An affordable private school alternative in London: the New Model School

Looking at the keywords people are using to hit my blog, I see that affordable education is at the fore of most of their minds. Not surprising given the number of parents who have taken their children out of independent schools already in response to the credit crunch and the anticipated exodus from those schools at the beginning of the next academic year once the credit crunch has had longer to make lives more miserable.  I’ve already discussed some affordable options earlier this month and last month, but today I have another for you.

You’re in luck if your child is high ability scholarship material (although full or even sizeable scholarships are few and far between), or you’re so poor as to qualify your child (of even average ability) for a full bursary at the local prep or public school.  You’re really lucky, though,  if you don’t have to worry about the price tag and can send your child to any school in the country.  The one group left out of all of this is that of middle class parents of non-scholarship level children. What options do they have?  GEMS and Cognita, the private companies I looked at on Sunday in Would you like fries with your education? professed to be focused on providing affordable no-frills schools targeted at just this group.  But as we discovered, many of those schools charge fees that rival those at the top of the fee bracket, and certainly none in London was anywhere near more affordable than the average fee-paying school that made no pretension of being affordable.

The New Model School Company may fill part of the gap in this market.  Created by social think tank, Civitas, it aims to provide another choice for parents who feel the state system is not providing the education that it should.  Its model is based on three premises: providing a top quality education, keeping fees as low as possible (fees in 2009 will be £5,250 per year, under half of the fees charged by most London day schools) while providing that top quality education, and establishing a model that can be replicated elsewhere.

The first New Model School, Maple Walk,  was established in Kensal Green, Northwest London in 2004.  Its facilities aren’t fancy: it is principally housed in a church hall, although new premises have been bought near Roundwood Park in Brent a few miles away.  The school will relocate in September 2009.  It had two pupils in 2004 and currently has almost 100; there are over 100 pupils registered for entry in each of 2010 and 2011.

I attended the launch in Docklands this week of the New Model School Company’s second school, Faraday School,  which will serve the Docklands, North Greenwich and the East London neighbourhoods.  (This school will be located on Trinity Buoy Wharf, next to the free ferry that goes to North Greenwich.)

Faraday School is expected to follow a curriculum very similar to that of Maple Walk: a strong emphasis on the basics (numeracy and literacy) with science, French, Latin (in the higher primary years), PE, PSHE, history, geography and the other usual suspects all included.  The head teacher at Maple Walk, Sarah Knollys, addressed parents at the Faraday launch. Some of the points which caught my attention were the use by the school of a phonics reading system (rather than whole language which disappointed a whole generation) and the teaching of history in a chronological order.  (It seems obvious, but you’d be surprised how many schools like to teach in “themes”, something that drives me bonkers and inevitably produces a cohort of kids who don’t know that the Pyramids preceded the Protestant Reformation.)  Specialist teachers are brought in where needed.  Despite the absence of fancy facilities, Maple Walk participates in what I would call many “rich” activities: song, dance and poetry reading competitions, yoga (as part of PE), and Latin.  Maple Walk’s head said she is open to any enriching experiences that are affordable.  One immediately thinks that English Speaking Union speech and debate or maths competitions could easily be integrated into the curriculum, for example.

We’ll have to see how the kids from Maple Walk stack up when they participate in standardised tests and/or apply to competitive secondary schools.  But on the surface, Maple Walk and Faraday seem to be two schools worth keeping tabs on.  And of course, if the New Model School opens a school in South London, I may be among the first to fill out a free registration form…

For more information on the New Model Schools, see http://www.newmodelschool.co.uk/

Would you like fries with your education?

When I see a characterful individual restaurant open another branch, I always despair.  Will it retain its character and quality? Will it expand and become a chain equivalent to Pizza Express or Wagamama — perfectly adequate but lacking that je ne sais quoi that the individual restaurant possessed?  I feel the same way about schools.  When we think of English independent schools, we naturally think of the Etons, Westminsters and Winchesters: individual schools with character and a sense of purpose owned by a charitable trust. Of course, some are owned by individuals who feel passionate about education in pursuing their profit motive. Think the Colonel at Hill House, Joanna and David Thomas at Thomas’s Day Schools, and Lady Houstoun-Boswall at the Harrodian and later Hampton Court House School.  But what many people don’t realise is that many independent schools (and even some supposedly posh ones) have in the past five years been bought or established from scratch by investors for the sole purpose of turning a profit for investors who may have very little of the passion that one expects of anyone involved in something as important as education. 

