How do parents afford private school

We pay from our salaries, that said the fees have gone up significantly in the last few years. A few years ago we had three children in an independent prep school, eldest was full fees, middle was awarded a scholarship so 80% fees (but lost 5% sibling discount) and youngest did get the third child 10% discount. The eldest two moved on to state secondary schools so we now only pay for the youngest however her fees alone are not much less than what we paid for all three. She will be moving to a decent state secondary next September so no more fees thankfully which is a relief.

Having had children at the school for many years now, I would say there is a real mix. There are a small number of families where a trust fund covers the fees, there are also some where grandparents pay however there are many that make sacrifice, some more than others, to be able to pay.

We do both earn good salaries however we have sacrificed being mortgage free and subsequently delayed our own retirement to ensure the children had the benefit of attending a decent primary school.

I suspect that option wouldn't be feasible to us nowadays as the fees are a good 50% higher now than they were when we moved the children there. Cost of living, increase in wages, increase in national insurance and now the VAT - the number in reception this year is less than half than it was historically.

I work in finance and make circa 90k gross so I take home about 5k per month. Fees are 3k a month for 2 kids. Ex gives me £800 a month. Remainder gets wiped out with day to day stuff. Home paid outright so no mortgage. Single parent. Every parent in our class has a very high earning father, mum home. Half the class has some sort of SEN. For me, the schooling has been worth it. My kids (no SEN) are happy. I think a state school may have also been fine but it's worked out this way now.

Timed it right and got a job at the private school I wanted my DS to go to. 50% discount (some schools offer 70% fee remission). There’s also scholarships and deals with the Head that can be added on to reduce fees. Single mum.

Can tell here that you sent them in the past. Oh how the consultant salaries and tuition fees have changed 😭

I agree. We are in a similar boat to yourself. Whilst we have more than many, we pay school fees from earned income, we have a mortgage etc. I’d consider rich people to not pay school fees from earned income.

Dunno tbh.. i suppose i consider us having growing long term wealth but i never really consider ourselves rich.. which to me i think it's more to do with lots of disposable money available to spend freely, which we certainly don't have. Perhaps i (wrongly) compare with folks at our kids school whose parents pay their grandkids' fees, inherit huge sums or property and pay off multiple kids fees yearly upfront, others own huge family businesses or old money... none of which is something we'll have or expect to happen to us, plus being immigrant we do send a lot of money home for various (non income generating) purposes. But of course when u put it that way (against national median household etc) then it's a different picture. i completely accept that and take your point.

@OneSillyCrab what household income would you need to have to consider a household to be "rich" if over five times the national median household income, and in the top 2% of household incomes, is in your view "not rich really"? Where does the threshold to "rich" lie?

We have 2 DC (y9 & y6) and have had them in private school all their lives. All paid for by financial planning, modest lifestyle and one high(ish) salary. DH earns about 120k and I'm just under 30k pa so not rich really. Ok, we do live in the far north so very affordable housing, manageable mortgage, but id say we've done it just by working hard over the years and managing our money properly and keeping off the rat race! It doesn't feel too strained tbh, its not like we're scrimping on everything. We're immigrants and have been in the uk 20 odd years now, so no family money etc. Wouldn't put them in state school tbh but would gladly welcome a scholarship but wouldn't make a huge lifestyle change just for a grant. Eg moving to a boarding school away because of securing a massive scholarship... wouldn't do that. Will plod on till the end, lol. I look forward to Uni fees, nothing will be higher than what we've paid all these years so Uni will feel like a breeze i'm guessing

For me what ‘broke’ the state system - at least here in Scotland - was the move to ‘inclusion’. Pupil referral units were done away with, permanent exclusions banned. The rising need for specialist SEN schools were also not met. This saved the council a ton of money but led to soaring violence and destruction. State education in Scotland is no longer able to teach children who want to learn.

Yes you’re right. I guess I am thinking about a family where 2 people earn that.

As a single person though I think i would feel well off on 100k without kids to feed and pets and so on…but I do take your point about this because this thread is about who can afford private school and I guess there’s no absolute answer but it’s got to be around the 100k total earnings in the household depending on the region of school. Obviously with grand parent help this would be lower.

Spurred on by this I looked again at our finances today and we have approx £500 a month left which is for emergencies between us after we’ve paid for all we do and need monthly. Nothing in our life is extravagant other than private school (17k) everything else is pretty moderate. We do spend around 7-8k a year on holidays per year so that’s the only other extravagance. I know that figure is significantly less than many of our friends who earn similar and don’t do private school.

I know it’s a choice and that if we weren’t paying for education I’d likely feel more well off or be investing and saving etc.

If I was to make the choice again, with the introduction of VAT on fees I am not sure I’d do it again, when we chose it was Covid, fees were less, the alternative was bad and moving house seemed impossibly difficult during Covid so we shelved all that and chose to stay put (not to move into a different catchment) and go privately. Thankfully the education and school has been excellent so on that front it has been a good decision.

You said that you consider a salary of 100k plus as wealthy but someone on £100k takes home approx £68k per year. i.e. far less than you and your DH do. I’m not having a go at you, I just find people’s perception of wealth interesting.

Yes and it’s interesting that the poster says that they consider £100k plus as wealthy but two people earning £55k each have a significantly bigger income than one person on £100k.

