To think private education probably isn't worth it?

[Rumplestrumpet]

Not about the VAT issue... Nor the ethics of private schooling, but rather the return on investment.

Private education is so expensive I wonder is it actually "worth it"? Most private schools near us are £25-30k a year, meaning £150k-£200k for secondary education. Will it improve their earning potential that much?

Would it make more sense to pay for some tutoring/extra curriculars and put that money into a buy to let for them to have when their older? For that money they'd have a flat paying for itself for them to take over when they are older enough, rather than trying their chances on the property market.

Interested in anyone whose parents forked out and think now maybe it wasn't the best investment...

Have you ever had children in private school?

I’ve had both.

Private primary is hands down better if just purely for the class sizes.

Totally depends on how wealthy you are. If you have to scrimp and save to get your children to private school it's possibly not worth it. If you can comfortably afford it, then it probably is.

It depends why you choose private if you get the return you expect.

We're sending our DS private for secondary next year. The only school we can afford is tiny & has less facilities & study opportunities but great student wellbeing. Why? DS received a message from a friend in the public HS & a student brought a knife to school the other day. This did not shock me. Bullying is rife & not addressed. I saw a verbal attack with vile language & threats to kill another student just outside the school gates. It's not financial return, but a safe environment where my ASD DS, who quickly descends in negative mental territory if challenged, can thrive & not just survive.

Alternatively, my cousin sent her DC to fancy 'old' private schools for the financial return & thinking it'd make solid, well behaved children & adults. The teaching was not great. Both boys struggled & needed tutors. Their behaviour isn't great, either. Ironically the father was state educated & has built a very profitable company.

Not everyone can afford to do this

This is essentially what we plan to do.

Dh and i were both privately educated in an era where if you got a scholarship or bursary and your parents skipped a holiday/ drove a slightly shitter car they could afford to send you but boy! did you know about how much it cost them! 😅
So you studied extra hard and didnt waste time on non academic subjects.like art or music because advanced maths was what was going to make you rich and successful 🤣🤣🤣

As a result we have a good(ish) income but no generational wealth coming our way. Private education just isnt a luxury we can afford. if we want our children to be financially comfortable we have to invest efficienctly

No-one that spends £200k will say it's a waste of money, otherwise it would be too depressing. As for earning potential, it's not true at all. Privately educated people I know don't have better jobs, it's not a guarantee. But the ones that follow the traditional private school routes into employment will probably reap the benefits

Wraparound care is a significant factor for me. I’m a single parent and if I used the local state school wraparound I’d likely need to change job or reduce my hours or hire a nanny (in each case at a cost similar to the cost of prep school). My career would also be more likely to stagnate.

The wraparound care at the state school only runs until 5.30, doesn’t run Fridays, is oversubscribed and is just kids running around in a hall with one adult supervising. The prep school wraparound is high quality, always available at short notice and includes hot meal etc.

And the prep school generally has an understanding that most parents have demanding jobs. So there’s no 4 week staggered start to reception (as in local primary), school calendar available for full year in advance, holiday club available almost every day of the year etc. I wouldn’t expect the local primary to work round the needs of professional parents in the same way but it does mean it’s not really suitable for me.

I don’t expect my “investment” to pay off financially. I mostly just chose the school I liked the best where I thought my children would have a good school experience. I think it’s about comparing the schools available to you and then looking at the opportunity cost of paying school fees.

I really don’t think there are many schools that people pay for for the social network. People probably do use private schools in the hope that there will be fewer disruptive children or because they are selective or effectively selective due to the demographics. But certainly at prep school level it would seem very odd to spend £10k+ a year in the hope that one of the 28 children in the year might be helpful to my sons in future. And the parents are mostly doctors, lawyers, accountants etc. I suppose these connections might conceivably be helpful to me professionally but there’s much easier and cheaper ways to network.

Definitely not worth it in most cases.

It's always funny how people try to impose this idea that sending a child to private is a financial 'investment' and that it's not usually one that pays off.

I have friends who send their children private and they know it won't guarantee their kids to get amazing grades but they just want their kids to have access to good extra-curricular activities at the school itself and have access to great facilities in a wonderful environment. Most people want the best for their kids (within their means) and so I understand why you would just automatically send your kids private without doing some cost benefit analysis.

Mine had no extracurricular life at all beyond football team, annual activity holiday for the sporty, and at one moment a lunchtime computer club (80s). They don't all have extracurricular.
You are damn right it's not worth it. 2 years of feeling help from charities for doctors' families until I was old enough to pass a scholarship, and the outcome was a breakdown at 14 under abusive homework pressure. I was wrongly wishfully perceived as academic and brainy just for early reading and some inconsistent islands of ability to read about science. Instead I turned out completely unable at the later type of schoolwork, the long answer questions that try to make you find someone to self that is beyond what they have told you: a method that does not work for everyone. It left me traumatised for life out of doing any more academics ever again.
That school had consistently bad A-level results too, and a brief existence, it was a flash in the pan, that popped into existence full of wild right wing promises about braininess on the back of a couple of kids, failed its predictions, then lost numbers steadily until closure.

@NoveltyCereal my children aren’t a fund that I invest in. I don’t decide which extracurricular activities to fund based on potential return on investment.

cost/benefit analysis is also highly subjective- how do you quantify the benefit of enjoying their education in order to then offset against cost? What is the value of a random side passion (music, sport, art) that they carry through life? What price tag to you place on mental health and the transformative value of appropriate interventions for send?

i am not paying for grades, but for the 100 other things that matter but aren’t necessarily quantifiable.

