To think if you can no longer afford school fees...

£3000 gain to the taxman, £8000 cost to the taxpayer per child. Bonkers.

You’re not using the calculator right - you need to adjust for gross income and net. You’re putting in gross figures where it’s asking for net.

Where are you getting council tax of 500 from and mortgage of 700? You either live in a super-cheap area, or have not kept up with costs. In my area our rented 2-bed is CT of 2200 per year and that’s a LOW council tax band here. Our basic rent for a bog standard 2-bed is £2k a month. Our basic expenses (housing, council tax, energy bills, food) easily top £3200. That’s before any discretionary spending.

People who didn’t get into the property bubble before it blew up are no way spending only 700 on housing and 500 on council tax. You are seriously deluded about the relationship of income and costs in the vast majority of the U.K., I’m afraid.

@Barefootsally

That's totally not what it is, in fact the "politics of envy" is a bit of a trope.

@asterel

But then I calculated their net income?

On net income it puts them slap bang in the middle.

However, this is significantly different from the government and other agencies who say that the median household disposable income is about 35k.

The 700 mortgage is the UK average. The Band H council tax in Surrey is 4743 PA, as a lot of people only pay 10 months I rounded it up to 500.

"You are seriously deluded about the relationship of income and costs in the vast majority of the U.K"

I actually think I'm pretty accurate on it. I've been VERY generous and only given our family the average cost of a mortgage.

Stick it up to a grand and suddenly the ability to fund even one child at private school falls. That gives them only 1711 or 395 a week, which is well below the household average.

So are people on these incomes going to be privately educating their children?

No.

Which rather proves my point.

@Aladdinzane Do you mean £500 per month or per year?

A mean average mortgage of £700 will include the much lower mortgages of those who bought property before the bubble. It’s not representative of families with children who are younger on average, and certainly not at current interest rates.

What do you pay? Do you have young children? Have you bought a house or rented recently? What are prices like in your area? Would 60k household income x 2.5 buy a house where you live, let alone a nice house in a good catchment?

@asterel

I'd have to find out what figures the other sources I've been reading use for the income deciles. If it is this one, where there is almost 0% participation up until the top household income decile, then, you'd need a net household income of 125k net.

State schools where I live are actually very, very good. So I have no sympathy with any parent who thinks that their child is going to suffer from having to go to one.

I mean, this has got to be one of the stupidest comments I’ve ever read on Mumsnet, up against some fairly stiff competition.

@BIWI did it occur to you that state schools where others live (as opposed to just where you do) are either shit, or faith schools where you have to go to Church to get in, or vastly oversubscribed so use a ludicrously limited catchment area as an admission criterion?

Jesus wept.

I did say 'where I live' @Piglet89

I'm sorry that you seem to find that so offensive. You can weep as much as you like.

FFS

I put in 500 per month, which is actually higher than the 5k for band H in Surrey by another 1000. I was trying to make allowances for those who would say " That's not average council tax in nicer areas" if I put in an average council tax amount.

Don't on average banks offer from 3.5 to 4 times gross household income, this is what google is telling me ( its been a while since I had to get one).

So our gross income family on 70k ( the hypothetical ones earlier with one child in PE) could get, being conservative and going to 3 times, a mortgage for 310k.

@BIWI but you see, the way Labour’s manifesto works (as I understand it) is that it will not just put private schools out of reach for folk in your excellent state school area, but in fact all across the country, so also in areas like mine, where state provision is, frankly, not good.

I wouldn’t mind so much, were your excellent state schools accessible to me.

Do you now understand the Swiss-cheese-sized holes in your argument?

It’s not a stupid comment . 86% of state schools are good or outstanding so shut schools are actually quite rare.

@ChocolateFinger222 a sizeable proportion of parents in my area cannot access the good or excellent state schools, so over subscribed are they - what are they supposed to do? Just accept the crap alternative they’re allocated, miles from their home?

It is a stupid comment.

