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

The person can more than afford it but chooses not to because they’d have to cut back on spending on other stuff.

We paid from bonuses. There was never a year when there wasn’t enough to pay them but if there had been we had savings

My DC are currently at a state primary but DD will be going private in September for Year 7 as we have struggled to find a state secondary school locally that can support her SEN. DS is a few years younger so he will continue at state for now and we will then send him to the same school as DD for secondary. It's a small independent school and, thankfully, the fees are a lot less than many on this thread! Just under £20k a year, even with the VAT increase.

DH earns £90k a year. I am on £45k and work TTO so that affects my take home pay.
We are really fortunate that GP's have offered to contribute £650 per month towards fees. DD was also awarded an academic scholarship which gives us 15% discount so that also helps.

We're already in our 'forever home' in an area we love so no desire to move somewhere bigger and we don't mind cutting back on things like holidays abroad and new cars. We will still be able to live comfortably. If we couldn't go private I would most likely have to quit my job to Home Educate DD. The financial impact of that would be worse for us as a family, not to mention it would be devastating for me personally as I love my job! But of course I'd do it if I had to.

DH and I earn £200k gross between us and there's not a chance we could afford private education where we live (in the SE, not far from London). We did however buy an overpriced house a stone's throw from an excellent state school in the hope that that's a runner when our eldest is of secondary school age, which I appreciate is a privilege in its own right .

I think with the cost of living / inflation as it currently stands, private education will soon become confined those with significant wealth (whether through salary or inheritance), rather than the upper middle classes (and upwards) that it has been to date

I’d be surprised if you weren’t able to afford private on that level of income. Rarely have I cash flow modelled private education for someone earning £200k who can’t pay that out of income. The only time was when the families had 4+ children. So I think it would certainly be doable if you chose to.

We have 2 kids in private school. Both parents work full time and earn over £100K. We have a mortgage 2 cars and holidays but there is not much left over … we don’t do a lot of clothes/ meals etc . We save up to do one thing in the house / garden per year.

@TimeFlysWhenYoureHavingRumwho do you reckon coordinates this exactly? Quite a lot of the private school kids mine have graduated with have gone on to do things like teach. No one was consolidating wealth…more like haemorrhaging it in fees. Most people simply want their kids to not be in a class of 30 and to get a well rounded education. They’d happily send their kids state if the state was properly funded. No one is exactly dancing with delight to pay the fees!

I’m not surprised at all. Say between you, net total income per month is £10K. Not unusual to have a house in expensive areas of SE for £800K- let’s say mortgage is 600K so £3K per month at 4%. Can you really then comfortably afford £2K per month for child in private school? Not without serious saving in advance or extremely tight spending to a level that most people would rather avoid.

As I’ve said, it’s a question of priorities. The OP said they couldn’t afford it. I’m disputing that. They could if they wanted to; they’re choosing not to, because it’s not a priority.

Lucky you 85% of parents cannot afford private school…..

Vast majority parents cannot afford private schools …. Tory’s have slaughtered state schools last 14 years , where the majority 94% kids go …. Thanks a lot Tory voters

We could afford it but did not and both children got straight A’s at local comprehensive school. It’s not all its cracked up to be in some areas

So bored of this debate but adding my position so others understand.

we have one DC in private education because they didn’t get into the local secondary and the one they got was miles away and really poor by Ofsted. Fees are 19k a year now (were 14k when they started, now in year 9). That’s because of the addition of VAT and a small fee increase.

We both vote Labour so although i don’t personally like the policy (!!) I understand it.

We are not wealthy but id say we are ok. This is what we earn:

55k each

And we make a lot of sacrifices. Less holidays, no pension savings atm, we don’t go out much. Buy everything on vinted. Rarely eat out, kids don’t get pocket money and both have ‘jobs’ to earn their own spends.

We are not loaded, we don’t play polo at the weekends or own horses but we are lucky we live in the north, our mortgage is £1300 a month, which compared to our london friends is quite low. My parents also ‘donate’ 10% of the fees a year to us so that helps a little. We still pay 17k. When our second DC starts in a couple of years we will have no holidays abroad for the years they are both there. We know this, we chose it and I’m ok with the decision. We have saved as much as we can already so we will have a little aside for her. They have no university funds saved as it’s all gone on school. And we do no home improvements etc that aren’t minimal.

I am not delighted about paying 20% more in VAT but I accept it’s a decision that will benefit state education hopefully. Sadly it’s making life pretty hard for those ‘in the middle’ like us but I know I could always pull them out and send them to the ‘inadequate’ secondary school nearby. But I would rather not so until then it’s living frugally. My DCs are not SEN, but I feel truly sorry for those that are that pay and have been forced to pay more just to make sure their kids get an adequate education.

A fairer system in my opinion would have been just to tax more high earners but I would say that because I’m not one.

Im sure there are many people reading this who earn around this level and can understand that actually we have to budget very carefully to afford this. We knew when we signed up what the price would be but the additional VAT means that that extra £3500 a year has to be found and it’s come out of our pensions, holidays and luxuries budgets. But i fully appreciate I’m lucky to be able to even consider private school for my kids. I didn’t go to one myself and neither did any of my family but I did go to a good comp and sadly that wasn’t an option for my DCs where we live so we chose to pay.

