Parental Contribution

[ailurophile]

CH Dad wrote:

playing devils advocate the school cannot continue living beyond it's means. ... I think the Foundation have to try and take extreme measures to redress the deficit

I guess most of us can appreciate how difficult it is to make ends meet in the current financial climate.

I wonder whether CH have considered trying to release some of the equity in their own considerable property holdings?

[Antinous1]

What a change! I just dug out a copy of "School Life" magazine from Autumn 2008, which the school was handing out on one of the open days we went to. There is a lengthy article on CH which includes:

"It is a matter of pride that fewer than 3% of the pupils pay full fees of £20,442 a year. For most pupils, education comes either free or is very heavily subsidised. ......... The average household income is less than £15,000 a year, the average parental contribution to fees about £3,200 each year."

" 'I couldn't care less about league tables, because we don't have to market ourselves,' comments Mr Franklin ......."

"Three quarters of our intake comes from families who are in the bottom quartile of incomes in the UK..."

"With an endowment of more than £300 million, Christ's Hospital is one of the richest schools in the country ....

Doesn't really sound like the same place that the website now 'markets'.

Antinous

[CHDad]

I wonder whether CH have considered trying to release some of the equity in their own considerable property holdings?

That would be a quick fix but once you have sold the family silver.......................what then? Besides which the property portfolio is providing a good return. Without that the endowment fund would be further depleted.

[DavidRawlins]

The endowment needs to be increased, rather than depleted; so that the Foundation, and thus the school, can be more supportive over the next few hundred years.

[Dr Mummy]

I have to say I was very surprised (and annoyed!!) to read about the weekly boarding places - when I enquired about this as a means of reducing the fees I was told it was impractical and not viable! I suspect these places are only available to those paying full fees....

[cupcakemom]

Although my DD starts in September, I have already had to start the process for her younger sister, who would go in September 2013, so took her to the recent open day at which I asked about the weekly boarding situation. I was told that weekly boarding would be for bursary places as well as full fee payers. Apparently the idea being to make the whole boarding situation as flexible as possible. Although my DD would do two years of termly boarding she would then have the option to go to weekly - however, as with the majority of boarding schools, I assume she would still need to attend lessons on a Saturday morning, and in the unlikely event that she suddenly finds some sporting talent, matches, etc on a Saturday afternoon. I would be hugely concerned if she came home each weekend for a Saturday night and Sunday as it would simply mean she would be able to take more and more debris to school that would need to be brought home at some point ... I feel roof bars coming on!

[CHDad]

When my son started at CH I was really disapointed that they did not do weekly boarding. However after his first year I have to say that the three weekly boarding system they currently have does work really well. The children do want time to play together and relax. Saturday evenings and Sundays are the only time that they can really do this. D.S really enjoys his Sundays now and although I can take him out for the afternoon he nearly always declines the offer!

[ailurophile]

CH Dad wrote:
ailurophile wrote:
I wonder whether CH have considered trying to release some of the equity in their own considerable property holdings?

That would be a quick fix but once you have sold the family silver.......................what then? Besides which the property portfolio is providing a good return. Without that the endowment fund would be further depleted.

Precisely. I was actually trying to be ironic, in response to the suggestion made on here that families might be expected to risk the security of their own homes to protect the long term financial viability of CH.


I have been worried for some time now about both the speed and direction of change at CH. It is certainly not the same school now that it was when I chose it for my sons; but it seems quite extraordinary to hear a parent like Pinkhebe express the same concern before her child has even started at the school!! Of course I can appreciate that the Foundation need to respond to a shortfall in endowment income created by the recession, but I can't help thinking that some of the rapid changes being made seem rather confused, and that they are in danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

In a recent letter to parents the Headmaster stated that "Council 'declared its intention to eliminate the funding deficit by a combination of vigorous fund-raising and increased parental contributions'. Clearly success with the former will reduce the need for the latter...". This seems to me to ignore the potential that success with the latter will jeopardise the former! Vigorous fund-raising relies on the school's traditional profile as a charitable institution; if they change this by admitting an increasingly high percentage of pupils from wealthy backgrounds, they will undermine the charitable ethos and jeopardise fundraising efforts. Council's approach also seems to ignore another obvious problem: the Foundation's funding deficit does not exist in isolation. The school's traditional sources of support (big business, Old Blues and current/ potential parents) are all likely to be equally affected by the economic downturn, so a reliance on increasing income either from fundraising or from parental contributions might be somewhat optimistic.

I only wish I had the answers! Maybe CH won't exist in another 50 years, and that would be very sad. But it seems equally sad to me that in order to survive even in the short term, many of the essential attributes which have always made this wonderful school unique must change beyond all recognition.

[YadaYada]

increased parental contributions

I get the need to balance the books but I don't get how current parents' parental contributions can be increased beyond any increase in income? Unless they want to push us out in order to make space for full payers and I'm not so cynical to think that is on the agenda.

[wurzel]

Depressed now.

When my son didn't get in I was basically led to believe that although he was academically very good (has since been graded 8a in maths) he was socially a bit awkward and others needed the boarding lifestyle more than him - I had no objection to those reasons as really they match the original ethos of CH. But if the whole thing has now done an about face it leaves me wondering.. I mean he also really wanted ch for the band as he plays drums, keyboard, sings in a choir and has self taught himself the guitar - apparently the music staff loved him as well.

