to move DD from her nice independent school where she has a scholarship because her brother didn't get offered one?

[middleschoolmuddle]

We are not rich but nor are we poor. The school have offered us a 16% bursary for DS - it's not enough.

Would it be mean to move DD to a state school at this stage (Y9)? Has anyone done this?

I can't think straight, my mind is whirring so I'd love some perspective from those of you that have managed to use the local 'good' state schools and pass up the rather nice (best in County) independent one.

She'd hate you forever if you moved her. You've given her a wonderful chance so don't take it away from her.

"Well I said to leave the DD where she was, but it was coupled with down-sizing to afford the school fees out of income."

What about the other kids?

Having to downsize so that their sister can continue with her private education?

I'd be pissed off at that!

Equally of course it wouldn't be nice for the daughter to have to leave if it can no longer be afforded.

but if that's the case...

I went to private school for more years than my brother and sister did.

I left with 4 poxy O levels, two of which were unimpressive DS and RE.

My brother got a couple of CSEs.

My little sister, who spent not a single day in a private school has a PhD in a hard science.

The most overwhelmingly important factor in terms of outcome was not the schools we went to. It was the stage we were at when my parents' marriage collapsed. On the second day of my O levels to be precise.

My ears pricked up at the albeit small and innocuous sounding mentions of your husband. Might be something, might be nothing. But the two of you don't sound on the same page. And as a family appear to building huge time and debt pressures that generally don't do wonders for the glue that holds a couple together.

I'd take a long, hard look and assess the extent to which as pair the current situation might be wearing down, or has the potential to wear down the bonds between you in the future. Becuase a move as your daughter goes into year 10, while imperfect as a solution, is a million times better than leaving a pot to boil dry till it explodes off the hob in a year or two's time.

And you do sound under a horrendous amount of strain.

We all screw up. You might both have made wrong choices along the way. But the real measure of us is how we rectify those mistakes. So I think you both need to forgive yourselves and find way out of this that takes this awful, growing pressure off your family.

What a mess!

Really you can't afford any DC in private school.

However, starting a child in year 9 in a new school might be really problematic.

Can you limp until year 11?

It's not ideal to down-size but it seems the least bad option to me, rather than totally disrupting the DD's education

But, really, it's a bit of a disgrace that the situation has arisen. My DF is a governor at the independent school that my DSis and I used to attend. Whilst I dint know any specific details, he has alluded to various difficult situations that have arisen where children have been sent to the school when there was no reasonable way the parents could have thought they could have afforded it on an ongoing basis and then have asked the school to bail them out effectively (this is obviously different from parents who have been honest from the start with the school re: what they could or could not afford). It's shit for everyone concerned.

I sympathise - DH and I both went to private school and always thought that we would send ours. However, we have too many children and decided early on that we'd start in state. However, we have a very bright DS who on a whim we entered into the scholarship test for a fab prep school and he got the top scholarship - but after a huge amount of angst, we chose to turn it down because we have four DCs and I wanted them all to have the same opportunities. I think (we'll find out in March) that he HAS got enough for the superselective grammar, so I hope that I will feel justified in having turned down the place for him - but at the time it felt awful - especially as the head kept banging on about our "duty to do the best for our very able son". Actually, we have four very able children who are flying in their excellent state school - although we do pay out for considerable enrichment outside of the school confines......

It sounds as though you are in a grammar area - is there any chance of moving your DD for GCSEs into a grammar? If that isn't an option and if you possibly can, I would keep her where she is for GCSEs and then perhaps move her for sixth form. Racking up debt isn't a viable option - and will reduce the opportunities for your younger children (a big part of why we didn't put our eldest through - I still wanted riding/ballet/swimming/music lessons etc for the other three). I hope that you can find a solution for your and your family.....it's such a horrible decision, but I hope that you can find one you can make peace with.

All of you urging the OP to leave her DD where she is are missing the point. Yes, it will be very distressing for the DD who is happily settled at her nice private school, but this family are paying her school fees by adding that debt to their mortgage every term! They cannot afford essential repairs to their house! They are living on one salary!

