School Gate blog: How to pay less for a private school

Looking up at the grand Victorian mansion near Cranleigh in Surrey, once the rural retreat of the Lord Chief Justice, it is easy to make assumptions about the families that live in its imposing wings - expensive cars, holidays abroad, children at private schools.

On the last point, in one case at least, you would be wrong. The Shaw family found itself in deep financial trouble in October 2005 when, overnight, Adrian Shaw succumbed to clinical depression. Within three months the earnings of the owner and managing director of Ikon Associates, a successful PR and marketing business, had halved. It soon became clear to Adrian and Jo, his wife, then a full-time mother, that they would either have to sell the house and move somewhere smaller to carry on paying their daughters' school fees, or take them out of the private system.

“Bearing in mind that with depression you feel despondent about the future, your self-esteem is at a very low ebb and prospects are pretty grim, we thought, ‘Well, if we did sell the house, how much capital could we put aside and would we just be delaying the inevitable?',” says 48-year-old Adrian.

Emily and Alice, 10 and 7 respectively, were enjoying life at Farlington in Horsham, a popular private school in 33 acres of parkland on the Surrey/Sussex border, for girls aged 4 to 18. The fees were about £12,000 a year for each.

Adrian went to his parents for help. But, having had to remove him from Cranleigh public school in the 1970s for financial reasons themselves, they were reluctant to agree to pay fees for their granddaughters ad infinitum.

“With hindsight that was sound advice, although it wasn't very popular at the time,” says Adrian. “Then, all I could think was that I couldn't take the girls out of school because they'd miss all their friends and their education would suffer.” But in the end they had no choice. The prospect of paying £40,000 a year in fees - including tax, which raises the cost considerably - was not an option.

The Shaws' predicament is likely to become increasingly common. The latest predictions are that as many as 600,000 people will lose their jobs this year, bringing Britain's total unemployment to three million by 2010 and spreading terror among status-conscious parents.

Adrian's wife Jo, 44, was educated privately from the age of 8. She admits that she was naive and apprehensive about state education but, having talked to friends with children in state primaries, was delighted by what she found.

“I never looked at the league tables. I just went with my gut feeling and where I knew people were happy,” she says. “By going to see the schools, I could see how happy they were and that was encouraging. The schools were very approachable, really lovely.”

Within months the girls had moved - Emily to St Cuthbert Mayne, a local Roman Catholic school, where she had friends (although the family are not Catholics) and Alice to Park Mead school.

Waiting outside the school gates felt awkward for Jo at first, but any fears that the girls' education might suffer or that they would fall in with “the wrong crowd” soon vanished. The girls settled in within weeks, making friends and finding themselves stretched academically. Jo, too, made more friends among the parents.

It was the best decision they could have made, says Adrian, who is now fully recovered. “We were very lucky. There happened to be a space in two good schools, but if you don't ask you don't get ... and it helped hugely in lifting my depression because the financial onus disappeared overnight. Suddenly I was £40,000 a year better off.”

More than half a million children - 7 per cent of the total - attend private schools, and with several thousand jobs being lost in the financial sector and at management level, schools and councils across Britain expect many more parents to face the same tough choice as the Shaws. Last month, a survey of 150 councils by the Local Government Association found that one in ten reported, late last year, being contacted by fee-paying parents looking for places for their children at state nurseries, primary and secondary schools. In Buckinghamshire, 130 more children from independent schools have applied this year to sit the 11-plus exam.

The problem for many parents is that good schools are already full and, while sixth forms have no maximum numbers, under Government rules academically selective grammar schools are not allowed to expand. This month thousands of children will sit the 11-plus for a place at one of England's 164 free state grammar schools but, with the credit crunch, the competition will be tougher than ever.

Andrew Carter, the head of high-achieving South Farnham Primary School in Surrey, has noticed an increase in the number of fee-paying parents calling about places in mid-term. With his school full to capacity, he is still receiving six or seven inquiries a day.

“If they have two children, they will try to get the older child in and then the younger one under sibling priority,” he says. “We are also at the stage when our older children apply to private school for next year, and we expect those numbers to be down.”

Carter believes that priorities are changing. “Parents are asking very piercing questions,” he says. “They realise that they will have to pay for university and they can see that bill growing and growing. Parents are thinking that if they have a certain amount to invest, they'll invest it there.”

When Britain was last in a recession, in 1991, the number of pupils in private schools fell by 1,200 within a year and by a further 9,300 over the next six years.

To pay school fees, many parents set up fee savings plans or take out insurance policies but a significant number pay directly out of their income - and the fees are steep. Last summer Halifax Financial Services reported that they had risen by 6 per cent in 2007 and by 40 per cent - or £3,000 a year - in the past five years. On average, according to the Independent Schools Council (ISC), the cost of private education in England is £11,000 a year. Boarding schools can cost as much as £27,000 a year.

