How to get your kids into public school

If you think you can't afford private school, think again, says Merryn Somerset Webb. In fact, with the number of bursaries available, the poorer you are, the better your chances.

Want to send your children to private school, but assume you can't afford it? It's a reasonable assumption. Look at the advertised private school fees and you will see that a reasonable day school costs close to £10,000 per child. Go boarding and it'll be £30,000. Before extras. After tax.

The result? Last week, Andrew Halls, head of Kings College School in Wimbledon (annual fees: £20,000), laid it out: "somewhere along the line, first the nurses stopped sending children to us; then the policemen, then the armed force, then even the local accountants and lawyers".

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.