Any not-posh private schools?!

[mumyes]

Been viewing a few private schools recently and bugger me they're all so fucking posh.

I love the amazing facilities & resources, but they lose me with the excessive snootiness, exclusively wealthy families and when they talk about all the prep schools they're close to.

My DC is at a (lovely) state primary.

Does such a thing as a nice, moderately academic Indy school where not all the kids are from wealthy families exist?!

Yeah, well...

That's kind of what I was thinking 🤔

You mean like the last Labour Party's Specialist schools? The Tory cuts soon put paid to them.

I don't think that the school I work at is particularly posh. A lot of the kids there are teachers' kids (decent staff discount). I'll be sending my own kids there and it's only £4k more per year per child than the state option when taking into account wraparound care costs (junior; senior is a lot more!). I know £4k is a huge amount of money but for a number of average families it is do-abke.

I mean if you're looking at 20k+ schools of course they will mostly be wealthy...they're the only ones who can afford it. Duh.

Not sure why journos are in the same boat as barristers and CFOs. As one myself were generally on 25-40k 😂 Were skint

Some private schools have close relationships with the civil service or the armed forces. Children are at boarding school because their families get posted and children stay behind to finish GCSEs etc. They tend to be less monied, but have a different feel to them.

But how do you define 'posh'.

My ds has a scholarship to an independent. I'm a single mum, so nothing 'posh' here. His class mates vary from parents with his&hers Maseratis to local farming families whose grandparents have stumped up most of the fees.

Generally the school is middle-class slightly tatty but it's rural and muddy old land rovers are common. People tend not to show their wealth so much.

Yeah, it was a good state school. Solid comprehensive with a really good head who supported her teachers (she left a year ago). At secondary it's all about the head teacher imo. Look for the head you feel most in tune with. It was a school with a reputation for draconian discipline though I thought it was pretty mild tbh - what they did was to take all the emotion and drama out of discipline - you've done X, so now Y will happen, moving on now. The school is very tatty, there was zero decent sport and not brilliant music though drama was good. Ds had some very poor teachers and I've no doubt there was a lot of disruption but he already had bombproof concentration from a really explosive primary school class (daily meltdowns, 6 levels of differentiation, you name it).

You're going to have to prioritise. The perfect school does not exist. Now that our children have all left school, it's interesting what parents have to say about their choices. Talk to parents of children now at uni.

We sent DC to private school and his friend’s parents were all like us - managing to pay the fees but at the expense of other things. One family had re-mortgaged their house. Fees are high because of the available facilities and because they offer higher salaries to attract and retain teachers. GD is at one of the top girls’ schools in the country and it isn’t all about academic brilliance. The Pastoral System is absolutely wonderful. A really good private school isn’t just about academic achievement but all round growth of a person.

How about a state boarding school like Cranbrook in Kent.

DC will need to be clever to get one of the boarding places (especially if they are girls) but it might tick all your boxes.

£14k a year - but they get fed as well for that!

Wealthy does not equal posh.

The Dulwich private schools - JAGS, Alleyn’s and Dulwich College are £20k+ per year. Parents are obviously wealthy enough to pay for it or the grandparents subsidise. Not new money and not old money either.
No super cars, yachts, footballers. Many are lawyers, bankers, doctors and usually both parents work.
No overt display of wealth - many ride bikes on the school run, some have 4x4s - wear work clothes, sports gear on the school run, occasional subtle designer bag. Some in 6 bed houses others in small 3 bed, no-one seems to care.

@Stuffynosetime what the hell?!

What you shall look to is grammar school.

Consider move to an area that have them. Also start a petition for government to create more. I’m sure many parents would sign up the petition.

They won’t “be with and learn to get on with kids from all backgrounds / walks of life” in a grammar school, OP. Grammar schools are overwhelmingly about kids from middle class families; the idea that they provide a leg up for “rough but bright” kids had some truth decades ago, but is rarely the case today.

Just send your kids to a state school you are reasonably happy with, and use some of the money saved to supplement their education other ways. Private education is too expensive for most normal families these days unless grandparents are helping out.

City private, day schools are not actually ‘posh’. Many used to be direct grant schools.

It is surprising how not necessarily wealthy many parents are. Some are giving up all sorts of things to afford the schools, some students have bursaries.

My understanding is that teacher salaries are the big cost factor, much more than facilities. It would be very hard to have a cheap private school while maintaining small class sizes.

They do exist up North and if you are looking for a day place without boarding.

www.igsdurham.com primary
www.oakheights.co.uk/fees/ secondary
www.abraracademy.com/information/school-fees/ secondary

Where I live it is about £12,000 per year
so people with one child, who don’t go on many holidays, who have an old car might scrape the fees together. You do get a variety of home backgrounds included.

Many are the children of doctors and teachers and lawyers, who aren’t really ‘posh’ in their behaviour either.

Some children can get bursaries too, but I don’t know what the parental income threshold for that is.

Some babies’ nurseries, which people have to use in order to work cost, £2000 p.m. in London I have heard!

Depends on the area and cost I imagine.
we are in Yorkshire (not the posh bit) and most of the DC at my kids school are firmly Mc. Doctors, Accountants, teachers, small business owners.
Few farmers but no landed gentry or similar.
Never met a snobby parent and and attempt at snobbery by the kids seems to get firmly squashed by their peers.

Not for everyone
theedenschool.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/The-Eden-SDA-School-Prospectus-2122.pdf Scroll down for fees

www.thekfa.org.uk/59/tuition-fees

www.dslondon.org.uk/en/admissions/school-fees

I'm not really sure what you expected as most schools cost around the average entire take home household salary per year 🤷🏻‍♀️ The only people who can afford it are super "posh".

I'm not sure what area you are in but the majority of state schools are very good these days, and you have so much choice now due to the way the allocations work. I wouldn't dismiss out of hand if diversity of population is important to you (I agree this is an extremely significant part of a rounded education about the world we live in)

NorthEast England, private school is mainly MC professionals with only a tiny handful of genuinely wealthy parents. Most parents are sacrificing new cars/extravagant holidays etc to send their kids private. Definitely not snobby or elitist. You are just at the wrong end of the country 🤷‍♀️

You could send them abroad. Many families in Europe do that, they send their children to live with host families, mainly in the US, Canada and Australia. But you could send them to Europe instead, e.g. to attend a statw Lyceum in France or a grammar school in Germany or Switzerland, while staying with host families. I did this throughout secondary school. It's much cheaper than private school in the UK, and on top of a better education, your ds slso gets fluent in a foreign language. You can even arrange it privately on an exchange basis, like a Frensh/German child stays with you for 1 or more years, and you send them yours instead.