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 you’ll find that it’s 100% of the population that’s entitled to a free state education.

You chose to opt out and yes, you pay exam costs either as part of the fees or as a separate charge.

Did you not read your Ts & Cs?

Sad times.

Ive never given a thought how gcses are paid for. My parents wouldn't have afforded it (i went to state school) DD did gcses in 2022 and we didnt have to pay (state) and DS will sit them this year.
But tbh Ive never even considered that it would be an additional fee at private school.

Because you chose to go independent.

GCSEs are also not mandatory.

I think you're missing the point that you chose this option and did not read the small print, so to speak.

For the reasons I outlined in my post, if you'd care to read it. I shall rephrase the same in case that helps with your reading comprehension. It would be valid to include these costs in the fees and some schools do so. However that means that every pupil in each yeargroup of the senior school is paying a set amount every year towards the exams that are only being sat by y11 and y13. This means that pupils who join the school in y9 or y10 rather than y7 get to pay a disproportionately low amount towards this cost than other pupils and pupils who take 50% more subjects get to pay a disproportionately low amount towards this cost compared to the amount they benefit. The same is not true for electricity, water and gas because there aren't such significant differences in the benefits that different pupils get from a those services each year. When there are sharp differences in the benefits that different people receive, suppliers (the schools) can choose to charge everyone a flat fee and have the people who benefit less subsidising the people who benefit more, or they can make the people who benefit more pay more. They will put some people off either way as each option will see some families feel hard done by so there's no "correct" solution, either is fine so long as they are clear in their Ts&Cs.

Apart from some schools have higher fees for years 10 and 11 than 7,8 and 9 for exactly this reason.

Anyway it doesn't matter because a private school is a business and can choose to use whatever pricing structure they want and the parents as the customers can choose wether they are happy to accept them or not.

No one is making anyone pay for education in this country. Everyone can have it for free if that is what they choose

Private school here, exam fees are included in the tuition fees, so no additional invoice for the GCSE entries.

Indeed they do and that's a potential compromise which a school can choose. But they can also choose not to. None of these factors make for the OP having any validity for arguing that their situation is "unfair"

I didn't say they did.

Education of children is their human right, and it's therefore right and proper for the State to offer to pay for it. These are young human beings and future workers, not a type of pet for the parents to have to find every penny for.

That's some hypocrisy you show complaining about "93% of the population[...] feel[ing] entitled to 'free'" when the starting point of your thread was that you don't think you should have to pay for something!

The majority of that State-educated 93% do not live next to a grammar school. Many LEAs no longer offer grammar at all.

I believe @MrsHGWells wrongly (and naively) thought that GCSE's are provided to state schools as a free service, which I suppose sort of explains why they were outraged that private school parents had to pay.

Now that it's been explained to them that state schools pay for exams too, hopefully they will realise they were wrong and backtrack.

I am not convinced that these private schools are worth the money, given the poor literacy of the posters they turn out.

Whenever I've looked at private school fees info on their websites it's always been clear there's a cost for exams. So presumably if you sign your child up to a private school you factor that cost in from the outset. No one is forcing you to go to private school. Also £750 seems a relatively small sum in comparison to the entire cost of private school for a child (which I would have thought is easily over £100k for schooling between ages 11-16).

State comprehensive here and I paid for DD to have a GCSE the school didn’t offer (our mother language) - school entered her but I paid for the exam and for a qualified person to do the speaking test with her. School paid for the others.

I mean you know the answer to this, you clearly wanted a debate and to show every one your arguments for independent school. Fundamentally you made a choice and now your arguing semantics.

That Act is the reason we now measure "poor literacy" as opposed to "illiteracy", because outright illiteracy is vanishingly rare.

Before the Act, 23% of people couldn't sign their own name in the register book when they got married. They would have drawn an X instead. By 1900, 30 years later, the adult illiteracy rate had dropped to 6%.

