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?!

At christs hospital is a private school in Sussex with I believe the highest percentage of lower income families and incredibly high number is bursaries. Basically the very wealthy few pay for the rest

many Private schools are not that profitable, even on the £15k plus level of fees. Facilities, teaching, smaller class sizes, all cost money.

I don't know where in the country you are OP, but DC's private school - highly selective - is not at all snobbish. There are bursaries for anyone who is bright enough to go there and can't afford it. Pastoral care is excellent. The boys (single sex school) are very happy and although many are from eye-wateringly rich families (DC's friends had castles and yachts. We - er - don't and live on the edge of a council estate) – they didn't care about your background - they still happily came round to ours all the time for sleepovers and parties and pizza nights.

But I do think these schools are rare, and if that one hadn;t been near us, I suspect we'd have sent DC to a local comp rather than to one of the other more overtly 'exclusive' schools as they wouldn't have fitted in and would have developed values very different from our own.

They might not now but they certainly did in the 1960s when I went to one

‘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.‘

I do wonder how many examples of ‘excessive snootiness’ you have witnessed. Sure some snobs exist. But most parents from private and state I have met don’t try and look down on others. Everyone has their own struggles. They may well talk about their local prep schools but that’s not unreasonable surely. I think you need to separate out in your mind what is actually ‘snootiness’ and what is normal but distorted by the chip on your shoulder.

Yes there are a couple near me in Dorset. Pretty normal parents who are not snooty.

I agree with this summary. I teach in a private school in West Midlands.

Depends where you are. Here in outer Lodon it is all pretty mixed (my son was the only white boy in his senior school in the class at one point - fee paying school, not that colour relates to wealth but there were a lot of new immigrant families putting every spare penny into school fees including some who moved the whole family over to the UK for the son's education and it is certanily not a "posh" school although that does depend on how someone defines that.
If you go out to leafy very rich areas of the SE you will find some aeras where houses all cost £1m and people are perhaps "posh" in the sence you don't get at places like Manchester grammar private school or other metropolitan very academically selective secondaries in the private sector.

I am not sure it is snooty to mention prep schools that feed into the secondary. I paid school fees from when the children were 4 and that wasn't really anything to do with being a certain class. I just wanted single sex and private schooling.

Not anymore. The provincial professionals who were the bread and butter of that type of school can't afford to send their kids private anymore.

DH and I both went to not "posh" private schools, our kids won't, can't afford it despite being in equivalent professional jobs to our parents...

What OP is looking for does exist in some places, or at least almost. I'm in Jersey and there are schools here with fees of circa £2300 per term, so £7k a year. A bit like the Australian model mentioned upthread I think.

Still an awful lot for many people obviously, but there's a much greater mix of pupils, some from very wealthy families and some who can just about scrape the £7k together (maybe with family help) for a better academic and pastoral experience than other schools. The median salary here is £43k so a bit more achievable.

Whilst it obviously shouldn't make a difference, I get the feeling that having one of those schools on your CV is desirable here too.

Same same. DH does the same professional job as my dad but not a chance of putting 3 kids through private school on the income these days.

My nephew is at a private school in Yorkshire and the fees are about 10k for junior and I think about 15k at senior level (day school). My twins' outer London day school is about £18k a year. However I am not saying it is cheap. However it is a similar cost to full time care for a baby so where both parents work full time it is pretty seamless from that to private school fees.

Well, there’s no tax break or free hours on school fees. Appreciate a baby doesn’t get the latter, but most parents will have it on at least one child before they pay for the next.

However it is a similar cost to full time care for a baby so where both parents work full time it is pretty seamless from that to private school fees.

Sure... except for many of us full time care for a baby is pretty much unaffordable and we count down the days until we no longer have to pay that! My kids will be attending private school, but only because I'm a teacher with a large staff discount. Most people could not afford to pay the equivalent of the crazy childcare costs for able additional X amount of years!