Private school fees- is it worth the £250k?

[SchoolDilemmas123]

AIBU about potential school fees?
I want to send my DS to the local state secondary but my DH wants the private route.

My DS has a place at an independent school for year 7, starting in Sept 2026.
The fees in his first year will be £30,000 (£10,000 per term) plus uniform and trips.
So we are looking at least £250,000 for his education until the end 6th form.

When you put it like that…. It’s an awful
Lot money that might be better spent elsewhere. We could invest the money now and give him £300,000 when he turns 25 for a house deposit for example

There is so much to weigh up! It’s a great school, not a hot house but pretty academic. The school suits him very well. He would thrive there.

we have a ‘good’ state secondary school to consider. Not outstanding, gets very average results. He would hopefully be fine there. I want to send him here with his friends from his state primary.

We can afford the fees but it would eat into our future savings. We live in a normal house, no mortgage, and both work full time.

I don’t know what to do for the best long term.

Anyone else had these considerations? If so how did you reach your decision, and are you happy with it?

YANBU - send him to the state secondary.
YABU - go private

That’s a hell of a financial commitment without deep familial wealth. The world is in flux I am pretty anxious about the impact of AI on the job market. Don’t think going to private school with fix that. Personally I wouldn’t risk it in this climate.

We are paying for university of course but am even questioning tbh. Met a lovely mum and son at the weekend. Private school top class degree from Cambridge he left a year ago. Can’t get a job. Terrifying.

And that is why I am thinking that way re saving for them instead - as you say, being able to afford a flat with a huge deposit (or in full) from 25 is probably a bigger leg up now than the education.

I have heard exactly the same reports re: schools from parents (also London based). Every parent works in financial services - or the international super-rich. The children of the ‘high flying’ middle class professionals have been priced out and are at the state schools instead.

Another consideration is… the very real possibility my children might not want to move out till they’re about 30 - so then is that money better spent on a house to accommodate us all, and downsizing when they’re in a position to be able to buy themselves?

Do you have evidence that grandparents pay these fees?
As for doctors…really? I thought they were all striking for a pay rise as their salary has gone down & down in past 10 years while fees have increased year on year?

Can you pay for uni fees and accommodation? Can you pay for a house deposit?

If not, I’d redirect the £250k to house and uni. Much more important IMO for their overall life success.

I know, I was just speaking about my own experience.

But I do also know lots of people who sent their children to more bog standard private schools and now those children are in their 20s, a lot of those parents regret it. One in particular feels like they put their lives on hold financially for a (very happy!) child that ended up wanting to work in retail. Nothing wrong with that, they just assumed that all that money on private school, their child would “achieve” more. They are just happy that their child is happy, but they do regret all the money spent.

Bit again, I can only tell you my lived experience of people I know.

I think on the whole those dying of drugs in Scotland (predominantly those from incredibly deprived communities) aren’t part of the private school system.

I am not in the income bracket that could even consider educating their child outside the state system, but looking at my children and their friends, and my friends' children, I don't think it makes a big difference as long as the local state schools are decent.

The young people I know who have been state educated have gone to Oxbridge and Russell group universities, top art and drama schools, highly competitive degree apprenticeships or else are doing vocational training for jobs they really enjoy. A couple of them might have benefitted from a more nurturing school environment for a couple of years, but that's not guaranteed with an independent school. They would all be much better off with a state education and large lump sum than they would with a private education and forging their own way.

My kids went private from 11 as we didn’t get into the nearest school and weren’t happy with the alternative. They had a fab time at private secondary and no regrets (other than financial) but now with the both at uni, I look at their friends from primary who went state all the way through, and are at similar unis. I’d say save your money. If I were making the decision today I’d go state.

Yes. I know many parents who are very open about the grandparents paying the fees. Most of my child’s friends have grandparents who pay the fees. There aren’t enough parents around with jobs that pay enough to buy a house and have a spare £30k a years for private schools to survive otherwise here in Scotland.

A lot of doctors marry doctors. Consultants and GPs earn £100k plus. 2 of them earn a lot. Put that together with when these parents went to uni it was mainly the middle classes who studied medicine. I don’t know any doctors who aren’t absolutely loaded and have no threat of redundancy unlike other well paid professionals. I have zero sympathy for their wage rise sniping.

If he’s bright and has done so well at state, I’d send him to the state secondary. He’ll be in the top sets where disruption tends to be less. If it’s awful you can just move him?

