Why are school fees at boys schools higher than at girls schools?

[dimsum123]

DD's school fees just under £5k per term. Every single boys school I've looked at for DS the school fees are around £5.5k per term.

Am looking at equivalent types of schools.

Because boys schools are better as they have boys at them.

Because boys schools are generally more prestigious 'known' names.

Dunno! But I remembering noticing it as my brother's school fees were higher than mine.

In 1986 my school fees were around £500 a term, my brother went to an all boys school, his were £750. They had much better facilities eg more sports fields, better labs, better teaching ratios.

Because if you go to the right boys' school it's a launching pad for future greatness, running the country etc. The same is not true of girls' schools, all they do is help you marry the heir to the throne or similar.

It looks like discrimination to me. But won't say anything as all that will happen is that the girls fees will go up to match the boys rather than vice versa. A bit like when they banned discrimination in car insurance premiums.

One reason is because GDST are very well endowed and choose to keep fees 'low' to improve accessibility, though they are nearly on a par with other school fees now.

I think the GDST may help to keep fees down in the girls' school market. They have 27 schools so benefit from huge enconomies of scale. I don't know how many independent girls' schools there are, but I bet 27 represents a reasonable percentage of them. I suspect others may feel the need to compete.

MY daughter's GDST school fees are 500 a term lower than my son's.

Well i cant say how they are right now, but when mine were at day schools in Guildford, (last one just left) my sons fees were less than my daughters... only by a few ££000 but cheaper nevertheless.

Here the girls school is way cheaper £1000 plus a term than the mixed school, but the mixed school is better known.

I think the reasons are historical and sexist in a way. Rich parents have always sent their boys to prestigious schools, while often caring less about their girls education.

However, they still wanted their daughters to be educated somewhere, so smaller less prestigious girls schools grew up.

In many areas really good state grammar schools existed for boys (my father, uncle and DH went to really good boys GS), but the girls state grammars were less good (and girls pushed less hard at 11+)

MC parents looking for a 'niace' reasonable education for DDs who didn't have a brilliant GS or didn't quite pass the 11plus were often sent to small private GS (DFIL dotted on DSIL and sent her to such a school rather than a passable girls GS, DM's because she didn't get the 11+ mainly because neither school or her parents really bothered about girls)

I think as more and more prestigious schools have become mixed, small girls schools came to depend far more on families who could just afford private and who did so because they wanted a nice safe protected enviroment for their precious, delicate DDs.

That this attitude persists in 2014 really annoys me, but it does. My feisty DSIL had to argue with FIL to go to her local 6th form, DDs DF would be much better off in
IMO if she'd done the same.

It's definitely to do with demand. A couple I know are using inheritance money to send their son as a day pupil to the well-known public school they live near but will be sending their daughter to whichever local academy school she is accepted into (neither of which has a good reputation). Their son apparently 'needs the discipline and the extra push', whereas their daughter 'will do well wherever she goes'. Basically, their son, who resents his younger sister, never does any work and indulges in attention-seeking bad behaviour, is being rewarded by being sent to the kind of school where he will be set up for success for life, and their daughter, who is well-behaved, conscientious, and earns her pocket-money by doing jobs around the house, is being denied a similar advantage because girls are expected to get success through effort (or maybe through marriage).

Because, to quote members of my family, boys need an education, girls just need to marry well.

So no, it's not discrimination neither was the car insurance thing it's market forces. Boy's schools can charge what they like, because there is competition among the best ones, girl's schools tend to have to attract customers, hence the lower fees.

I know families (still) where the boys are sent to private school and the girls to the local state school. Many people still believe that girls' education is a nice to have, not a necessity. It's tied up in that belief that jobs are something to keep women busy until they get on with the real work of raising a family rather than men who need to provide for their family.

I was overlooked for promotion once in favour of a man on the basis that he had a family to support and I was a 'career girl'

No doubt about it. However, not on the part of the schools, hence the lack of discrimination regarding fees.

The basic discrimination which says that girls don't need as good an education because they will be popping out babies and doing cordon blue cookery courses isn't going to be solved by upping fees at girl's schools. if they are expected to charge as much as boys schools, then all that will happen is that fewer girls will go to decent private schools and will have even less chance of doing well.

Sort of what Buffy said. It's really not very edifying to see people squabbling over the nature of any gender-based privilege within the private school system, whilst apparently not even recognising the class-based privilege at the very heart of it.

I'd also add that, if the boot were on the other foot - girls' fees were more expensive than boys' - people would be even more up in arms. I agree with the basic premises of feminism but not everything is a gender conspiracy.

insurance issue?
boy's schools tend to offer more violent injury prone sports.

Very interesting responses. I think it is due to demand and current and historical sexism which kind of amount to the same thing.

Nope, no squabbling. Apologies for taking the class based problems as a given, I tend to assume the people reading and posting on this part of the forum have a basic grasp of those issues.

Also there is research suggesting girls do better in single sex schools, boys in mixed.

This plays straight into the hands of the "my DD is a delicate little flower who needs protecting from boys and nasty lower class children" brigade.

Since there are very few single sex state schools, in non grammar areas, pretty average cheaper girls schools rub their hands in glee.