How do parents afford private school

[Tonnnnnn]

Around here private school fees for secondary school are around £30k per year.

What sort of salary is required to fund two kids at private school? I am assuming both parents need to earn around £100k mark or one parent needs to earn £250k.

Even then, mortgage, holidays etc.

Aside from a few high paying industries ( banking, law) most places would t pay this much unless you were senior, and there are thousands of private school places around London.

Wonder if people are using their salaries or if it’s family
money paying for the fees

If I think about the professions of the private parents in our schools they include: doctors, dentists, architects, finance, solicitors, farmers, tech startups up folks, global execs for various companies including supply chain/IT/Quality/Ruegulatory/Sales, senior execs for pharma and med device alongside lots and lots of stay at home mums. Anyone with a finance or solicitor husband stays at home that we’ve met as those husbands seem to work the longest hours.

Most senior associates in law are still only in their late 20s or 30s, they are not the age group who are sending children to private school.

I sent you IB salaries to disprove your point that ‘even IB’ isn’t paying their junior staff that kind of money, because they clearly do. Just as PP sent you city law salaries.

You’re being deliberately obtuse in the discussion.

Anyone with a finance or solicitor husband stays at home that we’ve met as those husbands seem to work the longest hours.

Sometimes us wives can be lawyers who wotk long hours too!

High paying jobs for us. Fees paid for entirely from our salaries by DH and me. Which is the same for all our bills. We’ve never had family help, whether direct financial or childcare support (they wouldn’t be able to). We have three DC’s. Fees are around £60k a year out of taxed income.

But I suspect that grandparents do pay a lot of the school fees in my area (not London), or they otherwise subsidise and featherbed a lot of the lifestyle choices of their DCs/DGC.

Our son will be starting private secondary school in September (attended state primary). My husband is a high earner, my income is average and grandparents have offered to split the costs with us. We are very lucky to have this option. Of the families taking the private route for secondary in my son's year, 50% are being helped by grandparents - to my knowledge- it's not something people will always talk about though.

@Namechangeno500Quite. I was relaying the experience of the families at our school not in general. Of course both parents can work long hours and utilise a nanny/boarding.

I know and I do see it at our school - there are more stay at home mums still. But our situation is that I'm the higher earner, and work longer hours, and my husband does the school run etc etc. But yes our fees are paid out of salary- no grandparents to help unfortunately!

I really really wish law trainees were on 200k as the norm! 😂

Some people are lucky to have inheritance or their kids have an inheritance. Some people get it funded or part funded through local authority if for SEND reasons. Some people just do have really good salaries, or work more than one full time job per parent. Some families choose to send only one child (if for a particular reason that that child needs it more) and/or only some years of their schooling - then save in advance/pay off loans for many years before/after. Some people remortgage their houses. Some children get scholarships or bursaries to help with the cost. Some families share the cost if there are cousins with a big age gap so that two or three families are paying into one set of fees at a time for a long period of time. Many families probably juggle several of the above. It's just really dependent on what your alternatives are as state school options very different in different parts of the country and depending on if your child has particular things they need from a school.

I meant NQs. Not trainees. Obv I’m talking about US and MC firms not the high street firms.

We could afford it but we'd have a lot less than we'd like for other things. Salaries £200k & £120k (part time, will be £150k when I return to full time).

The people we know paying it:

• high earners (£300k plus)
• grandparents paying
• had family help/inheritance meaning they have lower/no mortgage
• or are med/high earners but willing to sacrifice EVERYTHING to pay it because they think its a magic bullet

Anyone with a finance or solicitor husband stays at home that we’ve met as those husbands seem to work the longest hours

Lol. I have a "finance husband" but i also lead a team of 40 in finance! Lots of my senior colleagues in finance & law are women with kids.

It’s not a magic bullet. But parents have a responsibility to get the best they can for their child. Id feel I’d failed in that regard if they had to attend the state free schools. All so I could afford to buy some crappy consumerist crap. It’s a question of how highly you value education. And many people don’t. Which is a shame.

Failed....? Jesus Christ.

State schools aren't all awful you know. And not all fee paying schools are good...

Errr... no amount of avoiding consumerist crap will allow me to pay private fees of £30k a year 🤣

And that is true of most people’s situation. What an ignorant and tone deaf comment by springtimemagic. I get she was responding to someone’s decision not to pay when they can afford it, but it’s outside the reach of the vast majority of parents.

Most people are not supposed to be able to afford private school. That's the whoe point of it - to restrict social mobility and keep wealth concentrated in the top 1%.

We are looking at private school for our DS. We can afford the fees from salary and the fees will be £30k (but it’s not just fees - uniform is more expensive plus more expensive school trips, transport etc it all adds up). I earn £80k (I’m part time) and DH earns about £85k. For the last 3 years we have been putting money aside every month to help cover the additional costs beyond fees. When DD goes to secondary school we will need to remortgage our house to cover paying two lots of fees for the 4 years they overlap. This is a lifestyle decision for us though - DS is autistic and we just feel he will be lost in the state system with big class sizes. And we feel a lot of guilt about only sending one private hence the decision to remortgage when it comes to DD.

I don't think the aim of private school is to restrict social mobility at all. Yes, not many can afford it but if you can then why shouldn't you choose to spend your money in your child's education?

Each to their own....

We live rurally, so our fees are 'only' 20k a year. DH earns a fairly good salary and my mum has helped out a bit. Still feels like we have no spare cash now, and I am extremely grateful that my younger one has got into an outstanding state school instead.

Which is exactly why they keep building more and more professional standard theatres and sports facilities and raising their fees far above inflation. If it becomes affordable it becomes pointless. Nobody wants to go to an affordable private school. If they did, somebody would have built one by now.

High household income - both DH & I have been higher rate tax payers since our late 20's (now 53 & 55). I'm a saver/planner at heart so we didn't leave it to chance and have been saving/investing since the DC were born (in our 30's).

DH hit senior management (telecoms) before 40 and I would define it as having P&L responsibility. We've relocated several times across the UK to follow job opportunities/promotions when the DC were young - some of these were forced due to redundancies so it has been a career rollercoaster! We definitely realised that we would have to plan ahead for private education at the secondary school stage and made financial decisions like maintaining modest household expenditure (relative to income) because we were investing it. So, no fat pension contributions and overpaying a modest mortgage (offset) to pay it completely down before we had to pay 2 sets of secondary school fees (3 age gap so a 4 yr overlap of double fees). This was our route to affording it - having no mortgage by the time DC2 reached secondary school age. So, you could say that we sacrificed a more expensive house/lifestyle in order to pay school fees.

DC1 is now at uni and DC2 is at state 6th form so we have finished with school fees. The last year of double fees came to £40K which was before the introduction of VAT. If we were still paying now, it would be nearly £50k!

Because you don’t value education as much as those who do.

Well that certainly is becoming the case with Labour’s introduction of vat on them. Only the really wealthy can afford them now and the lower earnings have been priced out. A great shame.

What patronising nonsense. So not having the money to pay £30k a year in private school fees means you don't value education? Yeah, right.