Do private schools give bursaries/scholarships to parents with decent salaries?

[Alyosha]

I feel certain that the answer to this will be "no" but wanted to check.

We have two DS, 3 and 3 months. We both have good jobs, joint salary is over £100k, very comfortable and we have no complaints about our standard of living. We live in London, where private school fees seem to have gone absolutely nuts. I went to SHHS which was £9k pa by time I left in 2007; so very expensive but would be just about affordable for me & DH for 2 DCs. Occasionally they send me a begging letter asking me to donate for their fund to build a world class music centre...can't say I'm too motivated to donate now their fees are pushing £20k pa.

I can't see any way that we could afford school fees for both boys in 2- 3 year's time even with our good incomes. But looking at the support available it's only if you're earning under £80k. But there's no way I would have thought a family jointly earning £80k could afford £20k in school fees for 2 children (£40k net a year!) with mortgage, council tax, utilities, groceries etc.

So our only option would be a scholarship, but most scholarships seem to be 20% max off fees, which doesn't make them affordable, especially not long term. Is there anywhere that has substantial fee remission for a scholarship in commuting distance of North London, either primary or secondary?

This is of course assuming the DCs would even get scholarships, which I realise is a tall order!

Yes my point is that losing charitable status hugely erodes the value of gifts. Many companies have charitable foundations but typically those charities don't financially benefit that same company

OP ages ago you said And it's boarding which I'm not hugely keen on.

I know it’s not fashionable to say this but some children love boarding. (And not because they have an unhappy home life.) It can be quite fantastic for an only child, and / or one with a parent or two who might find it a struggle to shuttle between clubs and what have you. Confident, gregarious children can really thrive in a 24 hr friends situation.

And I should also say that there are plenty of teens for whom the individual rooms at one particular Public School are a huge draw. And the fancy uniforms merely an opportunity for theatre. It’s too early yet, but I really wouldn’t dismiss boarding until you’ve visited a few with your child. Some have 20% of their intake on bursaries of up to more than 100% of fees. (For which candidates do not need to be geniuses.)

I definitely think boarding is a very different proposition at the age of 13/14 than it is at 7/8 or even 11. I absolutely loved fancy uniforms as a schoolgirl and wished my school had a fancier one - always was a bit jealous of Christ's Hospital School! We'll have to see what happens when the children are older. Very hard to imagine them being teenagers at the moment!

@LiterallyKnowsBest

OP ages ago you said And it's boarding which I'm not hugely keen on.

I know it’s not fashionable to say this but some children love boarding. (And not because they have an unhappy home life.) It can be quite fantastic for an only child, and / or one with a parent or two who might find it a struggle to shuttle between clubs and what have you. Confident, gregarious children can really thrive in a 24 hr friends situation.

And I should also say that there are plenty of teens for whom the individual rooms at one particular Public School are a huge draw. And the fancy uniforms merely an opportunity for theatre. It’s too early yet, but I really wouldn’t dismiss boarding until you’ve visited a few with your child. Some have 20% of their intake on bursaries of up to more than 100% of fees. (For which candidates do not need to be geniuses.)

I know which school you are talking about, @LiterallyKnowsBest, and it was part of the package for my DS.

He is not a particularly confident or 'typical boarding school' child (homebody, doesn't like team sports, diagnosed with AS when quite young, very clever but struggled socially) but the school was the best possible fit for him, and he flourished there in a way he had never flourished at school prior to that. It helped that this particular school helped every pupil to discover what they loved and what they were good at (whether that be academic or art or sport or darts or anything at all!) and encouraged them to pursue it.

I dismissed boarding when my children were younger (this particular one was offered it at 8, and I refused even to consider it), but things change, and sometimes the opportunities are too good to turn down. Especially when the school is more or less paying you to send your child there.

It meant a bit of a re-jigging of life as it was so far away that it was difficult to get there and back in a day, but it was worth it a million times over.

Gifts of that kind really aren't common.

Most schools will never have had one and don't expect ever to get one.

?

In London, quite a few day schools offer generous bursaries and scholarships .
ie there are 25% off bursaries available up to 120K income, depending on net assets.

