How much do you sacrifice to send Dc to private school?

[VeryTiredMummyOf2]

I have 2 Dc, just want to know what people give up? And is it worth it?

Those of you who are forgoing pensions or holidays & so on... how will you feel if your child screws up in life? Bombs at A-levels, goes off to teach Yoga at Glastonbury, ends up in a blue-collar job, ends up with a criminal record, even. Basically, doesn't do anything with their lives commensurate with their expensive education. Would you feel resentment about the sacrifices you've made?

Bizarre wording. The cost is higher...

A statement more about working than education but if it means equipping your girls with the tools that the boys being educated privately are getting as they prepare to rule the country/occupy positions of power then count me in

Yes, there is holiday cover too if you work, Parents tend to take 2 weeks in the summer, use holiday clubs for a few weeks, sometimes children can stay with a grandparent for another week.

I know a surgeon whose husband moved abroad for her work. It is not all women giving up their all for men by any means. My husband moved cities for my career. Of course if your career is cleaning then the dynamics change a bit.

As for this argument that we cannot all earn a lot - of cousre I agree. The average IQ if 100. Plenty of people are below that. Many are not able to work hard or won't work hard. Plenty are lazy. Some work very hard but made a bad career choice. Just bcause most people earn a pittance and live in mediocirty doesn't mean we have to say to our daughtesr - the coutnry needs low paid workers - go forther and do your bit an don't dare to think you could be the UK's leading hedgefund owner or an equity partner at Ernst & YOung. We need people co clean the floors at Ernst and Yojung. it's your duty to do that and put all those high paid ideas out of your pretty little head. Why not become a hair dresser like your mother or an air line hostess but never never pilot because you aren't bright enough and are a girl. My daugher's friend didn't go to a school with that type of message. Her friend is now a pilot. Girls fly planes, not just mop up passenger sick.

Some of us live in households where there is only one income and no possibility of another (unless ds aged 7 goes out to work).

I am choosing how I educate ds. If he wants to take that education and goes off to teach yoga I will be happy with that. If he ends up with a criminal record then I will feel that I have let him down as a parent rather than blaming it on his education.

I do know someone who drove her 5 year old dc to her local state school and said if they didn't make an effort at their private school then they would be moved to the state school. I thought that was appalling.

My mother at 14 left (state) school with no qualifications (bar shorthand) to become an office junior. At 40 she bought that company. She only did this in order to put her kids through private school and have the flexibility she needed. I, at 14, intended to be an actuary. After getting my place at LSE (not at 14 obviously), I decided I wanted to go to work instead and started as an accounts junior, roll on exams, promotions, good city job - however, now, I am running the same company my mother bought 35 years ago in order to put my kids through prep school on about 1/3 salary I was on in my 'good job'. But it pays the school fees and gives me the flexibility I need - bonkers? Probably. Oh, and my husband is one of those poorly paid University Lecturers, but it means he is at home 4 days a week and not constantly travelling and stressed as he would have been in his 'good job'. For us, it was a lifestyle choice based on how we could give them the best balance of education and settled home life with both parents - not based on our IQ's or maximum earning potential regardless.

We only have one child so how much we pay out is much less than some. But we are lucky. We don't really compromise. We still have a nice house, nice cars, nice holidays, etc. We don't miss out really. If we had a second child and second lot of fees we would have to think more about curtailing holidays.

Ours are 6-7 weeks summer holidays, 3 at Easter and 3 at Christmas. 4 half term weeks. Approximately 16 weeks a year! I have no idea what I'd do with the children for that many weeks a year.

If/when I did work for someone else (currently self employed) the break even amount to me is much higher than the £25k pa.

We still have holidays and get some nice stuff. But I suppose we'd just do loads more of that if we didn't pay fees.

Why did I give-up everything for a country bumpkin ? because school and working hard had given me lots of knowledge, and absolutly no common sense.

Before we crow at our children ganing 10 A*, lets also make sure they can judged when and to whom to give their hearts.

