It gets Scary!

I promised more scary stuff so here we go.

This is the bit where God sent our first two children to a private school.

(For readers outside the UK, most schools in this country are run by the local authority or directly by the government – these are called State Schools, and are free of charge and are not generally allowed to select pupils on the basis of ability. There are also ‘Faith Schools- basically state schools but subsidised by the Anglican or Roman Catholic Churches, which means they can give admission priority to children from their own faith or other Churches. Then there are Independent or Private Schools, also called Public Schools just to confuse you, which are independent of the government and can select pupils by whatever criteria (other than racist) they wish. You have to pay a fee to send your child to these schools, typically about £7500 per year.)

I have always been opposed to private education on the grounds that it is a ridiculously large amount of money to spend for a relatively small increase in the child’s results.

However, as our oldest child passed through primary school, he proved to be unusually bright. The headmaster put the thought in our minds: “He could go to ##### School”. We therefore started to look at it a bit more seriously. The local state schools were mediocre, the nearest one with half decent results was a long way short of the private school mentioned. They also had discipline problems. My niece complained of her art lessons – “It’s hard to draw an orange when it is flying around the classroom”. The Private School had excellent results and much better discipline. Not harsh – just an understanding that respect is given and received.

So we stuck our lad in for the entrance exam – the Lord would use the result as a guide.

His result was in the top 2%!!

The next question was the fees – there was absolutely no way that we could afford them. But God knows what he is doing. Since most private schools are registered as educational charities, to qualify for registration they have to have a system of assisted places for able pupils who would otherwise be unable to attend. Through this system, we were only required to pay ¼ of the fees – which coincided with some other loans being paid off and we could afford it.

A year later our next son came along. We put him in to the entrance exam again asking for divine guidance, and he too passed with flying colours.

So we have two sons at a private school – a true miracle on our income.

God provides – if you count credit cards as God’s provision.

Eventually, much like Elijah’s brook running dry, we reached our credit card limit and went trough a highly stressed time. We already had a massive mortgage. How could we raise the funds to continue their education?

I contacted my professional institution’s benevolent fund, expecting them to take one look at my salary and tell me to go away. But instead, they put me in touch with their specialists who arranged a self-certification mortgage for us. This was unusual in that rather than asking us for explicit details of the income we were self-certifying, it only asked us to certify that we could afford the payments with only the briefest statement of income.

Now I am a little troubled by the next bit – knowing what income they needed us to quote to permit the mortgage, we quoted that figure. Our logic was – God has led us to this private school. He has led us to this house. He has led us to this self-certification mortgage company. Who are we to say that he will not give us this income? I accept that this is stretching the definitions of integrity, and I don’t advocate that anybody else should do it. But what it does mean is that we cleared the credit cards and put away a fund to pay the school fees until they reach 16 after which there is a natural break to transfer to the very good local state sixth form college.

Our next scare came within six moths. In the annual review of our assisted place they suddenly started counting the tax credit as income, which had been explicitly excluded before. Because of our big family, this was a large amount, and would have meant that we would have to take the boys out of the school. More desperate prayer!

I arranged an appointment with the headmaster and explained how the rule change had a disproportionate effect on our family compared to others. He agreed entirely, and citing the boys’ excellent behaviour and performance, arranged for their fees to be fixed plus inflation until they finish or we have a change in circumstances. Praise God!!!

The next worry was our third son. We wanted to treat him equally, but knew that this time we really, really couldn’t afford to send him to the private school. Much prayer for wisdom! But this boy was a very different boy from the others. If I give a book to one of them in the evening, they give it back in the morning having read it from cover to cover. But if I give number 3 a book, he reads half way down the fly-leaf and hands it back – bored. The first two study diligently for hours doing their homework. Number three completes it as quick as possible and runs out to play football. We realised that he would not be happy in the intensely academic atmosphere of the private school. And on top of that, in that year, the closest state secondary school improved its standards and achieved the highest state school results in the area, only a little short of the private school, even though it does not select on ability. So our number 3, who is still very bright even if not academic, is happily going to the nearest state school, and doing very well free of charge. God knew what he was doing all along.

So the education and fees for our sons has been a major source of stress over the years, and it has been very scary, but I can state categorically that if you allow God to take charge of your life he will provide for you at these difficult times. This is the adventure of a normal life given to God.