To expect my parents to continue to pay my children’s school fees?

[I88l]

We couldn’t afford to send our children to private school but luckily my parents stepped in, and offered to pay for their school fees. We sent all 3 children to a private school at a combined cost of £90k. However, my parents can no longer afford to pay for their fees.
https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/parents-pay-kids-school-fees-out-money-2792093

If you wanted to get people's thoughts on the article, you should have been clearer in both your op and your title, and included a non paywall link.

Very unwise to accept this sort of offer unless grandparents can pre-fund or put aside most of the amount in advance.

I feel for the children. Not because state schools are awful (same as independent schools, they're a mixed bag and many are very good indeed), but because educational stability is very important imo and these kids are getting that pulled out from under them due to their parents'/grandparents' unwise choices.

Pretty standard cost for senior independent day school in London

Epsom College is £30k
St Paul’s is £29.6k
Kings a bit cheaper at just over £25k
Westminster is nearly £35k

I'm sure with a bit of sleuthing you could find that out? What's your angle here?

Tbh, this is something you’d stipulate right from the off. If there was a chance my parents half way through decided they wouldn’t be able to continue, I would have sent them to state school right from the start. It’s cruel to the child to,pull them and send to a state school after they’ve attended private. The difference between state and private is huge, and the quality of the teaching and the sort of kids they would interact with would be so different. And I say this as someone whose kids went to state school, but I know people who did put theirs through private.

I feel sorry for the children and the parents DC been put into an education setting , settled, made friends, got used to small classes, the facilities and now it's been pulled from underneath their feet.
Teenage years are not a good time to change schools.
GPs should have really thought this through before offering, if GP worked in finance it shouldn't have been beyond them to do the budgeting and the maths.
I do think they should pull out all the stops to try and continue, maybe release equity in house etc.
However 90k a year is an enormous amount to find. Wonder if they could investigate bursaries or scholarships with the school to try and make it more affordable.

yes agree great tip @Finteq !

I love that so many people are just impressed with the paywall reading hack :)

I do feel for the kids. A friend with triplets sent them to private school but then had to send them to state school for their GSCE year, they all found it very difficult to adapt to the larger class sizes.

Post the sodding article

DH old school is almost 30k per annum, the absolute shit private school close to us is about 20k per annum.

Assume they are either bad at financial planning or something untoward happened.

Obviously the grandparents need to sell their home and go rent a cheap room somewhere. Also any other family should do the same. Perhaps they should get dna tests done in case there are some more relatives that they can squeeze a few drops of blood from. Does the family have all their kidneys btw?

In fairness to the author I think her reaction furious and shock and guilt would be most peoples in this situation.

No one wants to move schools at short notice. If they had warned them they possibly could have looked at grammar school options for y7 and or 9. Now it will be which school has spaces. They could have done state primary and private secondary if they had known there was only a certain amount of money. (Or looked at cheaper options).

But of course she will feel shock and guilt because she’s also going to feel she shouldn’t have taken this money/realised sooner

Something like this you need to see an IFA, people always forget about care home fees (be that gifting parts of bouses, income etc). It may have been that a lump sum could have been invested.

She needs to speak to the school about bursaries (I’m sure they would get the eldest through at least), they may even get something for all of them. If not she just needs to make the best of it and find spaces in state schools,

You can't afford it. Send them to a state school simples.

Came to say same.

If they can't afford it anymore, kids need to be moved to state schools and that's that unfortunately 🤷🏻‍♀️

Oh yes, I read that. The writer does acknowledge she is being unfair to be angry. Which she is.

I suppose it could be more about worrying about her mum's dementia. Sometimes we focus on one thing in order to avoid thinking about what's really upsetting us.

Or maybe it's just bollocks to get people reading and talking about it.

We put dd into private school knowing we could afford it.

My DPs offered to pay (as I was the only DC not getting other help) - DF really wanted to but DM kept quietly putting me off (narc, I'm her black sheep, plenty of money so not scrimping their style).

Because of that, dd is now in 6th and final year and DH and I have paid every cent towards her schooling. Some years have been a stretch but it's what WE signed up for. DPs paying the fees would have been great but it's up to them how they spend their money (and I know that DM rules over DF ).

There’s not much choice is there? They go to a state school. Mad to think it would cost so much as my DC got top grades at GCSE and A level at a state school. Saved myself a small fortune

Excellent tip!

There's some unpleasant comments here, some people have no empathy. The teenage years can be hard enough, it's a bonus if your kids are settled and happy at school. Making them move and having to scrabble for school places will be hard for them. It's not about having to mix with the "common" folk ffs🙄. None of mine went to private schools or even grammar schools, I don't harbour any resentment towards the children that do, why would you?

May all your wishes come true 👌🏾😀. I’ll never miss a good article again !

I think quite often GPs who are wealthy can get a bit carried away when GDC are born .They have already paid vast sums out, and it is hard in the economic climate for everyone .The yr 12 pupil has already had an extensive private Schooling .The yr 7 quite a lot less .Maybe the yr 12 could go into yr 13 with a good college ? the younger two will have to find new schools certainly by the end of Spring/Summer term as well . Your parents have been very generous to you and simply cannot afford to keep doing so .Maybe a Grammar School in the area may have a place spare?

They probably ran out of money due to the high school fees. If they can't afford to pay it why should it be expected, where will the money come from

Obviously move them to a state school. Or find the money yourself. 94% of people use state schools so clearly using them isn’t the calamity some parents using private schools seem to believe.