To expect my parents to continue to pay my children’s school fees?

DH old school is almost 30k per annum, the absolute shit private school close to us is about 20k per annum.

Assume they are either bad at financial planning or something untoward happened.

Post the sodding article

I do feel for the kids. A friend with triplets sent them to private school but then had to send them to state school for their GSCE year, they all found it very difficult to adapt to the larger class sizes.

yes agree great tip @Finteq !

I love that so many people are just impressed with the paywall reading hack :)

I feel sorry for the children and the parents DC been put into an education setting , settled, made friends, got used to small classes, the facilities and now it's been pulled from underneath their feet.
Teenage years are not a good time to change schools.
GPs should have really thought this through before offering, if GP worked in finance it shouldn't have been beyond them to do the budgeting and the maths.
I do think they should pull out all the stops to try and continue, maybe release equity in house etc.
However 90k a year is an enormous amount to find. Wonder if they could investigate bursaries or scholarships with the school to try and make it more affordable.

Tbh, this is something you’d stipulate right from the off. If there was a chance my parents half way through decided they wouldn’t be able to continue, I would have sent them to state school right from the start. It’s cruel to the child to,pull them and send to a state school after they’ve attended private. The difference between state and private is huge, and the quality of the teaching and the sort of kids they would interact with would be so different. And I say this as someone whose kids went to state school, but I know people who did put theirs through private.

I'm sure with a bit of sleuthing you could find that out? What's your angle here?

Pretty standard cost for senior independent day school in London

Epsom College is £30k
St Paul’s is £29.6k
Kings a bit cheaper at just over £25k
Westminster is nearly £35k

Very unwise to accept this sort of offer unless grandparents can pre-fund or put aside most of the amount in advance.

I feel for the children. Not because state schools are awful (same as independent schools, they're a mixed bag and many are very good indeed), but because educational stability is very important imo and these kids are getting that pulled out from under them due to their parents'/grandparents' unwise choices.

If you wanted to get people's thoughts on the article, you should have been clearer in both your op and your title, and included a non paywall link.

Some of our school fees are paid by a GP, a term a year for each child. They are very young now so the fees aren’t a huge amount. For years 10-13 the fees are currently just short of £10k a term, there will be a one year cross over whilst both are at this level of fees and we are planning for it now as no doubt it will be more by the time we get there.

It seems pretty irresponsible to have absolutely no back up plan for if other funding stops!

To be honest most rich people get their kids school fees paid for by grandparents. It’s the most tax efficient way to do it

If they’re in London they could just borrow a large lump sum on the mortgage and either stick it into a 5-7% fixed rate to cover some of the increases or use it to negotiate a lump sum discount - their salaries could then cover increases beyond that.

If there's a mumsnetter of the Year award, my vote goes to @Finteq 🏆

My heart goes out to all the poor little darlings who will have to rough it with the common types and pick up dreadful local accents. Hopefully Labour will help the process by abolishing VAT relief for private schools. I say this as someone who went to one in Dulwich.

Speak to the school, they’ll help if they can.

Or there’s great state schools that are free! Ridiculous attitude

In Google Chrome on Windows, hover over the link with the mouse and hit Windows key + ALT, and Chrome will offer to save the page as a file that you can then open. Works with lots of paywalled sites.

Moot point, they can't afford it. End of.

My grandparents paid for my brother's private secondary school because they were lovely and my grandmother was a very successful business woman and was wealthy.

It's not really "someone else's kids" when it's your own grandkids.

some poeple shldnt be so bloody entlted if they dont have the money they dont bloody have it

The joint wage is 93k, so there should be some affordability there. They should speak to the school about bursaries and aim to keep the eldest in the school. The youngest should go to state school. The middle child has prob just started her gcse courses and can move without much upheaval, but with a bursary gps andparents might be able to afford the year 9 pupil, at least to year 11.
Or is this just a bashing thread for parents who send their kids to independent school.

The most expensive private (day) school in London I know is Queenswood and i think that's about 9K per term. I'm sure there would also be a sibling discount for multiple kids. £10K per term per child sounds crazy (and my daughter is in a London private school).

Perhaps tax planning - if a grandparent pays for a grandchild’s education out of income, it isn’t taken into account when calculating inheritance tax, even if within 7 years of death. However, as illustrated here, it’s a big commitment.