To wonder if our children would be the ‘poor’ ones at private school

[Changethefloorthroughout]

DH and I have a good joint income of over £100,000 and I’m seriously considering private school for our children.

A worry for me is if they are surrounded by children from much wealthier backgrounds if they would feel ‘poor’. I’m just posting for thoughts from people who know a bit more about the independent system than me.

Happiness is the priority but I also think happiness is linked to achievement and success. So both. By the way - C grades are a thing of the past, although they may be re-established by the time my children are doing GCSEs.

Achievement and success are not just the preserve of private schools

I guess so.

Thing is though, in answer to your question, I think yes, your DC are likely to notice the financial constraints placed upon you as a family if you choose to pay for private education. Things other families take absolutely for granted like theatre trips, gym memberships, frequent holidays abroad, cleaners or getting the car valeted, meals out, cinema trips, birthday parties, weekends away, may be harder to stretch to or need more saving up for.

For me, having been the child in this situation, it's absolutely not something I want for mine. I would only go for fee paying schools if it didn't mean I had to make sacrifices to our standard of living.

I and all my siblings have agreed that we would have been much better advantaged by having more family holidays and treats, and by our parents being able to help us get on the housing ladder in our twenties. None of us has any intention of doing the same for our dc for exactly this reason.

Horses for courses and different families mean different choices. But at the salary levels you're talking about, it's a hard no from me.

This is what is baffling me about this thread.

My income pays for private school. OK.

So we still have DHs income to live off. And people seriously think that can’t pay for a theatre visit, or a gym membership?

Really exotic holidays possibly. I can understand scaling back there. But everyday things, not so much.

An earlier poster said we’d be living like monks. No, we wouldn’t

@Changethefloorthroughout

But it is relative *@LagunaBubbles*, which is the whole point of the thread. £100000 is untold wealth in some quarters and absolute poverty if you are best mates with Bill Gates and Elton John.

It isn't " absolute poverty, if next to Bill Gates and Elton John". It's just poorer than Bill Gates and Elton John! Poverty is, not being able to have your heating on or enough to eat.

@Unsure1983

Depends which private school.

This.

We are definitely at a lower end of the pay scale compared with families at the school. However, I couldn't give a flying monkeys. We all pay the same to be there & I work hard to send my kids to private school. Never been an issue for us & I certainly don't feel inferior.

Isn't 100k in the top 10% richest people in the world

We were quite shocked at the previously lovely Dd of a family member telling our Dd that at her private school they look down on the “scholarship” kids and called them chavs 🙄. Parents often don’t know the half of what goes on…

Do you WANT to send them to private school? If so, then if you have done your sums correctly and you can afford it then you should do it.

However, I've tried to read most of the thread and I am a bit baffled by you using a combination of your gross and net income. You need to look solely at your net income and then decide if you can comfortably afford it. You might have a gross income of £115k, but if you're both making huge contributions into your pensions or salary sacrifice schemes for private health care etc then your take home pay will be much less, and very relevant.

School fees tend to rise between 5%-8% each year which is way more than salary increases. So factor that in.

if you currently have spare income are you saving this now? Some schools operate a scheme where you can make a lump sum payment in advance which covers the first few years fixed at current rates. This would be financially beneficial if you can save a lump sum Before you children start private school.

@Fomofo

Isn't 100k in the top 10% richest people in the world

Possibly in the world but not in the UK. £120k is top 13%

So we still have DHs income to live off. And people seriously think that can’t pay for a theatre visit, or a gym membership?

Then I guess you’ll be fine … not sure what you want to hear TBH 🤷‍♀️

@PegasusReturns

So we still have DHs income to live off. And people seriously think that can’t pay for a theatre visit, or a gym membership?

Then I guess you’ll be fine … not sure what you want to hear TBH 🤷‍♀️

It’s fairly clear. I haven’t asked if we can afford it. My question is whether private school is typically populated by those on a far bigger income than ours. Answers are an interesting combination of ‘yes, you plebs’ and ‘no, you snobby twat, volunteer at a food bank.’

Conclusion - it depends. And I really need to start teaching basic comprehension better!

