Middle-class families ‘priced out of private schools’ for their children as fees ‘go up and up’
Prices rise when demand goes up and supply doesn’t. Or, alternatively, if prices rise then fewer people will be willing to pay.
So, the question is, are fewer people sending kiddies to private schools? That would help us untangle what’s going on here. And at least as far as I know no, there are not fewer private school pupils. So, therefore, there must be people willing to pay these higher fees in the old volumes.
The implication of that is that we’ve got more people in the upper middle class who can afford these fees as they move out of reach of the middle class.
I would also hazard that the number of overseas pupils has skyrocketed in the time period the article is referencing – 1997 to present! Far more from the Middle East, Russia and China and they are charged more usually. Definitely a first-world problem but as legislation for discrimination in employment and housing as well as income sequestration and seizure of assets for reparations for Whites is enacted by the next very ‘woke’ administration one wonders how helpful a private education will actually be?
With Universities now being so rubbish, the value of a school that can guarantee a kid 3 As has diminished. Might be better off finding a county that still has grammar schools.
Labour policy is to make education more like the NHS.
As Van Patten says, it’s that the cathchment for pupils is now global and not just the UK. So, yes, upper-middle class Brits who could afford to pay now can’t.
Data point. The fees for my first year at prep school in 1967 were £165 a term, full-board. Now they are nudging £15,000 a term. Admittedly the conditions in 1967 were closer to the Gulag Archipalego than the current Club Mediterranean version, but we didn’t have half-term and Saturdays were half-days.
Boarding schools have a global catchment, so I can understand prices rising; but day schools can only take local pupils. In London that does indeed mean competing with the global elite who choose to make London their home; but elsewhere in the country there aren’t so many global elites.
For example, the 1100 day pupils at King Edward’s School in Bath by necessity live in the local area; their parents pay up to £16k a year. Obviously the money is coming from somewhere.
The ISC (Independent Schools Council) has a good report on their website with breakdowns of pupil origins. Of pupils whose parents live overseas, China and Hong Kong together account for 43%. Germany (8%), Spain (5%), Russia (5%) are next. The report specifically mentions Hong Kong as a source of recent growth.
Overall though, non-British pupils whose parents live overseas account for just 4.6%; and non-British pupils whose parents live in the UK make up a further 5.7%.
Independent schools are curiously popular with ethnic minorities: 37.7% of pupils identify as a UK minority ethnic.
Does a degree from a British private school make it easier to have permanent residency in the UK approved??
Bogan,
Schools don’t award degrees, only universities do.
As far as I can tell, time spent as a student (school or university) doesn’t count towards the five years required to apply for ILR (Indefinite Leave to Remain). It does count towards the ten years required on the ten year route to ILR; but that route requires you to have spent no more than 540 days in ten years out of the country (ie. 54 days a year). A typical boarding school student will exceed that limit every year with school holidays alone.
Besides, the kind of people who can afford to spend £35k/yr on boarding school fees (not to mention regular flights back to their homeland) aren’t usually desperate for UK citizenship.