School fees have risen by 19% in the space of 12 months

[Findingfactsaboutfees]

AIBU to think this is outrageous ?! Fees are exorbitant anyhow and in the last 12 months we have had an increase of 19% by way of 2 increases in a 12 month period. Fees per year for the senior school are £16690 per year and do not include state of the art facilities as other local schools do. The junior school fees aren't much less either! This is a school in the north of England. If you are paying for education, where are you based and how much do you pay? I wonder whether it is comparable.

Private education will only be for the ultra-rich if fees continue to rise at the rate that they are. It is unsustainable for most working professionals who are comfortable but not ultra-wealthy! Parents locally have tried to take their children out but can't as there are no state school places to be had within a 12 mile radius. The only other option is home schooling which isn't possible when the parents are working full time. We're not yet at the point where we are thinking of taking our child out of school but hearing the plight of those who are in the process of trying to is worrying. I've always been a labour voter but if they do go ahead with the introduction of VAT, I fear it's going to get even worse.

My point exactly

Oh and while we're at it. On MN people often say that there is no difference between people buying houses in the catchment areas of good schools and private education. But lets be honest, the vast majority of people sending their kids to private schools do live in the catchment areas of good schools, the vast majority of private school students come from families who are in the top 10% of household income, lets not pretend that they don't also live in nice areas. I taught in an OFSTED outstanding rated school in North London which from a non selective 6th form that regularly got into the top 100 state schools for A level results and sent a significant number of kids to RG universities. On more than one occasion I ment private school parents at parties or dinner who told me I was brave for teaching there, as they could never have dreamed of sending their child to such a rough, poor performing school. For the most part, people sending their children to private school want to be able to justify it ( as can be seen on this thread) as not buying their children privilege over others, and due to need. In the vast majority of cases, it isn't due to need due to failing schooling ( and the poster who said that private schools can guarentee safeguarding ahaha, you clearly know very little about rampant bullying in private schools). So admit it, you are buying a luxury, they aren't charities ( their image is enhanced by scholar's results) and they shouldn't get tax breaks and you should pay VAT.

@Neededanewuserhandle surely that argument could also apply to those (of which there seem many) who use the state sector and are saying it’s under funded and not good enough etc. surely the point of a democracy is that we’re all able to state our case for what’s important to us. Natural consequence is that if people are unhappy enough with the governments solution they have the option (unpalatable as it may be, given that we will all have family ties etc) to leave

(I'm not advocating any particular policies - apart from fair admissions. Just curious about people making this argument when it's well established that one of the big issues schools are going to have to grapple with over the next decade is rapidly declining numbers.)

Maybe it would be more useful to start by focusing on the current actions of this corrupt government rather than tarring all private education with an Eton brush.

Maybe it would be useful to look at which sector in which virtually every member of this corrupt government was educated. Time we stopped the privilege band wagon, its product isn’t a good advertisement for it.

@Findingfactsaboutfees How can you possibly be a Labour voter and support private education? Genuine question. Labour has always loathed private education (unless they are using it for their own children, in which case there are "good reasons") and has made no secret of

I wondered that.
I think probably if the poster admitted to sending her dc to private school and voting Tory the pile-on would explode the site.

I think for fair admissions, all faith schools and all state schools with any form of selection or sibling policy for secondary (so you still need to live nearby) also need to be scrapped.

I don’t think this will increase pupils educational achievement - probably more likely decrease it, but if the idea is a total level playing field for all those who live in a particular area (bearing in mind that all locations themselves are not equal), then that would be the natural step.

Bollocks. I am saying we (as the previous poster said) we shouldn't be held to ransom by people blathering on about taking their marvellousness to another country.

I will be here indefinitely and I will do my best to make the place better because at the root, I like this country.

People who just fuck off when something they don't like happens should be encouraged to fuck off wherever they think will be better for them.

135,000 children is 20% of the entire private school population. Again, look at the data of where the vast majority of students come from, there is no way that increasing VAT will lead to 20% of the students leaving, most parents will actually just pay the increased fees. Maybe they could actually do the things mumsnetters claim they already do? 😂This is really the thing with private schools on here, many mumsnetters like to claim virtuous scrimping and good decision making and outright need due to poor educational options. Those things are in the most part excuses. For every parent driving an old car and living in rags whilst taking no holidays for a decade, there are 9/10 private school parents living in the nice parts of town, driving 4x4s and having a number of international holidays a year.

It’s a privilege to wear designer trainers
To have up to date tech
To go on foreign holidays
To have any sort of holiday at all
To own a house
Its all relative…….

