To ask how you afford private school fees

[Elephantslovetofly]

We have a young DD, and although it's a while away yet we are thinking about school. The area we live in does not have a good local school, and we are considering an independent school for her

Disclaimer - I went to a private school and for what it's worth had a great education. I enjoyed being there and did well in exams. I believe my parents decided to send me there also because of a lack of a good local state school. I might have done fine at a state school, but will never know I guess

We are probably 45 min drive from the school I went to - further than is ideal. DH doesn't mind driving her there if we decide to send her there though (if she is fortunate enough to get a place)

The issue is whether we can afford it. The fees are about £9k per year for junior and £12k for senior. Assuming we therefore need to find £1k per month for fees

My cheeky question is this - if you have a child at private school, what does your household earn and how difficult is it to find the money each month to pay the fees? Our income is about £60k, and at the moment I don't think we can do it (along with our other current expenses). Wages might go up a bit before we would need to start paying, but if this is always going to be a pipe dream i'd rather get over it now

I know we could move closer to a good state school, but am exploring my options at this stage. Don't really want to move, as we have a good house here and are settled

Thanks for reading

still I get your point. You just don't get mine, that many aren't like that. I'm just saying that is not the mix you get at many schools. A school whose entire catchment ranges from poverty to low income working doesn't offer much mix. A school where a disproportionate amount of parents have circumstances that make supporting education either impossible or a low priority doesn't result in parents who have the power to demand change. A school that's undersubscribed will get a disproportianate number of trouble causers and problem dc because it always has space for them. A school with no academic focus doesn't attract the ethnic minority/ immigrant groups who prioritise education. A school with none existent Sen provision will create more supposed trouble causers through it's own inadequacy. A school with a constant turn over of staff won't help those borderline dc who could go either way. Your description just isn't the reality for many of us. And I don't think the majority is people all moving for admissions, although plenty do. More that if you live in a mc area, the schools tend to be mc or mixed. Whereas live in a deprived area and the schools are often similar.

bert I always got the impression your ds's school was similar to Dd's primary. In that its stats on paper didn't look good, but in reality it was good for the pupils, if not league tables? Therefore hardly what I'd call a bad school?

I can only think the jokes about abysmal stem from ignorance as to the reality of schools in poorer areas.

gnome I'm not inner city either. Semi rural. And despite the deprivation, it's actually a pleasant place to live and a far cry from other equally deprived areas not too far away. But yy on giving up hope.

Stabbings are worryingly frequent in our nearest comprehensives - we are inner-city. They are outstanding schools with good results but the culture is increasingly challenging.

On paper, they are far better than the school I went to (where stabbings were also not uncommon) but I have the option of sending my kids to schools with no violence. It's a no brainer.

"but I have the option of sending my kids to schools with no violence. It's a no brainer"

I went to a two private schools between 11 and 17. My sister was beaten to a pulp by the daughter of a Saudi government minister in one - hair ripped out, black eyes, split lip. My friend was raped by another pupil at the other school and sexually assaulted by a teacher.

Terrible damaging things also happen to children at private schools.

Stabbings in any schools are rare.

Re London schools - London has the highest number of good schools in the country. Also the highest percentage of parents who won't use them. 17% of children in my area of London attend private schools. Primarily as far as I can see because they don't want their children at schools where 70% of the intake is non-white. Oddly this also includes non-white parents who don't want their children at a school with too many other ethnic minority children.

Minifingerz - not rare in.my area.

In the last six months the 3 comps nearest me have had: 1 fatal stabbing (after school hours but in the vicinity and still in uniform), an incident in school during which 2 pupils were stabbed and ended up in intensive care, a public knife 'gang' fight on the same road as the school, 2 kids stabbed on a bus by other kids wearing the same school uniform.

The private schools.in the same area have had a total of 0 knife crimes in the same period.

60k is not enough in my opinion. And all the talk of scrimping and saving to me is awful, is that what you want for your children? All children have to be educated, some of them resent it, some also get holidays and travel sweets in the car. Be the travel sweets parent.

