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.

Thank you for your kindness and understanding. I never intended for this to turn personal or into a private vs state debate.

In an ideal world, all state schools would offer the same opportunities as private schools but people should still have a choice as to which they wish their children to attend. The reality is, that will never be the case amongst state schools and there will still be inconsistencies due to catchment areas and people still being priced out of certain state schools due to house prices, ptas with parents who can afford to raising funds, donations from those better off etc etc. Those who can will simply supplement their children's education in other ways.

Well said @minipie. There are parts of, for example, London where the catchment house price far outweighs several years fees. One state 'free' school, popular with media luvvies, even had admissions prioritised according to ‘safe walking routes’, shutting out kids from the local estate. Still, at least they get dinner party bragging rights that they’ve used their actual capital and cultural capital to stay in the (very white) leafy state school while first generation migrants stay in rented accommodation or small flats to send their kids private.

Actually no. I am paying for a better service- state provision doesn’t meet my kids needs or my expectations . If I could have it for less, amazing. I think everyone should have what my kids do, and I wish there was a lower bar to entry for private schooling.

State school rolls are going to drop by more than the entire private school population by 2030. It's a much bigger challenge for a lot of state schools. It's already hitting some inner-city state primaries - the bulge year is this year's Y6.

To maintain the viability of some of these schools - particularly secondaries where when rolls drop too much they will have to drop whole subjects they offer if they don't have enough funding/students for the teachers - they'd benefit from an influx from the private sector over the next decade.

The argument that wealthy people are doing poor people a favour by keeping their children out of state schools is laughable

I was an FE lecturer in the 90's, we had several students whose parents just couldn't continue to afford to send them to private school. The students coped admirably.

Good point @JassyRadlett re population dropping. And of course no party has the courage to want to attract migrants to the UK to make up for our ageing population.

Respect

I believe the message at the time was ‘Green eyed monster never a good look.’ 😂

Totally agree, don't know why they have kids they never see

Supernoodles were a £1 in Aldi's yesterday. They used to be 50p everywhere, that's a 100% increase!!!!!! Everything's getting more expensive, love.

You seem to be in dire need of an education in economics and finance.

Parents who send their kids to private school pay income and property taxes.

In the vast majority of cases, they pay far more in tax than the people who send their kids to state school.

That extra tax acts as a subsidy for the folks who send their kids to State schools as there is no tax rebate for this in the UK.

If you want to improve the funding for State schools, you will have to adopt a more progressive local property tax like they have in the US.

But then again, that also means people sending the kids to state schools would have to pay higher property taxes as well.

Funny how that works right?

The reason why state schools are failing is because of funding. And the reason funding has been cut is because we have an aging and sicker population (more tax revenue being funelled to the retired for pensions, healthcare and social care), as well as a very narrow tax base (upper 10% of income distribution pay 60% of the taxes, with the bottom 30% paying much less because of the £12.57k tax free anount).

Scandinavian countries have superior schools because everybody pays tax. Same with property taxes.

So if you want better State schools, that means the bottom 50% will have to pay up as well.

*State school rolls are going to drop by more than the entire private school population by 2030. It's a much bigger challenge for a lot of state schools. It's already hitting some inner-city state primaries - the bulge year is this year's Y6.

To maintain the viability of some of these schools - particularly secondaries where when rolls drop too much they will have to drop whole subjects they offer if they don't have enough funding/students for the teachers - they'd benefit from an influx from the private sector over the next decade.*

The influx of private school kids isn’t going to be into the schools that might struggle to keep their numbers up. They’ll go into the most sought after schools (as I say, via buying houses in catchment, tutoring etc). It will be less privileged kids who will then get bumped down the admissions list into the less sought after schools which might otherwise struggle to fill their places.

So yes, those less full schools will get an influx, and it might save them from budget cuts or even closure, but it’s at the cost of less privileged families being bumped down to less sought after schools that they may well be much less happy with.

Rich people always pay for the best schools - whether it’s by buying a house in catchment of an Outstanding school or through school fees. Often buying in-catchment costs way more than fees - useful to bear that in mind.

