Private schools - should they scrap their bursaries?

[SomeGuy]

I was interested to read this report from the Charity Commission.

Basically they tested five schools to decide whether they were charitable or not. Fees ranged from £6k to £15k per year.

The definition of charitable is a new one, since 2008. It is here.

The key criterion is

"F3 Principle 2b Where benefit is to a section of the public, the opportunity to benefit must not be unreasonably restricted"

in particular

"F10. Restrictions based on ability to pay any fees charged

Charities can charge for the services or facilities they provide. They can also charge fees that more than cover the cost of those services or facilities, provided that the charges are reasonable and necessary in order to carry out the charity?s aims, for example in maintaining or developing the service being provided. However, where, in practice, the charging restricts the benefits to only those who can afford to pay the fees charged, this may result in the benefits not being available to a sufficient section of the public.

...
The fact that the charitable facilities or services will be charged for, and will be provided mainly to people who can afford to pay the charges, does not necessarily mean that the organisation does not have aims that are for the public benefit; however,
an organisation that excluded people from the opportunity to benefit because of their inability to pay any fees charged would not have aims that are for the public benefit.

Therefore, where charities do charge fees, people who are unable to pay those fees must, nevertheless, be able to benefit in some material way related to the charity?s aims. This does not mean that charities have to offer services for free. Nor does it mean that people who are unable to pay the fees must actually benefit, in the sense that they choose to take up the benefit. They must not be excluded from the opportunity to benefit, whether or not they actually do so."

Basically they have determined that poor people must benefit in some way from private schools in order to have charitable status.

Of the five schools assessed, means-tested bursaries were advertised at four. The percentage of fee income going towards bursaries was: 14%, 10%, 5%,

Interesting point though. Private schools don't really fulfill the 'public benefit' definition, but do as far as 'non profit'

Tax breaks for non profits?

To be honest I don't think the issue of how to help the 70,000 children in the care system is at all helped by linking it to the issue of indie school status.
If people really want to help they should foster, provide respite care or volunteer for parental help services.

Cosette - I can see whaere you're coming from but these children's problems will not be solved by being in a nice school environment. Not without a decent family to come home to each night.

Hi Seeker,

That isn't what I'm saying by any stretch.
I just don't think that ordering schools to give away free places will encourage children from very disadvantaged backgrounds to apply - it will appeal more to middle class parents with low disposable incomes.

It is the same problem which universities have faced when they tried to widen participation (something which I was involved in professionally).
With all the efforts to encourage them, many people from disadvantaged backgrounds felt Oxbridge wasn't for 'people like us' and were put off by the idea of the pomp and ceremony which they perceive goes with places like that. I imagine the same is widely true for private schools.

No private school will ever have the kudos of Oxbridge, so it is unrealistic to say 'these children are here - lump it or leave' because the reality is, private education operates in a free market and parents will move their children to another school if they don't like the other pupils there.

I'm not pretending to have all the answers, but it is a gross oversimplification to assume that you can force children from disadvantaged backgrounds to mix and integrate into private schools while parents pick up the tab for it. It just wouldn't work.

That's why I think private schools should be abolished - so that the kids from private schools should be "forced to mix and integrate" into the state school system!

Or get sent to international schools in Europe, or get home tutored by bright teachers formally employed in good schools?

As OP said, back of the beermat maths would put the cost of state-educating all the children currently in state schools at somewhere around £3.5 billion.
I'd personally rather my tax didn't go up any more for what amonts to nothing more than social class ideology

My friend, unemployed, husband unemployed, has their son at a private school on 80% bursary plus scholarship for sports as he is brilliant at sports.

The Charity Commission has a very narrow definition of what helps people in poverty.

Scholarships don't count, and neither do 80% bursaries.

Scholarships were historically regarded as a good thing by independent schools, because it meant that bright pupils who perhaps could not otherwise afford to go, would be given the extra support and more intensive environment of a private school.

But they're not allowed to do that any more - well they are, but they ALSO have to provide bursaries for pupils of no exceptional ability (purely on financial grounds), otherwise they will be forced to close.

My son's school is in the catchment area of an 'Outstanding' state primary school, and I don't see why parents at my son's school should be forced to pay for a small number of children who would otherwise be going to the 'outstanding' state school.

No private school will ever have the kudos of Oxbridge, so it is unrealistic to say 'these children are here - lump it or leave' because the reality is, private education operates in a free market and parents will move their children to another school if they don't like the other pupils there

Eton is very close to Oxbridge in kudos, and I would guess that Eton graduates end up earning far more on average than Oxbridge graduates.

How will the country be able to afford the billions to educate the children if private schools arent there? Yes, both my children go to private schools, we both work full time to fund this. There is a view I fear that if you are sending your children to fee paying schools you can somehow afford any fees regardless..

If for example VAT is charged on school fees it might well finish us off. Many many parents are just like us, of course there are some at the school who have no worries about the fees regardless of what they are but they are no longer the vast majority. Lots of working professional parents who have just decided that this is where they want to spend their money...

Someguy,
Do you think most parents would acknowledge that their children are better off and richer for having a mix of children in their school (albeit a narrower one than you would find in a state school?)

