To think only the super rich will be able to afford private schools?

[donniedarko89]

I live in a fairly affluent area, full of private schools. We are comfortable, not wealthy, and considered private for secondary eventually (and who knows, with the cost of living crisis), while enriching the state primary's offer with lots of extra clubs and activities. Noticing that more and more families are doing the same, even high-earners who would in the past have gone private by default. Are private schools going to become only for the ultra rich, especially if the fees spike up with a Labour government?

In London, certainly, the idea of middle income people ‘making choices and economising’ to send kids to private school is a myth.

Yes particularly because housing is so expensive.

These already exist.

No, you really can. You just wouldn't like that.

They had thousands spare for years - so don't pretend!

@CuriousMoo well I also had an academic scholarship and we had a hardship bursary and ate off the allotment a lot but yes I suppose they must have had some spare cash.

If your parents had no carpets that's neglect, not private schooling. Consider therapy. .

Look, as far as I'm concerned private schools have always been for the super rich. Maybe now they're for the super super rich as opposed to the just super rich but really once you're talking about whether a person can afford £18k a year as opposed to £12k a year on something non essential it's such a rarified class of people that it makes little difference who's in it and who's not.

That’s not a reason to vote Conservative. The Labour offer for early years matches it.

Yup. Just look at those lovely new black passports any time you're feeling sad about it. That'll lift your spirits.

Anyway according to many threads on Mumsnet we're all out and about going to coffee shops and bars etc so actually the entire idea that our living standards are falling through the toilet is just anti brexit propaganda. Or something.

Agreed.

Actual Communist and socialist countries couldn’t manage it.

Interesting, your first post portrayed it as a matter of just refusing to spruce up the house and spending the cash on fees instead.

?

My sister sent her kids to private school. Originally it was because the private pre school worked out about the same as nursery fees. Then they just ended up staying in private schools because they’d made friends and were happy there. She wasn’t super rich but definitely comfortable.

The kids are adults now and have posh mates but shit jobs 😂😂

Eradicating privilege, in schools and elsewhere.

That isn’t a reason for not trying.

Australia is completely different.

Australian "private schools" are highly affordable and (IMO) not really fully private schools at all in the true sense of the world, because they 40 to 70% of their funds come from the state. They are really just semi-private schools where parents pay a top-up, not full fee; of course they can be afforded merely by careful budgeting for a lot of people.

Yes, I have encountered plenty who think the countries that tried it just ‘did it wrong’, and if they had the chance to enact it, it would of course be different. Safe of course in the knowledge that they’ll never be required to test that theory.

Both my parents grew up in communist countries. They sent me to private school.

My DB and SiL are/were high earners (London City jobs) and have always privately educated their 3 DCs. They basked in their advantage without a single care.

DB's income took a battering during the pandemic, and now they're struggling to meet the fees.
Ironically, he is now furious that private education gives an advantage, and feels very hard done to that they are feeling the pinch.
He definitely didn't choose private education for the small class sizes, or the SEN provision, or the pastoral care.
He loved the advantage it gave his children, until it didn't.

Well that's all the argument we need isn't it.

Case closed.

Human nature is a complex interplay of a multitude of factors, innate and environmental. Whilst altruism absolutely is one aspect, so is the desire to put one’s own at an advantage. This varies on an individual level, but getting what is perceived to be the best for yourself and your loved ones is without a doubt a driving force.

My point about communism is that it doesn’t eradicate this drive. It was still displayed in communist countries, and when opportunities arose as a result of those systems collapsing, people absolutely did seize them, regardless of the indoctrination they had been subjected to.

No they were very left wing. I came to that conclusion myself.

In Australia we have this already. The top private schools in Sydney are now tipping over to $40-43k per year for tuition (and that’s before uniforms, books, excursions etc.). Our great local independent in Sydney is $17k and gets better academic results.

I can’t imagine paying all that extra money just for the prestige, and given I’ve worked my life in big corporations and never discussed schools I’m not sure the prestige gets you very far anymore. It’s really just about keeping up with the Joneses.

There will be less and less people able to afford these expensive schools going forward. Everyone I know that sends their children to them is helped out financially by the grandparents. This next generation simply won’t be in the same position to do so. The schools will have to adapt their business model.

I went to a no frills sort of private school, which attracted a lot of families who had to make big sacrifices to send their kids there. It was academically solid but not somewhere likely to attract the super rich; peeling paint was everywhere, ponies were unheard of. I believe it cost about £9000 in 2003.

Bank of England inflation calculator tells me that's £15,357 in today's money.

The same school is now charging £17250 per year - but that now includes school trips, which definitely weren't included in my day.

It's a slightly above inflation cost increase but is it really so far above inflation as to exclude all but the super rich?

It's not. Everyone on Mumsnet just feels entitled to private school because they have a job.

I think private schools should be the domain of the super rich. If you get yourself into the position that Australia is in, where governments subsidise independent schools so that anyone with a half decent income can afford them, you will undermine the state system which will be given the task of educating the most underprivileged children, without sufficient resources. Then parents will declare the state system ‘horrific’ and decide they must send their kids private. And around you will go with everyone scrabbling to buy some privilege for their kids, demanding the government fund it as their right, and bugger everyone else.

The most hilarious part of it all is that research in Australia consistently shows these schools do not improve academic outcomes. And that privately educated kids have poorer results and higher rates of drop out at university than those who attend comprehensive state schools. The low fee options don’t even have the swanky facilities to recommend them and almost all are church-based, where parents turn a blind eye to their homophobic beliefs and declare the pastoral care ‘amazing’ for white-skinned Oscar who is on the rugby team. The ‘cheap’ Christian schools exist purely for the middle classes to buy their way out of the state system, and congratulate themselves for ‘valuing education’. Meanwhile their kids would be better served with a state education and some trips to see other parts of the world.