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 Our daughter had been very withdrawn the whole of year 2 and 3, we put it down to post Covid disruption.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.

Right. So they'd work part time, even though this whole issue is about not having enough money? I don't understand how reducing their hours would help them financially.

I think the reducing hours was about NHS hours and picking up private work- we think they're drs but OP not confirmed.

So sorry your daughter has experienced this. I understand exactly the area and community you describe ! We too are very rural, live around farming families who have lived in the villages for centuries, everyone knows everyone. Local state secondary is 35 min school bus (the closest) that serves about 15 villages, and the next is about 40
mins in the other direction again serving the same villages.

I am absolutely not racist however i can hands down say that within the 5 village primaries there is not one non white child/family. And even at the state secondaries as they serve the villages (as outlined above) it would be extremely unlikely. The neareast primary or state secondary that would be in a town where it would be more multicultural and diverse would be close to 30 miles away.

So i do understand. However i don’t know how you can change it without increasing your income.

I really dislike the title of this post, it's so misleading & almost sounds like the OP is about to be put out on the streets!

And a bit crass when there are people who genuinely cannot afford to live & rely on food banks etc to survive.

It's hard having to move areas especially with children, but sometimes the best of a bad set of options.

You're right. There's no easy solution. They can't afford private education. They can't afford the fuel bills. They live somewhere rural where people think it's ok to be racist.
Something's got to give.

No. I'm responding to a poster who thinks they should give up working, or work part time in order to home school.

I believe your daughter was bullied. And I believe it was racism based. However, I agree with someone who posted before me - why, before considering everything else, have you not challenged the school? In my DS's school bullying and racism, if confirmed, result in temporary and then permanent exclusion. Your school should have made more effort to protect and support your daughter.

With regards to your your other replies - if you really "could not afford to live" you would not be whining but would have been doing something to stop yourself from dying of hunger on the streets. I'm just calling bullshit on your whining. Just another Labour bashing post (eye roll).

Agreed. "Can't afford to live" means you've got no money for food or fuel or housing. Not that you're spending all your money on a luxury by choice - even if there are good reasons behind that choice.

The way things are clearly isn't working for OPs family. The answer is to move the daughter into a state secondary. If they have to move to do so, then so be it. It needn't be forever, there is no reason why you have to give up all the local connections and family relationships just because you live half an hour down the road for a few years while your child finishes school.

Children are vulnerable when they are in any form of institution.
Paedophiles are attracted to any profession that gives them access to children.
Any child living with any unrelated male is at greater risk of sexual abuse than those who live with their biological father and mother.

Institutions always put their reputation ahead of child safety until they are exposed.

https://news.sky.com/story/boarding-schools-are-an-ideal-environment-for-grooming-report-finds-12554803

Boarding schools are the "ideal environment for grooming", with children relying more on staff than in non-residential institutions, an investigation into child sexual abuse has found.

Have you read the report- it's mainly on a couple of particular sorts of schools, not mainstream boarding schools. Sensational headline but it's not a wide review. And the report goes back almost 60 years.

Abuse can be anywhere- most of it in families.
Or the church, or sport, or the Scouts etc. All kinds of situations where children are found.

Anyway this is completely off topic. OP's daughter isn't going to one.

Quite.

Home schooling is often done with tutors coming in or the child going to them.

Dubai British schools are mainly the equivalent of state schools. The quality of education is not better.

I copied in a link from one investigation as an example - there are many others and even more reports in newspapers when former students speak out as adults - too many to pretend that it's not common.

Also, I was responding to someone recommending a boarding school - sorry if that upset you.

I think move to private sector and increase your wages. In the meantime, one of you could look to pick up a second job in the evening.

Your daughter’s needs should come before grandparents.

Look you have to do what you have to do and if you need to leave NHS that’s ok. Maybe it’s just temporary.

you are not leaving your husband’s family forever, you can still see them on regular basis. I moved to a different country and it’s still ok. I agree with other posters that your daughter’s needs come ahead of grandparents. If they desperately want you to say they can sell some of their assets and pay for the school for several years ahead.

it’s odd that your husband’s family lived there for so long and didn’t experience racism but your daughter does - what does your husband say?? Or did he hide these attitudes from you?

So you’d put your husbands family and your daughters family over potentially getting poor and not affording life. I’m sorry but that’s wrong. You need to live and you need to move to a more diverse area. Your daughter deserves a beautiful life in which she will love herself . You can still see the family etc.

Where is your nearest district general hospital? Foreign doctors and other HCPs tend to settle near to the hospital, so the closest schools to big hospitals are unusually ethnically diverse often in otherwise predominantly white areas.

No, the suggestion was that they educate with a network of parents.
I cannot see how any of these suggestions would help their dire economic situation.

I wonder where you live? I brought up two dual-heritage DC in a Midland's market town (pop. c.15,000) in the 80s/90s. I confronted racists to their face, once in the main street of the town, but the schools we used were church schools (RC) where racism was stamped on in the primary sector and dealt with sporadically in the secondary school because the school did not understand the racism going on. A boy of Indian heritage was calling one of my DC 'ci-ci' (which I daresay you know is as awful as 'Pki') and the school could not accept that a brown DC was racist to a brown DC. We managed this and DC grew up happy and now one has DC of their own, also brought up in a small market town in the Midlands - church schools again selected (DGC baptised) and nearby city very multicultural.
But I suspect villages in our locality are like yours. The solution is to move at least to a town and choose a CofE or RC school (if DC not baptised get this done in local church). If you are in the south and can move jobs then the Midlands and north are much cheaper for housing (and more house for your money) and populations in towns and cities are more diverse.💐
Edited by MNHQ to redact offensive terms*

I’m suspecting OP that you are in an area that may be fine for your H but isn’t for you or daughter , because you clearly can’t afford this lifestyle - you might well be able to afford similar elsewhere that’s a bit more diverse or even possibly just a more liberal area where racism is actually taken incredibly seriously, but not paying for private school too - I think a lot of people who can afford private school are often in the position of having paying/helping grandparents, inheritances , sold businesses etc . My son switched secondary 3 times for different reasons, 2 state and 1 private state boarding in the middle- we sadly had to realise that we simply couldn’t afford it , we thought we could but the ‘help’ we were offered just didn’t happen - I’m sorry it isn’t working out from the financial angle but that’s life , you can’t manifest money out of thin air - by all means though see if you can get the school to look at reduced fees. Otherwise I would consider moving somewhere that’s bigger, more mixed ethnically and with good /good enough state schools - don’t know if you can afford London/home counties money but it is one advantage, same in most bigger city’s -

That's a daft idea. Although the lower earner giving up for a while might work? We're talking 7 years, though. Yes, daft.

Realise OP is in North East, so housing is relatively cheap. Also, small towns may be no more diverse than villages. I can't think of a solution other than church school in large town. But if they are doctors then private fees for one DC is surely ok?

I agree 👍