I also have a question/illustration about remortgaging a house to pay fees -

Currently interest rates are at an historic low - if you took out a £50k 25 year repayment mortgage at 4% to help fund fees then you have to pay £266 per month. £50k spread over 7 years is just under £600 per month when spread out - so actually you are only better off by £333 per month even at todays rates (and you will still be paying it off for another 18 years) - if rates go back to 10% then you are looking at £460 per month repayment so in fact would only have a spare extra £140 per month for the school or to put it another way - of the £50k you could only afford to give £11760 to the school as the rest would be needed for the extra payments during the 7 years. Now i know that actually as interest rates go up you could actually earn some interest on the balance of the £50k left but it however you look at it - it is an incredibly inefficient way to pay fees in terms of use of capital.

I suppose all parents could move to a house with 1 less bedroom and the children sleep in a tent in the holidays but having spent friday night sleeping under canvas in a storm I wouldn't recommend it long term

[ailurophile]

I get the need to balance the books but I don't get how current parents' parental contributions can be increased beyond any increase in income? Unless they want to push us out in order to make space for full payers and I'm not so cynical to think that is on the agenda.

YadaYada, I don't think there's any risk that current pupils are going to be 'pushed out'; the way I interpret it, the school are simply saying that they will need to accept more full fee payers in future, presumably (although this has not been made explicit) by reducing the number of Foundation places available. But current parents should be in no doubt that the Foundation can increase your assessed contribution by more the increase in your annual income. This was certainly our experience, and the reason why we had to withdraw our first son from the school.

I do think that we're in danger of getting too hung up on the whole re-mortgaging issue! Let's remember that Antinous's anecdote was about the approach adopted by another school; there is no evidence (yet!) that CH are going down this route.

[YadaYada]

I get what you are saying but YOU have been in the position that many of are scared of being in. If it can happen to you, why won't it happen to us?

[ailurophile]

YadaYada wrote:

I get what you are saying but YOU have been in the position that many of are scared of being in. If it can happen to you, why won't it happen to us?

Fair point, and I only wish I could reassure you that it won't. But I speak from bitter experience, and I really believe that other parents/ prospective parents should be aware of the risks.

In our particular experience, we were hit really hard when the Foundation decided to change the definition of income to include our employee pension contributions - money which we do not receive in our net pay packet at the end of each month. Peoples' opinions of the rights and wrongs of this have been well documented elsewhere on this Forum, but for my family this just happened to be the straw which broke the camel's back - we had budgeted carefully to afford a CH education for two children according to one set of criteria, and when the criteria changed we simply couldn't afford it any longer, end of story. In order to bring our mortgage payments down to within anything close to the 12.5% 'allowed' by the Foundation, we had already had to extend the repayment term beyond my husband's anticipated retirement date, so stopping our pension contributions was not an option. At the end of the day everyone has to know their limits, and we had reached ours.

I know that everyone's circumstances are different, but what I do feel very strongly is that any parent accepting a place for their child at CH needs to be confident that they will be able to sustain this commitment for seven years, and that the goalposts will not be moved. Again and again, the posts on this Forum illustrate that this is not the case.

The current statement on the CH website, "please note that the fee structure for bursaries and the Ready Reckoner (to assist with a fee estimate) are currently under review to incorporate changes that will be introduced with effect from September 2012", is deeply worrying. I truly hope that you and other parents will not experience what we did YadaYada, but yes, it could happen to you.

[Antinous1]

I do think that we're in danger of getting too hung up on the whole re-mortgaging issue! Let's remember that Antinous's anecdote was about the approach adopted by another school; there is no evidence (yet!) that CH are going down this route.

Yes, exactly so and I did actually say I was pretty sure that this wasn't the case at CH. However in some ways it seems to me that it is at least a more honest approach, as the school in question did make it perfectly clear at the point of offering a place what kind of sacrifice they expected the parent to make ... my friend didn't feel that she could make that level of sacrifice for the sake of one child (she has two others still in primary school) and was able to walk away, with some regret but no real damage done and no great sense of being ill-treated by that school. How much worse if she had accepted a place after being awarded a bursary which seemed to make the fees affordable and then found a year or two down the line that her contribution had been increased to a point where she had to either take measures that disadvantaged her younger children in order to make the payments, or withdraw her child from the school.

I think the choice of whether to take the risk and accept a place at CH without knowing whether the new fee structure for bursaries will move the goalposts an unmanageable distance depends an awful lot on whether you only have the one child to consider. If I had only one child I would happily mortgage my future for the right school place for them ..... but you just can't do that if you have other children who also need to have their best interests considered.

[dinahcat]

Just to throw another spanner into the works, I have been wondering about the effect that full fee payers and weekly boarders will have on the school in all sorts of ways .I work in an independent school and all the parents apart from a very small minority pay the full fees. They expect value for money. This is sometimes quite difficult to deal with and opens some interesting 'debates ' or the hackneyed 'full and frank discussion'. I don't really know but if I was paying £30 000 a year I might be tempted to be more vocal about things I wasn't happy about. Suppose a wealthy parents says 'We have to go to Dubai on business in term time and want to take the children out of school for two weeks' . If you say no and they threaten to take the children away from the school to a more accommodating one then the finances are in trouble as the budget will be set on the number of full fee payers . If one leaves there is a short fall.
Pupils with money bring their own problems whether it is with EMA or family money as excess cash in the hands of teenagers away from home is trouble.
Caveat emptor.