If you attended private/grammar school, what is your job role and salary?

[Z3lda]

Extremely nosey I know and obviously no one is obliged to share. But I'm just intrigued as it seems many are quite desperate to get their children into the best private or grammar school, but I just wondered what kind of jobs and salaries students from these schools go on to actually have? I know that education provides children with far more than just a path to a specific job and salary, but I do think many send their children to these schools for this reason.

Reality check
Only 8.7% pay higher tax rate.

A lot of higher earners don't get paid via PAYE

@2reefsin30knots

I'm relatively poorly paid (50k) but I chose a specialist role that is interesting to me. Our combined household income is about 200k, but neither of us 'went for the money'. Good academic CV does give you those choices. You don't have to attend an independent school to have a good academic cv.

Relative to who??!!

jessieca I lived on an estate that sounds similar to yours, most people lived on there were on benefits or refugees from Vietnam. My childhood friends have all gone on to do ok/well. I’m pleased we’ve all broke away. We’re early 50’s.

Provincial (and rather crap) grammar school (late 70's and early 80's) and then Cambridge here. But being working class, with zero preparation for the cultural change, and self-esteem issues meant my confidence and ability to plan was on the floor, and the experience was damaging rather than enabling. On graduation I took one low-paid job after another and just tried to hide for about a decade or more. Wasn't until I was in my mid-thirties that I actually started to feel I had something good to offer and began to earn a bit more (I mean getting up to the heady heights of £30k, in the civil service, still the kind of money that most of the people I knew would sneer at as 'peanuts').

However, I was lucky in that I was able to buy property before prices soared, and that, combined with good public sector pension provision, means I've been able to leave work at 50 and rely on rental income and dividends to pay my way for the decade before my pension kicks in.

My highest earnings from a job were in my last post, and that was £55k.

@Crinkle77 I've already said I meant compared to people who just went out and out for a lucrative career (City etc), not people in general.

I will say one of my "wealthiest" friends left school at 18. Got an admin job in the council & was able to buy a London flat at 20 (lived at home to save up & was helped with deposit) with an interest only mortgage. She's now in a 1.5m house with a tiny mortgage simply because of when she was able to buy & what happened to London property. She also has one of those excellent public sector pension schemes that is now closed to later entrants & the council paid for her to do qualifications later on. She doesn't earn super high & neither does her husband but she doesn't need to.

All of us grammar school. Nurse, semi-professional tech role, 2 senior engineers. 2 women earned max of £45k-ish, 2 men probably at least double that.

Dh & his group of mates went to a very academically competitive private school in the south east. They are all now london based for work. The lowest earner among them is on about £70k, having fucked about for 3 years at uni and got a 2.2 as a result. They all work in finance and law.

However, it's also worth noting that my siblings and I did not attend private school. We attended a very mediocre state school, but had middle class parents very focused on education. We all attended Russell group universities, the least academic of us is a head of department in a well regarded state secondary earning £50k, others earning around 100k in finance related roles.

A huge amount of it is about family upbringing including:

• attitude towards education
• how informed you are about career choices & their earning potential
• the importance placed on/encouragement towards career paths where there is the opportunity to earn well.

I think the kind of parents who choose private school happen to also to have these characteristics, and I think it's the underlying characteristics that have the bigger impact. That's not to say the private school doesn't help, but I think family background has a bigger impact.

The most I have ever earned was £3500 per year but then had a nervous breakdown and left the job because I couldn’t cope with it

My mother was all for show and believed anything that anybody told her. Especially if the Head Master of the all girls private school told her that all my “quirks” and laziness (what I now know was dyslexia and ADHD) could be trained out of me with discipline and hard work. It was a recipe for disaster

After a miserable 6 years I left with 1 O level and the remnants of a stomach ulcer and covered in eczema which I think was aggravated by stress as well as allergies

I think that choice of sending me to a school that was clearly not the right fit for me has had a life long impact as I never could understand how everyone else appeared to be able to hold down a job.

I did send Dd to a private school but it specialised in something that she loved doing and pre pandemic she was just starting to make money out of it.
It also helped that the school ethos was about building confidence. It also had an amazing SEN department with a team of teachers who would teach small groups of children or singularly throughout the day. The focus was on ways to overcome their SENs
They had group discussions where other children would talk about what they had difficulties with and what little tricks helped them.

