Do people expect ROI after paying private school fees?

[Enrew]

By ROI, I mean getting into top unis/ prestigious job/ high performer in a sport etc?

I ask after a family friend spent around 120k on child's education and child dropped out of good uni course to become personal trainer/ influencer. Nothing wrong with that career choice imo but friend seems resentful/ annoyed that after spending so much money child won't be doctor/ lawyer / banker and they could have done this career regardless of where they went to school. It's as if they had expectations all along.

I have no experience of private school system myself and my DC will go to local state school but thinking about it if I was paying out thousands per year for DC to have top education, I'd probably have some extra expectations.

Some of the parents of the children I was at school with, definitely did. Some were wanting more sport or extra curricular opportunities. Some were very invested in their children's happiness, some weren't.

Some of the private school parents I know now definitely are wanting to buy success; some of the parents I meet at my children's grammar chose it because their Oxbridge numbers are excellent, others because the school provides an outstanding and rich education for 'free'.

Parents are a diverse group of people...! These threads always assume "private school parents" are a homogenous group of automatons who are all the same. It's ludicrous.

A child isn't a racehorse, which increases value with an expensive trainer 😀

My DS goes to a small independent. He went for a scholarship at my suggestion and won it, after being lonely, miserable and bullied at the local primary, where he was excluded from everything because he didn't like football.

Now he's in a school where he doesn't get called names for liking maths and physics and chess, or reading a book at lunchtime. He is happy and confident. He has friends and is no longer depressed and miserable.

That's my ROI.

His gcse results are good but less important than knowing he is safe, happy and flourishing.

I think of influencers as people who contribute nothing at all to society, do nothing useful. They add nothing, create only fashion victims. Their job is to pressure people, subtly and not-so-sublty. No-one needs more pressure

Everyone expects an ROI, that's the whole point of having kids. 🤣

Depends where you set the bar. A genetic return is enough for me. As long as they are happy. Part of that is supplying food, clothes, space, and a decent education.

It really doesn't matter in the end! Money comes & goes, energy too.

Oh get over that chip on your shoulder. The poster never said that at all. She gave her personal reasons. The other 93% presumably either think the school they have achieved that already, or are financially trapped such that they can’t get their kid out. If the latter, it sucks for them but sniping at people who make different decisions won’t help the trapped kids at all.

I must admit I do wonder what my exSIL expectations are.

Her son has two very good scholarships in to two private schools (one is a public school with sizable fees), I understand why but I do wonder if he being dropped in to a different world. They don't have the money for any of the extras like skiing trips or any trips outside of his scholarships, or extra classes he might want to do, like most teens he's probably going to want the latest phone, trainers etc...difference being his parents will have to make sacrifices for these things and he will be with other children whose parents can easily afford those things. I went around to her house one January and the house was freezing but they couldn't afford to turn on the heating.
In comparison, my daughter, her niece has a completely different life at a good state 6th form, she has a loan horse, she's having driving lessons, school is a 5 minute walk away, she has a job and she comes home to a house I can afford to heat. This summer her dad (exH) and I paid for her to go on a horse riding holiday she really wanted to go on and I took her on a family holiday. I feel like we have given her a different lifestyle and different opportunities.

This! This nails it exactly!

But there’s probably someone out there thinking this is bullshit and you really sent them there cause you want them to get all A*s and good ‘connections’, whatever that means…

😂

I don’t expect a ROI. I sent mine private because they went to a state primary where the levels of disruption were off the scale. I felt secondary was an important stage of education, where they start to realise their interests etc and as it was the last possible stage of education, I wanted them to have a shot at being able to actually enjoy learning without the constant disruption experienced at primary.

In Y5 snd Y6 their daily classroom was affected by other kids who had awful parenting, behaviour issues, chairs thrown, crying teachers, classmate absconders, exposure to totally inappropriate language, all couple with the school mentality of focusing on trying to improve those at the lowest academic levels.

I jumped at the chance to go private for secondary and I have no regrets. I couldn’t care less about networking or prestige of uni.

@Carrotmccarrotface thank you. I won't lie and pretend that I'm not pleased my kids are away from kids with horrible anti -social behaviour and no interest in education.

There's SO much hypocrisy on MN about wanting kids to have "real life" experience as though the only way to achieve that is to go to school with the absolute financially worst off people or people whose families will threaten violence if their kid is disciplined. My kids go to school with people from all over the world, some of them from Ukraine and Albania and Syria. They're all on charity / scholarship programmes and my kids have seen what drive and ambition they have to get out of the shitty situation they've grown up in. No money involved. But apparently that's less real and valuable than going to school with the people we're supposed to pretend don't exist but all run a mile from to buy houses in "good" catchments.

There are dozens of threads on here with people explaining their reasons for using private and they are always outnumbered vastly by those who don't telling us why we do and how stupid we are because their child did great and got straight 9s at state. I'm in massive debt due to fees. It wasn't my plan. It's JUST doable and my circumstances make it necessary. That's all really. I totally understand that it's not doable at all for many and for those with unmet SEN needs in state, that is a tragedy.

