Anyone`s kids got into a good school on a sholarship?

[OnEdge]

I was hoping to privately educate my kids, but now on pregnacy number 3 just won`t be able to afford to privately educate all of them. Have any of you experienced a scholarship? How did it happen, was it "planned" Is there anything I can do to increase my chances? My daughter is only 3 by the way and son is 1.

I think it is rather early to be thinking about scholarships as these are mostly based on academic merit or excellence in a particular area e.g. music or sports and it is presumably difficult to establish if your 3 and 1 yr olds have any particular talents at this stage! Scholarships tend to cover only a portion of the fees and it can be as little as 10%. Full scholarships do exist but are not common and usually very competitive. If you have three children, you will be unlikely to get scholarships for all three and you will still have to make up the shortfall and budget for all the extras of uniform, trips etc which can be substantial.

Why do you feel it is necessary to privately educate your children? Is this something you have given a lot of thought to or just something that you feel is what you want?

tbh you're unlikely to get much money off even if your children do turn out to be brilliant, because they tend to be heavily means tested these days and if you can afford to privately educate any of them that means you're likely to be above the threshold to get significant help. (I have looked into this too despite my eldest being 4 )
Music scholarships may be a bit different but they would need to be very good indeed.

My children are the same age as yours and I have been thinking along the same lines as you, simply because the options for secondary school here are beyond dire (Luckily we have a fantastic primary school) I think it is wishful thinking though, for the reasons already given. I think it would be worth waiting until your/our children are older and seeing how things develop with them, with scholarships and with your finances. Or were you thinking of starting your eldest at 4?

I have given it years of thought. I feels so strongly about it. I went a state school and the education was poor, the pupils were violent, 2 or 3 of the teachers were in relationships with the pupils.. There was bad language, bullying, smoking drinking no where to sit at a table and eat a hot meal at lunch time with knives and forks. I didnt relate to it then and i dont want it for my children. I drive through our town at lunch time and I see kids walking along street smoking and swearing the uniform has gone out of the window and they are just such a shower. The local kids I have met who go to privatre school are well educated, well mannered, well dressed and I beleive, have a much better start in life. Its what I want for my children. And we live in a relatively nice rural area.

My experience is limited to DS1 at the moment, but basically he now has a free place at a very good school. However, this is not pure scholarship money - it's about 50/50 scholarship and bursary, and the scholarship itself is about 50/50 academic and music.

The impression I get is that scholarships used to be based on ability and not related to parental income. They are often not a very large percentage of the school fee anyway and some schools are phasing them out in favour of bursaries. A bursary used to be based generally on income and not on ability but I get the impression that more schools are using the bursary as a way of funding the most able children with lower parental incomes.

Every school assesses your qualification for a bursary differently so you might qualify for more or less depending on the school.

I guess what I'm saying is that whether you are after a scholarship or a bursary, the school will be looking for a child of high ability, whether that is academic, musical, sporting or artistic, and there will be a lot of parents after that money. In DS1's case it was obvious from an early age that he was pretty able, and as we are not very well off, he was able to get a place.

There's not very much around at primary level, so I think you would have to wait until secondary anyway.

you know what, I am being really honest here, but the reason I want to find out is that if it is a music scholarship, or language, I want to start getting them prepared now. My mate takes her 3yo DD to French lessons and I thought if i get mi daughter to learn Mandarin or the harp or something way out she might get a scholarship. I mean that is only a light hearted thing that started off as a joke but got me thinking........

You just need to expose your DC to everything and see if they have an aptitiude for it. No amount of classes etc is going to make an average musician outstanding, for example. And if the purpose of all this is to give your children a good eduction then surely you would be doing that anyway?

I'm afraid if preparation was all it took, you would be on the right track but schools are very aware of children who have been tutored and prepared and test the kids to track innate ability and potential. Speaking another language won't get them a scholarship.

Music is one area where basic aptitude can be converted into results with lots of practice but even there the standards are very high indeed and they are tested for musicality as well as skills. And I think 6 or 7 is probably the earliest that it is worth starting an instrument anyway.

There's nothing wrong with encouraging and stimulating your daughter, but do it for its own sake, because it is very unlikely to win her a free place at a private school unless she is naturally very able. And you probably won't be able to tell that for a while anyway.

It's also worth mentioning that you do need to be quite poor indeed to qualify for money off!

I've never heard of a scholarship for languages, and I've done a fair bit of research . They tend to be academic, sport, music, occasionally art or drama.

Scholarships are generally being phased out in favour of means-tested bursaries so that schools can keep thier charitable status.

The means testing can be v harsh- they take into account the equity in your home and exppect you to 'release' that before they will give you a discount. Once your youngest is 5 they will expect both parents to be working to contribute to fees. Some schools will only give full bursaries to families with income below £16k.

I had an academic scholarship at school and I wasn't prepared for it at all. I just sat the entrance exam and was invited back for a scholarship exam.

Music you could start early (e.g. violin and the Suzuki method) but it can be quite expensive. They look for children who are very musical, very skilled on their instrument and probably a member of the National Children's Orchestra or similar. The risk with that approach is that you may switch your child off music completely and if the focus of doing music is to get a scholarship, what happens if they don't get one?

tbh OP, you're probably better off saving up/working out how to move to the catchment of a better state school.
When I looked into it I found that there was one local school where, if my children turn out to be brilliant, hardworking and lucky, they may get 10% off the fees. At the other private schools in the area the scholarships would be purely honorary because of our income.

