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/

The best kept British school secret…

Over the next few days, I’m going to share with you a few affordable school gems if your current school has become unaffordable. Note that I am not defining “affordable”. We each have our own snack brackets. Some of you have kids at the likes of Eton or Benenden which you can’t afford as we continue to be increasingly credit-crunched. You may still be able to afford other public schools (yes, there are more affordable public schools!)  Some of you may have kids at boarding schools further down the foodchain (aka at “minor” public schools, as Mr. Snowdon corrects me.) There are still options for you. And some of you may have kids in public day schools. There are still, unbelievably, options for you, too, to explore. Today, I’m going to start with the more expensive options, and during the course of the next week, I’ll work through the various snack bracket options.

We’re unique in the UK in having a small, relatively unpublicised state boarding school system.  There are under three dozen such schools in the UK, most of which offer 11-18 schooling .  A small handful cater to the primary level — but don’t get me  going on that one; as a North American, when I hear people talk about little Peregrine going to Summer Fields or Sunningdale at age 7, I always think of that famous saying: “The English hate children. They keep their dogs at home and send their kids off to high class kennels called Eton and Harrow”.  Having spent ten years in this country now, however, I have begun to appreciate that boarding school for older children may offer something special or at the very least be a necessity in some circumstances.  But I just don’t get it for primary school. Seven is just too bloody young to get rid of your kids.

State boarding schools are open to children who are holders of EU passports.  You pay no tuition but you do pay for boarding — currently around £3000 per term.  You can see why state boarding schools are of limited interest to those who cannot afford London day school fees — you’d be swapping one £10k price tag for another of a similar amount.  (I suppose you could still see it as a saving when you take into account the food the average teenager consumes at home. Oh, and the long hot showers which the meter now registers and which you now pay for…)  But for someone currently paying £15-25000 per year for a boarding school in the private sector in the UK, there are substantial savings.  If you’re a snob, you can still brag to your friends that little Arthur is “away at school” and still talk about him coming home for an “exeat”.  Since the state boarding schools are so little known, very few in your social circle need to know that your stock portfolio is a fraction of what it once was and that little Arthur has actually “gone state!” 

 There are other advantages to state boarding schools.  Some, such as Cranbrook in Kent (one of my favourites) are grammar schools.  Local kids have to sit an entrance exam; only those in the top ability band are offered places.  I think many at Cranbrook would agree that the intake for boarding places is of a slightly lower ability level.  Slighty above average Atticus could therefore get into a “better” school (academically) than he would otherwise get into as a day student at his local grammar school (assuming there is one) by sitting the 11+ in a grammar school district.  Other schools, such as Hockerill Anglo-European College, offer the international baccalaureate and have average scores to give IB schools Sevenoaks and King’s College Wimbledon a run for their money.  (I also loved this school’s language focus: I heard groups of pupils speaking in German and across the courtyard, another group speaking in Spanish; it clearly attracts EU pupils from other countries.) Old Swinford Hospital School in the West Midlands is another one of my favourites.  Once a public school, it is still steeped in all the tradition and physical plant one would expect of a public school.  There are approximately 30 other state boarding schools. I must admit that there are some I would not send my child to as a day pupil if I lived in the catchment area, so I certainly wouldn’t consider paying to send my child to board at those. But there are some good ones (including my favourites above) and they are certainly worth exploring.  Plus, with the Russell Group universities increasingly discriminating in favour of state school applicants, why not enjoy bragging about little Jack being at boarding school and giving him the best shot ever of getting into Oxbridge?

 For more information on the state boarding schools, see:  http://www.sbsa.org.uk