Spectator letters: Bernard Jenkin and the cabbies fight back, rising school fees, Nigel Lawson on aid

Private pain

Sir: A line in Alec Marsh’s article (‘Britain’s one-child policy’, 1 February) caught my eye; that school fees have ‘almost doubled in the past decade’. I recently found an 1823 bill for an ancestor’s attendance at dame school (broadly equivalent to a prep school) that was approximately £3 a term for full boarding. In the 1970s, seven generations later, my own prep school fees were just over £300 a term. Whilst this represents, in nominal terms, a little more than a doubling every generation; in real terms the growth in school fees over the 150 years averages less than 10 per cent a generation. However, one generation on and the bills I currently receive from my son’s prep school exceed £6,000; representing in real terms a 400 per cent increase over a single generation. At the bottom of every bill they helpfully offer various means of payment, although all feel as though they are through the nose.