March 02, 2009 -- (MMD Newswire) Top private schools have been pricing themselves out of their traditional market for years, caught up in an annual prospectus war, where the schools with the most luxurious facilities generally win hands down.

This has triggered increasing fees, a search for new markets (Korea, Hong Kong and other far-off places), emergency changes of policy (notably the near total abandonment of single sex schooling for boys) ...

But one school, a traditional Catholic boarding school for boys set up in France 7 years ago by a group of UK teachers, is sticking to its guns, and feels that the current financial storms might produce a haul of new pupils from disenfranchised middle class families, keen to stay with private education but incapable of keeping up with fees.

Chavagnes International College, near Nantes, has its own full-time chaplain and ten staff, but provides an exclusive education for just 21 boys, aged 11 to 18. They are supported by their local bishop and the local government, but need to run on a very tight budget. All the traditional British public school trimmings are in place: plenty of choral singing and sport, public speaking, theatre, a tiny house system, traditional school uniform, Masters in gowns. But, apart from a small computer suite, Principal Ferdi McDermott rules out 'the newfangled'; not just because he can't afford it, but because 'it gets in the way.'

The school has attracted several members of the French aristocracy who are all great anglophiles, together with some Spaniards, yet it manages to keep its British atmopshere intact. Bilingualism and even trilingualism follow quickly in such an environent, which make modern languages a particular strength for this eccentric but successful school.

Chavagnes follows UK exams, with GCSEs and A-levels, and has already got its pupils into Oxford and a number of other UK, French and US universities. Fees are 15,000 euros per year, with bursaries and scholarships available in some cases.

Private schools in the UK are facing an uncertain future. McDermott thinks we are going to see UK private schools fill up with foreign pupils from far-away places, because of the weak pound, while (bizarrely) an increasing number of UK parents send the children abroad to 'no frills' traditional schools like his own.

More information: Ferdi McDermott, 0033 2 51 42 39 82 www.chavagnes.org

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