Okay… so what exactly are the sacrifices made for a private school eduction (feel free to scroll past if you don’t want to read another public school one 😉)

[vote4whoeveryouwant]

Yes, know another private school one. But I keep reading about people making huge sacrifices so their children can go to private school but I’d be genuinely interested to know what these are?

I earn pretty well but we only holiday alternate years, don’t have a car and haven’t done anything to our decrepit house for years simply because we don’t have enough leftover after outgoings and all the boring stuff.

My DD has dyslexia and we did look into private school for her as she really struggles but it no matter what way we tried to rework our finances there was no way we could make it work.

I think the sacrifices most people are thinking of is more about the difference between what 25k extra cash based on two kids in private school) per year could afford them. The majority of parents of private school kids aren't loaded- they are the middle classes with decent but not massive salaries. The 25k from two decent salaries is probably effectively your fun money, so private school is chosen above other luxuries such as holidays or a bigger house.

I'm baffled by people citing a second hand car as a sacrifice though. Why on earth you would spend 60k on a brand new car when you can get a 5 year old one for 50% of that is beyond me and doesn't really count as a sacrifice to me.

My friend sends her child to indie. She gets all his clothes from 2nd hand shop because they don’t have enough left over for new.

https://ifs.org.uk/inequality/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Private-schools-and-inequality.pdf

It states that most are in the higher income levels, which is understandable. However, it also says “Three-quarters of the children at private school are drawn from families in the top three income deciles”. By definition, that means one quarter are in the 4th decile or below. 25% is quite a sizeable chunk of pupils.

I don’t really understand why the private schools parents are seen as the villains though, when there are so many wealthy families in state and grammar schools, and still I am yet to see a thread about bashing wealthy catchment area parents - why?!
Sir Keir Starmer lives in a Central London borough, apparently his kids go to an outstanding primary state school, that if you look at the Ofsted reports, has been outstanding for years, do you honestly think that being able to buy a house in that borough is less of a privilege than buying private ed?! If you do, you are either very naive or one of those “less privileged” living in the best catchments.
Yes, state schools are good in SOME parts of the country, but failing in others, and instead of raging against each other over private vs state, we should be looking in the WILD discrepancy of quality in the state provision and WHO gets the nicest schools and is this really fair, or is it all for the people as long as they are the “right people”.

if you have money you choose what to spend it on, no, it is not a "sacrifice"- otherwise every single thing you buy is a sacrifice of other things you could buy, isn't it.

What makes you think I need to feel better about myself? I am obviously a lot happier and more content with my car-free, flight free, garden free life than people who consider that owning a 3 year old car, having to buy cheap flights, and not getting much done in their garden is a "sacrifice"

yes this is the thing isn’t it.

Having an old car and going abroad every other year aren’t ‘sacrifices’ to a lot of people. That’s just normal life.

@RadRad that luxury is already taxed through stamp duty

Thanks Rishi 😂

@RadRad this is what frustrates me too. I earn the same as my peer group yet apparently I'm the villain for choosing school fees over a couple of Range Rovers in the driveway and an annual splurge to Disney. It boils down to societal values which in the UK are not in a great place.

Sacrifice implies lack of choice and against your will. Go and use your google to see the differences between sacrifice and choice.

Free state school is available to everyone, private is a choice. You choose the more valued private school over holiday/car/sky tv, you do not sacrifice valued holidays for something less valued.

The misuse of the word sacrifice in this context implies private is not a choice and it is an attempt to relinquish ownership of that choice, paint those who choose private as the best for their children as martyrs and try to imply they are being tyrannized.

Why not just own that choice and say I chose private as I prefer it for my child because I think it buys them an advantage over state school. We are fortunate we could chose to budget to afford it and an increase in fees will mean I might need to reconsider that choice I made. Being worried about finances or a big change to your child’s school plans is normal and ok, implying you are being forced into making a sacrifice rather than a different choice is not.

Okay….

We live in a very, very small house. I can tell when people come here for the 1st time that they are shocked. Think a coach house belonging to a larger 6 bedroom home - literally in someone’s back garden. The benefit of this is no school run and low running costs.

We run one car (essential for my job) but it’s older and we borrowed the money from in laws to buy it and pay them back each month.

Holidays do happen, but my in laws pay or we house sit for friends. We are lucky to have a network of lovely friends all over the world. We save hard for airfare. In recent years we have used some vouchers I got for assisting onboard in a medical emergency to pay for flights.

My husband earns a decent salary. I am a healthcare professional with a speciality. I was made redundant last year (lack of funding). I now do NHS non specialist work, lecture, vaccinate, do some report writing, have a job in a school and teach privately in the evenings. I do 6 different jobs every week. 2 days of the week I do 3 of the jobs in one day.

so I guess for us, it’s not so much sacrifice as a lot of hustle. It has been 8yrs since I just had one job. I think, probably like most parents worldwide, we just work very very hard.

When the whole VAT thing happens we will change schools and I will never have go back to my NHS work. I know 6 NHS colleagues planning the same.

edited to add - DC is on an assisted place. So with all of the above, we still need help.

