Private School and parent on benefits

[Villagreg73]

My ds is about to leave state primary and start private school. I'm a disabled single parent and ds school fees paid for by a generous school bursary and a great scholarship from a scientific charity because of his understanding of the subject. He's not especially gifted though.
To those trying to find a way to send their children to PS it is possible. Keep trying. Armed forces and trade organizations can often help. Large industrialists have educational foundations.
Apply and hope. Even a 15% discount from any source could be enough.

I'm not sure I'd agree about the parties comment above.

We held our children's party in a village hall with games and party food etc. It cost about £200 and could have been less if I'd made the cake. Re presents the gifts really range. There were a lot of £25
Lego sets but there were also £5 books or small gifts. We give something small and thoughtful eg
A dinosaur torch (£7) for the last party we went too.

I've not felt pressured by the requests for money. They're often optional.

Well done to your son! 🎉🎊

Please do not take this the wrong way, but I would never consider putting my child in a private school if I was on benefits, he is going to stick out like a sore thumb.

Congratulations to your son! What a wonderful achievement.
My sons go to a private school and we don’t have these extra expenses. The majority of parents shop at the second hand sale (there is quite a scrum) and the basic uniform is M&S. He wears M&S bottoms for his sports kit as do 99% of his class.
We pay 30 quid at the start of the year for all teacher related expenses. Paid nothing for World Book Day. My main expense is music as both DCs are talented musicians but we learn outside school.
I wish your son all the very very best and I hope he has a fabulous time.

@florin “School trips once they get to year 5 they are generally over a £1000 each”
Your school is very ‘particular’ then. DC3 is at apparently the most expensive school in the country, doing a notoriously expensive elite sport- yearly cost for that £500, including weekend training and a residential training camp.
I don’t recognise anything from the rest of what you wrote. They’re not demanding about uniform- blazer around £50 and the rest from supermarkets. I also get weekly emails about second hand shop opening. Parties are soft play and then gatherings in the teenage years, 18th’s a pub crawl.

Also as an aside I went to a very posh girls school (not in the UK). My friends had very rich parents (by global standards). Everyone was holidaying in Europe. My parents are teachers in a country where teachers are not well paid. I didn’t stick out like a sore thumb. And no one cared. And if there was the odd idiot I had a great group of friends and they didn’t care. I did get a great education and went on to do a PhD though. I had wonderful teachers who were very inspiring. I now work as an academic and I regularly have to persuade students from
poorer backgrounds that our University is indeed for them.

And staff collections are unheard of in senior school- at prep it was completely normal to send in a card and bottle or potplant.

Congrats you must be very proud! As for the expensive extras everyone keeps warning about, there are ways around those. I buy most of ds uniform in the thriving second hand shop. Parties are often just a few of his friends to bowling or crazy golf. There doesn’t seem to be any competition or snobbery about possessions or houses.

@OneMoreToFind
Because sticking out like a sore thumb is the end of the world is it? But the point is he wont
DC mentioned above is my third through ps. They’ve all had close ‘sleepover level’ friends who on reflection were completely reliant on benefits.

I have a friend with children at private school. Last year she was surprised to be charged the costs for the GCSEs that her son took. She thought they were included in the fees.

He is also a gifted sportsman and did a rugby tour with the school to South Africa. I bet that cost them a fair bit.

Easypeasy private schools have to offer bursaries. They have charitable status and this is their charitable activity that backs that up

I was the child from poor family, grew up in council house neither parenting working by the time I went to secondary school. I was given 100% bursary in the early 1980s. The school was good but I couldn't really take advantage of all the opportunities. It's complicated but I really didn't fit in socially and knew it. There were girls in my year who had known each other since ballet class, not something I would ever have been able to do.

I felt the divide with holidays, we went nowhere but others went all over including the Caribbean and often families were holidaying together. It did give some advantages but difficult to relate to the other pupils who just didn't know how privileged they were.

Other costs were hard to manage, uniform and books all bought second hand.

Thanks OP that's really encouraging, we are also on limited income and considering the local private school for DS. I was concerned that he - and we - would be the poor relation, but the head was clear that actually it's the "rich" families who are in the minority, everyone else is just coping with the (all-inclusive) costs in whatever way they can, including help through bursaries. And he said that what the school is interested in is children who will benefit most from what they can offer, irrespective of their background. Well done you, and your boy 😊

Why would a private school offer huge bursaries though? I would have thought that as a business they are trying to make money, rather than attract those who don't have any.

Oh, easypeasylife - there’s so much you’ve missed!

Private schools now have to justify their charitable status. They have some very creative ways of doing it. Offering bursaries so that a few slightly less rich kids get in is one.

Disclaimer. There are some private schools that take their charitable status seriously and always have.