Friends recently expressed an interest in sending their son to the school attended by Princes William and Harry in Kensington.  Its sister school, Pembridge Hall, was the object of much brouhaha two years ago when its headmistress suggested women have Caesarean sections early in the month in order to be sure of getting one of the five places opened each month for children born that year.  People assume that with a clientele such as the princes and demand that requires rescheduling the birth of a child, these must be pretty unique schools. In fact, they are but revenue units of a chain of 13 schools and half a dozen crammers owned by Alpha Plus, which is now owned by Delancey, a property investment company. (Delancey bought Alpha Plus just under a year ago for a rumoured £100 million, some £74 million more than the £26 million paid five years earlier for the group by private equity firm, Sovereign Capital.  Sovereign Capital reported an IRR of  53% on its investment.)  And Southbank International School, attended by the children of many expats in the City, is but one in a chain of over 30 schools in this country plus others internationally.  That chain is owned by Cognita, which is backed by Englefield Capital.  The Hampshire School, with its Kensington address, is but one of dozens of schools in the UK and abroad owned by GEMS, which was founded by Dubai entrepreneur Sunny Varkey.  Alpha Plus, Cognita and GEMS emerged in the past few years, ostensibly to shake up the private school market and to offer value private education (read: literacy and numeracy and traditional schooling, but perhaps not the equivalent of a West End theatre for little Isabelle’s Year 2 play or an onsite swimming pool.)  A laudable idea, perhaps, given the significant percentage of parents who are disgruntled with falling standards in the state schools and  who say they would send their children to private schools if they could afford to do so.   But has the theory been put into practice? And is the corporatisation of our schools a price worth paying for a cut-rate education?

It is curious that Southbank International School and the Hampshire School do not post what they charge in tuition fees on their website.  I visited Southbank a few years ago and it was relatively expensive with respect to its peer group back then. I can’t imagine that Cognita has paid good money to acquire it only to lower fees.  In fact, I have heard parents I know with children there grumble about the increases there, and I know some who have pulled their children out as a result. So much for an affordable education there now that it’s under the Cognita umbrella.  And what about the Hampshire School? Well, we have no way of knowing what they charge because they don’t make this publicly available on their website. I should point out that it is the norm for schools to publish this information on their websites.  Are they withholding the information because its fees are perhaps not in line with Mr Varkey’s mantra that he’s trying to provide an “affordable education”? Wetherby School and Pembridge Hall, which are owned by Alpha Plus (which also owns the Davies Laing & Dick crammers), are at least up front and publish their fees.  But they charge £4200 per term — more than the going rate for the average London prep.  Again, so much for economies of scale, passing on affordability, and shaking up the private sector. 

Let’s assume for the moment that there are some affordable schools in these groups (and I believe there are some), and let’s ignore the fact some of the schools really are quite expensive (so much so that they have to refrain from posting the fees on their websites).  Is corporate ownership desirable? How long will it be before the quirkiness, history and colour of the established schools brought under these corporate umbrellas is eroded by the economies of scale imperative on which the groups operate?  How can a newly established no-frills school ever hope to achieve character when pushed to provide a return acceptable to the private equity houses (in the case of Alpha Plus and Cognita) that own them?  The project has not been long in the making, and I’m afraid if we revisit this question in a few years’ time, we may find that the expensive corporatised schools have turned into a homogenised slush while the truly “affordable” private schools under those corporate umbrellas are so strongly driven by the profit imperative that they fail to develop any of the character.  In short, I fear we’ll end up with a bunch of McDonald’s restaurants and maybe a few Carluccios, but in they end, neither really has much individuality any more, does it?

Early immersion, SVP

I have been obsessed with languages for goodness knows how long.  A funny thing, really, when you consider that I only really speak two languages fluently as an adult.  I remember asking for a Berlitz teach yourself Spanish book for Christmas when I was eight and how thrilled I was to actually get it.  Over the years, I’ve been to German Saturday school, been through French immersion and studied Latin at school, peddled my bicycle up to the University of North London for evening classes in Dutch when I lived in West London, and hogged the teach yourself Breton tapes from the public library for months until they finally recalled the book on the basis that someone else in Ottawa wanted to borrow it (who’d have thought??). It is not unsurprising, therefore, that I have given a lot of thought as to how I can give my daughter the best chance of learning more languages than me. And better.