It’s such a lot of money, and I’m the same I’m nervous of AI and impact on jobs. Though you are mortgage free so that’s great. We want to make sure we can pay for uni and give each child a house or flat deposit!

I really agree that the most privileged are those with an excellent, calm, safe state offering.

I teach in a state primary school and invigilate in a state secondary school. The secondary has a good OFSTED and I enjoy invigilating there. However, my grandchildren have been privately educated since the ages of four and the opportunities and experiences they have been exposed to would be unlikely to happen in a state school.
I think you should look at this from a different perspective to money.
What opportunities are there to pursue interests like playing a musical instrument, joining chess clubs, sports clubs, participating in shows, the list is endless. Look at schools and facilities. How confident are the children. How do the communities view the schools. So much to consider.
if you can afford it why not?
Education is the gateway to the world.

@MidnightPatrol That size of deposit is great and dc both had that. However they need the jobs to go with it in London. Or a partner.

I doubt any job is bought by a private school education now. It’s your own aims and ambition that do the heavy lifting and academics. Some dc follow parents into careers and carry on the parental business. As for doctors affording private school - I’ll say this quietly - they do private work. They are very well off! Of course grandparents pay too.

Id truly evaluate what you are getting for your money. For my DDs it had advantages, but they boarded. DD 1 is very successful in her career but that is nothing to do with school. It’s all about her. She could have been equally as successful had she gone to school locally, but, interestingly, none of her primary friends who have great degrees from RG universities have done much at all for a career. They all went to the local grammar and DD could have gone with them but we wanted a change. So I don’t think ultimate success (depends on how you evaluate that) depends on school. It depends on dc making the right choices and aiming high or aiming for what makes them happy.

Private school should give a broad education and all sorts of sports, clubs and activities and give access to speakers and careers advice. Pay for an exceptional school, not an average one.

Yanbu

It is not just uniform it will be expensive school trips, annual price rises, exam fees payable on top of school fees, transport and food costs, sports kit and so on.

A clever kid will do fine at an average state school as long as he or she doesn’t fall in with a bad crowd - is that a risk?

You summed it up in one. If the state schools are decent.

We could afford private school but chose the state school route. My DC have done very well and the eldest is now studying a STEM subject at a top 10 university. But there's a lot of variation in state school. The one my DC went to is very good (although only Ofsted Good, not Outstanding 🤷‍♀️), otherwise we would have made a different decision.

I find it so hard to advise anyone at the moment including my own late teens as it feels like a huge change is coming so what used to be the right thing to do no longer is.

@CanIRetirePlease We didn’t pay exam fees. Meals were included.

Average schools certainly don’t all improve dc either. Being ok isn’t being your best. Teachers of sciences can be difficult to find for example. I’d also want to see good music, sport, art and drama as well as good academics in a private school. These are often what distinguishes private education from state. There’s often debating, formal dinners, tradition and an expectation of good manners as well as smaller classes. Some dc thrive with this underpinning academics. Parents have to decide if it’s worth it and what the alternatives are. How good are they? What do the best dc go on to do?

I worked with the end product as worked in post 18 education at a leading University, DH was the same.

Honestly until you look at life outcomes and many years in advance you don’t really know. Among myself and my friendship group many of our children are in the 20 to 28 age category.

I have 2 friends who both sent their DS to private school because of issues that the sons had. They still have those issues. Isolated, poor communicators. One is easy to like the other it’s an effort.

Friends daughters, one is still at University and is a very clever young woman out of all the four children I know well who were privately educated she is naturally head and shoulders above the rest and also a good communicator. Her sister is a teacher in a state secondary school, loves her job.

The state educated lot, 2 girls both still at University and both doing very well. One won a prestigious prize and was offered a job on graduation which is this year. The other has managed to persuade an organisation to take her on her work placement year, they have never taken a student before and she did it by sheer perseverance. One lad and his sister have both become emergency services workers, he has bought a house at only 24. My DS was accepted on to a degree apprenticeship, he graduated last year with a first class degree, no debt and is already on 40k PA.

So an absolute mix, all anecdotal obviously but you can be clever and I have worked with people and students who really are at genius levels of intelligence but it’s also about personality. My own DS and three of those young women all have what I would call superior communication skills and people like them easily. DS was racially abused at his state school, other people leapt to his defence. He was also taught by me how to navigate this.