Hi, I hate to depress you, but I have little good news for you. My son has a scholarship and it's not worth squat financially. I think it's worth 300 a year, which would obviously ahve been useful once. Unless you earn less than 30k before tax most schools won't give you a dime, even though they admit that there's a kind of middling poverty trap where you can't pay the fees and don't qualify for help. It makes me absolutely furious. Stick it to the middling sort, why not? Yes, they will expect you to trad ein your property equity first and take out a second mortgage. You might think about setting upa trust fund, but unless you have a big surplus this only redistributesx the pain. My advice is to move to Kent, Bucks or Gloucestershire, all of whihc have exclellent grammars. did someone say postcode lottery???

Your thoughts on secondary school are based solely on your own experiences? Understandably if you had a bad time you would be put off....

Why not go and see some secondary schools in the area that have high Ofsted ratings? It may put your mind at rest.
We have an Academy near us that is incredible, I would never have believed schools could be like that, my school was like Grange Hill, but I still came out with 13 GCSE's 4 A levels and went to Uni.

OR...

You or DH take a job in a private school for a discount...

OR...

You or DH join one of the Forces where you only pay 10% of the school fees ( kids have to board though).

Apart from scholarships those are the only methods I know for getting into Private school at a discount!

Abby, you appear to be making that common 'private' assumption that the natural alternative 'state school' for a privately educated child is grammar.

Most are w-a-a-y more difficult to get into that many private schools!

Agree with others that you should look at moving to an area with better state schools, I went to a good state school in Surrey that had high pass rates, was single sex. Many students went on to Oxbridge. They aren't all bad!

I don't think private schools are necessarily better.

My daughter got a full scholarship at the age of 5 to a new private school. At first we were happy with it and believed that she was doing well and it was much better than the local primary. Unfortunately, we were taken in by the school's lies!

Basically it turned out to be shit academically. Most of the staff were unqualified, the French teacher did not know her un/une or even spell the words correctly. The maths lessons consisted largely of self study from Schofield and Sims book as the class teacher who was also the music teacher was forced to rake in extra money for the school by giving piano lessons!

When my daughter was 11 I gave her a SATS KS2 maths paper and she only got about 3 questions right. She failed to get into a good school at 11, but after attending a proper school for year 7, was very lucky to get a place for year 8 at a well known state grammar school.

The other problem we had as a "charity case" was that we were constantly expected to pay homage to the owner/principle and tell her how wonderful she was. Any criticism/suggestions however mild, were met with stinging abuse. When I complained about my 11 year old daughter being forced to draw a leprechaun for homework (we are Irish and in the context felt it was a gross representation of anti Irish stereotypes) we were shouted at for about 20 minutes by the deputy head. I really wish my daughter had gone to a state primary school!

Moral of the story - coach your kids if they are clever (but still expect to pay up)or move house. I also found that schools change dramatically in just a few years. One school I rejected on the grounds that I went there myself, is the best school around here now!

Thanks LadyPeterWimsey that is such good advice, I am so thrilled for your son. Am I able to apply for several schools? Or is there a common entance exam.

Thanks to all the other posters too (just got back from shopping) this is so useful for me. Wish I was rich.

Ds starts a top private secondary in September, he's a very bright boy, he always has been. I have no need to teach him anything as he picks up new ideas before the teacher's finished speaking, he can sit his GCSE maths and english next year if he wishes. Did we get any help with the school fees? Not a sausage.

Don't bank on getting a scholarship, they are not always easy to get.

I don't know what his new school have planned for him. I hope he doesn't, where will he go from here? Quantum physics in year 9? I can't see any school being able to teach him this. Languages are very different, there's loads of scope to extend.

Round here scholarships are fixed value currently at around 1k pa at secondary, so worth easily less than 10% of fees. Some are purely academic, others for particular subjects such as music, sport or art , toehrs for achieving academic standard plus excellence in a couple of extra curricular subjects such as drama. Not aware of any preps offering them locally though. You can also apply for a bursary to top up the discount but cut off is around £50k family income and full eligibility for less than £20k, and they take into account various assets.

As everybody has said I wouldn't rely on scholarships but bursaries if you really can't afford it. Only very few scholarships are available at 7, most at 11 or 13. It is the reason why I am sticking at 2 DC. If I wanted a third I would have had to go back to work, probably FT. Is that an option? Depends how much you want a private education for your kids - there are ways and means - grandparents, downsizing, getting more work, work as a teacher in the private school (obviously may not be that easy). Alternative move to where there are better state schools.
If I could live in an area with grammar schools (DH can't really commute from any of these areas) I would pay for private primary to increase chances of getting into the grammar schools.

Private prep school not that expensive compared to hellish secondary school fees.

Have you considered state boarding schools? Some are amazing academically. Some other schools (eg Christ's hospital) are private but charge a sliding scale of fees. Other options might be a cheaper private school or even home educating for a period of time.

Honestly, there probably isn't much you can do in terms of coaching your DC's yet, but you can start putting things into place for a move. Even with music, starting before 5 or 6 is of little benefit unless your DC's are very very keen.

FWIW I was offered music scholarships to three major public schools and also a place at two specialist music schools. I started the piano at 6 and violin at 8 (had my auditions when I was 10).