Buying from charity shops and not having Sky is one thing, but I would hate it if I couldn't take my kids overseas or travel to lots of interesting places in my own country and if we found it hard to pay for interesting days out and extracurriculars and good summer camps/enrichment stuff. And those things really really add up, unfortunately.

Ava you think travel sweets are more important than education? Ok.....

You can make whatever choices you want for your kids. If you feel travel sweets are important then... do that.

In the private school I work in the teenagers can feel rebellious by having the wrong colour socks. Many teens act out, it's normal, but I'd rather mine rebelled by wearing red socks than anything more serious! Plus in class they come in, sit down, and work until the end of the lesson. For the whole lesson. No messing about, no distracting each other, no shouting or disrupting the lesson. Imagine how much more they get done every year than if the lesson was being disrupted every two minutes! No wonder they tend to get better results.

We have not found violence in our children's academic private schools over the last 30 years but I am not saying posh comps have violence either. I suspect some private schools are better at dealing with disruptive pupils.

Ah there is the difference between many of us - be the travel sweets parent and my philosophy of jam tomorrow. (Although as a non sugar eater I am not happy with using sugar at all as a reward in the examples but that's a separate topic.......) So in the deferred gratification world where you put off today nice things so you have better things tomorrow you might well make sacrifices now. The travel sweets parent is giving stuff now rather than later and a smaller nice thing now and in return you lose a bigger nice thing later. All valid choices, parents make them every day.

As for homeschooled children not being as advantaged as private pupils it's hard to analyse through lack of data. If I gave up work to home school the children it would be many many many times more expensive in terms of financial loss to this family as I earn quite a lot (I was paying 5 lots of school fees, plus after school childcare and £90k mortgage at one point) and then you need to add in the loss of developing a career over those years and how easy or difficult it is to build a career back up once you stop home schooling. So you could argue giving up work to school your children is the most expensive schooling option in the country, many times several Eton places (depends on what the home schooling parent might have earned). Also we just don't know the data for entry to university for children entirely home schooled or schooled at home until sixth form.

By the way anyone with university aged chidlren (my youngest nearly are) you will have seen the contextual offer grades and the other offer grades on all the university websites. Bristol University for example has a list of the lowest achieving sixth forms (40% of sixth forms) for which they make lower offers. However it would be a huge risk for a parent to take their child from a posh comp or good private school for sixth form and plunge it into a failing sixth form just to hope to improve university chances. I would not do it.

Disruption and violence at the small, supposedly "elite" comp our dd attended for two years was normalised by the Head and the governing body. We were told repeatedly that the school's hands were tied by the local authority. This was a school that was "outstanding" and had other awards and accolades and was regarded as the holy grail.

In the independent sector we have found significantly higher standards relating to behaviour and expectations around behaviour. In my opinion the education of the majority should never ever be allowed to suffer because a school or SLT does not deal with continuous low level and regular high level disruption. The personal ethos of a head should not be allowed to damage education for the majority or for the reputation of a school.

The real problem with state education is that in situations like these it takes far too long to sort out the problems.

"Stabbings are worryingly frequent in our nearest comprehensives"

How frequent? How do they keep it out of the press?

I can't believe this thread is still going on.....

I went to a two private schools between 11 and 17. My sister was beaten to a pulp by the daughter of a Saudi government minister in one - hair ripped out, black eyes, split lip.

That's a shocking story. How did your parents and the school react? What happened?

User1464etc ... I wonder how many times you have mentioned your gigantic salary in your long history of posting on Mumsnet? I reckon it pops up in 80% of your posts. It makes me wonder if there is anything else to you? Do you have any hobbies or interests? Are you politically active? Do you have a spiritual side? A creative side? A sense of humour? Have you seen the recent thread about the braggy parent at the school gates? Your persona on Mumsnet reminds me so much of her.

I wonder where all of you live?! I've moved around the country a fair bit, and don't recognise the picture of state education that is being painted here at all.

It's no wonder that some parents choose to educate privately if they live in such awful areas. It must be frightening to live in such a rough, threatening environment, regardless of which school your kids attend.

