We can’t afford to live anymore

[ThatNavyPoster]

Private school fees are killing me.

We can’t afford to live anymore. I don’t know what to do. On paper my husband and I make good money, but for the past year we’ve been drowning financially.

We send our daughter to a private school. She was attending the local village school from reception to year 3, she was the only brown child in her school. Some of the older children were calling her the P word (we are not from Pakistani, not that it would be excusable if we were) and some children in her class were making comments about her skin colour and curly hair. Our daughter had been very withdrawn the whole of year 2 and 3, we put it down to post Covid disruption.

We did not expect this, my husband and his family have been in this village forever, generations are buried in the village church. Im brown, I was born in this country and so was my Mum.

We had no idea of the bullying until I picked our daughter up from school and she had cut her hair and coloured her hands with pink pen. She said she didn’t want to have curly hair or brown skin. We tried to work with the school to address the bullying, it continued all through year 3, she was becoming so distressed and started refusing to go to school.

For year 4 we moved her to a school a 45 min drive away, in a bigger town, hoping it would be more diverse. The drive was costing us £400 in petrol a month, plus £450 in wrap around care. My husband and I considered moving, he has been in the village his whole life, he has siblings and nieces/nephews here, we were helping provide care for his elderly grandparents, despite this, he agreed to move closer to the new school. Then the bullying with the p word started again, my daughter was told “go back to your country”.

We moved her to the private school 30 mins drive from our house at the beginning of year 5, she was a different child almost overnight. It’s more ethnically diverse than either of the 2 state schools, there has been no racist bullying and she has some lovely friends. She’s now in year 7. In order to afford it we don’t eat out or go on holiday, we drive a 15 year old car and rent an EV through work. We rent out our granny annexe.

We have decent paying jobs in the NHS, but we’re drowning, over the past year our outgoings have increased by close to £1000/ month due to energy price increases (we’re on LPG oil due to being in the countryside), food price rises, petrol, vat on school fees/school fee rises. We can’t afford to live anymore.

The autumn budget tax rises will finish us off by the time they are all implemented. We are not eligible for any benefits except tax free childcare. We are not eligible for any business and the school doesn’t do scholarships. The only thing left to cut is the school fees, and I am coming to the realisation that my daughter will have to go back into the system that made her hate herself because of the colour of her skin. That thought is killing me, but the school fees are killing me. I can’t see a way out.

No there really isn't. There are class issues and people of higher classes tend to have lighter skin. There is also xenophobia oriented around gentrification.There arent issues with racism among Jamaicans. Out of many, we are One.

You can afford to live. You just can't afford school fees. Just a bit of a difference!

What year is your dd? Most people cannot afford private school, that is your issue. I know you want to do what’s best for your dd and you want her to be happy but you don’t need to run from state schools you need to tackle this head on. Racism is terrible in any circumstance and needs to be addressed head on, the school should be approached in the first instance escalating up to the mp and department of education should it not be addressed immediately. So so wrong of her to experience this and I really feel for you. I wonder how many of the kids in the first school even really understood what they were doing, just parroting bigotry in their parents? Secondary schools are bigger and thus generally more diverse, possibly an option? If not look about to see if there’s any charities that support fees in your circumstances, approach the school too . I know your dh loves his home village but I’d sly be considering moving myself, I hated the closed mindedness of village life (I’m white so wasn’t race related but we were outsiders so not welcome). Wish I could give specifics on funding but I do know of someone who got funding for “bright black children” to private schools, I’ll ask her later if the foundation name. Thinking of you all.

Your only other option is finding a much smaller property. Those energy bills sound crazy. So sorry you are in this situation, I can't even imagine such a lack of diversity where I live - my kids are in the white minority!

Really don’t get why you’re down “close to £1000/ month due to energy price increases (we’re on LPG oil due to being in the countryside), food price rises, petrol, vat on school fees/school fee rises. “

VAT on school fees will be around £300, we’re not finding food going up that much but eat inexpensively and mostly veggie so it must be your oil and petrolwhich still sounds like a lot. So move to a more diverse area and better house as regards energy or get an electric car.

No holidays or eating out is the norm for many.

If your own husband (and therefore kids) are mixed, it was odd to go with thr story of the only (?) brown girl in the school and the pony... had you spoken about your family's experiences your opinion may have carried more weight.

