CH as an educational facility for West Sussex C.C.

[John Saunders]

Does the Foundation receive enhanced fees from the West Sussex local authority for educating their children? Living up in the far north, I am under the impression that Sussex children do rather well from the Foundation and that the school has deteriorated into a first class facility for the Sussex middle classes. I hope this is a misconception.

[eowyn3099]

My DS is in the third form, whilst we may be middle class, we aren't from Sussex! His year group is a massively diverse bunch, with the son of a German Count (on full fees), to children from inner London council estates, no doubt with free or virtually free places. Plus the whole array of different background children inbetween. You only have to go along to the school as the kids return from a leave weekend or holiday, to see that the car park is full, not of BMW's, Audi's, mercs and flash sports cars! By contrast there are old bangers, transit vans, but mostly your distictly average family car - normally aging!

This is not a school for elitists, but rather an amazing place where children from all walks, really do pull together, aided and abetted by a fantastic bunch of teachers and parents, who have given up huge amounts to give their child the opportunity to take up their place. You won't find parents here taking lots of holidays and buying new cars every year. What you will find are parents determined to keep their children at CH to complete their studies, worrying each year when the new bursary forms come through for completion, as to whether they will be able to afford the next year.

Places are offered based on academic potential and that little extra something that some children have no matter what their background, call it drive, quirkiness, a particular gift in one area, academic brilliance, there is no one defining quality. Often it's not the parents who have found the school, but recommendations from state school teachers, who recognise that a particular child deserves a chance at an education they would never be able to afford under normal circumstances.

CH is about opportunity not class systems.

[Fjgrogan]

eowyn3099 says ' places are offered on academic potential and that little extra something ..........' Yes, this is true, but it is not what CH was founded for! Historically the principal criteria for children to be selected were firstly NEED and secondly the ability to benefit from the kind of education which CH provided. Every year at this time there is on this forum an outpouring of posts from parents agonising about what more they can sacrifice in order for their children to continue their CH education . This is not morally right - Edward VI and his advisors should be spinning in their graves! Similarly the agonising about whether a second or subsequent child can also enjoy the same benefits that their older sibling has succeeded in obtaining; is it even worth putting the child (and the parents) through the stress of the competition for admission knowing that an offered place may have to be turned down on financial grounds at the last minute, because the actual amount of the parental contribution is not made public until so late in the procedure that it is then too late realistically to look elsewhere? The uncertainty and lack of accountability seem to increase with each passing year. It used to be that once a child was accepted the parents knew that their educational career was secure - if parental income increased then fees would go up pro rata, but never to the extent of parents being forced to withdraw the child.

Yes, I do realise that the money has to come from somewhere (including day pupils and full fee payers) , but to those of us who were fortunate enough to benefit in the past from CH's 'charitable benevolence', it seems increasingly as though CH is indeed becoming an educational facility for not only West Sussex, but evidently now also for wealthy European and oriental families. I hope this doesn't come across as xenophobic; basically I am just saddened that in spite of the fact that my own grandchildren are probably bright enough academically, and certainly within the original financial parameters, we would no longer consider applying on their behalf for admission to CH. It is a great school and provides an education second to none, but It just does not seem to offer the same ethical values that it was founded upon.

[ailurophile]

Does the Foundation receive enhanced fees from the West Sussex local authority for educating their children? Living up in the far north, I am under the impression that Sussex children do rather well from the Foundation and that the school has deteriorated into a first class facility for the Sussex middle classes. I hope this is a misconception.

John Saunders, I'd be interested to know on what evidence you have formed this impression? According to the latest CH Annual Review, 35% of pupils are currently drawn from Greater London, 20% from West Sussex, and some 25% from other 'home counties' within easy reach. But has it ever been different? The figures certainly don't seem to have changed greatly since I first looked at the school in ten years ago, and factors such as the costs/ logistics of travel must always have acted as a barrier to many needy families from further afield. (There are parents on this Forum from East Anglia and the West Country who have posted about these difficulties!).

What has changed over recent years is the percentage of families at CH who now pay full fees/ a very substantial contribution, but this is a result of a deliberate policy change by the school. (And as these families also already contribute towards the state education system through their taxes, you could argue that any theoretical payback from the local authority should directed to the parents and not to the Foundation!). So please don't get the impression that the 'middle classes' are simply leeching off CH; it's very much a symbiotic relationship - and one in which, as Frances points out, the balance of interest is increasingly weighted in favour of the school rather than the pupils!

[Fjgrogan]

I wish I had put it that succinctly!

[John Saunders]

Thank you for your comments. I note that your figures show that 80% of pupils live within the magic circle of south- east and south- west home counties. Surely this supports my original premise that the affluent middle classes are benefitting from subsidised education at the expense of the those living outside the influence of the metropolis. How many pupils are there from Liverpool,West Yorkshire or even Tyneside and Scotland?

[LongGone]

Thank you for your comments. I note that your figures show that 80% of pupils live within the magic circle of south- east and south- west home counties. Surely this supports my original premise that the affluent middle classes are benefitting from subsidised education at the expense of the those living outside the influence of the metropolis. How many pupils are there from Liverpool,West Yorkshire or even Tyneside and Scotland?

You may be right, but I would also like to know the relative number of applications from each part of the country before deciding there was a systematic bias.

[onewestguncopse]

There is no bias. The school treats all applications equally and i suggest that the number of applications from the South is due to a number of factors. A key one is that many parents today are keen to see their children more! Boarding is hard on a parent at times and therefore many would be parents would be more inclined to send their child to a boarding school that is local to home. That way they can see them at weekends, watch them play sport etc. This is something we encourage as much as possible. If you live in London or Sussex that is possible. If you live in Scotland - less so. That being said we do education students from across the UK. There is no conspiracy! We would welcome an application from anywhere in the world!

