Why do some parents think private school at primary is a waste of money.... but are secretly saving for secondary?

[Tallandgracefulmum]

AIBU as my little one is starting prep school in Sept. I was asked by a friend at DD's nursery my plans, said private all the way and was told I would be wasting my money and should save it for secondary when it matters.

I hate this ..most parents I know would send kids private all the way through but cannot afford it so are saving for secondary. But to be honets if your not used to paying shed loads monthly for schooling, you will not suddently 7 years later ( and higher fees) start doing it for secondary.

What some people don't seem to get is that some parents value educational experience over material possessions or fancy homes. This friend in question said she will use the money she saves to provide education experiences for her children and give them a lump sum for uni.

My thoughts are she just can't afford it and wants to make me feel bad for spending my hard earned money.

How many parents actually compare a range of private school fees, then calculate how much it would cost to send one child then save the relevant monthly amount ready to give each off spring at 18? Doesn't happen. What's wrong in providing the best educational experience you can afford for your kids without others constantly telling me I am wasting my money.

FWIW I can understand private school bashers who hate all forms of private schooling, but not those who bash primary but would send kids to secondary in a heartbeat!

If I didn't get my hair cut on a regular basis it would look like a bush. Well. More like a bush. I used to run outside until an Incident with a dog. My kids swim and the older ones also do treadmill running and use the bikes and rowing machines. As does DH. If keeping my hair short and taking exercise (and being scared of dogs) is a WC marker then so be it.

I suspect my tendency to swear like a navvy is a more obvious marker though.

Any least I'm not a living cliche.

So there's that.

If my hair looked like a bush, I'd get it cut once a month, too. I also occasionally go to the gym, but it's too occasional for me to be a member (you'd have to go a minimum of twice a week every week of the year to make becoming a member monetarily worthwhile), so I do PAYG at £6 a time. Obviously I never swear. This is not a marker of anything, except the fact that I wouldn't save much money if I stopped going to the gym.

I know - I'm a skinflint!

Oh it's all ridiculously reductionist really. I'm not keen on stereotypes, and now as immigrants we've moved into a new 'British' box. Which can be amusing or irritating (often both at the same time). It's just something I've mused on more becasue of the fairly extreme differences between some parts of my wider family and some parts of dh's, and the fact that those two worlds are completely mutually exclusive, just different worlds entirely.

Anyway, at the end of the day, if Tallandgracefulmum wants to send her children to prep school, she can easily afford it, it makes her happy to do that and she feels it is the right thing to do, then of course she should go ahead and do it. It's not as if any of us disagree with her when she says that she's not really missing out on anything important if she no longer spends huge sums of money every month on her own designer clothes, make up and entertainment.

Wadingthrough,
Maybe I have got wrong the def of MC who cares?

I think many on MN would class then selves as middle class though thats why I use the term; and yes I am immensely proud of my roots, why not, it is something to be proud of doing well. Personally, if you grew up wealthy with grandparents who were wealth creators, parents who were wealth preservers and your generation is neither, well it is a shall innit.
Someone mentioned you can take the girl out of.. .. You what, yes I came out of a sink estate and I am never going back there. As I said above how many of you can maintain or sustain the comforts/lifestyles that you grew up in.
Go on spout the same ol same ol, was easier then, banks gave away mortgages/business loans then, grandparents helped with childcare and all that rubbish etc to justify why you cant maintain or preserve what hardworking parents created.
Whereas the truth is more and more people from my background are moving on up come on people earn relatively more money today than many of their parents have done in their lifetime, putting aside inflation. 30 years ago a train driver did not earn much, now some graduates drive trains for 50k per year.
Someone once said on a thread it is not hard to earn 20-30k in the UK if you are reasonably clever. That is so true, so it is not hard to educate privately if you WANT to; you have to make the change if your current financial situation does not allow it.
Yes, many on this thread have laughed at my mum, but you know what if more people have the same drive, have the ability to survive on less than 8 hours sleep and work hard, they can achieve whatever their aspirations are, skys the limit.

