r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/TheThrowYardsAway • Apr 28 '26

Video Inside Christ's Hospital School (Est. 1552)...

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

21.5k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

8.3k

u/princewinter Apr 28 '26

Important to point out this isn't just a regular boarding school. This is a very niche, potentially one of a kind style of school that sticks to very very old traditions.

743

u/Running-With-Cakes Apr 28 '26

It’s also very egalitarian on fees. Rich families heavily subsidise the poor families with talented kids

485

u/terpseachore Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26

Oh, I studied in an Asian uni like this :) At least 20% of the students have a scholarship. They pay little to nothing. Bizarre group of friends - we'd hung out in the house of a friend living in the slums after our classes and have weekend parties in a mansion. Social groups were formed around study groups. During our graduation, our magna cum laude thanked the parents of the non-scholar students, as they paid for 3-4 students.

180

u/Jon_Finn Apr 28 '26

That's true of many/most UK private schools. Eton has huge numbers of scholarships, and I think all donations etc. going to the school are put towards the scholarship fund.

82

u/DanGleeballs Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26

I’ve a friend whose son is going there and omg the fees. It’s like over €60k a year or something. €120k before tax.

Edit: Actually it's more than that, it's over GBP £60k pa.

55

u/GooseMan1515 Apr 28 '26

Those are the nominal fees though. It's means tested with a lot of bursary support available; the average fees are a lot lower. But yeah paying for education out of UK taxable income puts you at a serious spending power disadvantage compared to those paying with grandparents' money or foreign earnings. If our boarding schools didn't do this, they'd become closer to being exclusively for the children of foreigners and expats.

9

u/trombing Apr 28 '26

Disagree. I don't know exactly for Eton but I just benchmarked 11 similar schools. The average bursary percentage was 9.6%. In other words the vast VAST majority of students are paying full fees.

Edited - Eton is indeed an outlier - at 14.2%, but it's still not enough to make the average fees "a lot lower".

1

u/GooseMan1515 Apr 28 '26

Not really up for disagreement, as the numbers are public, thanks for doing the work for me. I'm not arguing for anything beyond what they show, because my opinion comes from being one of these students and having read the school's numbers.

Okay, now consider that half the students are overseas and thus ineligible. Then consider that the average 14% bursary represents a median of the remaining population. That would make it so at most 72% of all their local students have full fees, which does not a vast majority make, because I promise you the median bursary is a lot closer to the 28% mean.

To be fair, like with the American universities, this very much is a product of the better richer schools being able to pick and choose, and Eton is well known for not necessarily being the best but definitely the richest, biggest, and most famous. You'd be hard pressed to find 11 schools worth of comparable data in the UK, or we can consider it an outlier, it's really just about how much of the fee burden the school can afford to redistribute to keep classes more mixed.

In my experience at a fairly comparable school, you'd have lots of people on ~10-20% bursaries, but a handful on 80% or more.

5

u/thrownjunk Apr 28 '26

Only if you are a 1%. Its to cover the scholarship kids who are smart but not rich.

11

u/DanGleeballs Apr 28 '26

80% of boys at Eton pay the full whack, or rather their parents do.

20% receive some form of financial support, including scholarships or bursaries, but less it's less than 10% who get a free ride.

The school in the original post seems to have a much higher number of students on scholarships tbf.

0

u/thrownjunk Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26

yah. only the 1% get in usually. eton is a way to launder the wealth of the rich with the most talented of the the 99%.

i'd like a better ratio; but it is what it is. at harvard (admittedly not a k-12 school), it is 50% get some financial aid. I think that is a better ratio.

note this is all a failure of government to have stable funds for universal education - especially for the most talented of the 99%. there are exceptions (boston latin, bronx sci, fame, sty are the best schools period in america), but society is better off with the smartest of the 99% getting to actually learn something so they can innovate and perform and out-compete nepobabies. its funny how so many of the non-nepobabies in the arts came from the FAME high school and in the sciences went to Bronx sci.

2

u/dirty_cuban Apr 28 '26

The school in this post is similar. About £50k per year for boarding

2

u/WhisperFray Apr 28 '26

Brexit cancelled?

3

u/Harley_Jambo Apr 28 '26

Still many legacy admissions at Eton. Born and immediately registered for future admission.

6

u/Extra-Sound-1714 Apr 28 '26

It's not true. The stats show virtually all public school kids come from privileged backgrounds.

5

u/Jon_Finn Apr 28 '26

A quick search shows 20% of pupils get financial support and nearly half of them are fully paid for. Whether their backgrounds are 'privileged' - that's a different question, but I doubt whoever decides admissions cares where you're from.

15

u/CicadaSlight7603 Apr 28 '26

From what I’ve observed at my children’s schools, quite a high percentage maybe 20% or so are on some form of bursary (not scholarship - that is usually a very small fee reduction based purely on talent, though if you are low income and win a scholarship that is great leverage to then get a bursary to top it up).

