What have you sacrificed to send your children to independent school?

[cheeseismydownfall]

DH and I are considering this for secondary, having made some rushed decisions in difficult circumstances that has led us to being in catchment for a pretty underwhelming secondary school. Eldest is in Y7 and it isn't working out very well for him. Two younger children in Y5 and Y3 - obviously if we go the independent route it will need to be for all three of them.

We've run the numbers and for three children it is a pretty eye-watering number (all the independents locally are £15k+ a year). It is just about affordable but would mean a significant change in lifestyle and much later retirement (we were planning to start winding down in late 50s - it would mean working for another 10 years and would need to stop overpaying on our mortgage).

My biggest worry is that if our circumstances changed we would have very little cushion in terms of taking a drop in income. It is such a massive commitment.

I'd be interested to hear from others that have faced a similar decision. If you can comfortably afford the fees or have children at an amazing state school this probably isn't the thread for you!

And that last point is relevant for the OP. Think hard about how you'll 'fit in' even if you've sacrificed. There is a scale of sacrifice

And OP will get people who care more about which car you drive at any school her DC attend too. You clearly noticed!

Impossible not to!

@JeSuisPoulet

I do accept I had an advantage being there with smaller class sizes, certainly. I did go to a comp for my A' Levels, so I do understand the advantages. But how is paying for extra private tutors giving your child 1:1 any different; surely it's worse! You don't get people going around for the rest of their lives suggesting they didn't work as hard because they had tutoring for years of their schooling. Ditto for people with posh accents at comp - chances are you had parents who helped with homework, showed an interest in your work etc. Many people don't, including a fair few at boarding school.

I don't understand your use of the term 'worse'.

For me, as someone who went to private school, I wouldn't send my child to an exclusive (meaning some are excluded) environment, but if I felt my child would benefit from tutoring I would pay for that.

I think it is totally different. State schools are not a level playing field, but they are not an exclusive environment.

It seems there are scales of sacrifice throughout the school system then, doesn't it? By "worse" I meant that for a lot of people on this thread smaller class sizes seem to be something to pour scorn on as part of why people pay/sacrifice things for a private education. Ergo, making the class size 1 is making passing exams even easier than those at private schools, by the extended logic.

We moved from a house we loved and a neighbourhood we loved for the right private school. The only options near us in london were incredibly hard to get into without extensive tutoring and it just wasn't what we wanted. If we were going to pay then we wanted to choose the right school. We are putting zero into pensions but it was still the right thing for DS.

@cheeseismydownfall what do you think, having read the comments on this thread?
If you think you really can't afford it, can I reassure you that if your children are bright (and there are all kinds of bright) and motivated they will be fine. The main thing my two and their friends missed was timetabled help for special university applications - Oxbridge tests and interviews, medical school interviews and prep; that kind of thing . But if you think ahead you may find other ways of supporting your DC. Good luck and let us know what you decide!

@JeSuisPoulet

It seems there are scales of sacrifice throughout the school system then, doesn't it? By "worse" I meant that for a lot of people on this thread smaller class sizes seem to be something to pour scorn on as part of why people pay/sacrifice things for a private education. Ergo, making the class size 1 is making passing exams even easier than those at private schools, by the extended logic.

I don't think any of it is sacrifice, it is choice.

Totally agree with you @JeSuisPoulet about the stigma. We can’t afford to send our kids to private school anyway, but I always said I wouldn’t want to as I don’t want them to have a lifetime of being told their hard-earned achievements were bought.

All would have been fine except that I am getting divorced in my mid 40s and having to buy ex husband out. If we hadn't sent the kids to private school we would have paid the mortgage by now and had savings. As it is, I will have to work full time until I'm 65 and won't pay the mortgage off until then. It's very hard to look at the long long term but you really need to think about these things. I couldn't have known that dh would be unfaithful after 20 years of being together. I was planning our retirement at that point. If I could have known how things were now, I probably would have made different decisions. Would probably have moved to a better catchment, supplemented with tuition and then we would have been much better off now. Both my children have now left school. They did love it. But I think they probably would have done nearly as well at a really good state or grammar school.

Anecdotally, I'm not sure I buy the 'soft skills' /confidence thing. Through my son's sport, I know a number of 15 year old boys from a variety of schools from failing comps to top boarding schools. There is no correlation between the amount of money spent on their education and how personable/confident/engaging/articulate/polite they are when you speak to them. I think it has more to do with the child's personality, and the parents' expectations/example setting of social behaviour.

We chose not to see though we could afford it as DH is a science Professor and I am an academic Librarian so we tutored DC ourselves.

My friend did send her child to a private school and to afford that she rents a house that’s substandard in an utterly grim area as it’s cheap and has never had the money to learn how to drive. She is a single parent and is probably the nicest and kindest person I have ever met.

To answer your original question OP- we could buy a second home with the money it’s costing us to send DC to a private school. We don’t live in a fancy house or have fancy cars (but they are newish cars) and we don’t go on flash holidays, but we wouldn’t do any of those things even if they were at a state school. We are very comfortable. But more and more we are asking ourselves if the school fees are worth it- not in terms of smaller class sizes, better facilities and giving DC a broader education- they get all of those in bucket loads, but looking at the end goal. What added value does it give them in life? Granted Eton has produced a load of Prime ministers and top
Positions in the civil service, law and medicine are occupied disproportionately by privately educated children....what does the average privately educated child do with their lives? I went to a highly selective private school on a full assisted place. All of my contemporaries (and those of my siblings who also went to different independent schools) do very average jobs and none can afford to send their DC to private schools without the help of grandparents or other inheritance. we only can due to DH (who didn’t go to a private school) salary. As time passes I’m becoming increasingly convinced that we might be better giving DC £250k aged 25 for a house deposit than paying for a lovely educational experience that sees them choose a career in teaching, nursing, Policing, hairdressing, publishing, the military low level civil service, SAHMs, ski instructors, builders.....I could go on. I’m not knocking these career choices, they are all valuable, but I don’t think any of them justify £250k in pre university education costs, especially if only one generation benefits.