I think it is an impossible question for anyone else to answer. It depends so much on the individual child and the specifics of the schools available. For us, private school definitely wasn't worth it but we were fortunate to have access to excellent state schools, both primary and secondary. We did look at the local private options and were pretty underwhelmed to be honest. Exam results were not significantly better, facilities were poorer in some respects but better in some others and GCSE/A level and extracurricular options were narrower - a function of the small size I guess. Overall I didn't see any major advantages, and certainly not any that were worth the amount of money it was going to cost.
Had our state options been poor, or even if they'd still been good but the independent schools had been much better, we might well have chosen differently. It would have stretched us financially to send 3 children to private school and there would have been a lot that we couldn't have done such as travel, hobbies etc. Again, if we'd been able to afford private education without it impacting on the rest of our lives significantly we might have made a different decision. I suspect we wouldn't have thought as hard about it or looked as closely at the options anyway. But we needed to be sure that if our children were going to miss out on other things then the benefit from attending one of the independent schools needed to exceed that, and where we live I don't think it does.
Then there are individual child factors. My nephews and nieces attended very well known independent schools, some as day pupils others as boarders and they had very different experiences, even at the same schools at the same time. I won't go into details because their stories are not mine to tell but they range from having a fantastic time and probably achieving far more than they would have done elsewhere to experiencing miserable, relentless bullying that I think has caused permanent damage to their mental health. No school is perfect, no matter how much it costs and how well known it is, and no school suits every pupil equally well. All you can do is weigh up the pros and cons and make the best decision you can based on the currently available information. Then listen to your child. Be aware of what school is like for them and be willing to do whatever you can to change things if it becomes apparent that your initial choice isn't working out the way you'd hoped.

If your child is “ bright but …” go for private school. Mine is bright but sporty/dyslexic and his independent secondary is absolutely the right place for him.

My area doesn’t have grammars and most comps are absolutely massive academys around here. They just wouldn’t work as well for him. However, for other children, the academy’s are brilliant - especially when combined with a supportive home. Mine just can’t do self-structured learning yet and he’d never fulfil his potential.

His school isn’t remotely snobby and neither are the other parents. And because he plays sports outside school he has friends from all different backgrounds.

He was at an outstanding primary school and whilst I’m happy he made strong friendship close by, the school itself was the wrong one for him. It only really taught to kids who were happy doing lots of writing and not asking questions (which I recognise makes him and me sound like horrors but we’re not!). All he got was negativity, even when he was giving everything with so much effort, and he left feeling like he was stupid. (He wasn’t, I coached him for the independent school entrance exam in six weeks and he more than made the grade).

Now two years in, he’s hitting the top 25% academically which he’s always been capable of. He’s also slightly sheltered from everyday teenage pressures and gets a wide education for arts and humanities.

There is a fantastic technical college (state) close by which takes kids from age 14-18. It’s very competitive so he might not get in even if he applies but he would have self-edited out of even applying if he’d gone state primary - state secondary (years 7-9).

His school is the only independent I would send him to in a 25mile radius btw. This country has virtually killed social mobility in the last 20 years. The education available to kids today is not comparable with what parents might have received. The comps and opportunities of my youth do not exist anymore (and they were pretty sparse). And whilst I don’t like this, my problem is with the game (education policy/investment/Uk plc) and not the player (kids and parents in the independent sector)

Your DC may want to change for sixth form.
A fair few of the privately educated near me go on to highly selective state sixth form centres where they get lots of university interview prep and the positive discrimination for "deprivation" from some universities.

I wouldn't hesitate in sending my DC to private for secondary if I could afford it.

The state system is getting worse every year. People can deny that all they like but the proof is in the pudding.

Given the falling value of my London flat (though I am grateful to be able to live in London for 1282 a month mortgage), I think the decline in birth rates (and global birth rates are crashing) wouldn't help and it would be quite cheap to buy a basic property in london when my son is 18 (abolishing of leasehold would help with that). I mean dh and I managed to buy in our 20s while in our first jobs and our incomes weren't great 75k combined. So we would be investing in private education as being a bloke with a property wouldn't be what makes him successful.

It’s not just basic tuition fees though, is it? It’s the uniform, sports kits, clubs, trips etc etc. An independent I worked at recently absorbed some of the VAT cost in recent fee rises, so expect above inflation rises over the next few years.

If you can manage those costs comfortably, I would probably go private, unless your local state provision is exceptional.