OP, I read your post with interest and amazement at your patience at people being downright rude and patronising, especially @naaah. What’s with the capital letters shouting, asking to summarise things and lecturing you to work more during her may leave!
Re: your question, I see nobody suggested the opposite of the advice before: send them to a prep which would be a huge advantage at 11+ over children from state schools, which don’t prepare specifically for 11+. If you look into the background of kids at grammar schools you’ll find a large number comings from preps. I have 2 kids at a prep and will apply to both grammars and state selectives, as well as indies. If we get in HBS, St Michael’s, St Marylebone and CSG (the latter two via musical route) that’s were we’ll go. If not, hopefully top indies, including your old alma mater. It would be a bit of a gamble for you, as you can’t comfortably pay all the way through and if they don’t get in grammars what do you do then. As you have Catholic route also there some good options open to you.
To me there’s absolutely value in private schools - I’m buying my kids the experience not the university destinations. You don’t need to be a genius in math to see how 3x more expenditure in private per pupil should lead to a much better experience than in state. Of course, there are terrible private schools also but that’s the job on the parent to work out which ones are actually good.

I'd love to know the %
We'd have gone private with one child.
Decided not to with two as h

Two is huge compromise.
Three DC makes private school impossible unless huge earners

@Frogusha What a nice post! Thank you. I do say it's my underwhelming internet superpower to stay calm in the face of goady and downright rude comments. I think my personal favourite was when @naaaahhh told me I was high on post-birth hormones and wanted my DH to enter the chat.

It's interesting you mention sending to independent primary and hoping for a successful 11+, my mum always mentioned this as the savvy money saving way to approach private education! For us the risk is too high that he wouldn't be successful, and I think it's a hard transition from independent primary to non-selective state comprehensive - talk about a shock to the system! We'll almost certainly put him in for the grammars we can (Ilford County, Latymer, QE Boys), and depending on our finances will add some independent secondaries into the mix.

This whole thread was incredibly useful in the end - advice on investments, stocks & shares ISAs were genuinely very helpful and me and DH are both targeting some higher paid jobs in the near future, so we may yet be in a better position.

@Alyosha

I do remember several girls leaving SHHS to go to state schools, all but one came back!

Interesting thing about SHHS, although a digression, I always felt it had a more bohemian vibe, and of my former classmates there's an interesting mix of careers - very successful entrepreneur, daily mail journo, fashion designer, poet, scientific researcher etc. None of those jobs earn anywhere near enough to send their kids to SHHS now. Yet the school constantly sends alumni begging letters, not to fund bursaries for the bright but less advantaged, but to upgrade yet more facilities. Does anyone know why they do this?

I doubt that SHHS has enough detail about most of their alums' specific situations to know from whom not to bother begging.

Some of your former classmates might have gone into corporate law or finance and be in positions to make donations to the school. Others, including some of the less well paid ones, might have found much better paid partners, and be in positions to donate. Some of these (hypothetical) classmates may have (hypothetical) DDs of their own and believe that there may be an advantage to maintaining "good relations" with the school.

As for why facilities upgrades rather than bursaries, I think that it's been previously mentioned that many private schools are engaged in an arms race, from which no single school can rationally disengage unilaterally.

@user799568149 Hmm. I think I'm surprised that they put their time and effort into pursuing donations for such a frivolous cause. Asking for donations so the privileged girls can have a nicer music centre is not exactly a compelling call to action, and I don't think I'm the only one who thinks that way as I got years of letters asking for money to fund it, i.e. they weren't very successful raising money. DH gets begging letters too - but asking him to donate to a bursary fund so that his old school can become needs-blind.

I feel as though SHHS is sending me a letter saying, essentially, "please donate so that our school fees can become even more unaffordable for the likes of you". It's such a pity they feel they can't opt out of the arms race. SHHS used to be pretty no-frills and was one of the cheaper schools because of it. That was part of its charm!

As you say, I'm sure that a large number of my former classmates could afford to donate if they wanted to, especially if they had daughters aiming for admission. I've well and truly burnt that bridge if I ever had a daughter; I sent them a snippy email saying all of the above. Which they replied to telling me 50% of the girls get bursaries now. Great! Why on earth didn't they lead with that in their fundraising?!