@Aladdinzane No way do you get 3.5 or 4x household income unless you have a giant cash deposit (usually 60% plus of the total value). The classical measure used was 3.5 x single income and 2.5 x household income, and that’s close to what you’ll get now from a reputable lender in the current interest rate environment. (Unless interest only, or with a huge deposit, even in the days of subprime mortgage lending in practice you usually didn’t remotely get the income multiple that lenders often claimed you might.) The days of 4 x household income really are gone, I’m afraid!

So your argument is that most state schools are good or outstanding so the mugs paying for education should pay extra tax? Why not just let them get on with wasting their own money? Why make them think twice?

@ChocolateFinger222

This is another point, who are these people affording 18k a year on average for private school fees who live in areas where the available state schooling within a reasonable commuting distance is so poor on average compared to the rest of the country?

What do they mean by "not good" too? I've heard PE parents discuss the state school I worked in during the 2000s as "awful" on more than several occasions.

Just to give the lowdown on what this school is still providing till this day, 75% or more each year achieving 5 good GCSEs with English and Maths with the top 3 sets achieving similar levels to the local grammar results in that respect. Very good, non selective 6th form, that despite losing the top 5-10% of GCSE performers to local grammars ( or to privates on scholarships) still achieves around 40% of students going to RG universities every year, often Oxbridge and Med/Vet too. Also cause of its size it is able to run as many A levels as big 6th form colleges, offering further maths, EPQ, classics, and other things that smaller 6th forms can't.

For extra curriculars it has a thriving PE department which runs teams in boys and girls Football, as well Rugby, Netball, Tennis, Cricket and Athletics. It also runs Cheerleading and fitness clubs.

Arts department that puts on a school musical a year, show choir, clubs for fine artists etc etc. School Council, world challenge, guest speakers.....

Yeah, awful.

Oh and DofE from Bronze to Gold.

@asterel "No way do you get 3.5 or 4x household income unless you have a giant cash deposit"

When was the last time you went for a mortgage? Friends and family getting mortgages right up until before the pandemic ( I'll admit things might have changed) were getting 3.5% of household income and sometimes more on 15-20% deposits.

We mortgaged and remortgaged in 2013, 2015, 2017, 2021 and 2023, and there were no lenders offering more than 3x household at any of those points unless you had a very very low LTV!

Well, our local catchment school has none of those, but plenty of knife crime incidents (the last last week when a year 10 was discovered threatening another child with a knife in an actual lesson and police were called - not only was it all discussed extensively on Facebook but the police then went round all the local primaries this week to talk to the kids about knife crime.)

Anyway, as I said, DD happens to have an unusual talent for languages and history, and is desperate to learn Latin, Greek, Classical Civilization and Italian - and there is zilch, nada, zip of any of those on offer, not in any state school in our local authority. But I guess the plebs shouldn’t aspire to learn any of those things, no? Best that we leave it to the really wealthy to learn those cultural luxuries - kids of bankers and Boris Johnson and people like that. We definitely should be punishing any middle-income kids who might have the temerity to be interested in any academic subject that doesn’t suit their status in society. Let’s not get above ourselves! Classics only for the rich please! That’s a true left-wing position, oh yes.

Just done a calculation for a family, as was highlighted by someone here on about 70k net.

Lowered the council tax from Band H to Band F so about 300 a month ( with a little bit left over).

Mortgage of 1,500.

Apparently this puts them in the 40th percentile ( not sure if this is accurate at all, as this is now mostly discretionary income).

But an income of 928 per week to spend.

After fees for one child at secondary this is totally doable. Gives them 2755 a month to live on.

But again, with two, not at all, as it leaves 1225 PCM, or 289 a week to cover everything else.

Lets throw in the average bursary of 35% for both children so 23,400 a year for both in fees.

This comes out with a monthly left over of 2071, can they afford an extra 146 pounds a month in VAT? This would leave them with, 1925 per month. Maybe, it is very possible.