We considered the French system in London.  The lycée has several primary school branches in London in addition to the main branch in South Kensington which also houses the secondary school.  There are also several private French and bilingual (French/English) schools in London, most of them subsidised by the French state to varying degrees and therefore presenting rather more affordable options than English prep schools too.  If it weren’t so far away, we’d also consider the Colegio Espanol on Portobello Road. Another bargain, by the way, at under £1,000 per term.  (The German, Dutch, Swedish and Norwegian schools, all south of the Thames, are rather less affordable, plus I have a little less personal interest in these languages.)  Despite the fact that plopping your child into a school where all the others speak another language is undoubtedly the best way for them to learn a language, there are two factors that make any of these expatriate schools slightly less than perfect: their revolving door nature (expats come and go as parental tours of duty in London start and terminate) and the fact that most have an order of priority that puts non-nationals at the bottom of the pile (although I bet those that don’t receive subsidies from foreign states become a lot more welcoming of non-nationals with the credit crunch).  So where does that leave those of us who would like our children to acquire another language at an early age?

Well, as it happens, something wonderful is taking hold in the U.K. in this regard.  Forty-some years after the introduction of the first immersion programmes in St. Lambert, Quebec (English pupils were immersed in French with a French teacher but with other English pupils), we’re seeing the beginning of a trend here in the U.K.  Immersion in a non-heritage language.  Wales has had Welsh-medium state schools for years (and there is in fact also a private Welsh-medium school in Willesden, North London) while there have been Gaelic-medium state schools in Scotland for several years.  But what we have not had until recently are immersion programmes in non-heritage languages such as French or Spanish or Chinese or any other language which is not the language spoken at home. 

Research has shown that pupils develop a much higher level of proficiency in their immersion language than occurs when this language is simply taught as a school subject as it is in English schools (or at least where languages are still taught at all.) The research also shows that their attainment in English and other school subjects such as mathematics, science, history, geography, etc. does not suffer compared to their peers who are not in immersion programmes, although immersion pupils tend to be behind their mainstream peers initially in English. However, when English is introduced a few years later (usually in the equivalent of Year 4), immersion pupils quickly make up for lost time and often surpass their non-immersion peers with respect to English reading and writing. Early immersion, rather than immersion beginning in Year 5 or in high school, and total rather than partial immersion, have tended to produce the best results. 

Walker Road Primary in Aberdeen started the immersion experiment in 2000.  The first cohort has now moved on to secondary school.  What made the experiment in Aberdeen all the more interesting for me is the fact that immersion was attempted in a school whose catchment is decidedly more deprived than the average.  (In the early days of immersion in Canada, allegations were regularly thrown around that immersion was a tool used by the middle classes to segregate the middle classes from those below on the socioeconomic or even ability ladder.) Wix’s School in Wandsworth opened as the first bilingual school in September 2006.  It was the product of the relationship of the head of the English-language Wix’s School (a pretty much bottom-of-the-league-tables school) and his counterpart at the French lycée primary occupying the same building.  The bilingual stream was so oversubscribed that there is another in the early planning stages at Hotham School in Putney (also in the same LEA as Wix), and even Wix is considering expanding its bilingual stream.  These schools draw on local, rather than expat, pupils so you have none of the revolving door of an expat school.  And non-French nationals have a hope in Hell of getting in.  And when they do, it’s free.  Now if I can only get one of the local subperforming primaries near me to follow in their suit, I might actually be interested in sending my daughter there.

School à la carte

My daughter has another two years before she applies for a place at an LEA-run school or is assessed for a fee-paying school.  There are other possibilities too, including foreign government schools in London and alternative (but relatively cheap) fee-paying schools. And, of course, there’s home schooling. The more I look at the stress of the independent schools admission process and the fees (count on £11,000 per year for prep and probably more at the secondary level) and the more I despair at the small catchment areas (read: my house is beyond it) for the few decent state schools nearby and the wouldn’t-touch-them-with-a-bargepole primaries that are within my catchment area, the more I begin to think about home schooling and about what I call school à la carte.  

