Parental Contribution

[YadaYada]

Looking at the new website something struck me. It was about the scholarships. They may have been there before and I didn't take any notice. Can current students apply for these - whether at 13+ or Sixth Form?

P.S. STILL waiting for next years assessment

[Antinous1]

I was wondering about the scholarships too. The school website says:

Scholarships are awarded for academic excellence and ability in music, art, drama and sport. The awards are offered at 11+ (may be deferred to 13+ entry), 13+ and Sixth Form with a maximum value of 20%. Scholarships are awarded as a result of the normal entrance testing carried out by the School.

Scholarships may be linked to bursarial assistance.

Does this mean that a full-fee paying day pupil could be awarded a scholarship which allowed a reduction of up to 20% off their fees? Because I also remember seeing on this forum:

Howard H wrote:
Current Day pupils fees are c £13K for 11-13 year olds and £17K for 13-18.
Unlike your previous poster I do not believe that the Foundation should ever consider fee remission for day pupils.

It does seem obscene if the school is proposing to use money that could be going towards supporting needy children at the school on reducing fees for those who have already been assessed as able to pay the full amount. Other Independents use scholarships as a way of persuading the parents of the most able children to choose them rather than another school. I'm pretty sure CH's attitude to this subject used to be that if your child had a good, affordable offer from another school then you should accept that and leave the CH place to someone without the choice.

Antinous

[sejintenej]

Don't get me started on this - I remember the stupidity that was Ch contracting out food in the late 80's. Personally I think all schools have got it wrong (including primary) and other than for religious/ethical(vegetarian) or health (allergy) grounds all school children should have to eat a single set menu. Reduces waste and allows tighter control of nutritional input. I actually found 95% of pre contracted out CH food nice - maybe the "scotch mince" was a bit salty and the scrambled eggs resembled a grey island in a yellow sea but in general I had no problems with it. This whole idea of choice and serve yourself salad bars has led to wastage and so increased costs. I ate far better in term time than holidays.

This is not a dig at CH as it has to provide at least as good as the local comp alternative - it is a dig at the entire concept of giving people too much choice - but then I have never liked Faddy eaters.

When I was at CH there was not even a vegetarian option and Tim Wright who had become vegetarian at age 6 just got the same as everyone else but without the meat - he than had Cheddar, cream crackers and apples on prescription from the doctor to be eaten in matrons room daily. That was going a bit too far but I see no need for a 3 choice menu 3 meals a day in any school.

CH does not have to compete with the local comp; the situations are totally different. CH pupils in theory have no alternative source of their 5 a day, protein etc but comp pupils can avoid their school meals and hopefully get a proper meal from mummy or the chippie.
Long before your time there was a standard menu - which you ate or starved. (I'm not sure how the Jewish boy in Col A was handled - we served him the same stuff as everyone else and he thrived on it). However parents knew the situation in advance - they could accept it or simply not apply for a place which IMHO should be the policy now.
That is not to say a change was impossible to arrange; a London specialist (thanks to my mother's employer) prescribed for me one banana a day to control not too bad acne. In an interview about the matter Dr Scott was far from totally in favour of specialists but I did get the banana. AFAIR there were just a few foods I had to avoid; no alternatives were made available but I suspect helpings of the other parts of the meal might have been increased slightly - that was up to the Trades Mon.

Having mentioned a Jewish boy, the crew on my first job included a Sikh. Given the conditions everyone was ordered to be clean-shaven at all times - the Sikh took the instructions to the temple where he was given permission to shave and to eat whatever food was available - mainly beef pemmican it turned out. Of course nobody had spotted the religious significance in advance so the instructions to him were instantly reversed though he chose to follow the rules binding the rest of us. Why cannot others try to fit in with the majority?

[kittykat]

Has 'learning support' always been a paid-for extra at CH?

Just looking over the new fees PDF on the website and noticed it. Is this any different to how it has been previously?

[pinkhebe]

P.S. STILL waiting for next years assessment

Me too.

[ailurophile]

Antinous wrote:

It does seem obscene if the school is proposing to use money that could be going towards supporting needy children at the school on reducing fees for those who have already been assessed as able to pay the full amount. Other Independents use scholarships as a way of persuading the parents of the most able children to choose them rather than another school. I'm pretty sure CH's attitude to this subject used to be that if your child had a good, affordable offer from another school then you should accept that and leave the CH place to someone without the choice.