My DS is at Private School.
It's the extras that add up.
The blazer alone is £115.Then there's the school coat which is £85.School bag £45.
As he gets older the list of equipment he has to have grows.
For example he will need a full cricket kit,rugby kit etc.
Then you have the extra curricular activities..For example Lego Club is £35.
We have also just been informed that from September they would like each child to have an iPad they can bring to school every day.They do add that they do have iPads already at school but that they would prefer each child to bring their own one in.
And don't forget birthdays..It feels like we are at a birthday party all the time.
School lunch too has to be paid for.
This is all without mentioning the school trips which are to places like South Africa,Argentina.

AdidasGirl My boys are also at private school DS10 has got a ski trip coming up very soon, if I was on benefits I would never be able to afford the cost and not to mention the other extras for both boys.

Completely depends on the school though.

Ours had lunch and Lego club included!

Thanks for all the positive comments. My OP was yo inspire hope. My ds school repeatedly said 5% to 10% absolute maximum. On application it was several times the upper percentage. WOW!!
Armed forces charity. I was thinking RM RN children fund. It's structured differently.
The extras like school trips, additional lessons music drama etc.. they will be difficult but we'll see..
Being treated differently because of financial back ground. Yeah maybe but that can happen anywhere. He's a well rounded child. Anyone treats him like that he has the ability to cope. If not, knows who to speak to.

What I want to end with is.
If you think it's right for your child (and not your ego). If you think they'll enjoy (upto) six days at school for 7 years and you know where to look and ask try it. Go to several open days. Be prepared to be told no by charities you were sure of. The help is there.

If you're going to secondary school then the full backing of current primary school head is an invaluable support.

Thanks everyone. GO 4 IT

It’s a rather more subtle business model easypeasy than simply raking in money.

The most famous school in the country currently waives its almost £40,000 annual fees for approx 70 boys for the five years they spend there. It’s not just altruism certainly. They need to maintain the institution as somewhere tangibly exciting enough (academically, socially, pedagogically (?), philosophically) for those who can pay to want to spend their money on that school. And for the media to find the place worth talking about. That happens by engineering an ever evolving mix of clever pupils from (hateful word) diverse backgrounds who want to be there.

There’s no doubt bursaries work better if a significant proportion of pupils can access them. Which only happens at very wealthy schools. Which leads to extremes ...

Point of detail. It doesn't waive the fees. It pays then from the bursary pot to the school. There is no reduction in income to the main school.

Aside from schools where there are sibling discounts, which are part of the main pricing policy and represent a genuine waiving of a proportion of th fees to repeat customers, I know of no schools which waive fees. Every one I have come across pays for bursaries from a separate fund.

(Now awaits lists and lists if schools which do waive)

Onemoretofind, why does it matter? DS had at least three friends who lived in exCouncil rentals, and who, were likely to be on pretty full bursaries. It did not matter as there were a huge range of different backgrounds, and a focus on a child's achievements rather than those of the parents. The boy DC did not envy was staggeringly rich, but had to be taken to school by a bodyguard as his dad had fallen out with Putin.

I meant waived from the point of view of the parents. I have zero interest in how schools organise their finances - just on the impact for families without zillions per year at their personal disposal!

It was also an answer to ^easypeasy* whose post earlier in the thread I read as suggesting that the main school would be receiving less money because of bursaries, when actually they don't (or at least none of those I know enough about)

So the 'why they do it' is to get pupils who might not otherwise be able to attend (on financial grounds) into the school. They are usually looking for DC who will bring something interesting to the life of the school, or who would particularly benefit from it.

No school is (yet) rich enough to go down the full 'needs blind' route, but there are quite a number who aim for that, or who are at least expanding provision. How the school affords its awards is quite important to how many and how large they are. In general, if you are looking, check out older schools. A few centuries of compound interest make quite a difference to value of bursary pot, even when interest rates and returns on investment generally have been low for a sustained period.

I agree.

I'm a single parent on a pretty low income and I thought i would give it a go applying for a very local private school.

Thought if I was lucky I might get an 80% bursary as this appeared to be possible.

Got 95% and we are delighted. I know DC worked hard for it too. I would say it was definitely worth a try.

Having said that, I know 2 other DC didn't get the bursary they needed. I think they assess the whole all round situation. I did make sure that we turned up for everything, were immaculately turned out, that DC was prepared etc.

Who knows what did it, but it worked

There are definitely less expensive extras at dd's private than many state schools. Almost everything is included in fees, and they have additional funding for dc who might still struggle. Trips are definitely cheaper than at nearest state, mainly because the school has lots of resources it already owns or pays annually to hire. Eg duke of Edinburgh, they already have their own staff and equipment so the cost to parents is lower.

Uniform, again cheaper imo. Blazer is the same as state (and cheaper than some). Other items are well made and last a long time so better value for money.

There are expensive ski trips etc but state offer those too. And at dd's it certainly isn't the norm to go.

Plus the wide range of extra curriculars, included in fees, saves money you might otherwise spend on them at home.