Thanks. It goes on to say that although there are some on bursaries, most of these families access private education due to family wealth (often grandparents paying fees), which would make sense.

Ours have left private education now, but ours were:

Choosing to limit our family to 2 children
Me working full time from mat leave onwards even though we could afford for me to be a SAHM or part time worker if we weren't to send children private
No overseas holidays during the private school years, and only cheap UK ones (camping etc) where as we could have afforded multiple luxury overseas holidays if we hadn't sent our children private.
Drove one old car (20+years) where as we could have afforded 2 new cars if we hadn't have sent our children private
Lived in our modest 2.5 bedroom house with a poky kitchen when without school fees we could easily have afforded to buy a 4+ bedroom house.
No updgrading 20+ year old kitchen/bathroom/windows, where as we would have easily afforded this if we hadn't sent our children private.
No big days out or meals out, which would have easily been affordable if we weren't paying school fees
DH and I buying minimal replacement clothes/using charity shops and car boots etc, generally having to penny pinch where wwe could.

We were earning £150k+ and living a pretty frugal lifestyle - that's the sacrifice.

I'm well aware that many, even without school fees are only living a frugal lifestyle because that's all their salaries will stretch to. But we were earning well, so the difference between how we could have afforded to live without school fees and how we actually lived with school fees was the sacrifice, and yes, I think it was a pretty big one. We went without a lot of things we could otherwise afford because of the school fees. We didn't go without basics, but we went without lots of luxuries that other people at our salary level take for granted.

I must admit, now they've left and are at Uni, I'm loving the fact that we feel positively loaded even though we're topping two children up fully. I've loved being able to extend the house, buy a new car, go on holiday, go out for dinner on a whim etc. I think I appreciate it more though for not always having had it. And there's also the unintended consequence that we're better off than we would have been because both of us working means we've both had promotions and payrises, both paid into pensions etc, so the future looks pretty rosy for us.

I don't regret it at all though, and am happy with our choices.

It’s about the affordability though not the taxes, most people can’t afford these exorbitant house prices, if you are able to afford a £1m+ houses, you are privileged, yet I have never seen anyone slating off these wealthy families using the best state schools for which we are ALL paying for.
The war against private is a smoke screen for the real underlying issue of inequality WITHIN the state school system, that’s all.

Giving up Sky was a big one for my friend whose DC went private.

Her kids are traumatised.

This is in relation to how much one values education. Some values education enough to have less kids, home based holidays, smaller housing, limited take outs, etc, some don’t value as much.

Stayed in my horrible marriage.

This!

I am so exhausted listening how hard it is to be rich.

Most people in UK can't - Sky or not - afford private education for their children. It's not an option.

I now have jam on toast rather than avocado…and my coffee is Maxwell house not Costa. Tories are always telling us to cut back on these luxuries and we’ll have a great life.

Sacrifice implies lack of choice and against your will. Go and use your google to see the differences between sacrifice and choice.

People do seem to be using the word sacrifice very differently here. I don't think of sacrifice as implying lack of choice or going against your will at all, quite the reverse. Following your suggestion I used google and the first definition (ignoring those about animal/human/religious sacrifice!) was:

an act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy.

That's certainly how I would use the term and I think it implies an active choice rather than lack of choice. For completeness the first defintion of choice that comes up is:

an act of choosing between two or more possibilities.

That seems to be implicit in the definition of sacrifice above.

Absolutely this. I'd love to be able to buy a 3 year old car.

And go on holiday...

Local private schools to me are around £20-25k/year and majority of people have 2+ kids.
Plus their uniforms and trips and extras.

No matter what sacrifices people are making you need a significantly higher than average income.

(Not having a new car and holidaying in the UK are things we do anyway with kids at state school)

Well my DC don’t go to private school the same as it isn’t my google (if it was they definitely would be in private school!)

I still disagree though, sacrifice is the correct term to use when you would like to have one thing but use the money on something else instead because you believe it will lead to a better outcome for your DC.

Our 3dc are in state schools. Household income around £80k so both dh and I are both fairly average earners.

I've just done some working out and had we made different choices, I think we could have afforded to send all three dc private for the 7 years senior school.

In essence this would have meant saving £1000 a month from the time dc1 was born to the time dc3 turned 16 (which spans 25 years! 😱) It would have covered all the fees plus left a healthy enough balance to cover all uniform/transport/trips/extras.

However, that would have meant pretty much every single scrap of our true disposable income being needed for 25 years straight.

So we could have lived in the same house and had the same cars. But for all of the dc's childhoods there would have been zero holidays or 'big' day trips. Massively scaled down Xmas and Birthdays. Pretty much zero nice to haves, ever.

Essentially, day to day, we'd have been living almost on the breadline - money for essential clothes, food, transport and nothing else. For 25 years.

I know some people live that way anyway (both dh and I grew up like that). But truly, I doubt that there are many average ish earners like we are who'd be willing to make that level of 'sacrifice' for so long.

But it's interesting to think about and to realise just how 'doable' it probably would be for many households, even with 3 dc - if you chose to go without absolutely everything else for decades.