Free and universal childhood education is not only a human right, but a national necessity to ensure that all our workers have enough reading skills to read warning signs and instructions. It's not a nice-to-have for parents to have to pay for or else see their children denied it.

Nice way to get an extra GCSE for little extra effort. Also formalises your DD's knowledge, which will help her if she wishes to work as an interpreter or translator in the future. Very smart move.

What is this? 10 papers?

All GCSE qualifications that I know of have multiple papers. Add to that practical assessments in Sciences, PE, music etc, oral exams in languages etc.

You seem to have very little understanding of exactly what qualifications your dc is sitting which I find extremely concerning.

My state educated child has 12 GCSEs, all A star. That needed way more than 10 papers. There are no grammar schools in our entire country (Wales) and we certainly do not live in a leafy green area next to an excelling school. It sounds as if you rolled into private education without fully informing yourself about the facts and other options.

Her choice, she’s a smart young woman
But I just wanted to show that state schools don’t always pay for the exams, though they normally do for the courses they teach.

I've rarely read such a load of arrogant, privileged, entitled claptrap. You clearly thought that state schools got exams for free, and now rather than acknowledge that you were wrong, you're digging in and spouting a lot of angry nonsense about lush greens and grammar schools. The vast majority of England (if that's where you are) has no grammar schools btw.

Anyway... of course people are 'entitled' to free education by the state. As they absolutely should be in any civilised country. That includes the school paying for exams out of its (very stretched) budget. It's no good having sour grapes and ranting at people who send their children to normal schools just because you've chosen the expensive route and didn't read the small print!

Another way in which money grabbing private schools get more money out of parents.

To some of your points OP, there is never a bridge of no return between the 2 systems.
Over the years I have had students swap between the 2 at all points. It is of course inadvisable to swap schools in y10 and 11 but some students have to do so.
The cost per qualification ( none of the 4 main exam boards in England and Wales charge per paper) varies between £45 and £110.
If your kid is sitting 10 then basically your private school is adding on a hefty admin fee as is their prerogative.
Why this is a shock to you now can only be down to your inability to read contracts.
Government doesn’t pay, each school does from their own budget, or in your case directly via parent. You cannot dip in and out of systems. If you pay for a private medical consultation then the prescription is not available on the NHS.
Feel free to transfer your dc back into the state system at any point.

🤣🤣🤣. But you could have chosen to send your child to a state school where s/he would quite probably have received an excellent education and you wouldn’t have been asked to pay the GCSE entrance fees. When you made the decision to send your child to a private school, surely you factored in all the extra costs you would incur over the years? If you could afford the fees for all these years, then surely an additional £750 is a drop in the ocean?

The more expensive exams are those that give 2 GCSEs btw, no individual singleGCSE tops about £60.

But your premise is wrong and you aren’t acknowledging it- state schools do pay out of the £5995 they get to provide year 11 education to each student. They don’t pass that cost on to the parents.

Your child’s school is a private business. I assume - ignoring VAT fees, you are being charged more than £5995 per student for year 11. So you have a valid argument with your child’s school to ask why they don’t use that funding to cover the exam entry costs like a state school does. Where is the money you pay going ?

Most private schools near me charge more for year 11 than younger years to cover the higher costs of exams, not just entry fees but exam invigilators, extra sessions for exam prep etc. does your child’s school charge the same for year 11 as year 7/8? If so, it could be they just can’t afford to swallow the entry fees, but if they are already charging more for being higher up the school, they are probably being unreasonable.

Ultimately though - if it was spelt out in the contract you signed with this school that exam entries would be charged additionally and not covered by your existing fees, then you don’t have much of a leg to stand on. You might get their policy changed for younger years.

They aren't really money grabbing though are they? They set fees to the level that enables them to give the education the fee payers want, which is usually a combination of some/ all of:
. Smaller classes
. More support
. Better facilities (science, sport etc)
. Longer hours and/or more extra curricular for wraparound care
. (Mixing with the 'right' kids)
. Faster paced education for the most selective
. Freedom from gov rules