If you were privately educated in the UK, what job do you do and how much do you get paid?

[MNisMyGuiltyPleasure]

You often hear that people who were privately educated had a better start in life and that's why they are more likely to secure better-paid jobs.

I was not privately educated but I am well paid. So I'm curious to see what jobs people who were privately educated in the UK have as adults, an how much they earn from those jobs.

@Joesghostkyconscience yes clever, but probably has undiagnosed SEN as he didn't read till year 4 and his year 9 Maths teacher said it was okay as we'd always need bin men.
Most of all he is one of the hardest working, most loyal and highest integrity person I know.

I was privately educated but not in the UK (live in the UK now). I’m a lecturer and I make about £48k a year. Dh privately educated in the UK and makes about £100k a year as is self employed in a trade.

The vast majority of my friends from private school though lead very ordinary lives. Lots became SAHMs with a partner who doesn’t earn much. Or they are working very ordinary jobs, mostly in retail, teachers, nurses, agriculture. I have one friend who is a solicitor. Another good friend got a PhD but is a SAHM with a teacher Dh. No one particularly high flying.

As I said upthread, I am "sacrificing" a lot to keep my kids in private as they simply could not thrive in state schools available to them. Yes I want them to make the most of the opportunity but there's no pressure to get straight As...just to do their own best, join some clubs, take advantage of what's on offer but there's no sense of "if you don't go to Oxbridge then you've wasted it". I agree 💯 with what a pp said that state Vs private is not the issue, it's the schools available (taking into account realistic catchment limitations) and the specific childrens' needs that make each case right or wrong. Anecdata about people doing well or badly isn't remotely helpful.

Also, to the pp who was saying about poorer kids not being able to "keep up" and therefore they'd be better in state...I'd rather my kids were a bit jealous of big houses and ski trips than being sucked into low aspirations, vaping at the gates and telling teachers to fuck off, which was who they were mixing with at state.

Former DH went to private school, I went to state - we do pretty much the same job and earnings difference relate to gender pay gap issues only.

The difference was that he enjoyed school, developed lots of interests, had high flying mates, fondly recollects anecdotes of rugby tours, debating society etc. whereas I was bullied, was utterly miserable for years and had to deliberately get questions wrong in all my tests so I didn’t get bullied even more for being a swot.
So yeah I would recommend paying to get your kid out of that if you can, appreciate most people don’t have the choice

We aren't super wealthy. We absolutely make sacrifices to send to private. Our income is 80% percentile on those income calculations that account for the size of your household so we are obviously wealthier than average but not hugely. Never found fitting in a problem. There are plenty of families like ours, quite a few families on our street use private school, including the single mum who lives in a two bed flat with her son.

School life, friends, families are so important. I had a mediocre school experience. Lots of issues at home not picked up by the school. Bullied badly at school (once again not picked up by the school). I was groomed by a teacher at one point, thankfully had enough about me to eventually steer clear of him. Subjected to racism from teachers and students.

A lot of these experiences were damaging and well I just want my kids to have happier memories of school.

If they go on to do well for themselves then amazing. But hopefully they’ll take with a them a love of learning and happy memories.

Don’t get how they afford it. Unless they never go abroad on holiday and just stay home all the time!

I said a bad state school, which is what we had available

The OBN (Old boys Network) is certainly still a thing, it has never offered me anything in terms of job/career, but then I'm happy with my lot as a teacher.

What I do have is a network of good friends with such things as houses in exotic locations, titles and country piles. They are all great people who I went to school with and grew up with.

This offers fringe benefits, for example a mate and his family were off skiing over the Christmas hols, so offered me and my lot the run of his c1750 16 bed stately home complete with domestic staff for Christmas - so we had a Downton Abbey style Christmas, which was great fun.

I'm one of the black sheep of the OBN, there are a couple of us from my year, not someone who has anything particularly to bring to the party, but are good company and maybe a bit useful at keeping an eye on fancy properties so are kept in the fold.

And we do all wear the same tie at events, and know the opposition ties too, bit like the army - all good fun!

@Joesghostkyconscience maybe that's exactly what they do. Maybe their rent or mortgage is v low as it's a flat. Maybe the child gets a scholarship or bursary. Obviously it's not always possible but if you truly think that for your child's circumstances fees are needed to get them into the right environment, then fine. Abroad will still be there in a decade. You could get 3 different streaming services a month for the price of one cinema trip. I know what I'd prioritise IF the state options weren't suitable.

The bursary seems realistic but the rest nah
lifes too short!

@Joesghostkyconscience I can only assume that you either don't have kids or are lucky enough to have easy going, bright, NT kids who make friends easily, are confident and are in a catchment of great state schools. Good for you. Personally, I think getting my kids into an environment where they can both learn and not be driven into a MH crisis is a bit more important than two weeks on a beach somewhere or a £50 trip to the cinema to eat stale overpriced popcorn.

Oh and as for realistic...I pay half the fees for my two, so let's pretend I have one child as in the example above. I live in a cheap place (mortgage not rent) and earn mid 30k. It's doable. Tight, with long term planning involved but doable. Also a single parent with minimal input from ex.

