实用英语综合教程第三册-7-实用英语综合教程

UNIT 7
Text A

PRE-READING TASK

Exercise 1
Before reading the passage, think over the questions.

1. How much do you spend at college per month on an average?
2. Are your total expenses at college a burden on your parents? Why or why not?

Now read the passage to know more about the same problem in Britain.

School Costs Are Rising in Britain, Too

1 Asked recently why the British spend less lavishly on luxuries than the Italians or the French, Philippe Leopold-Metzger, who was then the London head of the French jeweller Cartier, had a ready reply: House prices and school fees.
2 The cost of housing in southeast England has fallen sharply in recent years, but school fees continue to rise. Over the past decade, school fees have consistently outstripped the British rate of inflation.
3 This is not only bad news to British parents. British private schools, known confusingly as "public schools", attract pupils from around the world. The English language accounts for part of their drawing power, prestige for much of the remainder. Well over a century after the Duke of Wellington asserted that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, British schools retain their reputation for offering a first-class education.
4 But privately educating a child in Britain does not come cheap. According to the London-based Independent Schools Information Service, or Isis, senior boarding schools cost up to ￡12 000 ($18 000) a year. And fees are continuing to rise, although the rate is slowing.
5 Average fees for both boarding and day schools rose about 4 percent in the year ending in September 1993, after increases of 8.5 percent the previous year and more than 12 percent in each of the previous two years, said the information service's deputy director, Richard Davison. Estimates for the current year are about 3 percent, he said.
6 "Fees are rising at a slower rate now because schools have learned very rapidly that they cannot charge more than the market can bear," said Mr Davison. But the resilience of the market may owe more to the willingness of parents to make huge sacrifices for their children's education than to the forbearance of schools in raising fees.
7 Financial advisers say that parents are also starting to worry about university education in Britain. In Britain, unlike the United States, university students cover most of their higher-education expenses through government grants. But grants have not kept pace with inflation and British government ministers have argued that students and their families should bear more of the load.
8 So how do parents finance private education in Britain? According to a recent Isis survey, only about 30 percent make any advance plans. Most struggle to pay fees directly from their salary and other personal income. But this has become increasingly difficult as costs rise and families are starting to acknowledge that some planning is necessary.
9 Parents with the foresight to plan 10 years in advance should invest on a monthly basis in a series of endowment policies, suggests Isis. A policy will mature in each year the child is at school. The benefits from these policies will usually be exempt from personal income and capital-gains tax, unless they are discontinued.