Letters | 6 April 2017

All-round education

Sir: While much of Ross Clark’s analysis of the direction that independent education has taken is spot on (‘A hard lesson is coming’, 1 April), he could not be more wrong on one issue. Many (or even most) parents who choose a private education for their children do not do so simply to achieve top academic outcomes: one look at the results league tables would disabuse him of this notion. What the average independent school does deliver is a rounded education (drama, sport, singing, D of E, CCF, debating and so on) with an emphasis on self-reliance, character and values, and competitive reward systems which acknowledge success rather than mediocrity.

If state schools matched these elements, they might genuinely signal the end of the road for the independent sector.
N.H. Eeles
Wiltshire

Private school myths

Sir: The average fee for a private day school is £13,500 a year; for half of schools the fees are less than that. A third of pupils have some kind of fee reduction, and the average independent-school family is a middle-class dual-income household, where the salary of one parent pays the school fees (‘A hard lesson is coming’, 1 April).

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Andrew Watts

Does Cornwall have a pasty problem?

Recent Sutton Trust research confirmed that parents who want their children to go to the best state schools are paying a huge house-price premium — so these days, even good quality state education costs parents a great deal.

Last year, independent schools spent £33 million on means-tested free places (100 per cent bursaries) and an additional £31 million on means-tested fee reductions of over 75 per cent. At Oxford University, 30 per cent of entrants in receipt of a bursary (students with a household income of £16,000 or less) were educated in private schools.

Most independent schools are charities and make only a small surplus every year (for evidence, see the Charity Commission annual returns).