Ah so you think people don't understand you properly

My question is whether private school is typically populated by those on a far bigger income than ours

And plenty of people have answered that question, but you seem more interested in attributing false assertions to posters commentary and arguing the toss than anything else.

Your income is top 15%. About 6% students attend private school. Affordability is not the only factor but that figure should tell you that yes you’re going to be at the less affluent end of the spectrum.

@Changethefloorthroughout

DH and I have a good joint income of over £100,000 and I’m seriously considering private school for our children.

A worry for me is if they are surrounded by children from much wealthier backgrounds if they would feel ‘poor’. I’m just posting for thoughts from people who know a bit more about the independent system than me.

Only you know how your children will feel.

Facts are that yes you will probably be in the lower earnings bracket at a private school. But that doesn't mean your children will 'feel poor' - that is down to how you raise them and their home life.

@Changethefloorthroughout

Private schools in the south east must be much more expensive than the ones near us.

Everything in the South East is more expensive than everywhere else.

We found that although there were some seriously wealthy parents, there were also many parents who were making huge sacrifices to have what they felt was the best education for their children

Our son goes to a small independent and we don't earn as much as you. There is a good mix of parents and we do not feel poor. There are much wealthier parents but we chose the school as it's nurturing, the same reason as a lot of the wealthier parents. They are not better than us just because they have more money than us.

So £14k p/a per child - call it £2.5k pcm. That’s just fees. At those prices I’m assuming a regional day school. My boss has two children at fee paying schools,’and recons the ‘school trips’ are a minimum of £6k p/a per child (pre pandemic in just one year for one child this included South Africa, the US, and skiing). That takes it to £3.5k pcm. His two are at school in SE London, but the school trips friends’ children at private schools elsewhere go on seem to be similar. Plus extras for extracurricular music lessons etc. You are not going to get away with less than £4K pcm. You need to decide if, given your children and the schools available to them, this money would be best spent on school fees, or (for instance) on reducing your mortgage faster / saving towards their university fees / saving for their first house deposit / maxing out the pension contributions you and your DH make etc.

Not necessarily. Nobody knows what goes on behind the scenes. A couple of the seemingly richest families we knew had built a life on smoke and mirrors, it turned out. Life caught up with them, and they lost it all, had to sell their houses and move to rented, and put their kids into state schools.

Just cos you seemingly have the trappings it doesn’t always mean you have money.

@Changethefloorthroughout it depends on where you are I think. If in Central London prep then yes your children would be. Anywhere outside Central london, not so much.

Perhaps. But my friends son got a full scholarship at a private school years ago, he later went to Oxford Uni. They were poor, and I mean poor. He didn’t have a bed, she was at Uni (that’s where we met) and the student loan would go very quickly leaving them to live on £10 ish child benefit. His friends were rich, living in a nearby lovely town, often with pools. Didn’t stop him making friends, but he’s definitely got long lasting issue with my friend. This is a different scenario but in this case most of the kids were from very rich families.
I don’t know why people are so enraged by this post. I live in the South East and really don’t consider 100k salary to be really high. Here I think you’d have to make sacrifices to be able to afford a private school on 115k. But that’s because cost of housing is so high. If you want to spend the money and are prepared to make some sacrifices go for it. My son’s done amazing at the local state school, but we are lucky to have good schools on the door step. You’re looking at 20k min per child here for secondary.

I'm not 'enraged' by the post, but find it's tone and content distasteful

@Changethefloorthroughout

This is what is baffling me about this thread.

My income pays for private school. OK.

So we still have DHs income to live off. And people seriously think that can’t pay for a theatre visit, or a gym membership?

Really exotic holidays possibly. I can understand scaling back there. But everyday things, not so much.

An earlier poster said we’d be living like monks. No, we wouldn’t

OP, you seem to be argumentative for arguments sake. You seem to think £75k is a big salary for a family of 4 to live off. For the way a lot of people live, that would be tight, or ok. Your salary would pay for things like holidays, increased pension contributions, investments etc that will benefit you as a couple, without blowing it all on your children’s school fees. It’s different choices for different people

@Changethefloorthroughout
I think you have name changed for this thread, it is all too familiar! I thought the last one had decided you but clearly not.