difference being that they are voluntary so I can be totally flexible and be with my family when they are free.

That's the beauty of it, no two weeks are the same. My children always have to ask me what I did that day or what I'm doing the next, they can't always predict it!

To be free every day of the holidays and choose whether or not to go out, stay in, be active or sporty, be busy or lazy, be cultured or whatever - dull, no not one bit.

Apologies for thread drift.

I just don't see how a good education, whether private or state, should be incompatible with a woman making the choice to stay at home for some or many years. I've always felt education is about opening up choice in all directions.

Sadly it is often incompatable though isn't it ?

Good state schools push up house prices, and private schools aren't cheap. Often needs two incomes to cope.
It's a myth that there is free good education in this country. You pay extra for it one way or another.

I don't pay extra for it. House prices don't affect school places one bit where I live, despite the good state schools (see my post on grammar school thread).

I just wish everywhere were the same.

I will say up front that personally I went to a working class sink school, but I suppose I'll be shot at anyway.
Any definition of "better" has to be taken as "on average".
Private schools are more often selective than state ones. That's a combination of behaviour and includes testing. after my own experiences at schools that fans of state education happen to conveniently "forget", I keep noticing just how nice the kids are too each other.

"Better" however you define it is going to be a function of both genes and environment, and it's hard to untangle those.
On the edges there are two cases, people who are so rich they don't care what it costs, and those who simply cannot afford it.
But for those in the middle, it is reasonable to assume that they care more about education.

Are the kids in private schools genetically smarter ? That's tougher to call. certainly selection will tend to pick the smarter kids from those who apply, but that set is skewed by parental wealth.
However if we assume that people with more money aren't less intelligent that those with less, we can therefore take it that kids who get a place are on average smarter.
This combines with parents who (again on average) care more to deliver better outcomes.

This does raise an interesting question about hom much "value add" there really is in private schools ?
Give nthat they are able to select better raw materials upon which to work, are their better results mostly or entirely down to this ? From my own knowledge I can't even prove that that they add more value than state schools. Don't see it myself, but I can't prove otherwise.

There are lots of areas you could discuss in relation to better and there is the in put when they start (parents putting education above all else, paying, valuing it and very clever children fighting off 5 children for every selective place at a private school most of those who can pay couldn't get their children into anyway because it's entrance by IQ etc) and then also "out put" - how they emerge at the end of the day. Obviously the material going into the private system is "better" anyway so it's hard to determine the value added but I still think you can.

I find more of a gentleness of environment as one nice thing, not so much roughness. More shaking hands, smiling, no graffiti, care, concern, mutual support. You might say that's just a veneer for kicking each other behind the bike sheds may be but I still think overall less violence, fewer guns, knives in school and children obviously on the whole from more stable homes without problems of parents in prison etc Perhaps things like standing up when the teacher comes in the room ( do they do that in state schools?), may be better enforcement of rules against running, pushing, swearing is also something I've willingly bought. I also find their schools now they are at university, some of them, career enhancing to some extent although not massively so. People know those schools are very hard to get into so that helps.

Here, here celia2, I use a bus route which at school time is used by pupils from local comprehensives and girls from 2 very selected private girl schools ( putney high and wimbledon high ) . It often amazes me the way some of the girls act loud rude and very obnoxious however I have been pleasantly surprised by the so called rough
kids who frequently give up there seats to OAP and are generally quieter and more well behaved!

Agree with you there afcw about the behaviour on buses, the route I use goes past two private schools, a grammar and a comprehensive and despite the fact that there are far more children from the comprehensive the behaviour is much better - offering seats and allowing more vulnerable people to get on before them.

Also at DS's school (comprehensive) the class lines up outside class until teacher allows them in and only take their seats when told, they also stand when an adult enters the class during a lesson

I just can't believe anyone who could say on average children at state schools behave better htan private schools. It just belies the evidence I've seen Also in 22 years when I have been in some state schools (not many) I have always seen much more graffiti in state schools. The parents would be up in arms in a private school if it looked like that. I think the private schools form and mould the children better into how we want them to be although of course in all schools you will have liars, cheats and bullies. On the whole you'd probably want to go to dinner with the private school output at 18 rather than the state school lot.

Intrinsically all humans are equal and none are better than others but in terms of behaviour, academic achievement, good morals, consideration for others, looks, style, accent I do think the private school product is "better" using most of the tests most people use in the UK to judge that.

'the evidence'??? you do talk tosh

Returning to the OP. Just 3% this year and for that we get to put DD1 in a boater and have a separate item on the bill marked 'Elocution'. Bargain!

DC but despite being in a sink school look at you now!!!! I bet it was the making of you!!!!!