Perhaps it is to appease their conscience, perhaps it is for genuine reasons, but children who are only friends with children who come from households which earn £100k+ and have 3 holidays a year can't be very worldly wise.
Perhaps having the bursary children there is a grounding that not everyone in life has privilege, but at the same time, making sure their children aren't coming into contact with the oiks they might find in a less than outstanding state school!

As you said, scholarships and bursaries have been part of the private school system since they began, so it isn't that parents don't know what they are getting when they sign up.
By the same token, a child might not swim, but a portion of their school fees will be subsidising the children who use the pool regularly

Ohh Rocky - you might have to send your children to the same schools that 93% of the children in the country go to!!!!!

You may be pleasnatly surprised!

Someguy, Do you think most parents would acknowledge that their children are better off and richer for having a mix of children in their school (albeit a narrower one than you would find in a state school?)

From what I've seen the school is much more diverse than the nearby state school. I've seen the kids from that school playing after school and they are all Henry and Jemima types.

Private schools tend to have a lot of expat parents, so there are for instance children who have moved from the USA, Holland, South Africa, Malaysia, among others.

As far as having a richer mix goes, lots and lots of state school parents set out to avoid this as far as they can - they pretend to be bible bashers in order to get into church schools, they move to tiny villages where houses cost a million pounds and more, they rent houses next door to the school for six months in order to get in, etc.

The most popular state schools are almost invariably the last mixed in their area - the ones with the fewest kids on free school meals, the fewest speaking English as a second language, and so on.

As far as getting a 'richer' experience goes, I believe that most parents regard this as a social experiment they'd rather not play with their own children. Children are sent to school to learn to maths, English, science and the rest, learning about the unequal distribution of resources is really not high on the agenda.

As you said, scholarships and bursaries have been part of the private school system since they began, so it isn't that parents don't know what they are getting when they sign up.

Well no, that's not the case. The scholarships, which I think are a good idea as they reward excellence, are a well-known part of private school lives, but 100% bursaries (the only type acceptable to the Charities Comission) certainly are not. Parents don't know what they were signing up to if 2 out of 5 schools tested are deemed not to be complying, and the third is borderline. Clearly the Charities Commission is determined to change schools from what the parents signed up to into something rather different.

I think studies have been done that show that even where there is a wide social mix in a school, the children almost inevitably end up forming friendship groups with others like themselves. I'm not entirely sure that just being in a school with children from a mix of backgrounds is enough.

Local Authorities have sent some children in care to boarding schools for years, actually. Lord Adonis was one such. For the right child it can be life-changing - they don't all go on to deal drugs.

sparechange - luckily the school I teach in doesn't include accents, table manners or instrument playing in its entrance exam, preferring the usual Maths and English. We do fine for social mix and this probably has something to do with a thriving (and separately funded) assisted places scheme, as well as parents making, sometimes, considerable sacrifices. Been there, done that.

I've also taught in ' comprehensives' where social mix depended on being able to afford the astronomical house prices in the catchment area. V middle class, nice accents and lots of instrument playing.

However one dresses it up, paying for education = advantage = not fair that some children receive a huge step up in the world due to their parents' income (whether it be scrimping and saving to pay the fees, or whether the fees are a drop in the ocean for them).

This isn't personal, my DCs go/went to a top state grammar school on a par with the best private schools in the country. I am very, very lucky.

But really ALL schools should be giving the sort of education my DCs received.

But, the pumpkineater, the problem is that the reason your children's top state grammar school is to a large extent because the parents are like you - literate and motivated.

How could ALL schools possibly give this kind of education when many parents are illiterate, criminal, drunkards, drug addicts, or don't-cares? Their children don't stand a chance.

Actually, don't tell anyone, but the people who have scrimped and saved to send their children to private school are still lower down the pecking order than those for whom the fees are not an issue. And as for scholarship kids......

Going to Eton doesn't make you the sort of person who goes to Oxford and becomes Governor of the Bank of England or leader of the Conservative party. Coming from the sort of family who have always gone to Eton, on the other hand, does.

I get very saddened when people want to abolish things that are good.

Surely this is a free country?

crikey, have all you people mangaed to read the op?

pecking order? whose pecking order?
Don't know of anyone (of the many I know who are scrimping to pay fees) who is remotely interested in 'pecking orders' - just getting the education that suits THEIR child best,by making scarifices.
To get back to the issue of bursaries (rather then the class struggle that seeker seems to want pursue), sounds like a good idea, if there are bursaries, to offer them to the poorest achieving children rather than the 'brightest' (hate that expression, as suggests that other are dimmest which I do not accept) as those arguably deserve more teaching than they appear to be able to get elsewhere.
As a parent whose fees do go to subsidise bursaries I would have no issue with this - excellent idea.

sacrifices - 'scarifices' obviously getting ready for Hallowe'en

seeker - your dc don't go to the type of schools that the vast majority go to - they go to selective schools - it's very easy for people to wax lyrical about the state system when the state schools available to them are good-excellent, but that isn't the reality for I suspect the majority of the population - scrapping charitable status for private schools would do not a jot to change that ...

Correction - my dd does go to a selective state school. Ds goes to a very unselective primary school in an area of very high social deprivation. The school that dd got to her selective secondary school from. When it scraped an OFSTED "satisfactory".

And your point?

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