The credit crunch has begun to hit my middle class circle recently in a very personal way. When the last bubble burst (dot com, circa 2000), I was younger. No kids. No mortgage. Very few real responsibilities. Most of my friends at the time were similarly situated. It was a blip for us. We moved on. This time, however, we are all older; many of our friends have kids in school, and a good handful have kids in fee-paying schools. But the credit crunch has come down hard on many in our circle: redundancies and failing family businesses and the inevitable need to pull kids out of fee-paying schools.
Some would say that a private education is a luxury to begin with. So what if your kid has to “go state” with the masses now? After all, Paul McCartney’s kids did it, Gordon Brown’s are doing it, and David Cameron’s are too. Some of the state school registrars I have called up in the past few weeks asking for places for children of friends seemed to revel in the private sector families all of a sudden begging at their doorsteps. (Two registrars at London state secondary schools directed two high ability and achieving daughters of a friend to a local school which I am sure former education secretary Estelle Morris had in mind when she said there were some schools she wouldn’t touch with a bargepole.) The reality is, we have kids being forced to leave the school environments they know and are nurtured by in circumstances which add further to the sense of insecurity such a move (especially mid-year) brings. More often than not, the children affected are not from the moneyed established classes for whom the credit crunch is but a credit pinch but rather from families who have prioritised education over other discretionary spending in the family budget. And let’s not forget that while they’ve been paying fees to the independent sector, their parents have continued to contribute to the state sector through their taxes.
I have come to the conclusion that transferring from the private sector to the state sector outside of the usual transfer points (ie Reception, Year 7 and Sixth Form) requires more than perseverance: it requires good letter-writing, good follow-up, good kids to brag about who will help a recipient school’s league table position, and, ideally, a few good connections. If your kid is having to change schools mid-year, replace “good” with “exceptional” in the previous sentence. And add lots of luck.
My friend’s daughters did manage to secure places for January in Years 7 and 8, respectively, at a highly sought after school in London which I won’t name in case it results in unwanted scrutiny by LEA authorities. Two down, one to go. Another friend has a son finishing off his GCSEs at a fee-paying school. He, like the girls, is a catch: scholarship material and high athletic ability. It remains to be seen whether he, too, will be able to secure himself a coveted spot at the very same London state secondary.
These are clearly desperate times for people who, like my friends, would prefer not to take their kids out of their current fee-paying schools. Alternatively, if they must take them out and no viable local state school options are available, what can they do? I’ll explore options for keeping your kids in their current schools and alternate arrangements in future posts.
Snowdon on Schools 