Yeah well, CH's attitude to all sorts of subjects appears to be evolving by the hour...

However, we have been told that in order to survive the school must admit more full fee payers. It seems absurd, and (as Antinous says) obscene, that in order to attract these pupils the school must compete with other independents by offering generous scholarships. Presumably these subsidies will be paid for out of the endowment - income which is generated from charitable gifts given in good faith by benefactors over hundreds of years to provide education for those in need, not to provide a wider and more convenient choice for the well-heeled of West Sussex!

[pinkhebe]

The mention of scholarships has been on the website for at least 2 years.

[ailurophile]

The mention of scholarships has been on the website for at least 2 years.

I believe that until recently scholarships were offered only to sixth form entrants, and that again these were introduced as a measure to increase the numbers of direct entry pupils. In fact, looking back to a post I made on another thread last September I see that I predicted exactly the way in which things were likely to develop.

Howard H wrote:
Current Day pupils fees are c £13K for 11-13 year olds and £17K for 13-18.
Unlike your previous poster I do not believe that the Foundation should ever consider fee remission for day pupils.

These fees are fairly hefty, particularly for families with more than one child to consider, and even the affluent are likely to be looking for the best 'deal'. Many other independent schools attract parents by offering academic, musical and sporting scholarships - based on the pupils' performance and not means-tested - so it may be that CH will simply have to think about this in order to compete. In fact, haven't they already done this in the sixth form?

[dinahcat]

It does seem against the original ethos of the school to attract full fee payers and then offer a discount when the subsidies should go to the means tested pupils.I do accept the reality of the school being in financial difficulty but I do smell a rat here.

[AKAP]

Until now I have stayed out of this debate as I am not a parent past,present or future of a child at CH, but I am an Old Blue. I have therefore followed the points with interest and have to reach the conclusion that there is a real and difficult issue going on in here for current parents. But one thing I am certain of in my own mind is that there is not some form of conspiracy going on to change CH into just another private school.
For that to happen this group of people http://www.christs-hospital.org.uk/foun ... moners.php would have to have an agenda to work against the mission statement.
I give up my own time to do voluntary work for a number of different charities, I do so because I believe in the aims of those charities and I am confident that the current almoners (and previous almoners) believe in the aims of CH.
I believe that they are making decisions to guide CH through a difficult financial situation. Some of those decisions will be the right decisions some,we may find later were wrong. But I am prepared to accept that the decisions were made in good faith.
I wish them well.

[CHDad]

I agree, I think that the Almoners have a very difficult job to do in the current fianancial climate, their decisions are not always going to be popular but they are desperately trying to safeguard the long term future of the school. At some point in time, the financial crisis will improve (goodness knows when but not for a while yet) and they need to ensure that there are still sufficient endowment funds left at this point for the school to continue as a charitable institution. If they spend all of the endowment now then the only way the school will continue is as a normal independent fee paying school.

However what I do think is wrong is that it would appear that Parents have been asked to commit to sending their children to CH without really knowing how much they will be asked to pay. Parents used to use the ready reckoner on the website which was very simple to use, to withdraw this service without implementing a replacement system does seem to be a mistake.

[pinkhebe]

However what I do think is wrong is that it would appear that Parents have been asked to commit to sending their children to CH without really knowing how much they will be asked to pay. This situation seems ludicrous, parents used to use the ready reckoner on the website which was very simple to use. To withdraw this service without implementing a replacement system does seem to be a mistake.

It was my understanding that the RR will be back in September, once they have tweaked the system used to decide the burseries.

[CHDad]

That would be good as long as it is a reasonably accurate guide for parents to use, sending a child to CH is a big financial decision for a family to make. They need to do so safe in the knowledge that they can afford it.

[ReallyMissingHer]

We didn't remortgage our home (we already had a higher mortgage than we could have currently got ) but we did increase the term of our mortgage in order to reduce the monthly payments.

The affect of that actually brought down our payments to 17% of our gross income, from memory I think only 12.5% of gross income is deductable in the allowable deductions to find net assessed income? I think that is the key, if you have mortgage payments that are significantly higher than the 12.5% then you are stuffed.

I have to say, so far, all of my dds friends' homes that she has been to have been both more valuable and larger than ours which makes me feel a bit

[dinahcat]

I can't imagine anyone in the south east has a mortgage of %12.5 of their salary!