But this is massively dependent on both children getting bursaries that are the average. They couldn't possibly afford two children at private school. Even with the bursaries, with 2 children and 2 adults working ( without VAT) it could be a significant push.

But the thing is, to get 70k a year after tax both parents have to be earning 32% more each than the average salary of 34k. This makes me question the data on the calculator somewhat.

So in reality, can people on what are more than average incomes afford PE for two children, even with a significant bursary? Yes. Can they afford the VAT rise? Just about. But neither situation leaves much room for error and has significant sacrifices involved.

"desperate to learn Latin, Greek, Classical Civilization and Italian - and there is zilch, nada, zip of any of those on offer, not in any state school in our local authority."

You'd struggle to find this is most state schools ( although the one I worked at in the 2000s does have classics). Somehwere like Camden School for Girls probably offers it, but the vast majority won't. For an A level to run in most state schools then it means at least 10 students ( if not more in some) have to be interested in taking it. Since the budget cuts came in during the 2010s the offers have been majorly limited due to this.

If there is no A level, assuming one teacher, teaching one class in both Year 12 and Year 13 for 6 periods each. Then there is going to be no option for GCSE or extra after school classes for those who want to do it.

Languages is also one of the hardest to recruit in, the 2000s the school I mentioned before had a 90s title and was still a "language college", so it got extra money to run languages after school too. That stopped in about 2011. If you can't fully employ a teacher for at least 24/30 periods ( assuming a 6 period day), then they either have to be part time, or used elsewhere. Languages teachers are in short supply, so gravitate to where they will be used to teach their contracted hours in their subjects.

In privates, specialist are paid to come in part time, deliver 3-5 lessons a week to small classes. This just cannot be managed at state level anymore.

Exactly (though small private schools whose accounts are much smaller than the average state comp manage to provide these; why not in state? Because it’s a choice not to.) Fine, you can’t do these subjects in a state school. But does that mean we punish kids who are trying to access these with a bit of extra tax? Because it’s not going to stop the Boris Johnsons or the Westminsters of the independent sector from having those subjects. It simply polarises education further.

But then, so many posters have no idea that you might send your kid private for genuinely academic reasons - eg. that they just won’t get what works for them in the state sector, whether that’s a niche interest or SEN or whatever - rather than some kind of evil “privilege” over everyone else.

NB I have a friend who is sending her child private, but to a very expensive school. She’s an NHS trauma specialist who operates primarily on people extremely badly injured in car crashes and other kinds of similar trauma (crush injuries, etc). She wants her daughter to become a doctor too (to be fair, kid is very keen). Is it nefarious privilege for her to pay through the nose out of well-earned income doing the kind of job that anyone surely must agree qualifies as desperately needed in society, so that her child can do the same thing saving lives in the NHS? Does it make sense to tax her even more because this is regarded as “privilege”?

Obviously not all private school parents are like this example! But the idea that people all automatically deserve to be punished for paying privately just because they’re buying a “luxury” is simplistic and silly. Why not tax corporate profits a bit more instead? Or people speculating in crypto? Or landlords with big portfolios? Or people running online sites channeling the “sex industry” (OnlyFans, etc)? So many other, much more deserving targets.

That sounds tough and I’m glad your dd was able to cope. Mine didn’t cope. It isn’t possible to force a child to go to school. There are an alarming number of kids, who haven’t received an education, especially post covid. I have a friend, whose dc is in this situation. The plan for this child is hopefully college in September.

There are outstanding comps and outstanding comps. The outstanding comp next door to my dd’s private school offers an education and outcome similar to dd’s small private school. Dd might have been ok there due to the demographic of the kids but despite it not being far from our house, she wasn’t in catchment and it is very very oversubscribed. The outstanding comp, which dd went to but didn’t get on has a very different demographic and dd couldn’t cope with the lessons.

We sent her to private in year 9 not to get a better education. We sent her to get an education.