Frequently asked questions

No. All features are completely free to use. However, we do ask that none of our data be copied and published without our consent please.

No. We never store any of the information (e.g. names, dates of birth) entered by you into the tool. We keep this information secure while you're using the tool and it is deleted when you close your session. For more information please see our privacy policy below.

Where possible we've asked schools to input their fees data directly into our model, however for those schools who have yet to do this we have used the fees information provided on their website. While this data has been carefully collated and checked, we're happy to make any corrections pointed out to us! Please use the Contact Us section to get in touch.

Schools calculate sibling discounts in various different ways. For example, some simply discount each new sibling by an incrementing percentage (10% for the second, 20% for the third, etc.), while others may apply a larger discount to the fees of the eldest child as siblings join them at the school.

At least one third of all pupils in independent schooling benefit from some type of fee reduction, and schools generally offer two types of discretionary award in this area. A bursary is usually means-tested and is a discount offered to students from families who might not otherwise be able to fund independent education. A scholarship is awarded to recognise potential or excellence in one of more specific areas such as the arts, sport or academic ability.<

Full details of these awards are published by the schools on their websites, but can run to 100% of basic fees for that particular child. While you are unlikely to know at this stage which award, if any, your child will be eligible for on starting their senior education, you can add a speculative award into the tool to see how it would impact affordability.

There's no hard and fast rule for whether a scholarship or bursary can be combined with the automatic sibling discount. It will depend on the policy/discretion of individual schools, and is not usually stated in their general fees information. Where we don't have firm steer from a schools on this point, we've included the option for you to select whether or not to combine the discounts. This way you can see an illustration of the fees in either case and perhaps plan for the best and worst case scenarios.

Where discounts are combined, the scholarship is applied first, with the sibling discount applied to the remainder. Where the discounts aren't combined, the higher of the two reductions is applied.

Many schools offer different kinds of discount (e.g. for children of members of the armed forces, the clergy or former pupils). These aren't as common so aren't included here, so it's worth checking directly with the school whether there are any other discounts that you could benefit from.

Paying school fees represents a significant and long-lasting financial responsibility and, for most, will require planning and preparation well in advance of your children starting school. We've included a savings calculator here to provide a quick illustration alongside the fees timeline so you can get an idea of how much you might need to start saving in order to meet the total payment each year. You can vary the one-off initial payment, as well as the monthly contributions and expected rate of interest.

Note: This function is for illustrative purposes only and we do not intend for anyone to rely on it for financial planning purposes. There are a number of investments and savings plans available and we would strongly recommend taking professional advice on which may be right for you.

School fees have increased on average by 4% year on year since 2016, meaning that you may find you're paying significantly more than the fees currently advertised by the time your child starts school. We've taken this into account on the timeline, with the fees increasing by a set amount every year. While we've set the default rate of inflation to 4% based on recent years, you can vary this rate to see how it might affect future costs.

Although very much the exceptions to the rule, a few schools do offer to lock the fees for all years at the rates advertised in the year that the child starts. Wherever applicable, the fees timeline will reflect this and, for those schools, won't account for further inflation once the child enters Year 7.

While there is more to consider when choosing a school than academic performance, it is clearly going to be a major factor in your decision-making. To help you with this, we've collated together the publicly available data on GCSE performance in independent schools and represented it as two key metrics:

Attainment 8:

The points achieved by students in their eight English Baccalaureate subjects taken at GCSE are added together and divided by 10. A school’s attainment 8 score is the average of all of its students’ scores.

A*/A or Equivalent

This is the percentage of students achieving at least one A* or A (or 9 to 7 in the new grading system).

Note: No exam data has been published for 2019 to 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The score shown is from the most recent year for which data is available for that school.