Would you work Full Time to fund private education for your children

[tryingtobemarypoppins2]

with you working Full time resulting in your 2 young children (Reception and Y2) having a 7:45-4:30 day every day.

Or would you work part time, send them to a 'good' state school and be at home 2 or 3 days a week, doing the vast majority of drop offs/pick ups etc.

In a nut shell, I know it's more complex than that, but WWYD?

I love my job and want to work full time. The fact that I want to work full time has enabled me to be able to make the choice to send DD to private school. Two to three days a week she does 8am to 5pm and the other two to three days a week she does 8.40am to 4pm.

Well my kids infants has them outside a lot, they have outside classrooms (every class has sometime learning outside everyday, except the very worst weather), a dedicated outside play/explore space, as well as playgrouds and fields. They do lots of learning through play, and the local very selective Grammar actually prefers kids from the school.

Another school in a more deprived area, has bought Wellys and Raincoats, so each class can do learning outside everyday.

But also financially it just wouldn't add up for me.

BTW active little boys do not always get bored or naughty. And prep schools are often very exam focussed.

But it is your area, your children and your choice.

We can afford to send DD private because I work. We looked at all the schools at age 4 and sent her state (the private school was next door), then looked at all the schools at age 7 and sent her private. I expect we'll keep her private now as the local state secondaries are dire and we don't want to move house.

My friend sent her boy private from the first as he is a very "boy-ey" boy and she wanted him at a boy's school that could deal with that. Lots of games, lots of structure in lessons, big playground, competitive and lots of opportunities for school sports teams.

My full time salary is £40,339 so approx £2,158 net each month.
The boys fees (both of them) at worst (higher up the school) would be around £1700 a month.

I work for the county council.

cat64 from September our household income will increase by 1K (DH's business)

Thanks cat, that is a similar view to my DH's. He doesn't want the financial pressure, me out the house more etc and no hols! But he is lucky, he did terribly at school and still has a great business. But he is really under confident and struggled with learning, I often wonder if he had had a pre prep start if he would now be more confident and perhaps would have had more doors opened to him??

A prep school or pre prep won't necessarily do better than a primary school. Sorry but children do under achieve at preps (even good ones).
What if the reason your DH struggled was an undiagnosed SEN? What if your son has inherited this? Will the Prep be able to deal with it? Can you afford extra tuition on top?

Sorry but these things worry me. Also if they go to State schools can you afford to save to help them through Uni? Or afford specialist tuition if you need it? Or have the energy to tutor them yourself?

Not deliberately for that purpose, no. I currently work part-time.

But if I got a good full-time offer and really wanted to take it - I might well switch to private school largely due to the better before/after school care.

Even with me and DH working full time we can't afford private school fees round here - would be looking at over £1000 a month per child once you add in the wrap round childcare. And that excluded holiday club.

And with two full time jobs, trying to fit in the 40 min round trip to and from school (or the extra £5k per child per year for the bus service), just doesn't work for us.

And thats just primary. Gave up calculating costs for secondary.

Thing is, my children have a much longer day than that (7.15 to 5.30) most days of the week ... and I work part time and couldn't possibly afford private school.

Full time, as in proper full time in almost all professional jobs I have ever done or am qualified to do, means 8 am to 6-7 pm in the office, every day, plus commuting time...

Which is why I choose to be a not-quite-full-time teacher. Yes, we all leave the house at 7.15 am every day, yes I work 3 hours or so every evening BUT 2 days a week i get home at 3 pm to pick the children up from school, and on 2 other days at 5.30 as after school club ends (on staff meeting night I get home at 7 pm if I am lucky ... and then do 3 hours' work)

If I could get paid full-time wages for being out of the house 7.30 - 4.30 each day I would grab it with both hands .. wouldn't use it to pay private school fees but would think that I had an absolutely fantastic deal in terms of being able to spend time with my family!

In bare terms, I would and do. Or rather the fact that I work full time means we can afford more stuff, including private education.

Yes, if I needed to and if it was absolutely the best thing for my children.

This was the sort of decision making we went through a long time ago. Options really were:

• Stay central with poor inner city schools, but no commute.
• Move further out to better schools and pay a lot more on either mortgage or train fares.

Most people we knew chose the latter. Out of my NCT class of 10, only 3 were left in the area when children were about to start primary.