As has been explained already, luxury goods don't get you a disproportionate and undeserved share of society's money and power, unlike private education. The problem isn't so much that people are paying for education, but that they are buying influence. I would prefer the important jobs in our society to be done by the best people, not the richest.

@JacobsCrackersCheeseFogg You've read something I've written completely wrong somewhere!

I DO NOT think people who don't go private don't care about their children's education - it's the exact opposite! I think they care very much. And instead of farming them off to some posh school to buy grades many WC parents do what mine did - spend hours helping with homework, making sure we used the library every week, encouraged us to value our education above all else.

This 'I prioritised' bullshit from MC parents is fucking annoying, because most families could never go on another holiday again, never go out, and scrimp and save and STILL would come nowhere near being able to send their child to a private school.

This bleating on MN from parents about school fees at a time when so many have to turn to food banks is sickening.

Go private. Just don't expect anyone else to sympathise when the business running your childs school puts their prices up.

The latest figures I can find show that 29% of MPs were privately educated. That still leaves 71% who weren’t. Why aren’t they managing to improve the situation?

Every time there’s a private school thread several posters say if everyone had to send their children to state school they would improve.
As the pp says, 71% of MPs went to state school so they should be doing something about it.
I’d be interested to know the statistics of how many MPs educate their dc privately.

The private schools you are referring to are a very thin slice of the private school sector.

Raising the fees in those schools will make zero difference to the parents there. Its a rounding error for them.

You will basically have zero impact on the people educated via that pathway.

The bulk of the private school sector services the upper middle class in the UK, with a bit of the middle class thrown in.

As has been posted by another person private school funding from families is correlated to house prices.

Charging private schools VAT will have precisely zero impact on the channel you mentioned. All it will do is close off the possibility of private school to the middle class.

This means that you will be making the problem even worse.

What I'm saying is I don't want private kids over filling the classes of the year groups my child are already in. There are school places so if you take your child out of private education these are the spaces available to you, just like any child moving mid year. I carnt afford tutors so I managed to get my child into an anazing state school, he is doing well and getting grades 7-9 in year 10. Private ed kids carnt just come in taking places that don't exist and affecting my kids education. There are places in other schools that need using first.

Lack of knowledge is your main problem

You don't seem to have much of a clue as to how the UK economy actually works.

Thats why you keep voting against your own interests. Again and again.

You never seem to learn that reacting based on emotion and populism solves precisely nothing.

I think you can go further than that (though I do think you need different sibling policies for primaries and secondaries just for basic logistics and student/family wellbeing.)

So yes, faith admissions need to go, they create really warped catchments and exacerbate the house price issues as the house price parents cluster around the other schools even more closely.

Agree on selective, again it's a way of covert social selection (as are faith admissions - lots of data on the intakes of faith selective schools.)

But I think you can go further to promote socially mixed schools and undermine house price selection - I've seen secondaries that prioritise a proportion places for pupil premium students - a proportion that is higher than the surrounding demographic of the school.

Schools could take demographics into account when drawing catchments and redraw catchments where necessary to ensure a representative socioeconomic mix.

Lotteries do my head in a little bit but are fairer than a lot of systems - marginal lotteries are interesting.

Banding tests is one proposal made by the Sutton Trust so that schools are admitting based on mixed ability - so a school would admit an equal number of pupils from each ability 'band', which is sort of reverse grammar admissions.

@hillaryswankfan that graph and data you posted are stark. Thanks for sharing this.

The problem is you are missing my point.
My comment was about choice, all choices ie the choice to spend our money however we wish

When we take away all choices we are not a democracy

All democracies take away some choices about what you spend money on. You can't just go out a buy a machine gun and a pound of heroin. Or not legally anyway.

"When we take away all choices we are not a democracy".

I don't object to the choice, I object to the tax breaks given to the most well off with the poor excuse of "charidee".

I really take offence to your assumptions. My DS3 goes to private school. His older siblings attend local state and grammar. He has mild dyslexia, is a good boy and loves sport. We live in an area with one local secondary which has been in RI for 6 years. He would meet no thresholds for interventions, there is very little sport and his good behaviour means he would go entirely unnoticed. He is not confident enough to put himself out there. There are no other local schools with space. We could move to a different area but wouldn't be able to afford the housing and I provide care for my mother locally.

In the last four years I have retrained so that I can get a job which earns enough for us to be able to send him to a private school which is on my way to work. The extra 16k per year pays the fees. Fuck you and your ignorant stereotype.

Absolutely brilliant comeback! Careful the fangirls don't come for ya!

When did I say we should take away all choice?

It's like goldy or bronzey, only it's made out of iron.

Because it became independent when he was 14. Not because his parents chose private education.