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 Our daughter had been very withdrawn the whole of year 2 and 3, we put it down to post Covid disruption.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

Are they doctors? Maybe not.

could you move to a nice bit of Leeds or possibly York OP? Whilst I realise York isn’t that diverse, it’s the kind of place in my opinion with a lot of middle class parents who would frown on displays of racism - same is true here in Bath, I have 2 friends with mixed race children and a friend whose child is black and none have experienced any issues. Both places still quite handy for nipping back to family reasonably regularly

OP I have read all your posts.
If you are NHS doctors that can do private work it is definitely something you need to consider and take up. My DH is a hospital consultant. He did just NHS consultant work for 6 years before reducing and taking on private work. He also had the same thoughts around if it was morally right.

Earnings privately has given a cushion that we definitely didn't have before even with our DC in state school. Please explore the private side of your specialty, it may mean you don't have to leave your home or your close family. Good luck.

@Crikeyalmighty Middle class doesn’t rule out racism!
Bullies can be anywhere that is a bit of a snooty comment to make.

True. The very expensive private school near us has a reputation for bullying and racism.

Sadly, rural Britain can be even more racist than cities and it's shameful that you've had to make these choices. But your daughter is presumably in secondary school now so there will be a broader range of pupils from different backgrounds. Visit the state secondary schools and see how diverse they are.
You have other options too. You could downsize your home or move to somewhere less rural with access to a city.

She knows that. Helpful. Not.

You can afford to live if you stop paying school fees.

That is just not true. Grammar school maybe. There are some excellent and highly academic schools in the UAE that achieve outstanding GCSE grades. Not to mention facilities that are independent school standard.

Ah yes, look at me unable to feel bad for someone who can’t afford private school fees anymore. Despite being well paid and living on gifted land.
Heart of stone. Or perhaps my views are coloured by the volunteering I do driving a van that delivers to food banks, a woman’s refuge and a few local schools where some of the families are struggling so much that the school makes up food parcels for the weekends for some pupils to take home on a Friday.

It depends where you are in the UK to have this thinking. The education standard in Dubai is not comparable sorry if you have that opinion. The entry levels to top universities in the UK after Dubai education are also not comparative. Yes they look fancy and flash (the facilities you refer to) like the whole of Dubai but the substance is not there.
If you’re a teacher in Dubai or have moved to Dubai with your children you’ll have the opinion that Dubai education is better but it really is not.

There's always someone somewhere having it harder. It's not a competition.

Right. ‘We can’t afford to live’ - aka private school fees are too high. Pur-lease.

I’ve lived in both - I don’t deny it happens across the board but going on experience I’ve not seen it as ‘open’ in middle class areas, more the kind of thing that was kept between 4 walls or in people’s heads - as I say it’s my experience of being brought up and living in a very working class area till I was31 and more middle class areas since. I went back to my hometown for first time in 24 years last year and first time I had heard any racist stuff openly on the street for very many years.

So many people have suggested moving the child back to State secondary. Would this be in a different area?
Presumably primary racists grow into secondary racists, and both problem schools would be feeding the little racists into the big school. What would be different at the village secondary?

I would move to a more ethnically diverse area with a good state school.

Firstly, there's unlikely to be a "village secondary". It will be in a town, and it'll be very much bigger. It will almost certainly be more diverse, and have more robust policies dealing with racism and bullying.
The nasty primary school kids will have to behave more appropriately.

She's not going to move.

This is hilarious 😂 😂😂.
My daughter is in a London
private school where many of the very middle class boys are as racist as hell.

She's recently distanced herself from a young girl who is trying to work on her boyfriend's racism, as the racist way he speaks to and about the Chinese students is so at odds with who she thinks he is ( a nice middle class boy, who is just such a lovely boy otherwise 🤦🏾‍♀️).

Aah. Hopefully that is the case if the does need to move her. The poor girl has been through enough.

You're quite wrong, growing up in the 70s, New England, there was quite a lot of racist name-calling, from parents as well as children, when we moved to our new town. There were 10 black families in a town of 16,000 white people.
It's still a very wealthy area and my mother moved us their so we could have the benefits of a calm, law-abiding, rather privileged upbringing. Best thing she ever did. We all flourished and once people got over the shock of having black neighbours, we all got along. I got in a few fights the 1st year as my nature was to fight back if someone started on me. For the most part, I just got on with it..
The idea of mum selling our house because I was upset would have been ludicrous. We lived in a great area. I had to make the best of it, and I did...
Growing up in an almost exclusively white environment did me no harm. I got teased by black people for not being able to dance, but I, and my siblings have all done well socially, academically, financially. I put it down to our economically successful environment, and a mother who expected the best from us, irrespective of our feelings.

So, there...
Very little diversity, even less representation, but we still managed to succeed. Diversity is overrated. OP doesn't need to move. She needs to encourage her daughter that she's beautiful, smart and can be whatever she wants, in any town. And a home where her family is from sounds far more important than seeing lots of brown faces.. controversial take, perhaps, but that's my opinion...😊

I think probably 1970s New England was quite different to the UK. There was still a Civil Rights struggle, although the ERA and the VRA had been passed, it was still a long way from equality.
In the UK, race relations evolved very differently. I think your experience is very interesting, @TheJollyBee but perhaps different to one in the UK.

Interesting. We have first hand experience of three private schools, in London and very white countryside, and whilst DC did notice some unpleasant behaviour and bullying, for some reason it was never racist 🤔
Perhaps it's down to the schools dealing with it straight away, I don't really know.

For all the folks advising her to move...
What happens when her daughter starts getting bullied by other brown or black girls?
Or harassed/pressured by brown or black boys?
Grass isn't always greener...

Her first one was quite diverse and no racism issues at all. Where she is now for 6th form, it's quite a different with a very vocal few who are racists.

There are comments about Black and South Asian children, but she says the conversations around the Chinese children, who make up a large portion of the school's boarders, is particularly disgusting. She says the level of ignorance and faux- superiority would be funny, if not so ugly.

She was told quite specifically to avoid the Chinese children when she started, as they are unfriendly, x,y and z. Incidentally, she said outside the persons she knew before starting, they were most welcoming to her and she's very much a getting to know people for herself person.

This is her first term, so I have no idea how effectively the school deal with it. Presumably not very, as the students who are, are so open with their views.