Another day, another report on how many children have had to leave their private schools, thanks to Labour’s VAT raid on fees. This particular survey, by wealth management firm, Saltus, found that almost one in ten parents have had to take their children out of the independent sector altogether while 65 per cent of those questioned admitted to making ‘significant changes’ to their circumstances to keep their children in private education.
When belts can only be tightened so far, parents need to get creative. Frankly, the only affordable ways of educating your children privately today are either: a) access to masses of inter-generational wealth (which presumably you don’t enjoy, or you wouldn’t have read this far) or b) being born in the past.
Recently I read Tennis Shoes by Noel Streatfeild to one of my children and the only thing that really dated the book, published in 1937, was that of the four children of a South London GP, the eldest boy was at a public school, the next brother away at a prep, while the girl went to a ‘good day school’.
Consider that the starting salary of a GP in England today is just shy of £70,000, and their take-home pay (of around £51,000) wouldn’t even cover the fees for one child at a minor public school with an active sex abuse case going through the courts. A friend’s husband, who’s 47, went through a famous cathedral school in the 1990s on a full scholarship at no cost to his parents. But if Merlin shows an aptitude for long division or Perdita wields the bassoon with aplomb, don’t get your hopes up.
Alongside the inexorable, inflation-busting rise of school fees, scholarships have been cut back to nominal amounts at best — at worst, they’re merely a marker of ‘prestige’. At our ‘good local day school’, all that scholarship boys and girls get is ‘academic enrichment’, whatever this means. Their parents would prefer a decent whack off the fees of almost £24,000 a year. In the run-up to the introduction of VAT on fees, a fifth of independent schools cut spending on bursaries and scholarships, according to a survey by Parent Power. Generous bursaries do still exist, but you do need to be genuinely poor to qualify. None of this claiming that a six-figure salary goes nowhere these days (although if school fees are a priority, it really doesn’t), that so enrages the class warriors.
Re-reading my mum’s old Joanna Trollope novels after the writer’s death last year reminded me that the plot of The Rector’s Wife (1991) revolves around the protagonist, Anna Bouverie, taking a job in a supermarket (at £3.21 per hour), in order to take her daughter out of the sink comp where she’s being bullied and send her to some nice nuns at a convent school. (As I say, it does help being born in the past.) In the process, Mrs Bouverie scandalises the local community and shames her husband, whom we’d now recognise as being afflicted with toxic masculine fragility. And then — spoiler alert — the nuns award the child a free place which Mrs B keeps quiet, before embarking on a steamy affair with the new Archdeacon’s younger brother.
Generous bursaries do still exist, but you do need to be genuinely poor to qualify.
Given that one vicar I know has three children at boarding school (I worked this out to be £180,000 a year including VAT), either the Church of England has upped its ‘offering’ since Mr Bouverie was on £9,000 a year and a redbrick rectory ‘with all the charm of a bus shelter’ or generous bursaries do still exist for those on a stipend or low income.
Thus one sure-fire way to afford school fees would be to suddenly discover a vocation or take a valuable, low-paid role as, say, a carer. Then set your sights on a school like Christ’s Hospital in Horsham, West Sussex, where 100 students receive a free education and four out of five do not pay full fees. The current head girl’s parents met working at casinos in Aberdeen.
Or you could retrain as a teacher. Most enjoy a hefty discount on fees (80 per cent off at the prep my sons attended briefly). A friend who works at another prep school discloses that ‘There’s a bit of old county money, but it’s mostly chavs’ and teachers’ kids’.
If that doesn’t appeal, then I’d suggest looking for side hustles. Lady Redesdale famously paid for the Mitford girls’ governesses by selling eggs. But given how Unity and Diana turned out — and that some of my neighbours gripe about paying £1.50 for six of my free-range Burford Browns (currently £4.20 on Waitrose Online) — I couldn’t, in all conscience, recommend this.
Turning again to my mother’s stash of novels, I found inspiration for the squeezed middle in Mary Wesley’s Harnessing Peacocks (1985) in which Hebe, the heroine, pays for her son’s expensive education by monetising her two chief talents in life; ‘cooking and making love’, according the racy blurb. When the members of Hebe’s ‘Syndicate’ collide, her 12-year-old son is precociously understanding: ‘What’s the difference between marrying for money and being a tart?’ he asks, ‘except that you seem happier than a lot of people at school’s mothers.’
I suppose today’s equivalent would be setting up an OnlyFans account. (I’m not advocating this, just putting it out there.) I had planned to go onto the site to work out exactly how often one would need to flaunt one’s feet etc. in order to afford the fees for a boarding prep — but realised this would destroy my search history forever.
Finally, if you’re in the same wretched circumstances as Fiona – who disclosed to me at a coffee morning that her father-in-law, having suffered a series of strokes, remains hale and hearty in an expensive nursing home — take heart.
The Assisted Dying Bill is currently stalled in the House of Lords and there’s a risk the Bill will run out of parliamentary time. Time, then, to lobby your MP to use the Parliament Act to push the legislation through. It was last used in 2004 to get the fox hunting ban on the statute book. Selfish bed-blockers — your time’s up and your daughters-in-law are coming for you! Peregrine and Jemima must and shall have access to Astroturf pitches, en suite bathrooms and Ancient Greek!
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