@Werecat "Oh get over that chip on your shoulder. The poster never said that at all. She gave her personal reasons"

For accuracy. The poster concerned gave no reasons for her choice to send her children to private school from day 1 except "The only thing we want is for them to leave their education and not think "I hated every minute of school" Obviously implying that is an inevitability otherwise.

It's not a zero sum game. If you don't spend the money on private school, that money can be spent on something else.

So it is worthwhile thinking through what the value - that value doesn't have to be purely ££ - is gained from private school Vs other things you can do for your child now or later on.

So I think most parents are thinking about what they get for the money, they might not think about it per se as ROI, they might think of it more as "value for money" or just "value" but unless you're truly fabulously wealthy, you are thinking about these things.

I also agree with PP that you can't generalise here. There are absolutely private school parents who are thinking of it in £ terms - I know a few myself. A friend's son recently did badly in his GCSEs and was not allowed to go back to his private school's sixth form because his grades weren't good enough and she and her DH explicitly refer to feeling like they have wasted money.

But that doesn't mean all private school parents think of it purely in ££ terms either.

Not obvious at all.

I got the feeling the poster meant she had hated every second of her own education and was doing all she could to avoid that for her child. Not that it was inevitable.

@Meadowfinch "I got the feeling the poster meant she had hated every second of her own education and was doing all she could to avoid that for her child. Not that it was inevitable"

Fair enough. Not being gifted with psychic ability, I can only go on a poster's actual words.

@CurlewKate yet you are sufficiently psychic to read in views of state school parents that aren’t present. Funny that.

@Werecat " yet you are sufficiently psychic to read in views of state school parents that aren’t present. Funny that."

I'm afraid I don't understand.

No, one son goes to private school and one to state. The one at private has meant sacrifices for all of us in a single parent family but for his mental and physical health - he got removed from a school where he was failing, bullied both emotinallu and physically and the school did nothing to discipline the perpetrators We were at the stage of school refusal.
Three weeks at private school - he started reading books, got up without nagging, joined a club, smiled, laughed - something he had not done for nearly year.
He is there to thrive and be happy - what he does in life is his choice as long as he earns enough to be happy

Of note other son is at the same state school and having a completely different experience and v happy -same applies there - happy and earning enough to be happy is my aim

I wanted my dcs to enjoy their school days to the full and to come out of school with a fantastic work ethic, fit and healthy and resilient, with a bunch of lovely friends.

The fact that they all got fantastic results and into RG unis was a bonus.

I’ve wondered this myself before. Essentially by sending them to private school you’re buying an advantage or attempting to so it might sting a bit when it doesn’t materialise if you’ve made sacrifices to do that.

And ds went to a small state primary. Three of them left after year 6 to go privately. They've all done far better in their exams than their friends who went to our local state and are at better unis. I actually feel a bit sad for the couple of dcs who were always top of the class at primary and clearly very bright - neither did that well at A level at the state school, so to me that shows the school didn't do enough to grow their potential.

I don't think so - if the dcs have done as well as they are able - some dcs at non selective privates are not hugely academic. If they come out happy, having spent years being able to do their sport or drama or music or whatever to a high level then I'm sure the parents feel at least they've given their dcs as many opportunities as they can.

Honestly? I have a friend who went through a phase of asking why we went private “as they can still get good qualifications at a state school”. It’s peculiar to quiz others on the reasons for the decisions they made - particularly when implying that those decisions were somehow “wrong”.

I will say that I would be annoyed if one of my children (whether state or privately educated) became an influencer because I can’t see that it’s going to be a thing they can sustain in the long term.

I agree with the poster upthread who said that there’s sometimes an assumption that private school parents are homogeneous. Looking at the latest ISI census, 4 in 10 pupils (6 in 10 in London) are from a minority ethnic background and 1 in 5 are identified as having SEND. Most ISI schools are small. People have their own reasons for choosing this and they won’t all be the same.

@Withless "neither did that well at A level at the state school, so to me that shows the school didn't do enough to grow their potential."

Possibly. But also, one of the best indicators of academic success is parental wealth- so being able to afford private school may have been a contributing factor too.

Yes maybe - although one of the dcs had loads of fab holidays. Also if that were true, wouldn't that have been the case by year 6? My dc did much less well in the SATS than this particular child did.

Absolutely not, I hate that attitude. The DC didn't ask to be sent to private school. Our reasons weren't to make sure they had super fancy jobs etc but to make sure they both got the education they needed (for various reasons).

DS1 18 is a full time musician at the moment, DS2 16 is doing a L2 apprenticeship. Both got good GCSE grades, DS1 6-9s, DS2 mostly 5s but some higher/some lower. They did how I expected them to do, DS2 maybe slightly better (he has additional needs).

DS1 has the academic ability to do most things but music is what he loves. I'd rather him do what he loves than a high flying career he does just for the money. I don't see it as a waste of the school fees.

Jeeez no that's not how it works. This more like the attitude of a selective grammar.