I'm willing to bet, given this nightmarish scenario, that they have no or minimal savings too. This is a disaster waiting to happen. What if the DH loses his job? What if the marriage breaks down? What if some other crisis strikes? This won't be a case of one DC being upset by having to move schools, it will the whole family becoming homeless! FGS, this family cannot afford to have ANY of their DC in private school. There are five of them living on a salary of £60k with an ever-growing mortgage and they're contemplating adding to this debt with even more private school fees.

Thanks everyone. To those of you saying that we can't afford it and we are adding to our debt etc., does it matter that we have equity in our home?

Our mortgage is currently 149K and the value of our property is somewhere between 450K and 500K. I think that makes a huge difference. We are not totally irresponsible and the bank wouldn't lend us the money if they didn't think we could pay it back.

We have a drawdown facility on our mortgage that allows us to borrow up to a maximum of 189K. So effectively 40K (at the moment but this increases as we keep paying off the mortgage month by month) is sitting there to be used on school fees. We only need 18K for DD.

What we hadn't anticipated was the exact impact on our monthly repayments borrowing the extra money would make. We would quite quickly be up to making repayments that are 50% of income.

Is that such a ridiculous amount? Does anyone else pay this much for their mortgage?

What a mess.

Ds1 was offered the opportunity of private high school with bursary etc, we didn't do it as we had three other children at that point and I was expecting no 5. We knew that we wouldn't be able to afford for the others to go as well so we didn't send ds1.

We did however move ds1 to a diff high school in yr 9. Because he was miserable at the one he was at. Ds2 had gone to the same high school as ds1. As it's not our catchment one we are now paying £900 a year on bus fares and they have to leave at 7:30 to get bus rather than walk five mins up the road.

Op I am not sure what you should do.but it doesn't sound like the current situation is sustainable.

Surely if you need to remortgage to fund one child you can't then afford 2 more even on a scholarship. Why did you take that decision for dd knowing that there were other children to rake into account. You might be able to cajole the school into increasing their offer but even then it would a struggle. For each child you are potentially adding 60k to the mortgage even at 25% discount. Something needs to give, it would be difficult to move in year 9 but better now than in a year's time. Unless you have the remaining funding for her up to year 11 set aside you should give notice at the end of this term.

I think 50% of salary on mortgage payments is very high. Isn't the recommended amount maximum a third? I do think the equity in your house makes a difference though, in that if private school is very important to you, the obvious thing to do is downsize and move close to the private school. Obviously it depends what house prices there are like, but it sounds like it would be possible for all three of them to walk to the private school and you to be able to afford to pay.

Gosh, reading back over the responses make the situation sound very bleak indeed.

Some more info and to summarise: DD's has 2 scholarships, 25% academic and 15% music so we 'only' pay 60% fees for her. She will not stay for the 6th form - she has known this from the beginning.

DS offered 16% bursary, no scholarship - he has known from the beginning that he would need to 'win' 25% somehow to stand a chance of going.

The little one (Y3 so not so little :)) was recently offered a 50% bursary to an amazing prep school which we turned down.

We have aspirations for our kids that includes sending them to the 'best' available school. It is tantalisingly within our reach (I think but perhaps we are deluding ourselves).

No savings but future share options (hopefully).

Thanks once again, you are all really helping.

Yes 50% of your income on a mortgage is mad . Can you release equity by moving to a cheaper area/downsizing as location isn't ideal for their schools.

Okay, the mortgage/house value equation is relevant and I'm glad you're in a safer position that it sounded you were. However, paying out 50% of your household income each month due to the educational costs of just one of your three DC isn't reasonable. TBH, if you're determined to keep your DD at her school through GCSEs then you need to get a job to add to that monthly income and try and offset this imbalance.

When you borrow money you have to repay it, releasing money from your house is just like any other loan but you will end up paying a lot more as a mortgage is a loan over a longer period. Your mortgage payments are connected to how much the loan is, not how much your house is worth. You're far better off downsizing to release the equity, this was you're not borrowing more so you're not repaying more. Personally, I think you need to get a job.

I think from what you've written on the thread, that you don't really know how to manage your finances too well, sorry. You're struggling to pay school fees on an income of 60k, you're paying for clubs, school lunches etc, and you've taken equity out of your home and you don't realise that this will affect your mortgage payments. It may be worth your while seeking financial advice to be honest. It's very unfair on a child to move them out of a school when they have been there for so long and have made friends. You should have thought about all of this before you enrolled her. It's too late in the day now so it's better that you look into increasing your family income, or moving/keeping the younger ones in a state school and leaving her there (sorry if I'm being harsh).

