To ask how much of your income you spend on school fees? And pls tell me its worth it...

[Claliscool]

Not rich by any means.
Decided to send both children to independent school in September due to all sorts of covid and other reasons. The fees are about one third of our household income. Just bricking it slightly.

So if private school fees are roughly £800 per month each child, so about £1600 per month, you must have a relatively decent income. A third sounds fine to me. A third of a smaller income would be worse

The school near us are about 14-15k per annum. So we’d need at least 50k spare from our net income - gross that’s well over 70k.

Good point raised above. If you earn a lot then things like housing, food are a smaller % of your income so spending a higher % on school fees is not such an issue as you have more "marginal" spare income after paying for housing basics.

@Xenia

Good point raised above. If you earn a lot then things like housing, food are a smaller % of your income so spending a higher % on school fees is not such an issue as you have more "marginal" spare income after paying for housing basics.

Depends how much you spend on housing and food.

But yes, in general, the more you earn, the greater your disposable income will be unless you’re making certain life choices.

Where I live the sacrifice probably wouldn’t be worth it. State schools are good and the private schools, for the most part aren’t that amazing (there are a couple of very expensive good ones over the county border, but I’m not counting those).

Fees for a local private school for my two dds would be just over a third of our income and there’s just no way I’d even consider it, but then I’m happy with their state secondary and if I wasn’t, I could move them to a different state school as there aren’t huge waiting lists here.

So it depends on where you live and what the different options are like.

Going to mark my place on this thread for later reading.

We’re in a situation where private education has recently become an option for us (inheritance plus DH has a new better paid job) and we’ve calculated that if we start putting away money now we’ll have saved enough to pay for DD to go private from secondary (just finished Yr1 at primary) followed by her brother 3 years later.

We are lucky that we have an “outstanding“ Primary in our village, ranked one of the best in the county, but as it currently stands all 3 of the local state secondaries in nearby towns are not great. Of course many things can change over the next 5 years and if one of the state secondaries started performing well then we’d definitely consider it, but by financially planning now we can make private an option too.

Of course if it turns out we no longer need to pay school fees I’m very happy to blow the savings we hope to have made on a few fancy holidays/cars 😂

To go to the schools mine went to at senior level you need ££2500-£3000 a month each. Day is around £7500-£8000 a term. We already had the big house, numerous holidays, new cars etc. We didn’t go without anything.

I actually found with girls that, certainly for DD1, her ambition was sparked at university by male friends. Not that many from school have stellar careers. They didn’t want or need it enough. I suspect DD earns highly in her school cohort. She was determined. I believe school started her on her career and opened her eyes to a lot of opportunities which she took. She could have gone to the local grammar (passed 1 mark below max score) but she (and we) wanted something more bespoke that suited her.

Yes, my point was if your income is £250k after tax then spending £25k a year on rent and then £100k on school fees is not too bad as you still have a lot left to eat out of even if the % of your net income on school fees sounds a lot to other people.

I've double checked all the numbers and after all the essentials Inc mortgage groceries bills petrol we will have about 1.5k pcm for days out etc. I'm also going to take out schools fees insurance... Already got critical cover life insurance. Hopefully not being too daft, but at this point I'm sure it's the right thing to do.

You must be rich if you can send 2!?!

I don't want to keep harping on this thread if you've in fact already decided what to do. But for what end? Private schools aren't that great. The school you're choosing might be better than local state schools in offering a more comfortable and nurturing environment in the short term. But only in the way that flying from LHR to JFK in Club World is better than flying in economy. You're still on a plane. If someone else is paying, take it. If you are so rich that it's not a big deal, no reason not to. Have the champagne. But I stand by the idea that private education for most people makes about as much sense as blowing the extra few grand on sitting in a rear-facing seat. As soon as you land, buyers' regret sets in (unless someone else paid, or it was peanuts).

From my experience as a university tutor, I promise you that, in the long term, your children will receive no educational advantage from attending a private school. If they want to get in to a competitive university, it will very likely make it MORE difficult, not easier. These things have changed enormously in the last decade. Be warned.

