to think that, no, it is not possible to pay private school fees simply by "going without"?

[nameymcnamechange]

Of all the many thousands of things that annoy me about Mumsnet, it is this myth that more people could send their children to private school if they prioritised school fees over "extravagant lifestyles" and made sacrifices including but not limited to

• running one car or no car
• not going on holiday, or camping
• economising with food
• buying second hand clothes and not being interested in designer handbags

No, those small economies are not going to make the difference between a state or private education for the vast vast vast majority of families.

So can we please stop posting this kind of nonsense?

Good for you Jelllie. Would never consider sending DC's to private school.

There is a great deal of snobbery related to private schooling and, on mn anyway, a fair amount of jealousy from those that can't afford it. Don't understand it personally.

For the avoidance of doubt, both my DCs are in the independent sector

It doesn't mean that I don't agree with the OP though. Also a post made earlier on about the sheer responsibility of keeping on being able to afford it in an uncertain economic climate.

As for bursaries - the only word that expresses this is pshaw. Pshaw to bursaries! At my DCs school they are only offered to families who earn less than £35K and those bursaries only offer up to 50% off the fees. If there really are any families out there who can afford to send a DC to independent school even after a bursary - they must be the most fantastic budgeters in the world (or have grandparents willing to help out).

There are 6 academic scholarships and 3 music scholarships available per academic year at the DCs schools. Both DCs have academic scholarships and DS has a music scholarship as well. Each scholarship offers £150 a term off the fees. So frankly Pshaw to scholarships too.

Agree with OP. I haven't heard a lot of people claim this, but it does occasionally get trotted out. It's a platitude, and smug, and wrong.

Rollmops - I'm not sure if 21:06 is a response to me, but surely those are not your main reasons for sending your child(ren) to independant school? It's for the results of those things in terms of exam results, social skills, social circle.

£15-20,000 a year seems a lot to pay for better sport.

If I'm going to pay out £120,000 pounds for my child, they had fucking BETTER get serious advantage from it.

The question is, does making this one route to access these advantages dependant on cold hard cash increase or reduce the risk of self-perpetuating, embedded elites?

TCNY - there is no doubt that paying for education buys a serious amount of advantage in the UK. Indpendently educated children get better grades, get to better universities, and earn hundreds of thousands more on average than state-school educated counterparts

Inequality is deep rooted in the UK

Whether or not it's worth the stress to the parents is an entirely different question, of course.

Quattrocento - "Inequality is deep rooted [sic] in the UK"

Begs the question of whether that is something about which to be concerned.

After all, the commonly-held relativist view of wealth runs into problems when one considers that, according to its perspective, my losing money ipso facto makes you wealthier.

I could afford to pay for an independent education by making the odd sacrifice, I know many other people who could do the same.
I agree that there are far more people who could never afford to independently educated their children even if they took to eating their own excrement and walking to work in rags.

I choose not to. I went to bog standard comps with disinterested parents and managed to work my way to Oxford and get my 1st.

My dd will go to a rather poor comp but has super interested parents ( parents are they key) so she - in theory should do better than me. She is a clever but tough little cookie with heaps more confidence than I ever had. The Daily Mail loves to bleat about the fact that universities disriminate against independently educated pupils. It would seem I can buy my daughter an advantage without having to do anything other than pay her taxes.

I don't feel that I have world enough and time to fix the problem of indequality in the UK. And of course I acknowledge that it is a problem. Just not one that I can fix

I have no idea why you think that you are losing money and why you think I am gaining it. I assure you I am not gaining it.

There is another commonly held view - which is that economic growth is not a zero sum game. So we can all get wealthier together. Tell me when it happens, won't you?

But we could all do our bit quattro.

" Indpendently educated children get better grades, get to better universities, and earn hundreds of thousands more on average than state-school educated counterparts"

Or, alternatively, the children of engaged, successful, affluent, healthy, employed, educated professional parents do better than average (on the assumption that most people who have a spare quarter of a million for each child are most, if not all, of those things). It's difficult to disentangle the effect of the school from the effect of the parents. There are studies that claim that if you can find a population of state educated children who are homogenous with those that went to private schools, they do about as well educationally and career wise.

This is where the "everyone should go to state schools to provide social mobility" arguments collapse: short of taking children from their parents at five kibbutz-style, you cannot escape the fact (or problem, depending on your political hue) that educated and engaged parents provide a better educational background for their children than otherwise.

Well that's alright for you Jellie, with your uppper class titled background -- and you choose to judge a working class parent who struggles to scrape their child out of the local sink school?

You sound like Marie Antoinette dressing up as a milkmaid.

In fact your whole post is so welly I'm finding it a bit sicky.

It's just so common to aspire!

How do you know why parents send their children to private school? Because all your posh friends tell you?

'According to him the main difference is summed up as such: You are asked "what did you learn at school?" State school kids give a list of subjects, private school kids will say "I learnt to think/lead".'

Education in the UK is totally mired in the class system, and in the idea that there's a limited pot of resources (the whack-a-mole theory). Children learning to lead? Guffaw. Children being given ideas about themselves more likely. The idea that anyone would actually articulate such a piece of nonsense is just sad beyond words, because it is exactly the sort of sentiment that a parent in the 1920s would have expressed. Inequality of aspiration is deeply rooted in the UK. Make fun of the US all you like, but the pot is understood to be unlimited there, and although the education system fails a lot of children, the hope is there that better things are possible for all, that the pot is unlimited.