On 5 November, I talked about the trend towards afterschooling in The afterschooling imperative. Home schooling, or home education, goes a bit further: it leaves out the formal school altogether.  The motivations of home schoolers are many. You get all types — from nutbars to middle class people who just want a good solid education.  I would consider home schooling if it could adequately address a few needs: (1) exposure to the thoughts and views and areas of interest of people other than me (2) social interaction and the opportunity to form friendships (3) exposure to some elements of formal education (ie not everything gets done at the kitchen table) and (4) a little bit of time off of mother-cum-teacher (which would otherwise be a 24/7 job).  A school à la carte would address all of these concerns.  Parents could volunteer to teach modules to the children of others, or parents could club together to hire specialists (such as language teachers) to offer modules.  There would be a physical place where children would congregate and, critically, see familiar faces several times per week (rather than the once per week they might otherwise see another child at Brownies or football practice.)  Parents could still home school, but their children would be exposed to a whole plethora of interesting modules, many of which one might expect to go well beyond the confines of the National Curriculum.  (The unbridled ability to provide modules of any type are what would distinguish an à la carte school from “flexi-schooling”, a legal loophole which permits parents to combine home schooling with part-time attendance at a local school with the school head’s permission.  After all, if, like me, one of your big concerns is getting away from teaching to the all-too-many-standardised tests , why would you want your kid attending a school which will inevitably spend much of its time preparing for those very same tests?)

Topics which are in high demand can be scheduled after the normal school day in an à la carte school in order to pull in the afterschooling parents looking for that extra enrichment or remedial help.  I see no reason why the financial aspects can’t be viable, especially when one considers the availability of school space which heads are only too willing to rent out to buttress school budgets.

I am a traditionalist at heart, yet even I would be open to considering an à la carte education for my daughter.  Your thoughts are appreciated, but please post them quickly; I imagine that as soon as Mr Snowdon reads this post, it will be pulled…

Lest we forget…

Today is Remembrance Day. On this day, I do stop to think about the lives lost in the two World Wars, though with the passage of time and an increasingly critical eye, I do question what it is, exactly, that I’m remembering and what it is that my daughter (aged 20 months) will “remember” — especially as neither of us was around at the time, and with each generation, the nexus to those events becomes slightly more tenuous.  I’m no historian so am not really qualified to assess the merit of the sacrifice made by so many during the two World Wars.  I have no doubt that the “cause” furthered by these wars was not the great one we learned about in school; the recent interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq (and the absence of necessary intervention in many other places such as Darfur and Rwanda) have probably forced many of us, myself included, to re-examine with our 21^st century glasses the “facts” we were taught about the World Wars and the lead-ups to them.  I do find it difficult to tie the gargantuan loss of life to a veritable cause that isn’t in some way tainted by political games played almost a hundred years ago which were probably very similar to our modern day WMD/Saddam Hussein/Al Qaeda games.  So what is it, exactly, that we’re remembering?  After all, does any of us observe two minutes’ silence for Harold’s men at Hastings, the estimated 92,000 casualties of the Second Punic War, or the estimated 45,000 casualties at the Battle of Waterloo?

Well, I think what we’re remembering is our collective stupidity and reminding ourselves to avoid repeating the same mistakes or at the very least mistakes on the same scale as the two World Wars.  As I walked among row after row of white Commonwealth War Graves Commission headstones this weekend in Ypres, Passchendaele, Vimy, Mount Sorrel, Beaumont-Hamel, and other places too small to be dots on my Michelin map, I could not help being moved by the tremendous loss of life in muddy foreign fields.  This weekend’s grey, cold, rainy weather in Flanders and the pock-marked landscape at Vimy (still fenced in parts due to undetonated explosives left over from World War I) reinforced for me the horrendous conditions in which so many young people died. 

I was pleased to see so many young people from English schools visiting the war graves and memorials in Flanders and the Somme and demonstrating a respect that one does not typically see from that age group on London buses.  If I didn’t know better, I would say that the number of headstones (bearing ages not more than a few years older than many of them) had driven home a point that no GCSE or A Level reading could hope to achieve.  If more schools allocated resources to sending the younger generation to Flanders and the Somme (and spent less on “educational” school trips to Disneyland Paris, which seem to be the height of enrichment for GCSE geography and A Level business studies, among others), perhaps future generations will avoid repeating the mistakes of just under a hundred years ago.  And that is something worth remembering.

