Private school bursaries

[pollycat12]

Hi,
I know all schools are different but is it normal to have a mortgage ?

Or is it possible to apply if you rent ?

Thanks

superexcited, Private schools differentiate themselves from state schools in myriad ways. It is only in recent years that many of them have chosen to pander to the super rich to the extent of imposing massive fee rises and reducing such social diversity as they used to have.

Luxuries are not necessary. Dean Colet, Dr Busby, Dr Arnold and Frances Mary Buss would agree, I think.

ZeroFunDame, she got offered at a private school at Bancroft school in woodford green N/ E london , they quite good at math& science, thank you for your opinions

ZeroFunDame we got offer 90% discount and I am waiting for the invoice to see what else on top of that , then decide before the end of the term,

Granola, it is only in recent years that academia in the majority of state schools has caught up with private schools so they have to offer something extra to maintain interest and numbers. When I went to school the gulf between results at most non selective state schools and independent schools was huge. Nobody in my high school had achieved an A grade in their maths GCSE for over a decade. The A-C pass rate at my school was less then 20%. The picture was similar at other local state schools. The nearby independent schools were achieving much better results so the lure for parents was simply the chance of much better results. Now that state schools are much better across the board and it is possible to achieve very good grades at most schools why would people choose to pay fees if there were no extra offerings?

I really think we cannot compare schools with their original purpose and even what they were like 20 years ago with how they are today. It's like any business, if you don't move with the times and change to meet demands you go out of business.

So called luxuries, especially in the form of modern sports facilities, can also be used by schools for various public benefit schemes. Not only can they share use of the facilities themselves, but they often run coaching programmes during the holidays.

Superexcited JAGS and CLSG are not going out of business, despite their efforts to keep fee rises moderate and to extend access.

Look at JAGS' accounts and you will see that staff numbers have not increased while pupil numbers have. This allows the school to be available to a wider community. That's a deliberate choice by the head and governors, their response to the pressures on the sector.

Parents are free to prioritise what matters to them: Tatler and luxuries, academic excellence, social conscience, diversity, whatever. I just urge them to be informed.

Indrid IME use of sport or theatre / concert facilities or coaching courses are often a source of additional income to the schools rather than a free service from what I have observed -possibly discounted in some cases. It is good to know that some schools do regularly offer their facilities free to the benefit of the community.

I am not familiar with either JAGS or CLSG but they both seem to be good examples of school which offer good levels of bursaries and don't charge as much in fees as some other schools (although both have fee levels about 50% higher than schools in my region)
I am disappointed that JAGS offer scholarships as I feel that money would be better used to extend the bursary fund. Many very successful schools no longer offer scholarships as they prefer to divert the monies to the bursary fund which I feel is the right thing to do.

summer oh yes, and I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to cover costs. I'm not sure that a town like Sherborne would have quite such a smart sports centre if the school hadn't built it, so there is still a benefit even if there is an entrance fee. In addition concessions are usually available for summer coaching sessions if money is an issue.

All the Foundation schools (of which JAGS is one) offer both scholarships and bursaries. And the bursaries can be over 100%, as they can include all compulsory trips, a uniform allowance and a seat on the coach service. As the outgoing JAGS head says, no point in reducing fees if the ancillary expenses still stress the family.

I think it must be because if the wonders of compound interest, as the founding bequest was made nearly 400 years ago.

What is a foundation school anothernewt? It isn't a term I have come across before. I know a couple of the schools local to me have been around for 500 years, one offers scholarships of 10% and the other only offers bursaries so perhaps one is a foundation school and one isn't. Is there a reason why foundation schools need to offer scholarships?
I agree about ancillary costs putting some families off though. We are really lucky as the school where my child has a bursary provides travel assistance to all bursary holders and provides free school lunches for anybody who would have been eligible for fee lunches at a state school. They don't offer assistance with the cost of uniform but the prices of the uniform are very similar to the local state schools so there isn't any additional cost to parents.

futurebright If no one on this thread has any knowledge you might be wise to start a new thread with the names of the relevant schools in your title. (There seem to be millions of posts mentioning Bancrofts on other threads so I don't think there's too much risk to your anonymity.)

Oops, sorry, I was thinking of JAGS and being fairly specific (or should that be 'overly specific'?)

I meant the charitable foundation for the College of God's Gift, made by the Elizabeth actor Edward Alleyn in the early 1600s to atone for a life of worldly preoccupations. Letters Patent to recognise the Foundation were granted by King James I on 21st June 1619.

There are three schools which are successors of that original foundation: Dulwich College, Alleyn's and JAGS.

(But any school which has been around and endowed for 100s of years is likely to be considerably richer than newer ones).

