Can’t afford school fees, does this sound ok?

[Rightmovestalker]

Ds is year 11,GCSE year, going to state school in September for A levels. DH has a job but I now don't. The fees bill covers Easter - July and is £4.5k. My pay would have covered it but I’m not entitled to any state help.

We are overdrawn but have £3k available credit of our overdraft limit. We have another overdraft available for £1.5k. If we pay the fees now we will have no cash at all until 30th April when dh is paid and we have other bills to pay.

We are thinking of proposing that we pay £500 now and then chip away at it until it is cleared. Dh usually gets a bonus in July but it may not be paid this year. If it is we can clear it. Our other child went to the same school and we’ve spent c£160k in total with the school. This is the last year of fees. Does our proposal sound reasonable? Thanks.

YABU = borrow more to pay
YANBU = your proposal sounds ok

[PurpleTigerLove]

Dev - I’m glad your child has been able to attend their school esp if they are gifted in the arts. So many of the actors and actresses coming through nowadays are incredibly privileged and I imagine with family connections they don’t have the same struggles as normal people.
Bring - that’s lovely 😊 .

[BubblesBuddy]

In the last recession, DH had 1/10 of his standard income one year. We had savings though and several properties. We wouldn’t have qualified for help because of this. We had 2 at boarding school.

[BubblesBuddy]

When I say “standard” - he was self employed but had earned a lot before the recession and we comfortably managed the fees. So a huge drop was a shock - it would be for anyone. That’s why the op needs to speak to the school although I’m sure they will have a policy by now.

[Bringringbring12]

What’s lovely?
I’m certainly not on high income!! My son is on a bursary
I was saying that majority are single income high earning families

[houselikeashed]

I think the bursary families will be hit hard. For what I know, when schools work out what they will give you off the fees, it takes you down to the wire financially. So suddenly finding yourself with no income for several months (probably)makes living very hard. Let alone having to change schools inn the middle of GCSE's or A levels.

[BubblesBuddy]

If you are a bursary family but are a teacher or nurse you will be fine though! Not everyone with earnings at bursary level will be hit. Anyone with a restaurant or is self employed with no sales or business left will be devastated financially. If they have paid themselves dividends (which they should not have done exclusively) they will totally be in a mess. However that’s not exclusive to bursary parents.

[houselikeashed]

That's true. We're up shit creek though.

[BubblesBuddy]

You should find the school will renegotiate the fees you owe in terms of length of time you can pay them. If you have 3 years to go, you might be able to pay over 5 years for example. Your fee income for the school won’t be as high as others because you receive a bursary. Not as high as full fee payers so there might be flexibility. You might need to consider a change for 6th form but only if you cannot get back on track. However if schools have to do this with lots of parents one could see bursaries being in short supply in the future.

There are also lots of full fee paying parents who will struggle too as they didn’t get bursaries but still scrape fees together. Personally I wouldn’t advocate this but lots of people do it!