A note on how ISJ thinks about fees, and an option many families never realise is there.

There’s a particular family we meet every year. Their child would love it here; the teachers would know them by name within a week. They come to an open morning, they light up, and then, somewhere between the car park and the kitchen table that evening, they decide not to apply. Not because ISJ is wrong for their child. Because they looked at the fee, did the sum, and ruled themselves out.

We understand the instinct. We just think it’s a mistake, and we’d like to say so plainly.

The fee published on our website is our full tuition. It is not the fee every family pays. Where ISJ is genuinely the right school for a child and the full fee is a stretch, we can set tuition to that family’s circumstances. We call it Adjusted Tuition. It isn’t a discount, and it isn’t a prize to be won. It’s a simple acknowledgement that one fixed number was never going to suit every family, and that a child’s ability has nothing to do with their parents’ bank balance.

It works the way good schools have always worked, without fuss. Support is decided one family at a time, in private. It usually covers part of the fee, not all of it. There is no daunting form. It begins with a single conversation, and it stays between us. A child on adjusted tuition looks exactly like every other child at ISJ, because there is no difference.

We can do this because we were built to. ISJ is part of The Schools Trust, a charity, and reaching the children who would thrive here, not only the ones who can pay the headline price, is part of why the school exists.

So really, this is just permission. If ISJ feels right for your child and the fee is the one thing standing in the way, don’t make the decision for us. Have the conversation. Talk to Tiffany Hurret in Admissions. It’s confidential, there’s no obligation, and far more families qualify than ever think they will.

Because the worst outcome was never a family who asked and found it wasn’t for them. It was the child who would have flourished here, whose parents never asked.