Foreign parents should pay higher private school fees, says college founder

Foreign parents who send their children to private schools should be charged more than British families, the founder of an independent college said.

Alexander Nikitich, founder of Carfax Tutorial Establishment in Oxford, has cut prices for British parents because he fears they are being priced out of private education.

He said: “It seems wrong that billionaires from Russia and the Far East are paying the same as British dentists, doctors and solicitors who are seeing their incomes plummet in real terms.”

Mr Nikitich, originally from Russia, said that instead of higher fees, many private schools currently ask foreign parents for donations and offer bursaries to British children.

But he said schools should be upfront and simply charge international students more in fees, in the same way that British universities do.

At Mr Nikitich’s college in Oxford British pupils are charged £9,910 per subject while international students are charged £11,900. The price of extra individual tuition costs British students £42 an hour, while foreign students pay £78 an hour.

Mr Nikitich said parents prefer this “open and transparent” approach. He added: “There are very wealthy families who will make significant donations and some schools are being somewhat spoiled by this, and we sometimes get a sense that if you come from particular countries it is difficult to get in without a donation.”

Mr Nikitich, founder of the Carfax Education Group, which runs colleges, tutor agencies, schools and university consultancies in Britain and overseas, added that international parents are happy to pay increased fees because they value a British education so highly and do not want their children to go to an international school.

He said: “It seems strange that foreign parents, who value the British independent school sector so highly, aren’t making more of a financial contribution to it. If they paid higher fees, schools could afford to help pupils from less well-off British homes for whom the cost is a real struggle