WORRIED that sending your kids to private school will be unaffordable with VAT on fees? Simply fake the whole thing – you’ll save a fortune, and it can be as ridiculously posh as you like!
Make your kids pretend they do an elitist sport
Posh schools have always emphasised sport, presumably to give thick-but-rich kids something to excel at. So get your children to lie about playing a sport that’s unheard of in the state sector. Rowing, pelota and polo are all good. They can get the gist off the internet. Be warned – quidditch is not a real sport and will give the game away.
Force them to wear a straw boater
Your kids may be going to go a failing comp where every pupil talks like they’re in Top Boy, but wearing a straw boater as they set off in the morning will make people think they’re headed somewhere ostentatiously traditional like Harrow. However it may be wise for them to remove the boater when they arrive at state school or slightly before, because their learning is likely to suffer if they’re dead.
Teach them about posh schools with fictional examples
In order to lie about attending a private school, your children will need to know what they’re like. Have frequent viewings of films like Goodbye, Mr Chips and Tom Brown’s Schooldays, and hopefully they’ll be wittering about cloisters, fags and tuck in no time. Lindsay Anderson’s If… sends out the wrong message, and the recent St Trinian’s films are too unrealistic. Also with Gemma Arterton and Talulah Riley dressed as schoolgirls you don’t want to turn your kids into paedophiles.
Vet accounts of what happened at school
Your child must not reveal that they’re going to a comprehensive by saying something like: ‘The careers advisor said I’d be good at working in a warehouse’, which would be incredibly poor value for money for the £14,000 a term you’re supposedly paying. Check everything your child might say about their school day and change it if necessary. ‘Kaylee-Ann isn’t coming to school anymore because she’s pregnant’ sounds much better slightly rephrased as ‘Emilia isn’t coming to school anymore because her father is the new ambassador to China’.
Invent a form of Latin
Obviously your little ones won’t be learning Latin at a comprehensive or an obscure fee-paying school, but so few people study it you can just make it up and listeners will be impressed, as Boris Johnson realised. Encourage your family to invent Latin-sounding words and use them frequently. ‘Ipso quotus benifico ex coniferum’ might sound obviously bogus to you, but people are surprisingly gullible.
Encourage them to have fictional schoolfriends
Let your children invent, and talk about, fictional but extremely posh schoolfriends. Most people don’t know any upper-class types, so it doesn’t matter if the names are a tad caricaturish – Tarquin, Portia and Algernon are all fine. Obviously your kids can never actually have any of their little friends round to play, which may cause long-term psychological damage, but you’re saving even more money on squash and biscuits.
Use the peculiarities of posh schools to your advantage
Comprehensives don’t have their own cadet corps like Eton, and frankly it was wise not to give the twats in your class access to automatic weapons. So get your child to recount their activities in an imaginary Eton Rifles – it’s an unusual detail that sounds wonderfully authentic. Similarly, state schools rarely have famous alumni, apart from murderers, so if your child says Emily Blunt or Sienna Miller came in to give a talk, it really does sound as if they’re at a jolly super girls’ school.