The afterschooling imperative

I learned a new word this week.  “Afterschooling” (noun), “afterschool” (verb; as in “I afterschool my kids”)  Afterschooling is consciously augmenting your child’s school-provided curriculum.  Afterschooling parents are hybrids: think homeschooler meets laissez faire parent.  Many of us were afterschooled and didn’t even know it; our parents probably didn’t know it either.   They took us to story hour at the local library and spent time helping us winnow down our pile to the ten books our membership card allowed us to check out.  They made bets with us at the dinner table that saw us scramble to pull out the oversized folio National Geographic Atlas of the World to prove to them that Timbuktu did exist (and where.)  They helped us stack up copper pennies, layering them with lemon juice-dipped cloth and then measuring the current that ran through our primitive pile.  It was all very ad hoc.  More formal afterschool activities were rather limited and tended to consist of the likes of Brownies and Beavers, ballet, karate/judo, piano or violin lessons.  Instead, we played in the street, founded detective agencies, and established publications such as The Neighbourhood News (circulation 30; paid circulation zero) which lasted several years before folding.

Afterschooling today is another matter and attacked with a rigour far removed from the ad hoc nature of our own childhood stimulation. It’s about private tutoring for SATs, the 11-plus (whether for grammar schools or schools in non-grammar districts with selective streams), Common Entrance, GCSEs and A Levels, and elocution and coaching for public school interviews. It’s about regular attendance at Kumon centres and French clubs and half term “camps” and Christmas and Easter revision courses at crammers.   What boggles my mind is that so much of this is not so much to provide remedial help to those who need it, but rather to ensure a child is able to remain comfortably in the right spot on the curve to ensure whatever academic success his parents aspire to for him.  And there’s a certain amount of keeping up with the Joneses in this too; parents of perfectly able children are signing up en masse to Kumon and/or seeking out established local tutors out of fear of being left behind.

All of this, of course, raises the question: If our state schools are good, why do so many of us feel compelled to shuttle our kids from tutor to Kumon to le Club Tricolore and back (stopping off at WHSmith to buy a few more standardised tests to practice at home)?  We know the answer: many of our state schools do not, in fact, meet the standards many of us would hope for them, but we still want our kids to succeed (or, at the very least, get into that public school we’ve been saving up for for all these years in the state primary). Ergo, many of us succumb to the drill we all know.  What amazes me, however, is the number of children at fee-paying schools who boomerang from the home of the private tutor, to Kumon, and back to yet another tutor.  Either this is an indictment of the education these fee-paying schools provide (and calls into question what, exactly, you are paying for) or it’s an indictment of our society where even the privileged feel obligated to take away the precious time our kids have to become local sleuths, establish newspapers with no paid circulation, and pursue other, equally pointless but somehow important pursuits.

O ye of little faith — what school for you?

I think we should end public funding of faith-based schools in England.  Or at least those who advance the usual arguments against fee-paying schools should acknowledge that there are many similar arguments for abolishing publicly-funded faith-based schools, and if we’re going to get self-righteous when chastising those who choose to send their children to fee-paying schools, then we need to realise that faith-based schools are not so very different and that parents choosing them have a rather lot in common with their fee-paying counterparts.

Most faith schools are either voluntary controlled (where all building expenses and running costs are paid for by taxpayers) or voluntary aided (where running costs are paid for by taxpayers and up to 90% of building costs are paid for by taxpayers).  In short, everyone, not just those of the faith who are allowed to attend the schools, pay for them.  We all pay, the churches call the shots, and a select faithful few get to attend.  Taxpayers pay the piper, but the clerics call the tune…

 It is also inappropriate for a school system paid for by taxpayers to play a role in espousing any one particular religion.  Religion is a personal matter and one for the family or place of worship, not for a state-funded vehicle designed to equip youngsters with the tools to think critically about the world.

Finally, faith-based schools are proxies for selectivity.  Recent studies, such as those by academics Rebecca Allen and Anne West this year and reports presented to Parliament several years ago, buttress the position that faith-based schools cream off the better elements; their intakes are often not reflective of the pool of children from the immediately surrounding area, and the percentage of children eligible for free school meals (ie poor kids) is less than in non-faith state schools.  Isn’t such selection what parents choosing fee-paying schools are criticised for playing into?

Where I grew up, educational segregation was constitutionally enshrined, and thus you either attended a Catholic school (where you had to be well-documented as such) or a Protestant school (for those whose papers weren’t in order, Protestants, Jews, Muslims and any others.)  It was weird and stupid, as is any faith-based segregation, but it was enshrined in the Canadian Constitution.  There is no such constitutional protection in England and therefore no reason why this archaic system should be protected the way it has been.

From London day school to…boarding school? Are you outta your mind??

Can’t afford fees at your London day school any longer? Well, have you thought about sending your child to boarding school? “What?”  You ask.  “Are you a complete moron, Snowdon? That’s like saying ‘Let them eat cake’ when they can’t afford bread!”  Hear me out, folks… Sometimes, solutions aren’t always intuitive.