Dd has the life I think I should have had if my mother would have been realistic in what I was capable of and ad chosen a school that didn’t pride itself on being a pressure cooker environment.

Unfortunately I have seen parents who have an idea in their heads about what they want their children to be and doing the same things my mother did and getting similar results.

Me: Private High School earn £30,000 (age 45)
Sibling 1: Private High School earns £100,000 (age 42)
Sibling 2: Local Comp earns £40,000 (age 38) *

• They completely refused to go to a Private School

I went to a grammar school in the sixties, now retired. I was far too unambitious/lazy to earn a high salary, but the knowledge I acquired all those years ago is now proving very useful for beating DH at Pointless every day.

@NoBetterthanSheShouldBe

All of us grammar school. Nurse, semi-professional tech role, 2 senior engineers. 2 women earned max of £45k-ish, 2 men probably at least double that.

Actually I withdraw that. Due to the introduction of the comprehensive system, the younger engineer went to comp and the two women did their final years of schooling post-merger of schools.

Just into 6 figures, lawyer.
Private school & oxbridge. Not from a wealthy family, my mum was daughter of a greengrocer but did ok in her own civil service career and was mortgage free at a young age due to life insurance payout when she was widowed in her 30s.
I hate my job though….

Oh, and I wanted my child to have more confidence and options than I had, so I put my money into education for him. Private day school in London (although periods of state-subsidised school in France and state sixth form in London), lots of additional opportunities outside school, masses of travel. Basically, I wanted him to feel much more middle-class and enjoy the benefits of the enhanced social and cultural capital that more secure status brings. And to feel that he had choices, and understood the world a bit better.

He's in his first year at university, settling in well. Very confident (wasn't always so, but seems to have come good). His choice of subject isn't an obvious high-earner, but he'll have more of a financial cushion than I had, so hopefully will not have to sacrifice all his personal aspirations in order to earn a living.

Grammar. 41. Salary c£80k (not London). Finance.

Depressingly, I am one of the higher earners in the females of my peer group, but average for the males.

Grammar school here. One of the best in the country, allegedly.

I was bullied to all hell so I left at 16, no parental support at all so never did further education.

I’ve only ever done minimum wage care work or been a sahm.

So that worked out well.

Just to add, it's a Russell Group university - he did well in A levels.

Late 30's, private school, strategy development, about £80k currently

Oh and I’m 41, so it was only in the 90s I was there.

Grammar school.

Head of Marketing for an IT company, not in London. Late 50s in both age & salary

Grammar school, now 44 and earning £40k a year working in civil service. I realised pretty early on a ‘big job’ with lots of responsibility, meetings, heavy workload etc is not for me and I’m happy staying at this level.

It’s interesting thinking about the different career trajectories of my grammar school colleagues. As we were all basically ‘clever kids’ it’s interesting to see who is now earning big £££££ and who isn’t. My observation is that the higher earners are those who are more intrinsically career-driven (which you’d expect) but also those who are naturally sociable and extroverted.

So my quiet 4 As at A level plus Oxbridge friend is earning a lot less than the 3 Bs at A level girl who was very confident and had loads of friends and is now a senior managing director earning £150k.

So - school is only part of the picture. Personality, drive etc are massively important in my opinion!

I'm relatively poorly paid (50k) but I chose a specialist role that is interesting to me. Our combined household income is about 200k, but neither of us 'went for the money'

You working class hero

£50k is a very good salary (though it doesn't leave me that comfortable as a single income household in the south east with zero maintenance from XH) but compared to most of the people I went to private school with it would be low I guess.
Having said that I'm sure a lot of the women I went to school with don't earn anything at all as many of them are married to wealthy men and stay at home with several kids.

grammar school, master's degree, all English lit based. All top marks, 1st out of my peers (because I won various prizes at all levels, to my embarrassment)... now earning minimum wage, but happy with my work and lifestyle. I lack confidence and never want to either manage or communicate with/deliver information to a group of people, which seems to be the only way to rise through the ranks.

I went to a grammar school, now late 30’s. I work in HR and earn £50k. Jobs I’m now going for are £60k so hoping for a hike in the next role. I took a back step for a few years working part time when our DD was first here.