My comment was in response to one about government funding levels. Context matters.

However, your post does rather exemplify the odd notion demonstrated by many on this thread that state schools are inherently 'good' or 'bad' rather than being more likely to have their performance (in every sense) reflect their student intake - so changing the socioeconomic mix of any school in the way you describe will pretty quickly change the school.

That said I am a massive proponent of admissions reform to prevent faith admissions and mitigate the impact of house price admissions. There are numerous schools that do this effectively - eg by having protected admissions quotas for children in receipt of pupil premium, and through other means such as other forms of quotas and lotteries.

How do you not understand that no two people’s circumstances are the same and your work as a doctor and experience will be bastle
different to someone else’s? 🧐

for them to be able to do what they do, particularly the retrieval medicine, this is the best option.

Yes this is a big deal. My local area is turning from a wealthy Indian ‘owner occupier’ area to a white tenant area (mostly people moving in from the nearby inadequate school areas). This has already resulted in all the schools being moved from Outstanding to Good & Academies cutting funding for things because parents are no longer willing to donate or as involved in their kids’ educations. Class sizes are also getting bigger - one of my DNs goes to a local state school and his class size is 34. Most of these kids won’t be there next year. He hates it.

@Findingfactsaboutfees "but people should still have a choice as to which they wish their children to attend."

One of the consequences of choosing private school is that you are taking on certain extra risks. You're betting your child's stability on this private, money making business, hoping it doesn't go bust, or massively hike its fees, or randomly decide your child's face doesn't fit and stop taking your money. It is tough on kids when it doesn't work out, but these risks are part and parcel of the privilege you chose. Moaning when some of them go south is a bit like moaning that music lessons and uniforms are more expensive at private school. Yes they are, but that's part of the deal.

True. At our local private school NHS parents can register for extra ‘emergency’ care until 8pm (and drop off to a nominated home). So not all privates charge for wraparound care.

All of these things can happen at State school too. But as a parent you have extremely limited recourse as you aren’t a paying customer. Also, a lot of state run academies now charge working parents for books and stationary and ‘co-curriculars’ like running or computing that should be taught in-class to all students, and of course many make money on uniforms by not allowing second hand sales & yet don’t give parents the same protections as a consumer.

Thought it can flow the other way too. We have no fewer deprived kids locally in our borough than 20 years ago - but we also have a large proportion of families who probably would have sent their kids private 20 years ago, and now that's out of reach for all but the wealthiest. Which means the state schools - particularly the boys' and mixed comps, we have a really weird asymmetry with boys' and girls' schools in both comp and Catholic sectors - are much more socioeconomically mixed than they were 20 years ago.

There are schools that are richer and schools that are more deprived overall but they are all more mixed by income now and they have all improved - in fact the school that has the most deprived area of the borough in its catchment has improved the most. It's also close to some very lovely areas with sought-after homes where the owners might previously have chosen private, but who now see the fees as just too much. We've lived here 15 years and I'm now surprising myself to be over the moon about having secured a place at a comp that frankly scared me a bit when we first moved here.

This post does seem slightly tone deaf when there is a cost of living crisis and many are struggling to afford basics. Also, hopefully the schools are using some of the rises to give staff pay rises to match inflation.

16k per year is quite cheap compared to private fees my friends are paying, but considering what would happen if we ever weren't able to afford fees for whatever reason is one of the many reasons I will always avoid private education for my DCs.

@SoShallINever , you said

The ones near me have a surprising number of children who's parents are drug dealers or loan sharks.

That’s interesting. At my local boarding school parents have to provide proof of how they were able to pay the fees, specifically that it was not “the profits from the proceeds of crime” or something similar.

I hadn’t realised all private schools didn’t do that.

I imagine they cover the A level Maths syllabus in two terms and then the Further Maths syllabus in the next two or three terms, leaving a term or so for revision.

I wish I had that problem. Try panicking every time your energy bills, rent, council tax, food etc go up & having to stretch a fixed income to pay them all, that's a real problem. Nobody forces you to send your dc private, you chose to.