You don't get how people with a household income in the 80% percentile do it? With a few sacrifices and lots of budgeting!
We still go on holidays abroad but it is 10 days in an apartment or eurocamp in europe rather than luxury villas and long haul. Ski trips to borovets rather than val disere. We spend £100 a week on our weekly shop. Going out is to free or cheap places.

I went to a private school but came from a deprived background (assisted place, free school meals). I did okay for myself. I was the first person in my family to go to uni and I managed to get a job in the media. I left it in the early 2000s and in my last year, before I left to have a baby, I earned just under £45,000. My husband went to a state school, ended up at a very prestigious university and did exactly the same job as I did, in fact over the years he's risen up the ranks, and earns around £100,000 pa as a freelancer.

To be honest I think it's various things that make a person successful, not just a private education, but a private education can help.

In the school I went to it was just built into the fabric that we were going to be successful. There was a lot of talk about Oxford and Cambridge, a lot of debate, a lot of competition, a huge emphasis on sport and winning etc. But also, I suspect, a lot of families were helping in other ways in the background. I look back now and realise many kids were given deposits to buy their first house and most were bought a car at 18 (we had a car park for the 6th form). Many parents could get their kid a job through contacts and did. They were teaching their kids to walk with confidence, shake hands, look adults in the eye. I guess they were hitting it from all angles.

Sure, in your case - but your point was about a good school over a bad school and not related to sector.

If I said "I think something else to consider is how much a bad Private school can take from a child as well as what a good State one can give them." it would be equally relevant (or irrelevant, depending on your point of view).

Parents may be willing to make sacrifices simply so their children are happy!

Pressure to be happy is as much a pressure as any other.

@redskylight why are you assuming that parents put any pressure on their children?

Because parents do put pressure on their children?

Because a parent that is sacrificing with an aim in mind - whether that aim is good grades, mixing with the "right" type, or because they think their child will be happier is likely to have an expectation that they will meet that aim = pressure on the child to make their parents' expectations.

I sent my DS to football club when he was 5 because I thought he might enjoy it. He didn't, so I pulled him out of the club after a few weeks. There was no pressure on him and I had no expectations and didn't care either way.

However, if you're a teenager and you know that your parents are economising (and a teen is going to know that) because they think you'll be happier and/or do better at private school then there's a massive amount of pressure on said teenager to actually be happier and/or do better. Or at least to pretend well.

However, if you're a teenager and you know that your parents are economising (and a teen is going to know that) because they think you'll be happier and/or do better at private school then there's a massive amount of pressure on said teenager to actually be happier and/or do better. Or at least to pretend well.

I would hope that parents know their children well enough to help choose a school environment that makes them happiest/works best for them.

Like with your football example, if a child disliked a school (state or private) then parents would surely try to improve things or move the child to another school.

Parents are not infallible.

And there are still unhappy children at private schools.

If you pay a lot of money for something, that also tends to mean that you think what you're paying with is worth it and it's hard to bail.

Plus it's pretty hard to change schools once you get to a certain point in secondary school anyway.

But the point remains, children have pressures on them. Maybe their parents don't mean the pressures to be there, but that doesn't mean they aren't.

@redskylight if by "pressure" you mean children know their parents want them to be happy, feel safe, feel able to grow into their own people, then I'm not sure how you avoid that. What's the alternative? That we throw bread and water at them three times a day and let them just amble out? Or chuck them in the nearest crappy comp and leave them to it? Because the result of that kind of parenting is one of the reasons I had to move my DS into private. Knowing your parents love, care and prioritise you is not automatically pressure to achieve anything.

Amazing isn't it 😁

I think there are considerations currently that weren’t really in play even 5 or 10 years ago (when we were making secondary choices).

The teacher shortage in key subjects is a more and more pressing crisis in many state schools. Although teacher pay tends to be the same - indeed may be less - in private schools, the conditions of the job (less social work; potentially less violence towards teachers; better repaired buildings; money for equipment) will tend to mean that where a shortage if teachers exists, the good private schools may attract and retain a higher proportion of those there are.

So if balancing a school with eg no Maths-qualified Maths teachers and no Computing-qualified IT teachers and almost no Science-qualified Science teachers against a private school with a full complement of all 3 (after careful interrogation of who is actually teaching, as there are examples of ‘assistants’ or ‘fellows’ who are unqualified doing much of the classroom teaching work) then I might now think the investment was worth it, which was not the case 5-10 years ago.

I would definitely agree with this - there is the "sunk cost" issue at play here
PLUS the concept that going from private to state and the "eaten alive" idea
I know of two young year 8/9s who are utterly miserable at their eye wateringly expensive schools but parents won't consider moving them.

Dh was miserable at school from 13-18 while simultaneously being told every week how lucky he was because his parents were giving up ‘so much’ for him to go there.

He tried telling them he was miserable. They just told him he couldn’t be because he was so lucky to be there.

So he stopped telling them.

I would hope that today’s parents would be more sensitive to an unhappy child, but I don’t think it’s a given. So many private school parents demonise local state schools as part of justifying the decisions they have made that it can be really difficult to challenge the status quo and move from private to state. Ime as a state school teacher, those parents who do move their children into state are routinely massively surprised by the lack of difference between the two levels of education (and often have something of a shock when the child they have always been told is ‘bright’ and ‘doing well’ is below average in a standard mixed ability state school class - in one extreme example a child went straight onto our SEN list, something the private school had never hinted at).