The Value of a Private Prep School Education

By Chris Woodhead, Chairman of Cognita Schools limited and Ex Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools

Two or three times a month, the same question turns up in my Sunday Times postbag. Paraphrased, it reads like this: ‘We will probably send our son/daughter to a fee paying secondary school, but the state primary schools near to where we live seem pretty good. Do we really need to spend thousands of pounds on a prep school education?’

Much, of course, depends upon the local circumstance. Some state primary schools are, indeed, very good and some expensive prep schools have been known, putting it tactfully, to trade on past glories. Parents must therefore visit all the possible schools. It is important to get into lessons, to quiz the headteacher, to ask yourself whether you yourself would like to spend five days a week for several years sitting in these classrooms.

There is another very important question to think about, however. If you want your child to have a reasonable chance of winning a place at one of the more selective senior schools you are almost certainly going to have to send him or her to a fee paying prep school. I say this because the entry standards set by top senior schools are so high, because there is fierce competition for places, and, because however good the state primary school might be, there is a huge gap between the expectations of the state and the achievements of children in our best prep schools.

I spent a day a few weeks ago in one of the country’s most successful prep schools, following boys who were about to take their entrance exams to senior schools from lesson to lesson. I left deeply impressed. The level achieved in most subjects was certainly comparable to that expected at GCSE, and, in my own subject, English, where the class was reading Macbeth, I would have been happy to have had the responses the boys were giving from a first year sixth group.

How do such schools achieve their remarkable success? What is it that makes their very substantial fees such an excellent investment?

There are some obvious answers to these questions. Facilities and resources are usually pretty impressive and class sizes almost always small. These things certainly matter, but they are not the real explanation. A state of the art computer suite does not, after all, transform a failing school into a successful one and if the teacher isn’t any good the size of the class is irrelevant.

No, what parents are buying when they decide to send their children to a good prep school is a commitment to a particular kind of education – an education which, sadly, only independent schools can now offer.

State primary schools have to find time for pseudo subjects such as Citizenship, Personal Wellbeing and Economic Wellbeing and Financial Capability. They have to ensure that attention is paid to what are called cross-curricular dimensions such as Cultural Diversity, Healthy Lifestyles, Community Participation, Enterprise, and the Global Dimension and Sustainable Development. A number of ‘key skills’, including ‘functional skills’ in English, Maths and ICT and ‘personal, learning and thinking skills’, such as teamwork, creative thinking, reflective learning and self management, have also been given a new importance. All this is set within a statement of aims which asserts, somewhat ambitiously, that the curriculum should ‘enable all young people to become successful learners who enjoy learning, make progress and achieve; confident individuals who are able to live safe, healthy and fulfilling lives; and responsible citizens who make a positive contribution to society’.

The children in the prep school I visited were being taught traditional academic subjects: History, Science, Music, English, and so on. They were learning, of course, to think, but the whole point of their study was to ensure that they were inspired by the different kinds of knowledge the world has to offer. The more time state schools have to spend on vague aspirations which, frankly, are beyond the capacity of any school to guarantee, the less time they have to dedicate to the pursuit of the traditional knowledge that should be at the heart of education.

This is not, of course, to suggest that prep schools are nothing more than exam factories. Teachers who inspire their children will ensure that the children pass exams, but the real point is the inspiration. Neither is it an either/or. A good prep school achieves wonderful academic results, but it is, equally, committed to the development of every child as an individual, to the provision of the broadest possible range of extra-curricular activities so that pupils may have the opportunity to discover new pursuits and talents, and last, but by no means least, to the inculcation of a sense of right and wrong which will last throughout life.

I have always thought that the early years of education are the most important. In answering my Sunday Times readers, I acknowledge that the decision must depend upon personal circumstance. When my own grandchildren come to stay with us I think about the school I have been describing. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than for them to attend such a school.

Chris Woodhead

(Note by Editor: Chris Woodhead has over thirty-five years' experience in education. He has taught English in grammar and comprehensive schools, lectured in education at university level, and worked in senior posts in local authority education. He ran the National Curriculum Council and the Schools Curriculum Assessment Authority, before his appointment as Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools in 1996. Having resigned in November 2000, he is now a professor of Education at the University of Buckingham. Chris broadcasts, and writes regularly in the national press on education policy.

Chris is Chairman of Cognita Schools Limited, which operates more than 40 private schools, many of which cover the pre-prep and prep years of education.

Chairman, Cognita Schools Limited