We were in a predominantly white primary in a large village. There was actually some racism in the class in the early years. We are white but got wind of it through our child. I went up to the school and spoke to the teachers and notified the head. I don't know who else spoke to them as well, but I know a few people that did. The school were really good and put in place a lot of work with the children on the topic, putting up posters, group work, specific sessions and assemblies etc.
I can't speak for the experience of the families affected but i can say the school did a lot of work to remedy the situation. And I do know that all the children were firm friends by the following year and the children I knew to be problem ended up good friends with the few that were experiencing the racism.
Could you speak to the village school head and say you want to move back but your concerns and ask them how they deal and would deal with it.
There are always kids that come from families with strong views but this is in every school and it's up to the school to make sure that in school, all pupils feel safe and included and racist behaviour and language is not accepted in any form.
There will be parents of all races horrified to know that this is happening and will want to support the school in ensuring that this does not happen.
On a different note , we are currently downsizing and the relief I am feeling from knowing all my bills are reducing now has been like a weight off my shoulders. We have a nice big house and good life and it was being squeezed at every turn to the point where we were miserable and scrimping each month, and so we just decided that downsizing was the only option. Now we have taken the leap it feels so freeing.

The girl left the village school, @Shedeboodinia
It would be pointless.
Plus she's now secondary.

Someone I know made a decision of moving from London to a very white, very rural neighbourhood and then constantly complained his mixed race kids felt left out and picked on.

Move somewhere more diverse. It would surely benefit the whole family. Get your DD to a good state school.

And, sorry - but your language is offensive. Someone who can pay for a private school is in no way someone who "can't afford to live". Its the same if I decide to get a huge mortgage or a crazy expensive car and then complain I have no money left for food. Totally self inflicted.

Wow this has to win the award for the least helpful response of 2025.

Private school is a privilege I'm afraid not excusing the bullying that's disgusting but you clearly can't afford it you will have to move areas to get your daughter a better chance of a better school

Did your DD’s school pass on the full VAT increase?

Our London friends have already experienced racism, not in schools but in everyday life. Third generation born in the UK, privately educated with RP being asked by their NHS patients "when are you going back to your home country?".

It's spreading fast and London is not immune.

I really don’t think you can describe blond haired blue eyed and brown haired green eyed kids as mixed. My husband doesn’t even really think of himself as mixed because he ‘passes’ as white as they say these days. His father is Cape Coloured. He has Khoisan, Khosa, Malay, Bengali and European ancestry. If you did a DNA test the whole world would light up. His mother is half English and half Scandinavian. He has soft European hair like his mother, not surely black hair like his father. So, while you can tell there’s something extra if you know, I really don’t think you’d stop and think about it. Ditto my children. It’s absurd to co-opt the experience of others when we haven’t had those experiences at all. And my father in law will happily tell you that Britain is the least racist country in the world and that he’s never had a bad experience here, having lived in South Africa, the United States and then Britain. His fierce loyalty to this country is unsurpassed.

This.

Cut your coat according to your cloth. If all you can make is a waistcoat for now, so be it.

I guess it depends where you live in London.

But yes, racism is everywhere - but some areas are notoriously racist.

Re: "when are you going back home" - I'm still asked "where are you from, are you going back home" - nothing to do with the race in my case. Some people are just wankers. (I just have an accent)

I’m really saddened to hear about your daughter’s experiences OP. It’s a terrible situation when a school cannot control racist bullying and honestly, shame on them.

Obviously not for race reasons but we moved to Australia because I didn’t really want to come out of private school and attend one of the local schools which we moved from with good reason.

That is a common response and I understand why you're saying it, but Jamaica has not vanquished racism and the classism you mention is colourism, which is a subtler form. It's complex and many papers have been written on the subject and how it's a long way from having no issues. But it's a good ideal to reach for.

I was often the only non-white child. I had one experience of racist bullying, the state system isn’t a hot bed of racism challenge this

Except the stats say otherwise about racism in schools, state and private. Racism is baked into the system, enacted by racists and quietly reinforced through liberal indifference. The OP has been lucky with the third school.

Just because you weren’t aware of the racism doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. You probably got a 'we don't think of you as South Asian (insert ethnicity as appropriate)' Pass.

Just to chip in that a school does not need to be in a diverse area in order to stamp on racism.

I was for a long time governor at our village school in an area that could not in the least be described as diverse. We had two mixed race sisters join school and if there had been even the tiniest hint of racism we would have been down on it like a ton of bricks.

We moved from a city and gas heating to a village and oil heating. Our bills are much lower with oil.

We get the bulk of our oil in the summer when the prices are lower and then only have to buy in winter at the higher price if we get very low which we rarely do.

I like to be warm and have the heating often have the heating on during the day as I am at home.

I can't understand how the OP's heating bill is so high unless she lives in a mansion and has the heating very high every day

OP your post should read “we can’t afford to send our child to private school anymore”. Most people can’t afford this, even a couple with decent paying jobs. You need to be realistic about this.

Australia is great for white people.

Colourism is different to racism. It is complex and the more recent influx of immigrants to Jamaica have changed things.