It may well be that the purpose of my life is to act as a warning to others!

ragged that's an interesting question and I think it's one that parents need to get straight in their own heads before they start down the independent school road. You do hear people say/do some terrible things to their kids regarding school fees. :(

I tell my children that we had a choice to give them either money when they are adults, or amazing opportunities now, and we chose the latter. It's up to them what they make of it. We require them to take chances offered, and do their best and that is all. One child I think will be very high flying, the other probably won't, because it's not in their nature. That's OK - they have both had the same opportunities and important (to us) values shaping their childhoods/teenage years.

We don't feel that we 'sacrifice' anything, and I'm happy to confess that is partly because we are very well off, so although fees are a big chunk of cash, it never feels unmanageable. However, we also only started earning high salaries at about the time we began on the independent school path, and so rather than get used to spending the 'extra' money we had, we just used it on education/music lessons etc. instead and carried on living as before. So it doesn't feel as though we have given up anything; just made different choices than other people might have done.

My DS1 is at a good state secondary having failed to get into our local grammar.

We agonised over whether to send him to the local private school, but in the end decided that if we then were unable to send DS2 privately when his time came, then it would seem unfair for him to have to go to the state school when his brother is at the private one.

DS1 seems to enjoy it and is doing well, but sometimes talks wistfully about not having gone to a private school. However when I tell him what we would have had to sacrifice, he says he would prefer to have the lifestyle we enjoy now - than to give it up for the sake of school fees.

I would love to be in the position to afford both school fees & a relatively comfortable lifestyle, but for us the two are mutually incompatible!

I will always wonder if we made the right decision and hope our children respect us for it.

We now live in the US and have the daunting choice of going private ($30-40K a year in fees) and our kids being around entitled little monsters or moving to a good school district and paying $30K in property taxes for a small 3bed house (by American standards). A decent family home in this area is around $1.5 million with taxes of around $80K per year.

Without DH and I earning enough nothing would enable us to have these choices. DH is doing an MBA and I am taking my CPA exams. This will ensure our income is high enough in the future to sustain the lifestyle we want for our children. If DH is transferred to the UK then we would go private if our children didn't get into one of the grammar schools (Altrincham, Sale etc).

I always find myself agreeing with Xenia on women working. While my DH isn't stupid he is rather simple and doesn't think about things that will happen 5+ years down the road. I took the responsibility to plan for the future of our family. This has seen me change careers, get a new qualification, DH go to school for his MBA and both of us challenge our employers to pay us more. I decided to go back to work after 3 months as if I took any longer off my career would have suffered.

blatant placemarking sorry [bublush]

We live in a small house with a shit car and have 'enough' money to buy/ do nice things that we want to do.

I have 2 children and would like another one. I just simply could not find the money for them all to go into private education.

I can understand paying the money to fund specialist education with the aim of getting your child to live independently as an adult.

Otherwise it is all so far away from anything I could realistically afford to do I never even consider it. I can feel my judging pants creeping up my arse as I type, but friends of ours have registered their 4YO at private school. She's 4! They haven't even tried the local state school! I don't get it. They must have MUCH more money than it looks like they have got. I don't know why I care. I'm probably jealous. I just don't understand putting a tiny child into an expensive school when your house isn't finished.

Savannahgirl & NagooBunnytail - so much depends on your situation at the time. When we sent our first child to school our local state school was one step from special measures and wouldn't let prospective parents visit. Houses near good schools were far beyond our means, and moving out of London would have meant almost no family life if DH was to keep his job.

If I was in that situation now, things would be very different - we earn more and the local schools have improved massively. I probably wouldn't send them to independent schools if they were 4 years old now. All you can do is do the best you can with the situation you've got.

We are very fortunate, and my children know that. They also know that this is a choice we've made, not a 'sacrifice' and that if it all came crashing down tomorrow they'd go to the local state comp/academy and would be fine. Different, but fine.

