Thread by @Telegraph

📚Parents are considering if private school is still worth the money. Why?

❌ Sexual-abuse allegations
❌ Falling Oxbridge admission numbers
❌ Ever-increasing fees

@harrydq asks, ‘Is it time to reassess independent schools?’
🧵👇
telegraph.co.uk/education/0/pr…

💸 Ever-increasing fees

'The juxtaposition of one child fee paying and one non-fee paying... they are learning at the same rate,’ said Amy Eccles.

With parents spending £40K+ on fees for the same result, you may question why?

📉 Falling Oxbridge admission numbers

Last month, it became startlingly clear that state schools can compete with the independent sector.

🥇 A state school has just won the most Oxbridge offers, outstripping celebrated rivals at Eton and St Paul’s
telegraph.co.uk/education-and-…

❌ Sexual-abuse allegations.

Allegations of misogyny and ‘rape culture’ flourishing among gilded teenage boys have become common.

It is hard to imagine such behaviour is exclusive to the independent sector, but many reports are coming from such schools

📈 Private school costs have tripled in since the 1980s, and gone up by 50% in the past decade.

Barnaby Lenon, chairman of the Independent Schools Council argues that private schools offer value.

📌 ‘Demand hasn’t fallen, it’s gone up sharply in the past year’

🏫Parents are now showing little loyalty to their alma maters.

🔎 Focusing instead on tailoring the right choice, state or private, at the right time, for each child
telegraph.co.uk/education/0/pr…

↔️There is an increasing number of 'double-dippers': who switch between state and private.

6% of children are in private education at any one time, however 10% are privately educated at some point.

In families with more than 1 child, more are choosing to split between systems

↔️ During the first lockdown, Amy and Simon Eccles, both essential workers, moved their daughter from private to state school.

📚Their reasons were practical:
Few parents at the private school were key-workers. Classes were empty - she was attending with only 1 or 2 others

🎒 The move to state school saw 'more families with both parents working, almost 60% [of students] were back.’

Once at her new school, the Eccles found that their daughter was thriving:
📚 Doing well academically
🎼 Opportunity for music lessons
🥎 Joining after school clubs

✅ Save a fortune and bag a brilliant, enriching, diverse education for your child? It sounds like a no-brainer.

It’s rarely simple.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 The Eccles have two children and their son still attends private school. They feel he particularly benefits from the additional facilities

Did you attend private school? Is private education really worth the money?

⁉️ So what to do… Here’s what the experts have to say 👇

↔️ Don’t be afraid to mix systems
📑 Do your homework
👧👦 Be gender specific, girls and boys are very different in learning

Read more: telegraph.co.uk/education/0/pr…