GCSE exam fees £750

[MrsHGWells]

GCSEs are upon us in the coming weeks - do all pupils need to pay £750 for exam fees . Is this standard practice or negotiable by school? how do parents cover this fee ?

I think that’s true when it’s a disruptive child but not so much when the child is well behaved and well motivated.

If you have a class where the majority are well motivated and there’s only one disruptive individual then it’s effective but that’s rarely the case in most state schools. And without wanting to horribly generalise, in schools which set or stream it will make no discernible difference at all.

I totally agree that there should be choice not uniformity. However the state system should strive to eliminate any inequalities of access to those choices that are mediated on the basis of means to pay. You are right that schools that have hefty voluntary contributions will thrive but the existing rules that enforce that these must be absolutely voluntary with no difference in provision or shame/stigma on those who cannot are very important, and their admissions policies shpuld be carefully ensured to reduce or eliminate any seectiom criteria that would benefit the wealthier over the less wealthy.

Poorer children do not fundamentally have a lesser right to a good education than richer children. Of course the wealthier kids will nevertheless get a better deal - those who don't get the jackpot of a parents paying full whack for a private place at a school with tiny class sizes and top-of-the-ramge resources will still have their parents spending on additional tutoring, books and educational opportunities that will enhance their experience. That is how it works, all families are allowed to spend their discretionary income as they wish and spending it on a better education for your children is a totally valid choice.

However, absolutely no state funding should be directed to improving the educational experience of wealthier children in a way that is not equally accessible to poorer children.

There is one potentially erhical way to introduce top-up funding that I can see, but it would be probiitively expensive to administer and too open to abise to be practical in reality. That would be to have a set scale of sliding top-up fees based on ability to pay so that those kids from the lowest 40% of local incomes get their place absolutely free, those in the 40%-60% centile brakets of wealth pay a modest amount and the rest pay between 2 and 10 times the straight "per head" topup amount to subsidise places for the less well off. It coukd only happen with so much intrusive admin to properly assess people's ability to pay that it would never happen. Far better to simply use the existing mechanisms of income tax that already, while flawed, allow those with more resources to pay more - and agree as a nation that we want a better funded education system for all our nation's children and agree we want income tax to go up by whatever amount is needed to give every school the topup it needs. Education accounts for 9% of uk government spending - we could give every school a 10% topup funding by adding just 1% to the current tax take. That would be 100% worth it in my view.and would cost the vast majority of families a lot less than they would spend on an individual topup system.

Whilst simultaneously being so large that if a single private school fails the local state schools will be so overwhelmed that they won't cope.

Good point. If everyone had to use state schools (including the children of politicians), I suspect that funding of, and standards in, state schools would miraculously start to rise. Obviously that would never happen and I'm not really suggesting it should, but it's definitely relevant to the 'I'm doing the government/state schools a favour' argument.

You do get a choice where you receive NHS care. You could choose Exeter on the NHS. Look at Right to Choose.

Even the ones that aren't specifically intended to produce profits for shareholders/owned by venture capitalists are run with the aim to achieve a surplus.

Without profit being made on fees and on such things as lettings, sponsorships and bequests and from engaging credit providers, there's no money to provide bursaries and scholarships (also technically acting as a means of generating further income because it could bring in other high net worth families), upgrading premises and equipment or expansion and funding high profile activities and recruitment/retention of particular staff.

I have been thinking about the funding question.

As far as I can work out, Government funding towards non-state education (or towards additional costs that arise) is given when there is no capacity to meet need within the state sector eg:

• Some children with EHCPs are funded to attend private special schools, where no suitable state school places exist
• MDS funding is available for a small number of children whose needs for a suitable specialist dance / music school are not met otherwise.
• Transport for children whose appropriate special school, or allocated mainstream school (as long as the closest school was applied for) is paid for over a certain distance.

This is similar to the NHS, who will purchase capacity for certain operations to take place in private hospitals to reduce backlogs / where there is no capacity to meet need.

There exists in the state education system a route to declare preference for certain schools where there is capacity (similarly, Right to Choose in the NHS allows people to select a preferred hospital where there is capacity , but not force a preferred hospital to rake them if there is no capacity).

What is not funded by the state in either education or health is simply ‘choice to go to a third party supplier, where there is in fact capacity within the state system’.

This is reasonable, and consistent - for the reasons given by a PP, the costs of a school or ward are not reduced if instead of running at a capacity of 30, it runs at 29. So there is no saving to pay that 30th user to go elsewhere.

It is difficult to accept that capacity exists, because of the obvious difference between ‘total capacity of the education system’ and ‘capacity of the most desirable schools’. The OP of this thread herself stated that there were ‘no places in state’, rather than the truer version ‘there were no places in a state school I wanted’.

One of the so-far unarticulated issues lurking in this thread is that of the total cost of private education and its affordability for individual families. If a family budget will just accommodate fees along with other necessary expenditure - mortgage, car etc - that family actually can't afford to send their child to private school. Not thinking this through is irresponsible and not fair on the child, as I witnessed when a family close to mine sent their child to a private school and had to withdraw her after a year because their income fell. Even so, Labour's imposition of VAT on fees has excluded more families from choosing independent schools, thereby making them yet more elite.

Thank you. I've learnt something about Right to Choose - and I stand corrected on that point!

(Though I stand by my central point that if your choice was to attend a less good hospital in Newcastle (state funded), travel to Exeter for a better hospital (state funded), or pay (privately) for an equally good hospital in Newcastle because I couldn;t sensibly get to Exeter for the op, that the state (being responsible for the fact of the disparity in quality in the state options) should reasonably pay what they would have to pay in Exeter or Newcastle if I chose either option.)

Hi Ida - an interesting point, though I fear its not always especially straightforward to assess affordability in the long term. If funding private school across junior and senior school you might be looking at a period of 13 - 14 years, and what may well be the trebling (at a guess!) of fees across that period, plus any particular 'jumps' - e.g. VAT etc.

It's actually one reason why I consider the immediate imposition of VAT to be wrong. I can see a logical argument for applying VAT (even though I'm not personally persuaded by it), but to do so with very little warning risks preventing sensible forward assessments as to affordability.

Were it to be the case that only those who could effectively guarantee that they would have access to funds to pay uncapped fees across 13 years irrespective of unforeseen 'jumps' (e.g. VAT), and regardless of the loss of employment, etc, then the only people who could realistically do so would be those who already had hundreds of thousands in the bank which they could ringfence. I suspect that would be a very small 'pool', but it would also be a terrifyingly elitist pool!

sure, it's not enough for PS parents to pay VAT and exams on the top of high income taxes they pay anyway, they have to give they DC on the altar of improved state education.

How dare they not to

OP are you moving your DC to State Sixth Form or not?

If not at least OP won’t be surprised when she’s billed for A-levels.

I literally said in my post that parents who are engaged and invested in education should not be made to choose state education. Of course not. Obviously that would be ridiculous and clearly I never suggested anything of the kind.

I was merely making the point that parents choosing private over state education are not necessarily doing the state schools the massive favour some on this thread seem to think they are. Tbh I have never come across private-school-choosing parents who think that IRL or even elsewhere on MN. Most IME are more than aware of their privilege.