@Headshoulderskneesandtoes22 but that just shows you are valuing a high income job more. And actually their education and how happy and well rounded they are must be a good thing right? Some of my friends who were quite shy went to state school and they hated their experiences and had really low self esteem.
Surely you just do it to give them the best and they do whatever they want with their life? I'd be so damn proud of my dc going into any of those worthy professions Life is short and I also know a fair few unhappy people with higher paying jobs. Sad but true.

At my private school there was a real mixture of jobs, but all successful in their own way and with a confidence and passion you dont always see. But obviously we only know our own experiences.

I agree a house deposit could be more useful.

You’re basically paying for a lovely educational experience as other posters have said. And that depends on the school. It has little bearing on what you do in later life.
I went to a lovely academic girls private school. I and my sibling are high earners with senior city roles. But we are the minority in our year groups. Most of the girls we were are school with are not in those kinds of jobs and many are SAHMs. Many went into teaching.
My own DC are at a private prep school and love the whole experience but I’ve worked very hard, despite my privileged education, to earn the money to pay for it.

I have come across many parents at my DC school who have said they wanted their kids to have that certain confidence which (they feel) comes from private schools. I’m on the fence with that one as I honestly believe this has more to do with the child’s personality and their parents but that’s what I’ve heard people say.

In went private and unlike The OP and PP I cruised through secondary being spoon fed in my small class of academically selected peers but Uni was such a shock to the system I failed my first year and had to repeat

Same. We paid for my stepson’s secondary education. His sister was adamant that she didn’t want to go to the same school and refused to take the entrance exam, so continued in state education.

He did well until he went to university, then failed his finals, repeated his final year and ended up with an ordinary degree. She got a 2:1 and got her MSc last year.

I’m quite bitter, we could have knocked years off our mortgage with that £50 odd grand.

Pretty much this:
I went to a lovely academic girls private school. I am a reasonably high earner with city type roles in a specialist field. But some of my best friends from school are social workers and physios. We are happy doing our various things! I’ll be working very hard to send my children to a school that challenges them academically, teaches them there is more to life as well and encourages them to develop their passions.

@Alsohuman but then you could argue that if it's personality, he may never have got into uni in the first place if he'd gone to a normal school. 🤷🏻‍♀️ You'll never know.

It also depends on the local schools where you live; as I said the grammars here push kids pretty hard and if you have a child with dyslexia that is otherwise very bright I am not sure I would send my child there.

The state schools in my area are wide ranging but the 2 'best' have waiting lists while the others have constant issues with knives/bullying/suicides, etc. It feels very risky going into state secondary in my area for a huge variety of reasons. I'm not saying private schools don't have these issues but I do feel the pastoral care in most private schools is now far more of a focus than it can be in most state schools due to funding.

[quote BabyLlamaZen]@Alsohuman but then you could argue that if it's personality, he may never have got into uni in the first place if he'd gone to a normal school. 🤷🏻‍♀️ You'll never know.[/quote]
It’s not personality. He never learnt to organise his time or developed any independent learning skills. Quite frankly, taking four years to emerge without even an honours degree and the subsequent debt, he’d have been better off not going to university. He’d have got in regardless because he had military sponsorship.

This thread has really made me interrogate how I feel about education. A lot of posts on here are looking at education as a step onto the next thing - whether that's a career, or a uni place, or a set of grades, or a confident personality. I just don't see it like that. Although education does contribute to all those things, above all for me it is an end in itself. School and university is a period of your life like no other - when you have the opportunity to learn interesting things from interesting people, discover and pursue new interests, and spend time with friends. You never get that time again. So we pay for private education in order to give DS the best possible experience we can during this time in his life. In that sense I don't see it as a sacrifice - any more than I would see the money we spend buying our house or going on holiday or doing leisure activities as a sacrifice. It's simply the way we choose to spend the money we have available to us, to suit our own family. Im not looking to get anything 'back', except the knowledge that DS is having a wonderful education in a brilliant school, where he is happy and inspired every day. I know that we are very lucky to be able to afford this when others can't. Just as we (who have a partial bursary) can't afford the sorts of houses, holidays and lifestyle that some of DS's richer friends can. But we are all just surely living the best life that we can afford, in all sorts of ways - and education is just one of those ways, that some people can spend money on, some can't, and some could but choose not to.

@Alsohuman so university itself wasnt the best choice for him? But that's a different issue in itself and I could be wrong, but from my experience state schools push university just as much. It sounds like to you going to private school was all about getting a certain job?

Whatever kind of school you send your kid to, I really really don't think we should be expecting anything back. It's their choice to live their lives how they want. As a parent it is literally our job to give them the best life and choices possible! How I see it anyway.

For example if my ds went to private school and ended up in a lower paid but worthy job that he loved, I'd be so happy as would know he had been given all choices and the best education and knew he had been able to follow his passion. I'd hate the thought that he'd go through life thinking that he owed us and slave away at a high paid job he hated just because he thought he 'had to'.

End of the day all we want is them to be happy and healthy right? I suppose it's self sufficiency too, but I don't see how private school would ever make that worse.

I love the thought of my kids becoming nurses, teachers, social workers etc and all through choice and not because they had 'no other option'. But I think there is some job snobbery on here. A bit of a shame as I'd think you'd want well educated and people in these roles who really want to do them 🤔