rabbitstew
I have to respond to you before I got to bed.
Not all gyms are created equal, DH and I used to be members of a health club where the cost was between 200 and 300 quid a month for membership, so the year cost saved is a terms fees. Find another cost saving thats another terms fees etc, freeing up income to invest, save, do whatever. Now we just use our respective work gyms for free!!!
For those who think that going to the hairdresser is cheap, probaly has not had a root touch up, blow dry, treatment, colour in a long time. If or maybe if you want a buzz cut

You want to keep this going, don't you? I don't think anyone is laughing at your mum, just wondering how a low income family can, by dint of hard work, 4 jobs and careful budgeting, pay for private education for 4 children, while at the same time being unable to budget to pay to to keep the electricity meter topped up adequately.

Cecily - The last born sibling finshed school over 12 years ago, fees where a lot cheaper then, we got help with fees,Scholarships when they were worth fee discount and uniform grant and plus my mum did retrain and qualify between the older two and us the younger two.

I guess you did not see the posts.
Combination of assisted place scheme for the older ones and 2 jobs. younger ones no assisted place, just scholarships, mum going back to school and working 3 jobs whilst studing during the week and extra one on Sat.

Fees were priority :)

Plus the meter usually lasted longer unless someone put the electric heater on, that usually ran the meter quicker.

Many familes still do this today, one works to pay the fees the other to live on.

oh, you could always hide if you don't like.

But, Tallandgracefulmum, one minute you are saying people can't say that anything was cheaper in the past and now you are saying school fees were cheaper in the past...

Absolutely nobody has laughed at your mother. She sounds amazing. Many, however, are incredulous both at what you seem to think was a middle class lifestyle in the past and what is a middle class lifestyle, now. You really do seem to be confusing the lifestyle of the extremely wealthy with the lifestyle of the "middle class." It was never compulsory to have huge amounts of disposable income in order to be middle class.
It may have been more common in the past for the middle classes to choose private education (I know some middle class colleagues thought my parents a trifle odd not to opt for it), but I don't remotely see it to be a bad thing that fewer people see private education as a necessity these days. There is something wrong with society if only a private education is "good enough."

In my experience, only people who are insecure or frustrated about their own (lack of) options give anyone else a hard time about going private.

I moved my kids from state to private in y3/y1. One was so far behind I panicked, the other was doing great in State and is now doing well in private.

For secondary we'll move them back to the state sector. In Hants there are no grammars and a lot if very good comprehensives.

Some of my private school friends are horrified of the idea of a state secondary. But it does not bother me as I know exactly what we chose and why, and we are confident e chose the right school.

You have to wonder OP why it gets to you. You havemade your choice, it is a valid choice and you do not really need to justify it. On here or to your friends

Must say I am baffled by the emphasis and importance placed on private schooling. Respect peoples choices etc but the ops "private school or doom" "fees are a priority" attitude is odd to me.

Dh and I state educated as were many of our friends, all went to good universities and some have great jobs (partners in law firms, professors) some from modest backgrounds. I haven't even considered private school for ours just not on our radar. The buildings look beautiful though! Due to our state school being fine experiences I can't justify the colossal expense.

Tall- i find your constant generalisations breathtakingly uneducated and crass. A modicum of critical thinking required, I feel.

School fees may have been cheaper, but not that much cheaper, and however cheap they were, I would have thought having heat and light would have been the priority. If you had a meter key (wouldn't it have been cards in those days?) why could you not have used the emergency button when the electricity ran out so you could finish your history homework?

How did your eldest brother get an assisted place? If he is 49 now, he would already have been 16 when the scheme was introduced. You say your mother retrained and qualified between the older and the younger 2, so, assuming you are the elder of the younger 2, how could a qualified teacher who also moonlighted as a cleaner not be earning sufficient to be able to pay for electricity?

Many familes still do this today, one works to pay the fees the other to live on.

Once she was qualified, as you said between the older 2 and the younger 2 and, from the above, it seems your father was also working, why did you even continue to live on the North Peckham Estate? While I don't know a great deal about school fees I certainly do know how much cheaper house prices were 30 years ago.