Ah, futurebright I see you've already done what I tardily suggested!

AnotherNewt You are right about the Alleyn Foundation schools. They got loads of money in the 19th century when the railways passed through their land.

But what JAGS has achieved in terms of bursaries and moderate fee rises is very much down to its outgoing head. She kept making sensible decisions on those fronts out of a genuine concern to widen access.

Such a contrast with the headline making heads in the Sunday Times and Tatler. Their talk of going "needs blind" is nonsense. Check out their schools' accounts. They like to spout this stuff because they believe it's good for their own image, not because they are doing anything effective about it or actually care.

Rowing courses are charged separately at the Foundation school mentioned above and is blummin' expensive. However you get an awful lot for your money- 2 training sessions off the river and two on- about 10 hours a week.

Y'know granola I truly hope not one poor or averagely incomed family (with a child they don't know what to do with) is put off applying to a big name school because of any post here.

Given what they could gain - what they could gain that would be completely inaccessible, particularly if there's not a cat in hell's chance of their moving to the catchment of a nice state school or finding the time or transport to support fabulous extra curricular activities - that would be a tragedy.

No, Zero, it would not be a "tragedy". I have been urging a sense of perspective.

A disappointed applicant (and there are far too many of them because the "big name" schools are pathetic on bursaries and prioritise the formerly rich and the imprudent) should not believe their life has come to an end.

Sure, there are some bad state schools around but there are also lots of stupid, hypocritical, snobbish, greedy and image obsessed private schools, including "big names" currently in the hands of inadequate heads. If parents are put off those schools after digging a bit deeper, looking at accounts, asking about assistance beyond the fees etc, fine, job well done.

I'm not talking about a momentary disappointment. I'm talking about years and years of grinding frustration, withered potential ...

To be frank I bore myself; banging on endlessly about how parents with no money should be brave and apply to the richest schools because those are the places that really can offer life-changing opportunities.

And it's not a matter of being deferential towards independent schools. Not everyone feels they have the luxury of sacrificing their own child to the utopian dream of a better education system sometime in the distant future.

I've tried to explain this before and got hopelessly tied up with sheer rage and helplessness. If you don't know that the backing of a brilliant education can make the difference for one particular child between being called to the Bar and dying in police custody then you're damn lucky.

A "brilliant education" at a private school can also lead you into police custody, I'm afraid, Zero. I met a few such casualties at university. Drugs, usually. Kleptomania one of them.

The richest schools don't always turn out the best people or even very nice ones sometimes.

There's good and bad all over the place. There are school bursars who tell porkies and there are heads who are hopelessly out of touch. You just need to keep your eyes open.

There is what should have been a rather wonderful thread running at the moment inviting a favourite line of poetry. Lots of people don't seem to have looked at a poem since school - so it's not as exciting as I'd hoped. But this is useful:

That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.

Unfortunately granolamuncher, for whatever reason, has a bee in his or her bonnet about particular private schools and, sadly, though he or she thinks she has her eyes open, acts as if she is wearing blinkers. One comment by one head about the Tatler ratings has become a truth about the priorities of all schools.
Like you, ZeroFunDame, I hope no one is put off applying to any of these schools because of her rather unhelpful and misleading point of view.

Interesting thread although I've not read all of it. We're on a substantial stand alone bursary to a very famous very selective boys boarding school before that a prep school this has been the situation for that last 12 years. We currently have a mortgage with just over 30% equity and before that we rented.
We've never had a "surprise" home visit or even a planned one. Every year we complete a pretty comprehensive and some would say intrusive form but that's ok we're currently receiving a 60% discount so I wouldn't expect anything else TBH, fees needless to say have risen over the years but so has our discount. Every bursar we've ever dealt with has been exceedingly helpful. We were lucky to find the bursary at prep we knew someone who knew someone who put in a good word for us, and we found at senior school after lots of investigation that most didn't offer a large enough reduction to make it financially viable for us. We were lucky that our DS got a place at his school, if he hadn't our other options would have been a scholarship topped up by a bursary or back to the state sector.
We do have an annual cheap holiday, drive reasonable cars because we need them to be reliable.

We get a 70% bursery at Christ's Hospital, a friend is on 100%. 90% of the children are on some kind of assistance. I agree, look at the old schools - they'll have huge endowments. Luckily at CH there is not the wealth of other children to worry about (although I don't think many children think about that)

Hi there,

We are looking to put my daughter in a new independent school but would require a bursary. I currently have 2 kids at a school where I already pay for their education but this new school is £9000 more and I can not afford to send her there with out getting £9000 off. Is it possible for me to get a bursary?