@Xenia

Yes, my point was if your income is £250k after tax then spending £25k a year on rent and then £100k on school fees is not too bad as you still have a lot left to eat out of even if the % of your net income on school fees sounds a lot to other people.

Are many people with a net income of 250k spending 25k a year on rent? That would get you a very ordinary and not particularly well located three bedroom house where we are. You can though pay 8k a month for a really amazing house, so suddenly you’re spending 86k on rent instead.

My daughter attended 2 private schools. The fees were very high, but she achieved scholarships and she had a lot to offer in terms of academics, sport and just being a delightful girl. She is so happy she went to private school; it gave her a huge amount of confidence and helped her realise she could achieve anything she wanted.

@Claliscool
Thanks all... I'd included music lessons, a budget for trips, fee increases and uniform into the figure. I guess education is our number one priority. I was thinking of school fee insurance in case of the worst.

Don’t forget the extra holiday childcare, probably around 6 weeks a year extra? It’s not insignificant

About 1/3 of our income but for Dd it was a specialist private school and it suited her. I don’t think she would have coped in a normal 5 days per week academic school.

It has opened doors for her in the career she has and she knows so many people in the industry.

For Ds he did private online academic schooling which was a lot less and whilst for other children it would have been really good I do think that in his case it was a bit of a waste and I would have been better concentrating on one subject each year to get him through a GCSE or just to get to a certain level.

Dds uniform if bought new from the specialist retailer would have cost £700.

The school were really good and did point you in the direction of the school second hand uniform shop which was open at lunchtimes and run from the school office where you even got a discount for handing items

Dds full uniform cost me £112

Ds who started 2 years later at a state school was over £200 and within a few weeks of starting the £35 PE shirt was made obsolete and everyone had to go out and buy the new version.
I heard from friend who had a Ds at the school that within 2 years virtually all the uniform was changed and there wasn’t even a second hand shop as the HT wanted everyone in new stuff as it made the children look smarter

Agree, private school uniform isn’t necessarily more expensive than state. Here, one of the state schools (a faith school) uses the faith criterion and uniform to make sure they only get pupils with 1 sahp and and a 6 figure income...

Me and my DH are both in professions where the majority of our peers were privately educated. We were state educated.

I like to send our children to private school. The networking benefits are obvious to me, I see it everyday at work.

Half of our income. And we’re renting as well, so money is very tight. However, we live in Australia. If we were in England, they would be in state school.

OP from everything you've said I don't think you're crazy at all. In my opinion it's worth every penny.

Less than 10% but can pay all school bills from savings anyway.

However, we made a conscious decision to buy a comfortable family home and average cars, rather than the biggest mansion and 4 x 4s, enabling us to be in that position.

I have to say, this thread is one of the more craftily constructed stealth boasts I've seen on MN. Knowing full well that private school fees can run upwards of £15-20k per year, per child, combined with the insistance of others in this thread that "we are by no means rich..." and the virtue signalling about how we CARE about our child's education (as if those on the average salary bracket do NOT care?)...gotta love the MN bubble at times.

@Xenia 250k after tax would put you comfortably in the 1%. The 1% don't rent.

@HermioneMakepeace no savings, no property? Are you sure that you are doing the right thing?

@hopsalong you really don't think that it adds much?

@MrsMariaReynolds its obviously only s choice in the higher income brackets. However, once you are in this income bracket, you have the choice between lining your own pocket and buying a house next to an excellent school (and as a consequence actively depriving a less well off child of a school place as the houseprices in catchment will go through the roof, as observed around us), or pay for education (which allows the limited state funding to help children who don’t have the luxury of choice).

The 1% don’t rent.

Of course they do. It may not be the norm for that group, they may own other property that they don’t live in and their renting experience isn’t the same as a tenant on an average income but plenty of 1%ers rent. As an example, lots of professional sports people often rent. It also happens on a more ‘normal’ scale too, to other people who work in highly paid but short contract roles. They may not be in the area long enough to warrant owning a property so renting suits them. There are lots of high end rentals around. Who do you think lives in those?