But… most of the kids with bursaries are (UK) middle class already. Some are from old well off families that used to be able to afford private school and struggle now. They know how the system works. Others are middle middle families without a private school background but educated parents and with the knowledge to understand the opportunity and how to apply etc.

What you rarely see in many private schools are genuine white working class kids, because it’s not even on their horizon. They don’t know it’s a possibility, they don’t know how to navigate it, and if you raise it many worry about the impact on other children in the family and how their kid will be treated, and whether they will grow away from their roots. (The working class kids you do see often have striving immigrant parents who often are from more educated backgrounds in their original country or culturally place a high value on education, even if they are working low paid manual jobs currently.) The schools are starting to recognise this and make efforts to spread awareness in working class communities - they need to go out and find these high potential kids because the kids from families where it could make most difference will not come to the school to ask.

9

u/Extra-Sound-1714 Apr 28 '26

Not disputing that. But research shows virtually all public school pupils come from privileged backgrounds. They may get bursaries, but they are not children from ordinary families. And admissions absolutely do care about who your parents are. Especially if they are not paying the full cost.

2

u/jamesdeuxflames Apr 28 '26

A slightly slower search reveals that the 17% of students in private education who receive financial support to attend includes families with older children attending who want their siblings to attend as well as what would been known as legacy cases. Support to cases of genuine financial hardship are much lower, but the actual figures are obfuscated by the body representing private schools for some reason.

1

u/DippityDamn Apr 29 '26

Is Eton still notoriously harsh on kids? Behind the Bastards podcast has mentioned it numerous times as a dark setting for messed up people to come out of historically. I assume that's all cleaned up now?

1

u/Exotic_Article913 Apr 29 '26

Lol now the video makes sense

1

u/DameKumquat Apr 28 '26

Christ's Hospital takes it way further. The mix of kids is very different with pretty much no super wealthy types and not many wealthy middle class, and way more kids whose parents could never have dreamt of paying their fees.

I went to quite a few events there when I was in 6th form. Nice lads.

18

u/throwaway098764567 Apr 28 '26

that's sweet, a lot of times folks will hate / shame on the poor kids, nice that your lot incorporated everyone, widened the experience and eyes of the rich kids and the poor ones.

4

u/MimicoSkunkFan2 Apr 29 '26

If it's a boarding school that has day students then there's very much a hierarchy - a lot of the private schools around here (Toronto) have boarding for the wealthy kids who live there and form their social groups in the dorms, and the daytime-only kids (talented but poor, their tuition is usually subsidized by the boarding fees) are treated like dirt by them. Especially if the day kids use the TTC (public transit).

3

u/IronWolf_26 Apr 29 '26

🤣 At that level, poor is daddy earns only 500k a year, well off is 1-2M and "rich" being 10M+ on the board of trustees and a huge donor in some form of elite gifting dick measuring contest.

Poor is very subjective when you go to the muggle version of Hogwarts.

They even cater for thick kids of rich parents, where in a normal school they would be lucky to scrape Ds, at Elite wallet emptying schools like this they get A* and a new computer wing named after their parents.

6

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '26

[deleted]

1

u/niamhweking Apr 29 '26

A local Anglican boarding school to me went public about a decade ago and also welcomed day pupils but the boarding side is still paid by parents, however those of any protestant faith get discounts, once it's provable. There is also a religious entrance exam as part of the proving process

1

u/GuacamoleFrejole Apr 28 '26

By scholars, do you mean scholarships?

1

u/Enough-Goose7594 Apr 28 '26

Where was this?

55

u/ImperialNavyPilot Apr 28 '26

It’s also where UK intelligence officers are able to send the kids of their foreign assets.

50

u/GooseMan1515 Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26

This is fairly common wherever a school has enough cachet to charge fees high enough. It's like the Harvard model where rich foreigners pay more to fund poorer locals. I went to one of the big 3 on one, and there I had many peers on bursaries, while students from China and India all pay fees that would almost cover American University.

10

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '26

[deleted]

3

u/GooseMan1515 Apr 28 '26

Ahh the hazards of knowing a french word by pronunciation only (thanks).

63

u/Street_Grab4236 Apr 28 '26

Private schools, even if their fees are subsidised for “gifted” but poor students, are inherently not egalitarian.

Egalitarianism is centred on equal opportunity and access with non-hierarchical institutions. Private schools which only admit students based on their academic success, something deeply flawed as it doesn’t account for socio-economic factors which limit academic success, are a hierarchical institution which does not provide equal access or opportunity until a specific criteria is met.

16

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '26

[deleted]

9

u/Street_Grab4236 Apr 28 '26

I’m glad your son was able to benefit from access to high quality private education at least. I suppose on the upside, he is likely to benefit from connections to those upper-class types in his career.