OP, no-one is laughing at your mum. In fact, I think alot of people are saying your mum sounds amazing.

I think you have misunderstood alot of the points made on here.

You also seem obsessed with the class system and where you have come from vs where you are now. It seems to colour your attitude about everything.

OP's mum may have made sacrifices, but OP certainly isn't. So stop going on about how you put your children first and how feckless parents who don't send their children to private are. Gobsmacked by the clothes spending. I spend maybe £100 a year on clothes for myself.

When it comes to education, some people think it is not over-indulgent but morally right that they should want "only the best" that money can buy, even where they acknowledge that in other areas of their lives, they might find it quite amusing when people buy, eg, computers with specs they would never themselves need, just because these are "the best," or spend £300 a month on gym membership when they only go once a week to use the treadmill. And so, it is apparently not over-indulgent to want "the best" educationally, where "the best" means having every conceivable type of sport laid on, only the most professional art and drama facilities, only the most up-to-date IT suites and science labs, only the most highly qualified specialist subject teachers - for 8 year-olds... it's little to do with whether they end up with good grammar and handwriting, really, isn't it? If all Tallandgracefulmum really wants is for her children to have a better grounding in the basics and nicer handwriting than she has, she is choosing a very expensive way of going about it. If she thinks she is going to make her children happier, kinder, more thoughtful and better adjusted by educating them privately, I think she is wrong - private schools do not have a monopoly here. If she thinks she will hugely increase the chances of their future wealth and success by educating them privately, to be honest I think she is also wrong there. Clearly, even in her case, her mother and her mother's attitude to hard work had a far greater impact on her than her school ever did. You do not NEED private school to be successful, it's just nice to have if you want it and can afford it. That's all. Not everyone wants it if they can afford it, any more than everyone wants to have a £300 a month gym membership, even if they can afford it.

Cue OP responding to Hedge saying how dare she imply that she, OP, doesn't understand sacrifice? And then huge list of things about 'the poor' that we don't understand and that don't actually apply to OP either in her adult life.

Sounds to me OP like although you DO (from your childhood and from your experience with your mum) understand very well the challenges associated with living on very low income and although - at the other end of the scale - you also totally understand what it is like to be very wealthy, I am not sure you understand life for those people in between, who have children and who will always be 'in between'. People who have some money, yes, but DO need to make a choice between private school fees for primary versus secondary only, or say who have a very good state school nearby and think, 'well, I do like going to the gym and family holidays and stuff so I think we'll give private a miss for now' or who decide they would rather spend their hard earned on giving their child a lump sum later for their first property, because when the time comes, Lord knows what our DC will be able to afford.

I don't think you understand these people at all and that's the majority of people on here. It isn't about class at all, before you go on about that; it's about making choices based on finite resources. Because most of us have finite resources that are quite modest really. We don't not care about our children's education if we choose to go state. Equally, you have made the right choice for you. Why don't you just leave it there?

Bizarre thread.

If OP is a lawyer and a Cambridge graduate, I'm one too. She sounds like a legal secretary who has won the Lottery. Or maybe a footballer's wife or someone off Made in Chelsea. [mean face]

I know wealthy people (some who always had it and others who just got it) and they all have a moan about school fees. Between £15K and £30K per child is a large sum of money no matter how rich you are.

Not sure she's anywhere near wealthy. But even if so, still can't marshall a coherent argument. So Cambridge? Hmm. Lawyer? Hmm. How weird to lie blatantly show off to a bunch of strangers online.

Oh, I dunno - when I was pregnant I couldn't marshall a coherent argument either. In fact some might say I haven't managed to do it since.

lainie it is true that everyone moans about school fees. The rule is that whenever two private school parents meet, they will play the 'what I could have done with the cash' game....doesn't mean they would change it though..

swift I'm an Oxbridge lawyer, as is DH. We don't sit around marshalling arguments. Mumsnet is just a bit of banter not the Bailey!

Of course not! Banter good. But hers is inane. Always.