{"id":15,"date":"2008-04-02T11:18:50","date_gmt":"2008-04-02T11:18:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hilarymoriarty.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/02\/halifax-alarm\/"},"modified":"2008-04-02T11:18:50","modified_gmt":"2008-04-02T11:18:50","slug":"halifax-alarm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/?p=15","title":{"rendered":"Halifax Alarm"},"content":{"rendered":"

Phones were red-hot in the BSA office on Friday 28 March, with journalists chasing information to fill out the press release from the Halifax Financial Services, about steep rises in boarding fees in the last ten years (articles appeared in the Telegraph<\/a>, the Daily Mail<\/a> and the Herald<\/a>, amongst others).
\nThe Halifax had raided the ISC census material – public record – and done the sums which showed boarding fees had risen 86% since 1997.\u00a0 And so they had – the numbers were unarguable.
\nJournalists wanted to know why.\u00a0 The answers were simple – boarding schools came into the twenty-first century in those years, like everyone else.\u00a0 Customers are ever more discerning and discriminating: parents want the best for their children.
\nYes of course they want the best education; but they also want boarding accommodation they feel comfortable with, and facilities which will give children wonderful opportunities to discover and nurture other skills – state of the art theatres and swimming pools, for instance.
\nIn 1997, the average capital spend per pupil in independent schools was \u00a3525.\u00a0 In 2007, it was \u00a31250 per boarding pupil for new and refurbished boarding accommodation alone.
\nInvestment in accommodation moves schools away from vast freezing dormitories and towards single study bedrooms with en suite facilities.\u00a0 Inspectors look for personalisation of pupil space – they get that now in spades.
\nStaffing ratios are also likely to be higher, and boarding staff are likely to be better trained – we know that because a thousand boarding staff have been through the BSA’s professional development courses, accredited by Roehampton University, in the last ten years.
\nLast year and this, 400 Gap assistants attended BSA induction courses at the start of their year in British schools.\u00a0 If schools are prepared to strengthen the skills of youngsters who will be with them only a year, how much more will they invest in training their more senior staff so that boarding really is an excellent experience for pupils?
\nIn the event, perhaps journalists realised the story wasn’t really a story at all – particularly when they read paragraphs which said, ‘London is the most expensive, Wales the least expensive,’ for boarding – had they noticed the differences in the prices for just about everything between Wales and London?\u00a0 So the press release did not get the wide coverage it might have done, and the dreadful news of the plane crash may have shunted the story down the pecking order.
\nWe await the release of the next ISC census on 29 April.\u00a0 It will be interesting to see what the percentage increase in fees was for this year, and how boarding numbers are faring.\u00a0 Many schools have spoken informally of numbers rising – let us hope they have, as parents realise the value of a boarding education, whatever its price.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Phones were red-hot in the BSA office on Friday 28 March, with journalists chasing information to fill out the press release from the Halifax Financial Services, about steep rises in boarding fees in the last ten years (articles appeared in the Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Herald, amongst others). The Halifax had raided the\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[92],"class_list":["post-15","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-education","tag-fees"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}