The average London day school costs approximately £10,000 per year in fees with uniform, lunches, clubs and other add-ons often extra.  There are some examples where a boarding education could come in under this amount.  If you live in an LEA with good local schools, you may just want to explore those options (but then again, if that were the case, you probably would have sent your child to that good local school in the first place, wouldn’t you have?)  If, however, you don’t have that kind of good fortune, there are boarding options which will bring you in under the mark that you’re currently paying. Plus, as I mentioned in yesterday’s post on state boarding schools (which come in at around £10,000 per annum), there may be further hidden savings in that your child won’t be eating at home, making the water meter spin, or using toilet paper for that matter. 

Here are a few of the options I’ve come across over the years:

• Christ’s Hospital School in Horsham, West Sussex is an all-boarding school for 11-18 year olds. I’ve heard it said that it is among the richest schools in the country, which I guess it needs to be when you consider that most of its students are on some level of bursary; only 4% of parents pay the full fees. You may have seen them in their curious uniforms on television, and every year their band leads the Lord Mayor of London’s parade. It is now too late to apply for admission for Year 7 in September 2009, but if your child is currently in Year 5, you may want to consider thinking ahead about this gem of a school for Year 7 in September 2010. Those applying for admission to the Sixth Form have until Monday 3 November to get their applications in. Although the school does not advertise it, applications are considered for other years, but there is usually a waiting list. Fees are determined on a sliding scale, but as a guideline, a family with an income of £30,000 per year can expect to pay approximately £4,000 for a year’s tuition and boarding. It’s worth checking out: www.christs-hospital.org.uk/allaboutmoney2007-08.pdf
• Welbeck — The Defence Sixth Form College in Leicestershire is a sixth form boarding school for medically fit UK, Commonwealth (hmm…I should let my Canadian friends know) or Irish citizens. It really is for those who’d like to pursue a career in the Forces; I’m not really sure what happens if you change your mind mid-course. Since 2005, the school has been sited at a new, state-of-the-art campus in Leicestershire. Its focus on the sciences is not for those who are not strong in this area. As with Christ’s Hospital, parents make a contribution, but it’s on a sliding scale. Children from families with incomes under £17,000 per year get a free ride, while a family income of £100,000 will mean annual fees (tuition and boarding) of just over £6,000. For more information, including application deadlines, check out: www.welbeck.mod.uk
• United World Colleges are part of a global education movement founded in the 1950’s based on the ideas of Kurt Hahn, a German Jew who founded Salem, a school in Germany, and later, when the Nazis rose to power, Gordounston. He was also instrumental in the establishment of the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme and the Outward Bound movement. The first United World College, Atlantic College in Wales, was founded in 1962. The United World Colleges are rooted in the philosophy that conflict and hostility can be overcome if young people of different races, nationalities and religions can be brought together to learn from each other. There are now 12 such colleges around the world and all offer the International Baccalaureate diploma programme. Admission is based on merit, and there is a generous scholarship programme which dishes out money on a combined basis of merit and need (bearing in mind that dummies don’t make it in in the first place.) Interested pupils must apply through the UK arm and are assigned to one of the 11 schools outside the UK or to Atlantic College. The deadline for applications is in February. I had friends who attended United World Colleges back in the 1980’s. They were very much the Guardian-reading, furry armpitted, Birkenstock-wearing, panpipe-music playing, Students-Against-Global-Nuclear-Extermination type (you get the idea…) that I didn’t have much in common with back then. I also did not think much of the IB back then. Now, however, I’m a big proponent of the IB (well, you don’t have much choice when faced with A-Level inflation) and, having lived in three countries and travelled even more extensively for business and pleasure, I regret not applying myself and forced my younger stepson to apply a few years ago. For a well-rounded, socially conscious, academically strong pupil, I highly recommend applying. Check it out: www.uwc.org.uk 
• The Duke of York’s Royal Military School in Dover provides an education for the children (11-18) of military personnel. Fees per year range from £1,650 for those with parents serving, to £3,900 per year for those whose parents leave the services during the child’s stay at the school, to £7,500 per year for those whose parents were no longer serving on entry. I actually don’t know much about this school and would welcome feedback from those with children there. Check it out: http://www.army.mod.uk/welfare-support/education/1161.aspx

 That’s it for today.  I’ve got a few more ideas up my sleeve which I’ll share with you in the coming days.