[Fjgrogan]

It is certainly a huge improvement that these days parents are welcomed to visit on a fairly casual basis; in my own youth they seemed to be regarded as more of an intrusion and only allowed to attend specific events by invitation. It didn't seem to occur to the 'school' that parents should be more-than-equal partners in the education of their own children! My own parents would not have dared to disagree with anything that the 'school' said - they were totally over-awed by the fact that I was receiving all these benefits from the 'charitable benevolence' of others, and therefore content to hand over complete responsibility for any decisions about my welfare to others! Today's parents seem to be more vocal about maintaining responsibility for their offspring, and therefore staying constantly in touch, by visits, e-mail, mobile phones etc, none of which were available until comparatively recently. There are pros and cons in relation to either attitude; we had to grow up and become independent of parental control fairly quickly because for a whole term at a time our only contact was the weekly compulsory letter, which might be censored and could not therefore be too critical, so our parents were forced to believe that we were settling happily - there was no way of telling them if we were not! However, it was a level playing field; the enforced separation from home was just as rigid whether home was a few miles away or at the other end of the country. My own family were only in southwest London but had great difficulty in raising the train fares to visit Hertford on Long Saturdays, for parents and younger brother and sister - eventually my grandfather used to lend us his car which helped enormously, and meant that we could venture further afield than just the Hertford shops and the castle grounds! I dread to think what would have happened if they had lived in Scotland or Cornwall. How on earth do the current full-fee payers being actively recruited from Germany and Hong Kong manage in this respect? Texts, e-mail and Skype are a poor substitute for a real live hug!

[ailurophile]

The points about keeping in touch are well made. But as I've already said, I imagine for many families the real issue would be the practicality and cost of regular travel. With the Christmas, Summer and Easter vacations plus three half term holidays you are looking at a minimum of twelve return trips to CH to pick up and drop off your children. In addition there are two leave weekends per term; these start on Friday afternoon and end on Sunday evening, and the school make very limited provision for pupils to stay on the premises.

Put yourself in the position of a struggling parent from "Liverpool,West Yorkshire or even Tyneside and Scotland"; until your child is old enough to make a long unaccompanied journey by train, you would presumably need to take each leave weekend Friday off work and spend all day travelling to Sussex and back, then set off again by lunchtime Sunday and return home in the wee small hours ready for work again on Monday morning. Alternatively (and I know some parents find this more workable) you might have to spend the weekend with your child in a hotel closer to the school. Oh, and don't forget that many families have other children to factor into this scenario too. For most the logistics would simply be impractical - and the enormous associated costs of travel/ accommodation would be prohibitive!

I take my hat off to parents who are willing to travel long distances for their children to attend CH, but if it were me I suspect that I'd be looking for an 'first class educational facility' closer to home! I'm sure that the north is not without its own excellent schools!!

[Mid A 15]

Given that London and the South East are the most populated regions of the UK logically one would expect those regions to account for the majority of pupils irrespective of the geographical location of the school.

There are many London boroughs and areas like Thanet, Dover and Hastings to name just three, without too much thought, which suffer as much poverty as anywhere else in the UK.

In other words I wouldn't draw any conclusions one way or the other purely based the regional distribution of pupils shown above.

[jhopgood]

I always understood that CH was established for the poor of London, so the fact that there are now pupils from other parts of the UK has already moved the school away from it's original purpose.

I was given to understand recently that the school is finding it very difficult to get the "poor" of London to apply. In my time, it was the Headmistress at my Junior school who put our names forward, but this happens less and less. Apparently, many Junior School Heads in London consider that CH is elitist and refuse to recommend it to their pupils. Many parents on council estates are not very interested in their children's education, so are even less interested in where they study.
If this is true, it is not surprising that CH has to look elsewhere for the "needy" pupil.


Perhaps parents on the forum can confirm this perception, one way or the other?

[YadaYada]

As a parent of a child who lives outside of the Home Counties I am very pleased to announce that he is now old enough to travel home on the train and so I do not have to do the 3 hour journey down south. And saves money on petrol as the ticket is only £14.

[Foureyes]

John,
I agree with you that Housie was primarily established for the poor children of London. However, I do urge you to look at Ken's wonderful "CH in the Victorian Era" (or CHIVE), which I must admit came as a great surprise to me. As you know CHIVE covers 1837 to 1902. In that period 11,362 children were admitted, of whom 5,121 came from London; i.e, just under 50 percent. Some of the surprising figures are: Devon - 289; Cumberland - 38, Ireland - 269, Wales - 214. Why so many from Devon (my home county, by the way)? That is only a very selective summary and you need to look at the book to get the full picture - see his Table 2.6.5. on p132 for starters. So, the geographical spread is nothing new.

Admittedly, from the middle of the 19th century there were the railways and steamships to make travel easier, but even so it was a very wide geographical spread. I even recall reading that a boy from Pembroke attended the school in the 1570s (yes, I do mean 1570s). I presume that in those Tudor times he went to the school at age ten and went home when he was eighteen!

All that said, I agree with you totally that it is a great shame that the number of Inner London entrants has dropped. There was a great tradition of local schools, livery companies, councillors and parish priests persuading needy parents that their children would benefit from a boarding education at C.H., but, as you say, it seems to have passed. One also wonders how much effort the school puts into promoting itself in those areas???

David

[J.R.]

It would be quite interesting to hear from someone at the school as to how admission requests are actually graded.

i.e.....

Percentage from overseas.
Percentage from London and the home counties .
Percentage of Full fee payers against percentage of assisted places.

Somehow, I don't think that information will be forth-coming.