Having decided to stay options were:

• get religion
• set up to supplement the education at local school
• pay

We went for the latter, though a year or two of regular church-going might have been the easiest. Looking back, I think we made the right choice in terms of going private over the local state school, as much to do with confidence, security and aspiration as the learning itself.

What we had not considered was that the need to pay schools fees not only caused me to go back to work full time, but impacted on my husband's career decisions. He now earns more than he would have done had he stayed with his previous employer and, thought this could not have been predicted, is probably happier. I did not earn that much, but now that the end is in sight I am surprised at how valuable those extra years of pension contributions are.

Staying in Central London obviously helped in terms of finding a reasonably well paid local job, and we have saved a fortune on fares and years in travel time.

It is tough trying to juggle full time work with a family. However I think there have been advantages for the children in terms of self reliance and understanding the need to work hard and get on with things. Both like their schools, have good friends and are engaged in education. And because we have earned more over the years, we will have a better pension and more chance of early retirement once the heavy school fee burden is over.

I doubt there is any right choice. It depends on what options there are job wise and school wise.

Brilliant post Needmoresleep.

Yes, I would and I did.

I've 3 kids with only 1 still at school now but have always worked, alhtough not always full time (on average 4 days per week term time, slightly less in hols - self employed so very lucky with timing)

My working was always explicitily about paying the school fees, so a very stark choice - work and private school or not work and state school. Although it was never really private vs state it was always "right for my kids" versus "not the best for my kids"

Loving the idea that going to a state primary will 'damage' your kids. How will children be damaged by going to, in this case, a good school with very supportive and involved parents?

I too am interested in this 'damage' that the state sector is going to do to my children? Because I'm just not seeing it at the moment. What I am seeing is a lot of fear and chatter about league tables and aspirations and big classes. If I'd listened to it, I'd be a lot poorer, but I'm not entirely convinced my dd would be any better educated (or have any higher aspirations for that matter). And this is an Inner City London primary which is by no means the one the chattering classes aspire to.
We both work part time and I'm sure could afford fees if we went back full time, but I'm not convinced it would be a good use of our money or our time. I've been bowled over by how good the state primary is (and I'm state comprehensive educated all the way through to Oxbridge, so I've met plenty of people who have gone through both systems ). Each to their own on their choices, but I'd urge people not to base their decisions on fear of 'damage'. I can't imagine anyone better than my dds current teachers for her right now.

Comment following article in Independent about private school pupils being penalised. Perhaps it won't confer any advantage to go private when it comes to getting into university in the future:

Interesting! will we see a middle class bun fight to get into the poorest area schools now? can you imagine it? middle class parents roaming around England looking for socially deprived but acceptable areas to live? Lol!

Having spent a huge amount of time in prep schools and state primary schools I can say quite honestly that every prep school teacher I've come into contact with has had great grammar, spelling and has had a good standard of education and fabulous general knowledge (things I happen to value). These qualities were not so common in state primary school teachers.

We are at a state school and I was state educated. I believe my grammar, general knowledge, and general level of 'education' suffered due to poor teaching early on. I didn't have teachers who knew all the names of the Shakespeare plays, or would expect all children to have a rudimentary knowledge of quite a few of them by 11 etc. How wonderful to find teachers that are passionate about Chaucer, for example, and not afraid to share their enthusiasm in quite unorthodox fashion & go off track from their lesson plan even with quite young children. I was truly amazed when I realised this was quite common in prep schools. Alas, I could go on. Perhaps not important to many.

I am one of those people who spent my daughter's time at private nursery mentally putting a red pen through all of the mistakes in the newsletter. But I've not had any problems with the state primary. DDs nursery/Reception teacher is teaching herself latin grammar in her spare time and could give me (a national journalist) a run for my money on it.
Mind you, I fear I do live in a socially deprived but acceptable area (maybe I'm kidding myself on the acceptable?). And I've always hated Chaucer.

As have I sleepingbunny, but watching a young teacher spontaneously enthuse and explain her passion wasn't something I'd ever have witnessed in my state primary, in my son's or others I've visited. She made me think, and she made me pick up a battered copy of the tales again. She may have sown some seeds that morning and got a young child to ask a parent a question or two. What was interesting is she didn't stop to to think Chaucer was beyond the reach of the children, she also wasn't bound by the national curriculum.