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.

2.5 k on a semi.😱 Well that must be in a very expensive area. We can’t afford to live near London and family. Doesn’t sound like you can either if you want to live in one of the most expensive areas and have a private education. Move up North, sure you’ll pay far less per month for a semi.

Of course travel, tuition, music lessons, extra curricular activities, bedrooms big enough for a child to do homework in peace etc give children an advantage over others who don’t have these things.

I don’t think I know anybody paying that much for their mortgage.

Another76543

None give anywhere near the advantages that a private education does.

"You don’t think that £8,000 would be quite a lot for a family with a gross income of £100,000?"

Sigh, most familes who send their kids to private school earn far more than even this though ( as is clearly stated repeatedly in my posts and use of data).

However, I'm sure that most families on 100k income don't even manage the 40k needed right now. Again, dispelling the myth repeated all the time on mumsnet about average income earners achieving private school by scrimping and saving.

"2.5 k on a semi.😱 Well that must be in a very expensive area"

But the vast majority of Mumsnet Private school parents could only send their children to terrible local comps if they didn't go private. 😂

@LampL1ght yes, £500k average for a three bed semi - not particulary expensive for a three bed semi in the SE. £450k mortgage is £2500 per month at a rate of 4.5%. I’m assuming a ten per cent deposit. I’m from the North originally so I know how cheap it is in some areas. Not the areas I would want to live in though.

Oh by the way, I don’t have a three bed semi, I have a five bed detached. I can afford to live here just fine thanks. I’m not complaining about my situation and my children’s schooling won’t be affected.

Read my original post.
Im not saying all will leave
Other MN are saying they don’t care / or should all leave the country.
Thats why I did the calc.
Its at the top of my original post.

@hillaryswankfan they won’t be going to the terrible local comp as you well know.
Parents who make the effort to privately educate their kids will come up with a different route, they’ll move to a catchment area for a better school and push up the house prices, they’ll spend their money on coaching for grammars, they’ll move abroad….Good luck to them I say, it won’t be affecting my kids.

"Thats why I did the calc."

I wouldn't use that calculation as the back up for any sort of argument. You've randomly selected the data to come in your favour.

By definition, most private school families already live in the catchment areas of the better state schools.

Well I’m sure schools will cope. We’re hardly talking about vast swathes of children. And they’re welcome to the grammars. Not the healthiest environment for children to be in.

@Dibblydoodahdah but but but dear dibly, a whole load of MN posters get utterly angry when it suggest that they pay VAT on school fees, and justify it because their kids would have to attend the only local school available which is a sink school in special measures.

As I said, the data actually disproves this claim, as it does the claim about mass exodouses from the private sector.

"they’ll move to a catchment area for a better school and push up the house prices"

The majority already live in these areas.

"they’ll spend their money on coaching for grammars"

They already do, according to you, you did by sending your kid to a prep before grammar.

See you can twist it anyway you want but your undoing is the data, the majority of the students in private schools come from households in the top 10% of earners, and even then, the largest proportion of them come from the very highest earning households ( so top 5-1%). The mass exodous predicted will not occur, and the data on fee rises over the last decade and a half confirms this.

No it doesn’t. £62k puts you in the bottom 35% if you’ve got two kids.

https://ifs.org.uk/tools_and_resources/where_do_you_fit_in#tool-results-section

The counter-argument:

Why should higher earners subsidise the education costs of low income folks in the UK?

So sure, go ahead and charge VAT for private school.

In that scenario, a tax rebate for the fees is a fair outcome given they are paying for public education and not using it.

And this is a realistic scenario. Not pie in the sky at all.

"£500k average for a three bed semi - not particulary expensive for a three bed semi in the SE. £450k mortgage"

So using that data, the combined income of the parents when the mortgage was issued would be at worst 100k, which gives the couple a take home of 76,048 assuming no student loan payments or pension payments.

You were giving a figure of 20k a year x 2 children, which leaves 36,048 for living after fees currently. Oh shoot that mortgage of 30k a year comes off and they have 6k for a family of 4 to live on?

I think someone's been getting their hypothetical figures all over the place in their desperation to justify tax breaks.

"Why should higher earners subsidise the education costs of low income folks in the UK?"

Ahh this old chestnut.

Should childless people get a rebate too?

Should people who don't use the NHS each year?

The reason we pay tax is because, like it or not, the society that you live in facilitates you and your ability to earn.

@hillaryswankfan I sent my child to prep and to grammar for different reasons and I didn’t send them to prep with the intention of sending them to grammar. My DC’s prep doesn’t prepare for the 11 plus because it’s an all through attached to a senior. They don’t want the kids to end up in grammar. They want the fees for senior school!

I sent my DS to prep because he was bored at his day nursery plus I needed wrap around care that the local primary school couldn’t provide. I sent him to grammar because he is exeptionally bright, top 1 per cent bright, and the super selective grammar was the best place to stretch and challenge him.

And you can twist it all you want but a household income of £100k doesn’t cover mortgage and other living expenses plus two lots of school fees for most people. That’s a fact. So your top ten per cent argument supports nothing.

""Why should higher earners subsidise the education costs of low income folks in the UK?"

Er that's how the whole system works. You don't just pay for the bits you use. Society, innit

We should do as Finland and get rid of private schools.

@Dibblydoodahdah but it had the added benefit of helping your kid get into grammar right? So people like you do already do that?

"And you can twist it all you want but a household income of £100k doesn’t cover mortgage and other living expenses plus two lots of school fees for most people"

I just proved that above, but you settled on 100k as the entry figure and then built your own argument of 2 kids on 20 k fees etc. I did the sums and proved that even now your hypothetical family can't afford the fees.

" That’s a fact. So your top ten per cent argument supports nothing."

Ugh, you really, really don't understand what the data shows do you, and its been repeated. The % of children being educated only goes over 1% once you reach the top 10% of household incomes. It only goes to 5% once you reach the top 5, and then 50% for the top 1%. This has been repeated again, and again.

What the data means is that there actually isn't even that many students who's households are just in the top 10% being educated at private schools in the UK, which means that it really is the very well off that are making up the vast majority of students.

Which is why there will be no mass exodous as predicted ( and as the data on increases to fees since that report was published in 2018 shows).

I agree we should follow the Finnish model. They haven’t got rid of private schools though. What they stopped was being able to charge and make a profit for the basic element of education. Private schools exist and, in fact, are partly funded by the state up to the basic education element. I’ll happily pay VAT on my fees if the state gives the £6,500 state funding element to the school.

smaller class numbers can make a huge difference. My dd is studying maths and further maths a levels and there are three students in the class. There are two other a level maths classes but dd’s is only for maths and further maths students.

My DD is in Year 10 in a huge urban state secondary. They offer EPQ (which is an A level qualification) as a GCSE option, and my DD chose it, along with just 2 other students. I thought there'd be no way they'd run it as a class of 3, but they have and they do.

But you are now not asking just for that

You are demanding a further pound of flesh while you pay even less in.

So, how do you explain away that one?