Private schooling

[prinnycessa]

Can I ask those of you who send your DC to private school a few questions please?

Do you think it is beneficial from primary school, and if so - why?
What is your household income? Do you afford this comfortably or is it a struggle?
Do just you and the other parent pay or do you have any familial contributions?
Why did you choose to send your DCs to private school?

Thanks!

@prinnycessa @Baggyeye
At present we pay about £450-500 per month for 2 days in preschool, she'll be going up to 3 days next year. It's about the same as other nurseries round here. We're only eligible for 15hrs funded childcare as my husband is a student and unfortunately the school are really fussy how you can use them so we don't bother claiming them as there is no saving to us whatsoever. Worth mentioning we also don't get tax free childcare (again, not eligible with one parent a student).

Fees are around £12k in infants - and we're nowhere near the home counties so our mortgage is only £450. Car was bought outright before DD was born, and we saved a lot beforehand so we still have a buffer available for rainy day emergencies. Holidays are cheap and in this country, and at present we also stick with fairly cheap days out, don't do many meals out etc - these are the sacrifices we've chosen to make. But once my husband graduates he should be able to easily earn £30k plus, so then we'll be able to do more of these things.

I find it amazing someone earning almost 8 times what we do can be struggling to pay three sets of fees, but I guess it's all about how you choose to live and what you view as necessary and what's a luxury.

Is it beneficial form primary? Depends on the child. DS wouldn't have benefited - his very pushy and academic state school was better than the local private options for a very bright child. He went from state primary to state grammar.

I do wish I'd sent DD private from primary though as she struggles academically ( she has slow processing issues ) and her private secondary has done so much more to help her than the state school ever did.

Our household income is £150k and no we don't struggle but only because we are in our 50's and have a tiny mortgage with only a two years until it's completely paid off.

We pay it all ourselves but my DM did offer to pay for DD to transfer to private in primary when DD was struggling but I didn't want to take money from her and at the time wrongly believed that state schools were better for kids with SEN.

Our school fees are £15k per year.

Do you think it is beneficial from primary school, and if so - why?
For us, the school DD is at, yes. Academically their results are way above the national and local averages, they have a smaller staff:student ratio so much more opportunity for individualised attention and intervention and they offer things I've not seen at most primaries (Mandarin from Y1, Forest School one afternoon a week amongst others) Outside of that, being a smaller school it has a much more family feel and a lovely ethos and there are extra curricular opportunities and fun things that again a state primary would not be able to provide.

What is your household income? Do you afford this comfortably or is it a struggle?
About £153,000 gross between us, maybe a bit more? It's affordable, we pay about £850 a month.

Do just you and the other parent pay or do you have any familial contributions?
We pay for it ourselves.

Why did you choose to send your DCs to private school?
Mostly for the reasons in the first question but also because some state schools here are good and some are really not the kind of place I want my child to go and I really could not be bothered with the lottery that is applying for places.

We may or may not decide to stay in private when she leaves. All depends how it goes in the next few years. We do have access to 3 very very good state grammars nearby so they are a possibility. A lot of kids from that school go on to one of those.

If you have good state schools and can do extra curricular stuff in the evenings and weekends then I don’t think private primary adds that much. We have done state primary until now (eldest is 9) We are moving one child to join a prep in Y5 as she’s just starting to get a bit bored and this means she won’t have to do the 11+ as she can basically go straight to the HS. But when they tested her they said she ‘fitted nicely in their cohort’ in terms of ability/knowledge so hasn’t missed much in terms of pure education - I am moving her for the in-school sport/drama/language options and to avoid 11+.

we are both on decent salaries in FS in London but private school is not much more than full time nanny was back in the baby days and we have basically planned for this financially since they were small. It means less fancy hols (but we have other cheaper options which we are happy with) and eg an older car and house refurbishment being slower but we’re fine with that. But we can afford a very nice life nonetheless

@Phos @FreeButtonBee thanks - food for thought!

@AngelsWithSilverWings really interesting, thank you

@Flev how is the private nursery different to normal nursery? I appreciate you don't have the experience for a direct comparison but just trying to gauge the benefit from that level

Not if you have a good State Primary available
Our income is 6 figures and we are in Yorkshire so fees aren’t very high so it’s affordable
Just us paying, while I might accept help from family in an emergency if I relied on anyone else to pay fees I wouldn’t have sent the DC
We chose to send ours because the State Secondary is awful and a teacher there advised us not to send DD. She was offered a part scholarship to the Private school too and once we had sent DD I felt we needed to send DS too when he reached Y7
No regrets at all

DD is at State 6th form now so hopefully that and the fact she had a scholarship will mean Private schooling from 11-16 won’t go against her

Be aware, universities look at where GCSE's were taken when considering contextual offers. It's really common to move kids to a state sixth form in the hope the uni class that as a state applicant, they don't. Anyone who was at a private school from 11-16 has had a big advantage even if they have then moved to a state school, and universities know this.

It absolutely will be taken into account. You can’t game the system by switching back to a state school like this.