For parents, the attraction of independent schools is often superior sporting and extracurricular facilities and pastoral care, and also their grades and strength in teaching modern languages, classics and the three sciences. In August 2008, figures from the ISC indicated that more than half the A levels taken by independent school pupils resulted in grade A being awarded, and more than three quarters (76.9 per cent) were graded A or B, compared with a national average of 50.8 per cent.

True, the top state schools have higher academic standards - but what if you don't live in an area like Cranleigh, where good state schools are easy to find? What hope is there for parents who see police patrolling outside their local inner-city comprehensive at the end of each day and despair of their children surviving a few hours, let alone a term, within its confines?

The surprising answer is: quite a lot. Not only are class sizes smaller in less sought-after schools, but research suggests that your child will be well attended to by teachers and may excel far beyond expectations.

A study last year by professors in education from the universities of Cambridge, Sunderland and the West of England (UWE) indicated that middle-class parents who had sent their children to inner-city comprehensives often found that those children “performed brilliantly” at GCSE and A level, and that 15 per cent of those going to university won places at Oxford or Cambridge.

The researchers found that these parents, far from moving to a good catchment area or bankrupting themselves for the sake of an independent education, had chosen their local state secondary “whatever the league table positioning” - and that the children of these 124 “white, urban, middle-class” families were often given more attention by teachers anxious to improve their school's results.

Adrian Shaw's fears about taking his daughters out of private school were not related solely to academic qualifications, though - they also stemmed partly from his own bad memories of transferring from public school to a comprehensive at the age of 14, more than 30 years before. It was a tough environment, he found it hard to make friends and his grades slipped. The reason, he believes, was that public schools in those days had a Victorian outlook and tended to make pupils feel superior.

“I went to state school with that [superior] attitude, so it was hardly surprising that I wasn't treated very well,” he says. “I wasn't treated badly, though, and it's now one of the best comprehensives around. My best man was taken out of private school, came to the same school as me and had a great time. So I think a lot of my unhappiness was selfinflicted.”

Times have changed. Far from being picked on, both Emily and Alice were given “taster days” in their new state schools and within weeks had settled down and made new friends. However, Martin Ward, deputy general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, and a former head himself, admits that new arrivals may be at risk of bullying if they arrive mid-term from a private school.

“Anything that marks an individual out as different can make them a focus for bullying,” he says. “But it is something that schools are well aware of. Many of them have buddy or mentoring schemes so a new arrival is teamed up with someone who knows the ropes, then they don't stand out too much.”

However good the education being offered, though, and whatever systems are put in place to ease those making the transition, the decision to move a child from a private to a state school is unlikely to be made lightly. Eliza Berry, a City fund manager, admits feeling guilty about her decision to stop paying her nephew's school fees at the end of this school year.

With no children of her own, she was only too pleased eight years ago to help to pay for Charlie and Jamie's education. Their father had left home and the two elder children had had a difficult adolescence at a comprehensive, so their mother was keen that their younger siblings should go to private school. “It was a no-brainer. I had the money so it wasn't an issue,” says Eliza.

Charlie leaves school in July but Jamie still has two years to go. Last summer, though, Eliza told her younger nephew that she could no longer guarantee paying his fees for the next few years, so she would not continue sponsoring him. While her decision was prompted partly by job insecurity, the excellent results at the local sixth-form college also helped to persuade her that Jamie would be as well equipped to apply to Oxbridge from there as from his school.

“A lot of great kids go through the state system and do very well,” she says. “I did believe that private school was the only way to go, but we now live in different times and there are other perfectly good options.”

While Berry and the Shaws were happy to talk about their decision to switch from private to state education, others are much less willing to discuss the matter. According to Sue Fieldman, regional editor of the Good Schools Guide, taking your child away from private school is one of the last taboos.

“Middle-class parents seem happier to talk about divorce than about taking their children out of private school,” she says. “They almost regard it as the ultimate sin and failure - not only have you lost your job but you are prejudicing your child's future.”

Jo Shaw says that most of her friends were very supportive, but admits that she did not tell the children at first - and when her eldest found a letter to the headmistress giving notice of the removal from their school it was hardly the best way of delivering the news.

Dr Dorothy Rowe, a psychologist, says: “In this country there is a whole mythology about if you go to private school you have a wonderful career, a girl/boy club to belong to and you get straight into Oxbridge.

“There's enough reality in that for the myth to be maintained - but there are an awful lot of students who don't work hard, have mediocre ability, go to ordinary public schools and don't have wonderful careers. But that bit is forgotten.”

It is important not to keep the change of schools a secret or to tell lies that may make children fearful, says Dr Rowe. “If you do that, children will think it is something awful that they should be ashamed of, whereas they should see it as an adventure. After all, lots of classic stories, like The Railway Children and Little Women, have plots where the family suffers a disaster and they all rally round.”

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