R&T, if you're happy I don't see the problem but I do think women tend to give up careers for men or not go to univesrity as they're ni love or not take a promotion abroad because of a man and very few men do that even in 2012 and that's a shame. Thankfully that sexism is dying out but women do need to ensure daughters don't assume they will play second fiddle to a male career and that they can support themselves.

Of course 96% of children go to state schools and plenty of those do very well so it's certainly not the end of the world if someone cannot afford school fees but nor do I think it's that hard to use some lateral thinking come up with a business or take on a second or third job and earn that £10k a year plus tax per child or £5k a year after tax per child if you are splitting that cost with the children's father.

So conorsr who runs the company her mother started is in a sense benefiting from mother's career choices and income in the same way my 3 older children have graduated debt free because of what I earn. I am not saying that is always necessarily a good of course. Student debt might better incentivise children than your parents paying. It's not a straightforward decision for many. If you change your income to be able to afford £10k school fees paying as much for university (will be more with the higher fees etc) is not so painful too.

NagooBunnytail - we sent DD from 4 years too. Our choice. We looked at several schools - state and independent - and chose the one which felt right at the time. We visited them, read OFSTED/ISI reports, etc. And I was a teacher and still work in state ed, and I still chose independent from 4yo. No, I didn't try the local state school out. But I don't regret that. It has a good reputation. But it didn't feel quite right for us at the time of looking, esp compared to the school she does now go to.

"Those of you who are forgoing pensions or holidays & so on... how will you feel if your child screws up in life? Bombs at A-levels, goes off to teach Yoga at Glastonbury, ends up in a blue-collar job, ends up with a criminal record, even. Basically, doesn't do anything with their lives commensurate with their expensive education. Would you feel resentment about the sacrifices you've made?"
Or alternatively your DC could die early or you could row and never speak to them again or the world could come to an end. How ever much you pay you are not immune from these things.
I look at what my DS is receiving now not what he might become.

I think it will always be difficult for females to really have equal earnings if they have children, childcare is expensive and some mums want to be out of the work force for the early childhood years. Dad's generally don't have such a pull to be with their children every day.

Even if they become a yoga teacher i will know that they have an education to fall back on which can never be taken from them in a nasty divorce or stock market crash, it can't be taxed, it can't be stolen.

But does the education have to be at a private school?

No of course it doesn't as I aid earlier on, I have taken mine out for a term because I consider I am getting poor value for money that term and I hate this feeling that once in private school they have a gun to your head.
Sure it's a lovely thing to have as a child and it really is but the day it becomes a burden is the day it stops in our family.
School is not the most important thing in the world in our house be it state or private, it's something that fits around our family life not the other way round.

Thanks for saying that Heswall. This thread is making feel seriously shit about myself. I left school at 16 and worked in a bank for 21 years, and I thought I had done really well,

Tonight I am working night shift for the emergency services. I don't earn very much. Certainly cannot afford private ed for DC.

But I fon't seem to have a low IQ as I am headi g for a distinction in my degree providing I don't have to do nightshift before the exam

What this thread shows is that many 'sacrifices' made for private education are not even on the radar for most people.

You have done well for yourself and don't let anyone ever tell you any different.

I have probably had the best and worse of both worlds, grew up on a council estate saw what life was like for those who didn't "get out" despite their intelligence. I've also sat next to race horse owners in boxes at Ascot, had dinner at the Dorchester and lived in million pound houses.
And I want that for my daughters, frankly I don't care if they use their brains or their looks but I don't want them to have to scrub floors. I appreciate that somebody has to do the menial jobs but forgive me for saying I don't want it to be my children and if there's anything I can do to influence that then what sort of a mother would I be not to ?

I went to a very ordinary comprehensive school and sixth form. Teaching very mixed. Got degree [and MA much later with OU]. Feel pretty well educated -low salary jobs- my choices in life- for better/for worse. Have a number of brothers who went to same schools. The two most successful [by most peoples terms] are the ones that left at 16. They have flair and innate drive which comes from within? From proving their worth despite mediocre schooling? I don't know. What I do believe is that going to private school is NOT the 'be all and end all' [sparklingbunnyears ].