I think you're paying for the connections and the potential that brings. Well worth it if it gets your offspring in a lucrative career.

There may be schools where this is the case, but not the majority. In our indie about a third of parents are in trade, which can provide a lucrative career, though I suspect not the kind you have in mind. Another third are in public sector (teachers, nurses, doctors). Final third are a smorgasbord of private sector jobs, though as far as I can tell they offer little more than a bot of career guidance.

For us it was just something that was a nicer experience, both for the dc and us as parents. We didn't really consider it as a financial investment, but there are lots of things we pay for because it enhances our lives and makes things more pleasant - living in a nicer area, a fancier gym, premium holidays and pleasant transport. We haven't needed to sacrifice anything to send dc to their school and they'll get decent deposits and other financial backing to set them up as young adults. We still have enough money for multiple holidays a year, days out every weekend, expensive extracurriculars, throwing big chunks of money towards retirement, and we plan to get a tutor for 11+ on top of the school's prep.

State schools in our area are fairly decent so it wasn't about avoiding sink schools. And our dcs school isn't one with huge amounts of land and facilities, because it's in London. But it's worth it for us because we're happy with our dcs experience there and we're happy with how they treat us as parents.

Depends on the child, depends on the school - which is true whether state or private. At the top schools, educational standards can be high because they're selective, and you're also paying for the connections.

We have class sizes of under 10 at our state school.

I think it depends on the child and the school. My DH went to private school from the age of 7. His middle brother went from the age of 13. And his eldest brother went to state school. DH has a very well paid job 300+k, went to uni, has done a masters, is an over achiever, very driven. Middle brother has a degree, not motivated, has a mid level management role, earns 60K. Eldest brother didn't go to university, stayed in home town. Has a low skilled job, earns 40K.
Do I think schools made a difference to where they are now? Yes probably. Although DH has always been very clever and I suspect would have done just as well in state school.

Our son is showing signs of neurodiversity and currently having an assessment for autism. He was in a preschool with 30 kids in a class and could not cope, was totally overwhelmed. Now he is in a new private preschool with max 8 kids per class, loads of space, quieter and he is thriving

It depends on the local schools really. if you have great state schools with parents who are professionals and well connected but send their kids to state school like my dc's state school, then private education isn't worth it in our case especially when we are surrounded by mediocre private schools. I never thought my dc would be the right fit for a hot house type of school either and they point blank refuse kids with Sen anyway. My dc's state school have amazing Sen provision and operate like a private school apart from class sizes. So to me personally it depends on the local schools, your child's personality and what would be the right fit

Yes obviously I’m wealthy? And obviously I’m not trying to hide it given that I’m saying I can afford school fees! My point was that we are not from wealthy/posh backgrounds. We’ve done well financially (we can even afford school fees AND SkyTV which is apparently Rishi’s new measure of wealth). I’m pretty sure every good parent looks around at the options and chooses the best education they can for their kids

@taxguru this is the problem with state education kids involved in crimes should be sent to secure units so other kids aren't lead down that path. The states obsession with mixing kids from different backgrounds isn't helping anyone

It wouldn't have been worth it for my kids. Both went to state schools (neither were in the outstanding, oversubscribed category). The eldest got higher grades at A Level than the vast majority of his counterparts who went to academic privates. The youngest got almost straight 9s at GCSE. We've had to put the legwork in terms of extra curriculum and I'm the first to admit we're a middle class family in a leafy suburb.

I went to a private school on an assisted place and, as much as I despised the experience, it changed my life for the better and lifted me from a very impoverished background with a lot of adversity into the middle classes. So for me, the 'investment' Thatcher's government put into my education was very much worth it and I know a lot of assisted place kids say the same.

[quote="Madamebrioche1"]Our son is showing signs of neurodiversity and currently having an assessment for autism.[/quote]
All imagine, past or present, any kid getting sent to ambitious private school with this not yet recognised at all. Which was what happened to me

That’s a false equivalency.
7% of kids are privately educated. This does not mean their parents are the richest 7%. Some of them certainly will be in the top centiles but there will also be those who are scrimping due to SEN, dreadful local schools etc and are much less wealthy than a lot of families living in good catchment areas.

This. There is a huge spectrum between the most expensive boarding schools, where you're likely to be paying over £45000 a year without any extras, which is well above the country's average salary, just on school fees, and people who are scraping things together for a few thousand a term at a local day school.

What will happen (and will have always been happening in smaller numbers, because people's circumstances can change,) is there will be lots of people who can just manage even a substantial fees rise. Some may choose to move within the private sector, to a cheaper school, or from boarding to day. And some will choose to withdraw and go to the state sector, which is likely to hit smaller schools hardest, possibly in the lower fees end of the range, as this is where people are more likely to be struggling to meet the fees anyway. As a result, some schools will fail as the numbers become too small - some schools are already struggling after, and it won't take much to push them into unviability.

This will not affect areas equally, because private schools aren't distrusted evenly round the country, nor are good/bad state schools, plus every child has different needs, and suitable schools for that child may or may not be locally available. This means other factors will come into play for everyone's individual "is it worth it?" equation, such as travel times/costs, pastoral environment, extra curricular options, etc, etc.

The parents of private school children may not be the richest 7% but they are most definitely not in the poorest 7%. In facts I'd venture to say there were none to very few in the bottom 50%* If you can pay for private school fees you are well off.

*considering people who pay for their own fees only as that's the subject of this thread
**median UK household income in 2022 was £35K