Level of family income required for private school fees?

[TheABC]

Had an interesting discussion with DH over tea tonight, after reading in the independent supplement that the average cost of fees per term for a day boarder is 4k. We are approaching that in nursery fees for DS and it's a struggle. I can't imagine trying to juggle that sort of cost for two children over 7 or more years. However, clearly a lot of people are, as 6% of all UK pupils are privately educated and I doubt we have that many millionaires.

DH thinks the income ceiling is around the 80k mark, I think it could easily be lower, depending on family circumstances (e.g mortgage commitments). Who is right?

So other people can still afford these schools.

What I have been talking about is a visible trend whereby the salaried professional middle class is being squeezed out by a number of schools which until recently managed to include their DC in greater numbers. Plenty of them are still in those schools but more parents are having to resort to ways of paying the fees outside of their salaries, which they hadn't envisaged when their DC started at the school. It's a trend which is behind this and a growing number of threads on MN.

The schools could pay more attention to those who are finding it difficult to afford them. You can hear their voices on MN and in last week's Times leader. You don't hsve to invite them to dinner if you're not keen on the "nouveau poor", TWF, but you can hear what they have to say.

Market forces have that effect - in some poorer parts of the country some private schools have gone back into the state system and some have closed down.
Where I live in NW London the private schools are crammed with people who are not in my view very middle class at all and certainly not upper class. Just look at the vans of plumbers and the like outside the gates and many others with their own businesses who can afford to pay fees. Many of these people are not posh and are buying private school places for the first time and went to state schools themselves. The school I am thinking about is about £12k a year (prep school) and all the other local prep schools charge similar amounts.

If a woman ceases full time work and was on £20k a year (not unusual in London) then if she goes back to full time work she can earn a set of school fees when the child is 5 (£16K net pay) and a bit of the second lot of fees. If she doesn't go back to work but has been buying 2 nursery places or has a nanny then the cost of that will be the same as 2 sets of school fees so I cannot really understand how they cannot afford it as surely they either lost her wage when the children were under 5 or pay £20k a year so she could work full time. What is the difference when the children start school except the parents thought they would then have a time of milk and honey and higher spending or are women too lazy to work full time?

granolamuncher - none of these schools have EVER been open to all, regardless of background, so if they no longer pretend that, then maybe they are just more honest, now. The ludicrously high cost of housing in London and the SE is the real squeeze on the middle classes.

I've had a look as the SPGS website. It is very proud of the fact that in 1911 it was the 1st girls' school to have a swimming pool; in 1913 it opened its music wing; in 1933 its new science block was described as "splendidly equipped with excellent lighting and ventilation;" in 1971 there was a huge development project; in 1982 it had ambitious building plans underway; in 1986 it had a library extension; in 1994 a science block extension; in 1997 the Colet library; in 1999 a new sports hall; in 2010 the original school bell was restored; in 2015 stained glass put in the music wing... Seems to me that whilst the latter two expenses seem somewhat frivolous, it has always invested huge amounts of money into building projects, offering new subjects (eg engineering...) and frills like swimming pools and sports halls and this is not remotely a new phenomenon of the last 5 years (or 10, or 20...). Maybe the middle classes just didn't consider these to be frills when they could actually afford them?... And yes, it could increase its class sizes to above 20. But have they been much bigger in the past? Or do you just want them bigger, now? Do you really want to go back to the times when, frankly, schools were NOT better than they are, now?

JillyR2015 - it's a bit rich coming from you to describe others as lazy, when you were too lazy to "scrub your own babies' bottoms."

How much you earn and how hard you work have little connection.

Agree about the plumbers vans. At my DC school yesterday afternoon ( sports matches) no Ferraris or rolls-royces in the car park, certainly from what saw (not a car expert ) looked a whole lot less 'posh' than I remember those dropping off at the local state primary when DC were there.

