We have a DC in a private school and we struggle with fees even in good years. Now our income is under threat (definitely no bonuses, benefits are cut, possible redundancies if things continue like this for longer). Our savings are about a year worth of school fees, we can deep into them and continue paying potentially. But not sure it’s really worth it.
The school gave 10% discount to all parents for the current term. Their remote learning has been really poor, no new learning just testing/revision of what was learned earlier. If the same or similar approach continues next academic year (i.e. partly remote learning, no or very restricted music, art, sports, science lessons) it will be a waste of money for us. With all the restrictions children can’t really use the facilities of private schools and these schools then not any better than public ones. And what if having spent all our savings on school fees now we will find ourselves around next Easter with no money even for food if the uk economy really struggles and will have no options but to withdraw DC just later once we really run out of money.
Having spoken to the school bursary we were told to give notice (the school can wave one term fee that we contractually have to pay if giving notice now).
The school is very popular with up to 10 kids per place sitting entrance exams. If withdrawing our DC now we are risking the place. But at the same time the school has been really unhelpful and we could end up giving them our last money and will then have to withdraw DC any way.
What are your thoughts on how we can logically approach this? It probably depends on how long the crisis goes on for. If we talk about schools back to normal in November (which is very doubtful), then it’s not really worth the hassle. But what if schools are not back to normal (in terms of social distancing, remote learning, use of facilities) for another year or so, then it would probably make sense to cut losses now and not waste any more money and in a year time see what happens.
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Private schools: is it time now to move DC back to local primary and cristalise our losses or keep investing into DC’s place at private school
40 replies
alison123345 · 04/06/2020 23:23
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