@Lightsoutlondon @FemmeNatal on that basis it would make sense to keep your DCs in PS if you are happy with the school for continuity

Oh and it's not that it's 'held against her' - she'll get a fair offer for university. She just won't get the slightly lower tariff offers some friends will be made for the same courses, to reflect the fact they didn't have the advantage of 5 years private schooling.

Don’t regret sending DC to private from primary. He has had small class sizes, lots of attention from the Head to nurture his talents, huge focus on good behaviour and kindness (a lot of that is from home but it was always reinforced at his school), surrounded by bright kids, lots of opportunities to discuss and debate things, personalised attention depending on each child’s strengths and weaknesses. The downside has been a lack of diversity and some very stuck up parents - everyone is rich (but the kids all down to earth).

@Shitscared123 I'm glad you mentioned diversity as this would be a concern for us as well. I hope this will increase over time though.

I suppose it depends how you define rich! Some people are probably scraping by and/or sacrificing to offer their children (what they deem to be) the best. Which I think is fair enough as education is so important

@prinnycessa diversity was definitely an issue for me. Thankfully, DS is moving onto a lovely secondary with kids from all different backgrounds and more representative of London’s diversity.

By rich - everyone lives in 1m+ homes (owned), most have multiple kids in the private sector, holiday homes, holidays, tutors. Nobody is scraping by in DS’s class from what I can tell (I guess C London privates attract a certain demographic).

Do you think it is beneficial from primary school, and if so - why?
Personally I didn't but often wish I had. DD struggled at primary, didn't make any friends, was bullied endlessly and lost in a class of 32. I moved her to private at secondary because the state school was inadequate and struggling to manage long term drug issues, anti-social behavior and peer on peer violence.

What is your household income? Do you afford this comfortably or is it a struggle?
It's a struggle, a real struggle. I earn well, but I'm a single Mum so only one income. Lots of sacrifices to make ends meet. We are the ''poor'' family in her school as most are very wealthy, own multiple homes, holidays, vast properties in London etc.

Do just you and the other parent pay or do you have any familial contributions?
I pay myself, no contributions from anyone not even her father.

Why did you choose to send your DCs to private school?
I didn't feel I had much choice, DD has emotional issues and anxiety so simply wouldn't have coped in the state secondary school. She has thrived since joining, both academically and socially. It's a selective school and it has done her confidence no end of good to get in and to hold her own in a class of children who have had every advantage and been tutored throughout school life despite having none of these advantages herself. The pupil assaults (mostly girls sadly) reported in local news since have only reaffirmed my decision to not place her in the state school.

Bizarrely, the private school were using is actually more diverse than the general area - our town is very white, but children travel in from a couple of nearby cities which are far more ethnically mixed.

@prinnycessa we found from visiting a couple of nurseries before making our choice that this one had the advantage of being able to access some of the facilities at the main school. So they can do forest school activities in the extensive grounds, have a much greater range of outdoor facilities, access to the dance studio, visits to the library etc. The other nurseries we saw had small outdoor areas right alongside busy roads and a smaller range of indoor options. Given there wasn't much in it cost-wise, it was an easy decision for us.

We Didnt game the system, her Secondary school has no 6th form.
Ironically DD is on a pathway for Oxbridge due to coming from a deprived background. She doesn’t, it’s a postcode anomaly and we have tried to argue with her college but they are determined she is so will apparently get extra help to apply if she wants to. My neighbour says her DD got extra UCAS points due to us being “deprived” apparently so our DD might get the same.
In any case her schooling is what it is and I can’t change that now and wouldn’t want to

We chose state schools and enjoyed 4 holidays a year with our DC plus family days and meals out every weekend.
They made lovely friends at school and participated in lots of extra curricular activities.
Our DC’s exam results were slightly better than their privately educated cousins, they went to good universities and now earn above the national average income. They are aged 22 to 24.

Our DDs are at a private primary. I think it's beneficial from primary as they'll socialise with similar children they would go to (private) secondary with, smaller class sizes (14-18 with f/t TA), better pastoral care, specialist teachers, more extracurricular opportunities, more sport and prep for 11+ is all done by the school.

We're fortunate to have a high household income (2-500k in recent years) so we can comfortably afford it for our 2 dc. We also have the security of other assets (if we sold them off we could cover school fees until university). We don't have any financial help from our families. We're mortgage-free, don't own a car as we're in central London, and don't struggle with the fees.

We decided to send the dc to private school as it offers much more than any local state school can offer, and we wanted to be cushioned from the pressures that state schools are under these days (financial/social/bureaucracy). I certainly think that some state schools can be very good, but they tend to be located in certain areas and we didn't want to move to those areas to get into the catchment.

@OompaLoompaa the majority of us do those things plus private school? For some it’s one or the other, but not all.

@OompaLoompaa @Louise0701 I think some people afford all of those luxuries and send children to private school (the wealthy/very rich), and others can only afford one or the other. I suppose for the latter it's about what they choose to prioritise/value more

@LightBlu this is really helpful, thank you!

Depends on the state schools in the area. Our catchment area school is outstanding, whereas the nearest private school I feel isn’t any better. We also have really good secondary schools and the grammar school system, so when the time comes to secondary I think we’ll carry on with the state school system. If the local schools weren’t great it would be a different story. Joint income of £130,000.