Also, JillyR2015 you have regularly stated that you don't agree with boarding and think this is emotionally harmful. Yet you fail to respect others' opinions that both parents going out to work full time and leaving their small children in the care of others could also be harmful and isn't worth the risk if it can be avoided. Different people have different opinions, different needs, have different children with different needs. Don't you dare to try and look down on others for being "lazy" just because they have different views on what is important, have had different experiences and are in different situations.

If house prices had risen in line with wages over the past 20 years rather than the huge leaps we have seen and if household utility costs had risen only in line with wages over the last decade would more of the traditional middle classes be able to afford private education despite the increases in school fees?
I think fee increases are only a part of the reason why teachers and nurses and GPs etc can no longer afford private school fees. Many families used to be able to survive comfortably on one professional salary but that is no longer the case in many parts of the country (whether paying school fess or not).
I also think there has been a change in expectations over the last two decades. More people who have professional jobs expect to have expensive foreign holidays every year, they expect to have new cars every few years, they expect to eat out a couple of times a month. None of those luxuries would cover school fees on an annual basis but combine that spending with the increased cost of living we have seen over the past two decades and it isn't difficult to see why so many salaried professionals can no longer afford school fees.

That's an interesting chronology, rabbitstew. It confirms how well SPGS did to keep up with boys' schools in the last century, which was part of the school's purpose in promoting women's education.

I'm asking what the rationale is behind the new expenditure which schools of SPGS's ilk have decided to incur recently and the consequent inflation busting fee rises. I am being told that the market can bear it but that doesn't answer the question, certainly not if you have regard to the principles behind the foundation of these schools.

The effect is gradually to exclude more salaried professional families. These schools were never available to all but they were more inclusive than they are now. They could win back some of the squeezed middle if they made more efforts to reduce costs.

But what new expenditure are you talking about, granolamuncher? What expenses has SPGS incurred unnecessarily (except for the stained glass and school bell, of course! )?

"If house prices had risen in line with wages over the past 20 years rather than the huge leaps we have seen and if household utility costs had risen only in line with wages over the last decade would more of the traditional middle classes be able to afford private education despite the increases in school fees?
I think fee increases are only a part of the reason why teachers and nurses and GPs etc can no longer afford private school fees. "

Cost of living rises are IMHO worth complaining about.

I do wonder what is pushing the prices up. If there is no profit then what is increasing to match the rise.

Or is it an across the board increase.

expect to have expensive foreign holidays every year, they expect to have new cars every few years, they expect to eat out a couple of times a month
Excellent point - there is now more to spend money on that there ever was.
When I was a child, no cheap flights, and people had lower expectations, no fancy gadgets, computes, iphones, Sky and phone subscriptions etc, and clothes were just for wearing rather than as brands.
Going further back, even less so.
And regarding reaching out, why? The most expensive schools are massively oversubscribed anyway - their outreach focus is on the poorest to whom bursaries are given - if more of those Times leader writers and their pals were subsidised so that they don't need to give up some of their holidays to afford the fees, less bursary money for the those in real need.

rabbitstew MN164 produced an excellent summary of SPGS's accounts for the last 5 years in the recent SPGS thread.

What it showed was that the school had acquired an additional 11 teachers while pupil numbers had risen by only 20 or so if I remember rightly. n contrast, JAGS had acquired just one additional teacher against a similar increase in pupil numbers.

You don't have to have smaller classes (and yes, that's precisely what's happening). If you put them back up by a mere 10% or so, you could widen access.

But what were the 11 additional teachers for? Were they for additional subjects? Or the result of increased demand for a particular subject? Or to deal with specific needs identified within the school? Or specifically to reduce class sizes? Why are you certain it was purely for the latter?

I don't know, rabbitstew, you'd have to ask the head. Whatever the answer, it should be weighed against the consequent fee rises.

SPGS's fee increase between 2010 and 2014, as reported in The Sunday Times, broke the record for all schools in the UK at a whopping 37%. Hence my interest in it.