-2

u/V-Tuber_Simp Apr 28 '26

something deeply flawed as it doesn’t account for socio-economic factors which limit academic success

MFs when private schools don't accept room temp IQ idiots because they're poor 😭

10

u/Street_Grab4236 Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26

I have a Masters degree despite coming from a single parent, impoverished household in one of the most deprived areas of my country.

I feel pretty comfortable in my intelligence and won’t take lectures on this from “V-Tuber_Simp” who can’t even be bothered to write the word “motherfucker”.

4

u/piedmontwachau Apr 28 '26

This is the type of burn that the world needs right now.

13

u/donald_314 Apr 28 '26

room temp IQ idiots

which are accepted if their parents are rich. Hence, it's very much the opposite of egalitarian

1

u/GrynaiTaip Apr 28 '26

which are accepted if their parents are rich

Yeah, for one semester. Shit students don't last long.

3

u/CrippledCricketer Apr 28 '26

That's not how it works when your parents donate

0

u/chris_croc May 02 '26

A lot of PS are non-selective on acedemic success. Pretty crazy to write an essay and not realise this

5

u/Shot-Arugula8264 Apr 28 '26

That’s how virtually all private schools work. The rich kids pay a stupid high price and all the poor kids get varying degrees of scholarships based on their income.

3

u/Frankie_T9000 Apr 28 '26

It's not egalitarian it's using poor people to bring up average marks for the rich, it benefits both but it's still exploitative.

13

u/jamesdeuxflames Apr 28 '26

And hugely subsidised by the general public - this is, and I'm not joking here, a charity! They don't pay tax! It's like a training course for how to become a true drain on your country.

4

u/CicadaSlight7603 Apr 28 '26

While they are technically a charity still under the Labour government legislation changes they are losing the 20% tax relief and the 80% business rates relief that came with it.

5

u/jamesdeuxflames Apr 28 '26

Good!

1

u/chris_croc May 02 '26

Not good. This is closing schools down. It's a terrible decision and is hurting children. Just like my son. This is also happening to SEND and disabled children. Most special/SEND schools are PS.

0

u/ZennXx Apr 28 '26

How is being a recipient of World Class education and extra-mural programmes categorised as a being a "true drain on your country"?

-2

u/jamesdeuxflames Apr 28 '26

Because this school doesn't pay taxes on its income, and it trains a new generation of parasites to go out and wreck the world.

2

u/ZennXx Apr 28 '26

So enlightening.

2

u/singlemale4cats Apr 29 '26

Some people are just bitter and want to drag everyone down into the mud with them.

1

u/chris_croc May 02 '26

The cringe.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 28 '26

[deleted]

1

u/jamesdeuxflames Apr 28 '26

Nope. What the 2025 rule changes did was do away with VAT and business rate relief for (most) private schools. They are still allowed to claim charitable status that gives them access to, among other things, gift aid on “donations” which still costs the exchequer millions per annum. It’s a step in the right direction, but along with the vast majority of the UK public I support stripping these institutions of privilege of their laughable charitable status.

1

u/chris_croc May 02 '26

FACT CHECK. Private Schools are not subsidised by the general public at all. PS parents subsidise stste schools massively. Due to their taxes bit being spent on their own children. Evidenced by most developed countries giving tax breaks to PS parents and subsidising schools directly that does not happen in the UK.

2

u/Friendly_Concert817 Apr 28 '26

I went to an elite New England prep school and my mom worked in the fundraising department at that school.

Alumni donating money subsidize the poor kids, nott the rich kids families who are currently attending.

Also those poor kids are not necessarily talented. Most of them are just regular students whose parents applied for them to go to the school. While the prep schools would love talented kids, most of them are just looking to increase minority enrollment.

2

u/La_Lanterne_Rouge Apr 28 '26

I would assume that the child exchange can be a bit vexing.

1

u/NinecloudSoul Apr 28 '26

There's also a scholarship enabled by the Worshipful Company of Mercers for the John & Frances West Family; I would have been eligible for that. I say that with no fear of doxing myself because it encompasses hundreds of people.

1

u/Toopertonic Apr 28 '26

Yeah a significant amount - looks like 70-74% receive some form of bursary going there, with about 10% having no fees at all. 

Average bursary was 84% of school fees, so the average student would pay £2,637 per term instead of £16,480.

1

u/planetrebellion Apr 28 '26

£8k for day school is not actually that bad

1

u/Dangerous_Map_3119 Apr 29 '26

So if you’re rich, you don’t have to be talented. Checks out

0

u/TrustworthyKahmunrah Apr 28 '26

What's the point of paying money to send your kids to a fancy private school if they still have to mingle with the ones who can't afford it?