Yes 55k each. Take home is approx 85k combined. I think I said that but absolutely no way we could afford it on 55k combined income, no. And we are paying for a ‘cheaper’ private option than many. I know for example we couldn’t afford it if we lived in London or the SE as the fees would be a lot higher and our wage wouldn’t be as we would have the same jobs and same pay (no london weighting).

No idea! We certainly couldn't have afforded it, even on 3 salaries!

I know someone who moved to Birmingham and put her child into a high-profile private school, when they couldn't pay the fees they had to look for a bursary of some kind. I couldn't cope with the stress of that, TBH.

I don’t think there much hope for us, we do a lot of this already. We are very frugal but that’s just our natural style. Due to allergies we don’t eat out often and if we do it’s a McDonald’s for the kids. The money we save we use for a nice holiday once a year but that’s 4k which isn’t anywhere near enough for private school fees.

Ahhh yes if it’s 55k each that’s different to our situation 😭

With difficulty! I’ll come back with more detail but In essence, we don’t have a car (DH has a work car) and I work from home. That’s obviously a perk.

No childcare as I do it all / they no longer need it. Kids do some clubs so no savings there but we do two self catering holidays a year, we don’t go out often, we don’t drink at all. No gym memberships etc, we both run / cycle which is free. Hardly pay anything into pensions (£200 a month) which is definitely not ideal but it’s only for 5 years. No cleaner anymore. No TV subscriptions other than Netflix, vinted for all clothes. I sell a lot on vinted also. We don’t buy lunch out, always make it ourselves and take it. Also don’t buy coffees etc. Basically we live relatively frugally day to day and treats are on holidays and occasionally we will go for lunch / a meal at the weekend, if we do that we often do brunch as it’s cheaper. When we do stuff as a family it tends to be a walk and a cafe for a coffee not the cinema / bowling etc. Hobbies wise we don’t spend much at all. DH has one hobby which costs £25 a month. My hobby is free!

The kids both also have jobs, that is their pocket money (dog walking and car cleaning). Neither of them wear labels, they wear second hand stuff 90% of the time. No expensive gadgets etc.

And we have no debt other than the mortgage. A massive help. We paid that all off pre starting private school and I guess that’s the only way we scrape by. When we have two there it will mean no holidays for that time (maybe a week in the U.K.) or putting it on a credit card for those years.

My take on it is this is short term. We’ve had a good life with some great holidays and bought nice clothes etc in the past but I don’t need any of that so I stopped it all and all that now goes on the school but in a few years they will have left and hopefully we will have a bit extra again for treats etc.

We also wanted to move house or extend our house but we haven’t because that would cost too much at the moment. But we can manage as we are.

I never buy on credit anymore. If I can’t afford it upfront, we don’t have it. We haven’t had any new furniture for many years.

We have had two in private school at a time but now down to one. When we had two in at a time it was tough; we had to put some on mortgage. Older ones went to state sixth form college partly for money, partly because we think it is a good transition for sixth form.

Now we just have one. We don’t have the lifestyle we could have and have a higher mortgage than we would like but it’s manageable. By the time youngest finishes, we will be done paying uni support on older children and will be in a position to overpay the mortgage significantly. We may even keep youngest in private school for sixth form.

Household income is £200k and we pay £20k on private school fees (was £32k combined for 2 at a time but fees have gone up a lot last 2 years!), uni support is £13k (for 2 - we only pay a bit more than the government says we should contribute), mortgage is £2.5k pcm. We do overpay on that a bit.

I knew someone who sent two children to private school on a part time social workers salary. They paid 25% of the fees themselves, ex DH paid 25%, each set of grandparents paid 25%. They paid their own part time by constantly remortgaging their house but they also made some big changes to it. Not long after the children left school, they sold the house for a good price and downsized. Didn’t have to pay uni support due to income.

Well presumably it's £55k each.

They're bringing home £85,000 they're fine!

Yeah, people aren't poor just because they spend all their money 🤣🤣🤣

@Atissue123 I have been looking into sending my kids to private but I think we can’t afford it. My husband earns 52k and I’m part time due to having no family near by and juggling everything (which is a luxury but then most of my wages would go in childcare if I increased my hours)

Can I be cheeky and ask how you do it on 55k? Our mortgage alone is 1k a month. A breakdown or tips would be welcomed! 🥰

Good question. I associate ‘wealth’ with having excess money, in our situation we’ve had to make big cut backs to afford the education BUT I agree that we are wealthy because if I wasn’t spending my money on my children’s education we would have a pretty nice lifestyle and would be able to save more / invest a bit (which we can’t do). I guess I just don’t think 55k a year is ‘wealthy’ but compared to some it’s definitely well off. I understand that. The average wage in the U.K. now is 40k for 40 year olds and although I see we are both above that…not by that much. I guess I see wealthy as the top 1-5% of earners which I think is 100k+ but I also understand that those people will have mortgages, bills etc and will also feel the extra VAT being applied to fees. We also didn’t do private primary so we saved a bit there and I understand that many can’t ever do that as there is never any surplus.

This was very definitely our experience. Put one child through primary the whole way privately and always felt broke. Then realised that many, if not most, of her peers had grandparents paying the fees. Parents were subsequently all 15K better off a year than us!

Saw one of them the other day. Choosing to send three kids to private school and moaning that she didn't feel like a high earner because all her money was gone. Baffling.

If you have an extra £17,000+ each year available to pay for a second set of fees, why on earth don't you think you're wealthy?