prep school cost

kltoddie

jenheiffer wrote: »

Wow! You must have been spending a lot on lunches!:eek:

Yeah - £1.45 for scone, butter & coffee for breakfast in work (start at 8am) - v hard to resist when they are just out of the oven , then £3 for lunch. Soon adds up - approx £5/day = £100/month.

Now, if I could get OH to ditch the fags, we'd be laughing.

KT

leftieM

JosieJoBelfast wrote: »

I think this is an equality issue and stops parents having a right to choose if they withdraw it.

Whatever about the rights and wrongs of state subsidy of private education, how you can say it's an equality issue is beyond me. Private schooling is all about inequality - so your kid gets a bit ahead of other kids in the game of life. That's why people pay for it.

JosieJoBelfast

leftieM wrote: »

Whatever about the rights and wrongs of state subsidy of private education, how you can say it's an equality issue is beyond me. Private schooling is all about inequality - so your kid gets a bit ahead of other kids in the game of life. That's why people pay for it.

Prep schools aren't private - they are subsidised to the tune of 30%. I mean equality in terms of a parent's right to choose this type of school, like you may choose integrated or irish medium etc.

I appreciate that you do need some access to personal funding/money to benefit from them - but for parents who choose this method - why remove this type of school.

Surely the £2000 - £3000 savings they make in relation to these schools could be spent in investing in the other schools, to reduce class sizes, improve buildings, employ more teachers and enhancing the learning environments of pupils.

If these current 'Preps' have their subsidy removed - the Minister will have succeeded in creating a Private education system where few will be able to afford and fees like that of Rockport etc will be created. This will further widen the gap in what you are saying is the inequality in the education provision.

The parents I know will never pay 'private' fees - they simply couldn't afford it, they are not all 'wealthy' as is the perceived image of these parents. They will squeeze the already bursting classrooms in the state system. There may be empty desks, but they are not in the areas where they majority of preps would be based, South & East Belfast, North Down & Ards, and Lisburn.

I avail of the state system - although if I had not been able to get my child into a school of choice I may have availed of the Prep option. My school has good pupil/teacher ratio, small class sizes, supportive parents of both pupils and school, kids of no or all religions and backgrounds taught together and the environment of being a learning hub. All schools should be like this - sadly they all aren't. There are a couple of schools near me that I would never have sent my child to.

I mean equality - in terms of parents having a choice within the state funded sector.

My opinion sorry..........

freddie_2

Having just applied for a place in a prep school for my DD I feel that those who say they cant afford it are normally the ones with 1/2 children in full time child care/smoke loads or are always away on holiday.
Prep school is approx 10 pound per day, I do not work and H is just back into work after redundancy but I would sacrifice 10 pounds a day worth of things to allow my DD a prep school education.

As it happens the main reason we picked it was due to small class sizes. But have now found a primary school with even smaller classes so have decided against prep. But I still believe for the majority of people it is achievable if they want it to be.

crusty_toenail

JosieJoBelfast wrote: »

My opinion sorry..........

Thankyou for you opinion, never apologise for giving it;)

I wrote before how I attended a prep school and a poster made fun of my inability to spell, and then stated how 'money talks' in a later post?! This smelled of bitterness/jealousy to me.

I had no choice in what school I was to attend, as a child. We weren't 'loaded' my parents just had a 'bad' experience with our teaching in a non-prep primary, so took us out of it and scrimped and saved to afford our prep education. My dad was a low paid gov't worker and mum didn't work.

It is interesting to note that in 1st year of Victoria College alot of the non-prep children had jealousy towards the prep kids something they had picked up from their parents - you can feel the tension even in this thread!!

Yes money does talk, that's the way it is in capitalist societies and in Northern Ireland it is more 'who you know':eek:

Snoozle

crusty_toenail wrote: »

It is interesting to note that in 1st year of Victoria College alot of the non-prep children had jealousy towards the prep kids something they had picked up from their parents - you can feel the tension even in this thread!!

Very true, but this works in reverse too. I came from a 'rough' primary school, in a 'deprived' part of town, and attended a well respected local grammar school. The spite I had to endure from some (not all!) of the prep kids made my early school days a misery, I was constantly 'reminded' that I was a nobody in their eyes. I had no envy towards them, as in all honesty I didn't even know that you had to pay to go the prep school, I thought it was just another local primary school, albeit that it shared the same school grounds (the primary I went to shared school grounds with a neighouring secondary school).

I'm not actually against prep schools, I would consider sending my children to one if we weren't fortunate enough to have great primary schools in our area. But I do understand, from my own experience, that people's dislike of the prep school mentality doesn't necessarily come down to sour grapes, there are two sides to the story.

seatzie

freddie wrote: »

Having just applied for a place in a prep school for my DD I feel that those who say they cant afford it are normally the ones with 1/2 children in full time child care/smoke loads or are always away on holiday. Prep school is approx 10 pound per day,

thats a bit of a sweeping generalisation, if you asked me I'd say we couldn't afford prep school at £10 a day, I don't smoke, work full time have only one child and haven't had a non UK/Ireland holiday in about 6 years

a friend who lives round the corner has enrolled their son at over £3k per year - "just to make sure he gets into the grammar school when he's 11"....and what if he's not technically able for the grammar school?

on the other hand, as attending a normal primary school on a housing estate didn't do me any harm and I attended a grammar school maybe I'm reluctant to go down that route anyway, just as I am reluctant to pay for an 11+ tutor when my child reaches that age (or whatever test is happening at that time)

caz2703

I too attended a primary school on a housing estate as it was the closest school to me and my mum didn't drive to enable me to go to the good local school (Strandtown). I never felt like I was looked down upon in Strathearn even though I was sharing classes with girls who parents owned houses with pools & tennis courts and those who rode horses and whose parents gave them cars when they were 17. Maybe I was lucky - I don't know but I never felt jealous nor did anyone treat me any different.

As I no longer live in Belfast I'm in a situation where I don't know much about the schools around here. My step-daughters school seems good but I want the best I can for my son so if there's a better school out there I will do my best to get him in - fee paying or not.

crusty_toenail

Snoozle wrote: »

Very true, but this works in reverse

Oh yes, it does work both ways - kids can be so cruel too!

There was some really nasty kids in prep that told my best friend (who arrived from a council estate and non prep in P5) to 'go back to the estate where you belong'!

I too got looked down at when I arrived in prep in P2 cause I came from the 'wrong end of town' and didn't we didn't have any money. The kids all got picked up in BMW's and Mercs.......I got picked up in a rusted beatle which backfired and I had to push it down the hill to get it started every morning!

I remeber one girl from the 'right end of town' stayed in my house for the weekend, got into school on Monday and told all the kids in the class how small my house was and there wasn't even a towel to dry herself!!!

Snoozle

crusty_toenail wrote: »

I remeber one girl from the 'right end of town' stayed in my house for the weekend, got into school on Monday and told all the kids in the class how small my house was and there wasn't even a towel to dry herself!!!

:rotfl:I can laugh about this now, although I couldn't at the time, but I know exactly what you mean. I had to listen to endless taunts about how I didn't have a bathroom in the house (ironically, we lived in a four bedroom detached house, nowhere near the estate where my primary school was situated, but my tormentors didn't bother to do their research!), and that I blew my nose on my sleeve because we were too poor for tissues etc.

Mind you, the all time classic must have been the unfortunate schoolmate who was bullied because his dad owned the 'wrong type of Mercedes'. You couldn't make it up.....