• Home
• Spectator News
• Ards Chronicle
• Classified Ads
• Advertising Rates
• Commercial Printing
• Editorial Contacts
• Advertising Contacts
• Web Enquiries
• About Spectator Group
• Why Choose Us?
• Useful Web Sites

PANIC is spreading through parents at prep school gates as they fear for their kids’ futures after this year’s government cuts.

On September 1 the Department of Education is to pull all public money from the preparatory departments of grammar schools.

This means in just over six months time parents will face paying an extra £800 per year to keep their children in a prep – and school heads have warned that this figure may go up.

Now parents have spoken of their growing sense of alarm over what the cuts could mean for the future of preps, while also insisting that Education Minister Caitriona Ruane is robbing them of the ability to send their children to the school of their choice.

As one father of a P2 pupil at Cygnet House, Glenlola Collegiate’s prep, told the Spectator this week, the spectre of paying out almost £1,000 extra every year has already driven parents to consider uprooting their kids and moving them to a new school.

“There might be this image of all parents of prep school children being wealthy, but it’s not true,” explained the father, who asked that his name not be published. “Looking around the Cygnet House car park, I don’t see many new BMWs there.

“We’re talking about average people, households where both parents work and they’re making sacrifices for their children’s education. People like that will struggle to meet the extra cost.

“The department is saying that there are places available [for those children who leave preps], but when my wife and I looked at primaries a couple of years ago most of them had class sizes of 26 or over.

“Although I’m sure you could squeeze one or two in, I think the department has only really looked at rehousing some of this September’s Year 1 intake. I don’t think they have considered what might happen if a lot of children in P4 or P5 move.

“In any case, as with other parents, it was our choice to send our daughter to Cygnet House and you plan for that to be for seven years. Now many have to look at pulling a child out of their prep because the department is pulling funding. Parents chose where to send their child, but that choice is being denied them.”

Over the past few weeks prep schools have held meetings with parents in an attempt to clarify the situation, though according to the Cygnet father many are still in the dark.