Thankfully, my world is nothing like this at all.

But certainly at my DCs state school the big issue is not violence or disruption. The problem is continuous poor management:

• History teacher didnt want to teach the curriculum meaning students had to spend second year of GCSE catching up the first year
• German teacher didnt want to teach German (preferred teaching PSHE)
• Maths teacher walked out
• English teacher left at the end of first year GCSE and school found out late in the second year that all the coursework was lost
• Language speaking assessments got wiped

This is not to do with the students, this is to do with the SLT having no grip on the school.

Politicians end up with polarised views on state education either it is all leafy and lovely (the state school s politicians send their children to) or the schools are sinks with feral youth prowling around sniffing the air for blood.

The reality is that there are a few really good state schools, a few really bad sink schools, the rest are in the middle. Many are fine, and some, like my DCs' school are an absolute disgrace.

Gnome I do believe that where parents are also paying customers management HAVE to have a grip on that stuff, otherwise families vote with their feet. Paying fees a lot of the time means parents are invested (in both senses of the word) in success. SMT know this and know they have to be proactive in sorting problems.

That's not to say there aren't some who pay the money and have no further involvement, but I have found these parents are a small minority.

I don't really think user's and what she portrays is any different from posters who tell us constantly about their lives where they have to chose heating or food. It's the reality of individual lives and the reality makes up the differences in society.

I don't agree with all of user's philosophy (because I've managed to avoid having to work very hard or just for money, although I do work very hard) but never once have I seen user be rude to any individual poster or criticise anybody on an individual basis. For that I respect her hugely, particularly in light of the stick she takes on a very regular basis. I think we must try to respect people's views and their circumstances and the two are interlinked and very relevant on a contextual basis. It works both ways I think and all our stories are relevant.

Users is just more honest than some in that she does not feel the need to portray state schools as knife ridden drug soaked pits of vice and under achievement to justify her own choices. Which is a good thing, because the people who do for whatever reason describe state schools in hyperbolic terms just fuel the paranoia and perpetuates the myths. There is a thread going on at the moment where people are describing the decision to use state schools (not a particular state school, just state schools in general) as "scary"..........

No, there's no one else as one-dimensional on Mumsnet in my long experience. But I realise I'm thread derailing - apologies op if you are still watching.

I visit a lot of schools and violence is rarely mentioned.

The absolute definite number one problem is low level disruption.

However, I'm not really sure why it should be up to anyone else to tell me what problems in schools I have to accept.

Why should I be forced to accept someone else's definition of good? If I'm prepared to pay for I want for my DC why can't I pursue my own definition?

I've never in my life settled for what's on offer. I've never taken the path of least resistance. Why would I start with my DC's education?

broken I don't live in a rough, threatening environment. Just a deprived one. Same as millions of people in the UK do.

bert the crapness of our state options might have been the driving force behind going private in our situation. But in different circumstances, with an average comprehensive and the option of paying, I'll openly admit I would still have either gone private or used the same money to move within commuting distance of one of the state schools that would meet dds needs. My local state schools aren't my justification for going private, they and many others like them just prove that private isn't the reason we have such inequality of education, it's state provision that causes that.

But nevermind, it's only the deprived/ most vulnerable/ low income families that get the crap schools that fail them. So let's pretend sink schools don't exist and focus on the much bigger injustice of mc dc who only get a good education, rather than the option of private like a tiny minority.

In my limited experience low level disruption is tolerated in the state sector. E.g mobile phones and giggling and whispering. In a class of 30+ there is very little to be done about this as it is crowd control.
likewise I think London state schools do well because of the higher immigrant population who seem to push their children more.
In the uk we talk about having 'happy' children - ie children gettingn what they want. Children will be happy if they are educated to a reasonable level too, but this link isn't always made.
Schools seem to be failing boys in particular. No idea why.

Of course crap state schools exist.

Just not in the numbers Mumsnet would suggest. And they are largely in areas where the sort of people for whom going private is an option don't live! So forgive me my scepticism when private school users talk about the knives and drugs and violence in their local schools that force them to go private..........