Vespasian, I agree that parents are the key no matter where the child goes to school. And Jelllie you are right too up to a point, imo. I went to an Irish state school for secondary after a private elementary; it's a far rougher school now than it was then, and I don't know tbh if I would send my DCs there if I were faced with the choice, but Ireland is different from Britain educationally and in terms of what 'class' means. I can't imagine the awfulness of being the child sent to a school out of his or her socio-economic league in Britain though. Parents don't have to be educated themselves to provide a good solid attitude to education for their children. They do need to be engaged. Parents who don't even speak English do it in the US -- poverty of aspiration shoots the British in the foot.

YANBU it is rude and incorrect for people to generalise that all families could afford school fees, and almost hilariously telling when you read the kind of luxuries that are highlighted for "sacrificing". It was like when the bloody "credit crunch tips" articles were being published, advising us all to give up our £3 lattes - clearly written/said by someone who has no idea of the fact that other people's lives are different to their own.

If I have DCs I would always want to remain in the state system if at ALL possible, even if I (magically) earned loads of money. Having associated with a lot of people who went to private/public schools, most have told me that they think it's a waste of money or even harmful. Yet I'm sure many of them will go on to send their DC there because it's "tradition" . Even if I had the money, I would far rather have the cash to spend on days out, great trips abroad, saving for their futures (uni fees and house-buying) - all things which have real benefits and crucially don't have a free alternative. Education is free, and in the vast majority of places totally adequate.

It's like buying Evian to shower in IMO.

It depends totally on the income levels of the family involved some may be able to afford private schoool fees by simple cutbacks in household expenditure others will not no matter how much they dave.

Appletrees, you seem to not understand my post, and are suffering from very bad 'inverse snobbery'. Either you missed my meaning completely, or I didn't explain it well.
I clearly said that in the case of 'specific needs', and I include in that the specific need of say, a bullied child, with those whom find their child needs extra help for some reason or another, or if said comp is a violent hell hole. Those are not the cases I'm talking about.
I'm talking about generally.
I went to the rough local school, so I'm not sure what your point is. You know nothing about me, you are just seeing red because I mentioned titled upper class family. Why is it alright for me? If I was such a snob, as you are making out, I would be sending my DCs to private school.
Why do you assume I have posh friends? Stereotyping much?
'so common to aspire' - didn't say that, and you miss the point entirely. I think it is unnecessary to attend private school as a means to aspire. I think titles are a load of bollocks, don't use mine, neither do my siblings, and very few people know that about me. I said it here to relate my background to my viewpoint. I know many people who can't stop themselves talking about their child being at school with the daughter of so and so
Sadly, it is YOU keeping alive class prejudice, not me.
Marie Antoinette indeed - you are the one with prejudice and the chip on your shoulder.

And quattrocento I disagree with your statement - what is the proof of this advantage. I'm afraid the stats in the three major research articles following children from indies and state through exams and into uni showed that there was actually very little difference in university entrance based on grades. Actually the more expensive the school, the less likely they were to achieve a higher level in degree compared to state. Would be interested to know which studies you are basing your statement on. Genuinely - not being cheeky.

That should read 'three major studies' not 'the three major studies.

OP - YANBU,for a family on the "average" wage it is a ridiculous thing to say.

elportodelgata I want to ask you about some of the things you said in earlier posts:

1. private education is "a nasty, elitist and pointless" thng to spend money on.

• How is it "nasty" exactly?

• Elitist - yes you're right, but until all state schools are good, and while some people earn more than others, the choice is there to be made.

• "pointless" - that is a joke surely? My DS now learns traditional subjects instead of planting vegetables every day (as he did at his old state school). He gets extended work to do instead of having to assist less able students (as his old teacher made him do 'cos he was working at Level 3 in KS1) He gets to play sport every day instead of doing yoga and country dancing once a week.

These things may be "pointless" to you, but they're certainly not to me.

2. "money not ideology" is the main factor"

• again, for some of the super-rich perhaps, but as you presumably can see from what I have said above, my DS's all-round education

is my only motivating factor.

I work in state school, have done for many years and am sick of seeing bright, able children having to dumb down to the lowest common denominator in their class while the teachers constantly have to deal with disruption. I'm sorry some people who want to switch can't because it's too expensive, but that is not my personal fault.

Please don't make such sweeping assumptions about people and their reasons for making the choices they do.

But bigfoot, surely the only way, the state system will be challenged is by bright kids with involved famillies. I personally think the advantages to having been through the state system far outweigh latin @9 or daily sport. Strangly your reasons for going private mirror mine for staying in the state. DH ( at prep school) was being made miserable by choir, latin and scripture ,while I in my local hippy school spent a whole team doing back drops for a show and rode my bike to the local pool after school. Both my A -Levels and degree ( also my earning capacity) are better grade than his

Bigfootbeliever I took Latin A level many years ago. A course in vegetable planting would have been far more useful and relevant to my lifestyle.

naughtymummy / Riven / sue52 / StewieGriffinsMom : My DS doesn't do Latin - not sure why you think he does. He doesnt't do choir or scripture either - but I'd rather he did those than planting fruit and veg while he's at school.

Riven: I have no objection to helping the "less able", it's what I do for a living. I do object to my son being asked to do it simply because a teacher decided he'd already learnt enough that year. Teachers should teach - not 7 year olds.

We clearly disagree and that's fine, we all make the choices we feel are best for our children and much as my choice is different from yours, I would never criticise you for making the decisions you do.

Off to work now.

I think it would be interesting to see just exactly how much income people think is needed for them to live on when they deciding if they can or cannot afford to send their dc to private school.

Other than the mortgage, utilities, food, opticians, dentist and maybe petrol/MOT and car servicing, TV licence and broadband what else is actually essential?