OP, yes, the stakes are high in the worst case scenario (they don’t get in anywhere), but in that case you can try to apply to some great Catholic schools, like Cardinal Vaughan, heard great things about it. Sacred Heart Hammersmith?
If you send them to a state primary it’d mean either much more work for you or a lot of tutoring (which can add up and kids will be exhausted). You’d still prob need to do additional work for 11+, can’t rely completely on a prep, but it’d be topping up rather than doing it all yourself. Can be done from a state school but all success stories state to top senior / grammar that I know are either stay at home parents prepping or LOADS of tutoring (or both, or genius kids) 😉

@Frogusha Yes, good point on the Catholic secondary schools. I looked at the Oratory website but it's so far away from us as is Sacred Heart. And my husband is convinced his priest would make him scrub the parish's toilets for a week if he wanted a form for the Oratory. Apparently he took great pleasure in telling the congregation this week that they wouldn't get a form unless they went on all the days of holy obligation!

I came to SHHS from a state primary and have first hand experience of the horrors of the 11+. That was 99/00, it was bad then and I'm sure it's only got worse. I was behind until year 9 as well. And I did have a stay at home mum! Sadly not a genius though !!

We’re not a million miles from you in terms of area. Looking around mixed comps in London recently, we found well-behaved children and really committed teachers.

We’ve moved a child from state primary to prep because DC wasn’t thriving, but for other DC who is having a great time in a state primary, the plan is to go to non-selective state.

They key motivation is I want my children to be happy and if there is nothing to suggest they’d be happier in private schools, then keeping away from the pressure of 11+ and high performing/ perfectionist environment seems wise. I also think this DC will prefer being a big fish in a small pond, and in terms of academics should be at the top.

The comps have a clutch of children each year with very good GCSE results, so it is possible to do very well. I’d like my children to meet a wide range of people - surely that is an education itself - and as you point out, it is a shrinking pool that can afford the fees for private.

Just hoping to offer a different perspective.

@Alyosha, of course, you passed 11+ yourself so you actually know what to do and how to get it done. You’ll be fine either way. Good luck with the decisions!

@Alyosha

they replied to telling me 50% of the girls get bursaries now. Great! Why on earth didn't they lead with that in their fundraising?!

In all likelihood because it's not true. None of the other private girls day schools in London give bursaries to more than 12% of their senior school girls. SHHS don't publish separate accounts; their numbers are rolled up into GDST's. From GDST's annual report:

Overall, in 2019-20:
• The GDST distributed £20.4m in bursaries and scholarships, equivalent to 9% of all GDST
fee income.
• 1,105 (2019: 1,165) pupils benefited from a bursary, 204 of whom also received a
scholarship. In total, 3,182 pupils received either a bursary, a scholarship or both,
representing 29% percent of students in our fee-paying senior schools.
• 1,106 (2019: 1,133) students received funding equivalent to 50% or more of fees. Of these,
428 (2019: 432) received full bursaries, which accounts for 39% (2019: 37%) of bursaries
and 4% (2019: 4%) of students in our fee-paying senior schools.

If half of SHHS's girls received bursaries, then only 3% of the 19000 girls at the other 22 private GDST schools would have received bursaries last year. You're welcome to believe this, but I don't.

You sound like a very involved Mum so your DB’s will fly in the state system. There are some incredible teachers out there who bring out the best in bright, motivated DC and if your boys are as bright and motivated as you appear to be, then the world is their oyster in terms of achievement at state schools and they will love it. That means you can save money for getting them on the housing ladder.

I wonder if this well paid MP looked for a bursary before attempting a slightly more icky way of paying fees!
www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/15/tory-mp-daniel-kawczynski-fixer-job-with-saudi-contacts-school-fees

Does anyone know if typically single parents within the bursary income limit levels could still get a bursary if they have a mortgage, rather than renting?

Yes, of course!

Why ever not?

Literally
I have no idea how low or high the bar is set. This is not my area of experience. School webpages about bursaries mention taking into account ‘assets’. Owning your own home with a mortgage is considered an asset, so that’s why I asked the question.

They won't mind about you owning a house that you live in (unless it is so huge and expensive that you could sell it, pay the school fees and still have enough to buy a family home). If you had eg a second property or holiday home or something, they would want to know why you couldn't sell it to pay fees.