If you have an extra £17,000+ each year available to pay for a second set of fees, why on earth don't you think you're wealthy?

Saw one of them the other day. Choosing to send three kids to private school and moaning that she didn't feel like a high earner because all her money was gone. Baffling.

This was very definitely our experience. Put one child through primary the whole way privately and always felt broke. Then realised that many, if not most, of her peers had grandparents paying the fees. Parents were subsequently all 15K better off a year than us!

Good question. I associate ‘wealth’ with having excess money, in our situation we’ve had to make big cut backs to afford the education BUT I agree that we are wealthy because if I wasn’t spending my money on my children’s education we would have a pretty nice lifestyle and would be able to save more / invest a bit (which we can’t do). I guess I just don’t think 55k a year is ‘wealthy’ but compared to some it’s definitely well off. I understand that. The average wage in the U.K. now is 40k for 40 year olds and although I see we are both above that…not by that much. I guess I see wealthy as the top 1-5% of earners which I think is 100k+ but I also understand that those people will have mortgages, bills etc and will also feel the extra VAT being applied to fees. We also didn’t do private primary so we saved a bit there and I understand that many can’t ever do that as there is never any surplus.

@Atissue123 I have been looking into sending my kids to private but I think we can’t afford it. My husband earns 52k and I’m part time due to having no family near by and juggling everything (which is a luxury but then most of my wages would go in childcare if I increased my hours)

Can I be cheeky and ask how you do it on 55k? Our mortgage alone is 1k a month. A breakdown or tips would be welcomed! 🥰

Yeah, people aren't poor just because they spend all their money 🤣🤣🤣

Well presumably it's £55k each.

They're bringing home £85,000 they're fine!

We have had two in private school at a time but now down to one. When we had two in at a time it was tough; we had to put some on mortgage. Older ones went to state sixth form college partly for money, partly because we think it is a good transition for sixth form.

Now we just have one. We don’t have the lifestyle we could have and have a higher mortgage than we would like but it’s manageable. By the time youngest finishes, we will be done paying uni support on older children and will be in a position to overpay the mortgage significantly. We may even keep youngest in private school for sixth form.

Household income is £200k and we pay £20k on private school fees (was £32k combined for 2 at a time but fees have gone up a lot last 2 years!), uni support is £13k (for 2 - we only pay a bit more than the government says we should contribute), mortgage is £2.5k pcm. We do overpay on that a bit.

I knew someone who sent two children to private school on a part time social workers salary. They paid 25% of the fees themselves, ex DH paid 25%, each set of grandparents paid 25%. They paid their own part time by constantly remortgaging their house but they also made some big changes to it. Not long after the children left school, they sold the house for a good price and downsized. Didn’t have to pay uni support due to income.

With difficulty! I’ll come back with more detail but In essence, we don’t have a car (DH has a work car) and I work from home. That’s obviously a perk.

No childcare as I do it all / they no longer need it. Kids do some clubs so no savings there but we do two self catering holidays a year, we don’t go out often, we don’t drink at all. No gym memberships etc, we both run / cycle which is free. Hardly pay anything into pensions (£200 a month) which is definitely not ideal but it’s only for 5 years. No cleaner anymore. No TV subscriptions other than Netflix, vinted for all clothes. I sell a lot on vinted also. We don’t buy lunch out, always make it ourselves and take it. Also don’t buy coffees etc. Basically we live relatively frugally day to day and treats are on holidays and occasionally we will go for lunch / a meal at the weekend, if we do that we often do brunch as it’s cheaper. When we do stuff as a family it tends to be a walk and a cafe for a coffee not the cinema / bowling etc. Hobbies wise we don’t spend much at all. DH has one hobby which costs £25 a month. My hobby is free!

The kids both also have jobs, that is their pocket money (dog walking and car cleaning). Neither of them wear labels, they wear second hand stuff 90% of the time. No expensive gadgets etc.

And we have no debt other than the mortgage. A massive help. We paid that all off pre starting private school and I guess that’s the only way we scrape by. When we have two there it will mean no holidays for that time (maybe a week in the U.K.) or putting it on a credit card for those years.

My take on it is this is short term. We’ve had a good life with some great holidays and bought nice clothes etc in the past but I don’t need any of that so I stopped it all and all that now goes on the school but in a few years they will have left and hopefully we will have a bit extra again for treats etc.

We also wanted to move house or extend our house but we haven’t because that would cost too much at the moment. But we can manage as we are.

I never buy on credit anymore. If I can’t afford it upfront, we don’t have it. We haven’t had any new furniture for many years.

Ahhh yes if it’s 55k each that’s different to our situation 😭

I don’t think there much hope for us, we do a lot of this already. We are very frugal but that’s just our natural style. Due to allergies we don’t eat out often and if we do it’s a McDonald’s for the kids. The money we save we use for a nice holiday once a year but that’s 4k which isn’t anywhere near enough for private school fees.

No idea! We certainly couldn't have afforded it, even on 3 salaries!

I know someone who moved to Birmingham and put her child into a high-profile private school, when they couldn't pay the fees they had to look for a bursary of some kind. I couldn't cope with the stress of that, TBH.