I love the fact that anyone who attends a private school is a toff, as is the family. That makes me a toff as Jnr attends a private school (we're definitely not!). I also love the fact that we're all high earners who live in big expensive houses. I'll admit to my house being quite nice and in a nice village, the same village as I grew up in a council house, but the house wasn't mega money. We're also no high earners, both the OH and I are teachers at state schools.
The fact is Jnr was failing at his old school, he had plenty of mates there but detested it. We moved him about 6 months ago so he would have a chance when it came to his GCSEs (now in Y11). The main advantage for us are class sizes, they're tiny so he gets a lot more help and he can't get away with titting about so much. Our rationale for sending him was that he's unlikely to want to go to university, so if he wants to stay there for 6th form we'll have spent the same amount of money as 3 years at university.
Anyway on to the charity thing. I can't really work out why his school is a charity. It's a small school and doesn't seem to support other schools or anything in the community. The town does have a lot of selective private schools who belong under the banner of a charitable trust (jnr's school isn't part of this trust and isn't selective). These other schools do a lot of work in the community, there are loads of funded places offered to low income families. The trust also took over the running of the state school (now academy) I used to go to, which had been failing massively for about 25 years. It's normal catchment covers some fairly rough estates, but the trust are getting some very good results.
What I find amusing about Jnr's school are the various fund raising activities that go on. No different to any other school, Christmas and summer fayres, cake sales, raffles etc... All to raise money for things in school. The target attendees for these events being the parents and families of children that go there. The same parents who pay for their kids to go to the school! Why not charge a bit more and be done with it?
The other weekend Jnr went on a rugby tour for the school team. We paid for his weekend away, but they still decide to have a cake sale to help fund the trip. We paid for the ingredients and baked a cake for the sale, Jnr went and spent some of his money stuffing his face (we don't mind all this, I just find it funny!). They may as well just charged everyone going on the tour an extra £5-10!
