Why pay for the privilege?

In downstairs loos of houses of a certain sort, the old school photograph is a constant. When you’ve seen a few of these slightly yellowing portraits, you’ve seen them all. But this trend might soon reach its end. If you listen carefully in particular enclaves, you’ll hear faint whisperings about a new way of doing things. Maybe, just maybe, public school isn’t quite for everyone any more. Say goodbye to the old school pictures; the toffs are going native.

Last year, in a Viscount’s kitchen, I spotted an invitation to a school fair — at the local primary. A few weeks later, an Old Harrovian whose family has a 300-year history with the school remarked that he’d be preparing his children for the 11-plus, rather than common entrance. The aristocracy is stirring. While the matriarch of one big Scottish family may be content to send her sons 400 miles away to school in the south, a consensus is forming that this is no longer the only ‘done thing’.

It’s not entirely surprising. After all, being and sounding posh is out of fashion: the Bullingdon Club is struggling to recruit members, and, once again, ‘Etonian’ is used as a four-letter word. For one Old Etonian banker in his fifties, the idea that his school is some kind of prize is laughable. ‘When I was there it was a comprehensive for the landed gentry. Everyone east of the A1 went to Eton, and anyone west of the A1 went to Harrow.’

The rise in school fees — and as a result, the altered demographics — has changed this. In 1994, fees for Eton were £3,978; now, they’re £38,730 without the trimmings. Yearly boarding fees for Dulwich College, the most expensive school in the country, come in at a staggering £41,040.