OP Considering the equity in your house and the amount of money you have "virtually" available I'm astonished that the school offered any bursary at all for your DS.

What happens when they all go to university and need funding? I'd be nervous racking up more and more debt (esp up to 50% of your income). also consider that interest rates will go up at some point and then what happens?! What happens if your DH loses his job etc - do you have a contingency? What impact does paying out 50% of your income have on your other children's opportunities? And do you think that later on, it's going to have negative impact on their relationships? I would be fairly irritated if my sibling had an amazing education etc but I couldn't go and do swimming/riding/archery/whatever because there was never any money. I appreciate that these are perhaps questions that should have been considered before you made the choice to educate privately but it does seem to me that it's not a sustainable model for your family - but them I'm fairly risk averse.

You can't afford to do this for 1 child. You can't afford to do it for the other two for the next 10? years.

Why not move DD as you have 3 children to consider plus a house to fix and use a proportion of what you would save on a tutor for all 3 children at various times to support their weaker core subjects?

Absolute insanity to be considering this.

So with all this going on you put your youngest child in for a prep school entrance exam? On what planet would that have been a good idea?

As I said. It's state school, not a salt mine.

Do it. Tell the kids. Move on.

I have a friend whose husband went to private school but whose brother didn't as the parents couldn't afford it. The brothers never got on after that, never reconciled. My friend's husband thinks it was because of resentment at their different opportunities. I don't know your kids or situation so don't know if that is a possible outcome for your family.

We have two in private, it's £7500 each as we are in the north. Dh earns 90k ish and our mortgage has 100k left. We have 6 months salary in an emergency account and we pay the fees a year in advance plus have next years fees save up by christmas every year.

Financially if things change for us, we would have at least a two year grace period to transition our boys to state school so could get them through any exams.

With all this in mind I am still very careful with money . I would be constantly stressed in your situation. It can't be good for your family life. Even with your equity I wouldn't do it.

Don't move your daughter. You made a decision about her schooling and it would be a betrayal to go back on that committment.

Treat each child as a separate case, considering the family income at the time.

What is the liklihood of your DH getting a better paid job in the next few years? Is he looking for other jobs, or would he consider it? Would he be able to set up his own business and move into a consultancy role?

What type of jobs are you applying for yourself? Could you do something p/t at minimum wage just to get a bit of tax free income rolling in? Even 4k-5k tax free would make enough difference. (Your DH would need to earn twice as much for sane income). Cleaning, shop work, etc ...go where the vacancies are, not your skill set. You could get something pretty quickly if you lowered your sights.

Don't move without really doing the sums. Costs of moving really add up. If you can afford to move, you can afford to stay and use that money to send your son to the private school.

Our mortgage is currently 149K and the value of our property is somewhere between 450K and 500K. I think that makes a huge difference. We are not totally irresponsible and the bank wouldn't lend us the money if they didn't think we could pay it back.

It doesn't make any difference - you are still borrowing the money and it's a debt that needs to be serviced.

We have a drawdown facility on our mortgage that allows us to borrow up to a maximum of 189K. So effectively 40K (at the moment but this increases as we keep paying off the mortgage month by month) is sitting there to be used on school fees. We only need 18K for DD.

What we hadn't anticipated was the exact impact on our monthly repayments borrowing the extra money would make. We would quite quickly be up to making repayments that are 50% of income.

How couldn't you have anticipated this? Did you not do any kind of quick financial modelling to work it out? I'm not being facetious, genuinely wondering What happens when interest rates rise - the current thinking is that they will start to around 2017.

Is that such a ridiculous amount? Does anyone else pay this much for their mortgage?

Yes, I think it's a ridiculous amount. I only know one other couple making those types of payments. They nearly had their house repossessed. Now had to downsize.

Also, does the superselective have a sixth form that they can apply to even if they didn't attend lower school? Consider this for all your children.
Are there any other grammar schools your DS could go to for lower school?

We have aspirations for our kids that includes sending them to the 'best' available school.

It's not "available" if you can't afford it.