What is the real cost of a private education?
In her last months of life, Jade Goody sold the story of her slow death from cancer to the papers. She kowingly let go of what dignity she had left, and allowed her family’s private pain to be broadcast across the world for all to see, a world where she knew she was already a controversial topic and the subject of much media animosity. She knew that she would spend her last weeks being criticised but she bore it all with a brave face, and why? So she could die knowing that she was leaving her sons with enough money for a private education.
Now, I’m not saying Jade was wrong to want that future for her boys – after all she herself was one of thousands, maybe even millions, who feel that they were failed by the state education system. But it begs the question of the lengths parents have to go to get their children in to a good school, and whether private prep schools are really so much better than regular comprehensives if they come at such a cost to families?
School fees have spiralled in recent years, and the latest figures suggest that parents are now expected to pay an average of around £3,000 per term to keep their child in private education, or as much as £7,350 for boarding schools. Perhaps as a result, there has been a bit of a backlash against the so-called benefits of private education, with many believing that a child can succeed whatever school they attend if they get the right encouragement. This belief was given new life last month when Michelle Obama visited a state school in London and met with the pupils there, showing her obvious support for the school and telling its pupils very emotionally that ‘you are all jewels’.
But whatever the media decides to report next and however expensive it may be to send a child to private school, especially at the moment when many parents are struggling with the recession, the fact remains that on average private schools do achieve better grades. Bearing in mind that only 18 per cent of all sixth form pupils attend independent sixth form colleges, figures show that 10,156 of these pupils achieved three As at A-level last year, compared to just 7,484 pupils in state schools.
It’s certainly food for thought for parents, and a tough choice to make between what could be a better education for their children, but often having to make serious cutbacks in other areas of their life to be able to afford it. Many parents would have to start saving for school fees the moment their baby is born, or even earlier than that, in order to just get their child through the door of a private school.