If the school was better led, could it keep the fees at more reasonable levels? It's a legitimate question. I don't pretend to have the answer to it but I do think it's worth raising it.

My point about class sizes was more general: they have definitely been getting smaller in private schools. Just take one of their tours. You get shown into big Edwardian classrooms, designed for 20 or 30 occupants, and there's a horseshoe arrangement of desks in one bit at the front with a dozen pupils in it. Adding a couple more pupils to a class like that would quite visibly be more in line with what the founders had in mind.

Well, St Paul's Boys charge £7264 per term for day pupils, as against St Paul's Girls £6958 although St Paul's Girls charges £7479 per term for girls entering in year 12. So not really a huge difference between the boys' and girls' schools, there.

Westminster fees are £7800 per term for day pupils and £8456 per term in the 6th form.

All sound ludicrously expensive to me. Still, that's what you get when people have heard of you. NLCS is a bit cheaper, at £5875/term. Still seems pretty ludicrous to me, though. Seems to me you would instantly save money on private school fees by not living anywhere near London. Ironically, money saved on accommodation outside of London would probably mean you could then also afford the fees of famous London schools, you just wouldn't be living close enough to them. However sensible the high mistress or whatever she is of SPGS was with money, however, she wouldn't REALLY be able to reduce her school's fees sufficiently to make them affordable to middle class professionals living in a ludicrously expensive city like London, where breathing the polluted air appears to cost you, let alone anything else.

Btw, I thought small class sizes were a sign of lack of applicants and thus a pre-cursor to closing down altogether? The big name schools all seem quite happy with class sizes of 20??

The properly posh people send their kids to boarding preps rather than day ones and whilst these schools may take a percentage of day pupils to keep their numbers up, it's not what you would call a homogenous mix.

Address my point. Don't say how do I dare say XYZ.
My point is

If a woman earns £20k a year before she has children when they come she gives up work or hires someone to care for them (ignore male input for now) - that cost is the same as school fees. So why can a woman afford to give up all work to look after children up to age 5 and then miraculously needs much more money for food or whatever from age 5 such that what she previously lost from her wages or lost from childcare costs is not sufficient to fund at least one set of school fees?

(I have cleaned more babies'; bottoms than any housewife on the thread actually as I have had 5 children over a lot of years. Amazingly working mothers and fathers do change a heap of nappies).

Earning just for fees isn't enough. If on a full time salary it has to cover all the childcare, before school, after school and those long school holidays.

Going back to Manchester Grammar school (sorry to be boring), it's fees in 2001 were £5400 per year and they are now £11k something per year. Despite people saying that Manchester Grammar have stuck to their original ethos and kept fee rises to a minimum, I think more than 100% rise over 14 years is still a huge rise and way beyond inflation. It's fees are still more affordable than many other schools around the country and it's bursary policy is still one of the best.
Why such huge rises? Is it partly to do with increased running costs? Schools have to absorb the same above inflation energy prices rises that households have to endure. Wage rises for teachers to keep up with state sector teacher salaries? Increased maintenance costs as builders charge more than they did 10+ Years ago?

Yes, it's interesting about class sizes. In some schools, small classes do indeed mean they're on their uppers and in others it means that's what the richest parents have asked for. In other words, it's down to economics and business decisions, not educational benefit.

The fees of some London schools have headed for a different planet while those of other (still oversubscribed) schools have remained more reasonable. Choice amongst the schools and diversity within the most expensive are thereby diminished.

It's a free market and the schools can make their own choices about how they behave within it.

Superexcited That's interesting about MGS's fee increases. The fees are still around one half of SPS's, a London equivalent, as set out by rabbitstew above.

You might look at the school's accounts on the Charity Commission's website to see where the additional costs have fallen.

What is happening elsewhere, as The Times protested last week, is that schools have reached the point of outpricing substantially more of the middle class than they used to. MGS hasn't reached that point, from what you say, and it has been good on bursaries.