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?

I really thnk the TImes and the middle clsases on this thread are tying themselves in knots on this thead and it's making me laugh.
If you can't afford to pay go to state schools - plenty of them are good enough for most people. If you want a private school work hard and pay fees. I don't think we can expect private schools to keep fees at particular levels just because a local GP on £40k cannot afford them whilst a plumber on £60k can. As someone said above some of these schools can fill their places 3 - 5 times over and that is definitely not because they are full of oligarchs' children.

With all due respect, JillyR2015, I know GPs who "work hard".

More independent schools used to be available to doctors but some of the more expensive ones are now tying themselves in knots by pretending that they are still accessible to all and then (so it would appear and it did indeed make me laugh) calling doctors "NHS workers" in order to avoid admitting that their fees have rocketed to such an extent that doctors have resorted to applying for bursaries.

We can all vote with our feet, as you say, but we can also query whether some hitherto highly regarded schools have adopted a sensible course in recent years.

A typical GP working full time does not earn 40k per year. GPs who are partners in their surgeries earn around 100k per year. One in ten earns 140k per year. I really struggle to be sympathetic if the GP parent is the sole earner and the family can't afford fees on 100k or 140k per year. I don't see why this should be viewed any differently than many other families not being able to afford fees.

BTW there are at least a dozen GPs children in my DC's school, probably more.

And an NHS worker could well be a senior administrator, rather than a doctor.

If you really think there is big market for a no frills (London) private school why not approach a school management company about starting one?

To answer the OP's question I think £100k minimum with fair sized mortgage, new car(s) every few years, family holidays so I think your DH is near the mark. Also, not just for secondary years, we are planning for uni and maybe even beyond if post grad stuff is an option/wish.

I agree with you, cauchy: GPs s will normally be paid a good deal more than the £40k suggested by Jilly and, in any case, should be treated no differently than anybody else when it comes to bursary applications.

The fact is that many professionals, including doctors, do struggle to pay fees at (let me call them "plenty of frills but not 5 star") schools which used to be more accessible to them.

The Times leader on Tuesday listed a number of those professions and suggested, quite reasonably, that such schools might consider the option of reducing their fees to assist them. As you say, there are other solutions too.

I shall quit this thread now and leave it to others to air any other ideas they might have about how these issues of accessibility and choice might be addressed.

I only said £40k because we keep getting GPs on here saying they earn about £40k. There was a husband and wife pair on here the other day who both earn £40k - presumably they don't own the practice.

There are lots of private schools which cost less. There is one near us which goes up to 11+ and charges about £9k year (outer London within M25), small building, no swimming pool etc. I am sure every City has them.

granola what you need is a decoy for the super competitive super rich parents. You make a low cost private school have the best A level or whatever results and Ivy League / Oxbridge entrance percentage by only letting certified geniuses enter at sixth form. This decoy then attracts said super competitive parents who abandon the other expensive private schools. The latter have to reduce their fees and all the middle classes rush back to them before the super rich super competitive parents notice. Simple.

'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?'

Firstly, many of the 'squeezed middle' can't afford a SAHP or £20k on childcare. More and more families use family members, nanny-shares, au pairs, unqualified (and therefore cheap) nannies etc. for childcare.

In the situation where someone does spend £20k on childcare, this is different from school fees for the following reasons;

1. Childcare is short term, 2-3 years normally between going back after ML and nursery funding kicking in. It may be possible to live beyond your means/get in to debt/live very frugally for 2-3 years, but not long term (15 years of private education from 3-18).

1. If you have more than one child the overlap in full-time childcare will be minimal (or non-existent if you have big age gaps). The overlap in time at school will be much bigger. There is a clear difference between scraping together £20k for two years (total £40k) and finding £20k for 10 years (£200k), for example.

1. Nursery fees are pretty much all inclusive, it's 'just' £20k. Private school fees are only part of the cost. It's £20k plus, uniform and school trips and school lunches and music lessons and sports clubs and sports equipment etc.

1. School fees are not 'instead of' childcare fees unless you plan on your child being home alone before and after school and in the school holidays. You need the school fees PLUS childcare fees.

1. Children are generally more expensive as they get older. They eat more, their clothes are more expensive, it costs more to go on holiday/go out as a family, what they would like for Christmas/birthdays is more expensive, even housing costs etc. So 'and then miraculously needs much more money for food or whatever' is spot on. Although it's not miraculous.

And this is ignoring the fact that;

a) the cost of living is going up faster than wages, so her £20k wage was worth more when her DC was at nursery than it will be when the same DC is at secondary school.

b) many women are not able to return to work at the same pay-level as they left, a 5 year career gap hurts a lot of people.

Hmm isn't this really about choice? If you can't afford those schools that pamper to the super rich (Them damn oligarchs and Mandarins). Then you have two choices either go state. I have been told its not actually that bad consistently on MN or find ways to save on household spending or find other means to earn it and send them to the school you want.

If the school is pampering to the super rich then would you really want your child there? To be seen as a second class citizen?

Choose with your feet.....

I think the argument is that it's about lack of choice, Kenlee. Or, oligarchs and mandarins making choices that spoil things for everyone else. Or, schools making the wrong choices. Something like that. Basically, I think it's really about an emerging class of super rich people who are perceived by many, but particularly by the middle classes, to have too much wealth and too much power and too little understanding of the effect they have on everyone outside their little bubble. Throughout history, when that bubble gets too small, it has normally ended in something nasty happening. So no, it isn't really just about choice in the long run, it's about prevailing attitudes and what they bode for the future.

It seems obvious to me that in London, the super-rich/low income on bursary extremes are not prevalent yet but this will become more and more the case over the next decade or two. The generation who are starting their adult life now will have to spend so much more on housing that surely only those with very substantial incomes will be able to afford fees. I haven't read the Times article as I am not a subscriber but IMHO it is the spiralling cost of housing that is more to blame than the schools increasing prices.

We bought our current house 17 years ago for less than the current cost of a one bedroom flat, and that is the main factor that has allowed us to opt for private secondary education on an income level that is I'm sure well below average compared with other parents at the schools. If we were 10 years younger the sums wouldn't work for us.

Outraged - thanks - someone who actually answered my point. The reasons I don't agree is that school fees are more like the £15k I pay (GCSE level London) or the cheaper preps even in outer London under 10k not the £20k quoted. Extras are very little indeed - our school includes the meals free in the price and schools like Haberdashers even had the 11+ entry away trip totally free so no one was excluded no price grounds, ditto my sons' prep school. Uniform we bought second hand from school shop for virtually nothing.

Secondly when the first baby comes most mothers either keep working full time and pay full time childcare which is less than school fees or else stop work. I agree that some will have a relative helping but not a majority by any means. A few may think of the 2 years at home as a period to save up for but most fund out of current money for the childcare or lack of wages.

I agree the holidays have to be covered. Our daughter did 2 weeks at her school Haberdashers summer camp and as we had younger ones our nanny covered the summer holiday. Also their father was a teacher so could have looked after them in holidays although I accept that not all parents paying school fees have one of them a teacher or university academic or barrister or other career with holidays and terms.

On the ignoring points that is why women should not give up work so you aren't going back at all - you keep working and pay for the nursery place and then the school fees. Win win all round and children do better too.

(Beingf, the first house we bought 30 years ago costs £350k now (outer London) but interest rates are more like 2.6% (my daughter's current offer) rather than the 12% we were paying then and taxes are lower. She pays a third of her income in mortgage and I am sure we paid a bigger % plus we had children at her age. Same job - lawyer in London).

JillyR2015 - so you had a nanny?... As for the cost of childcare equalling the cost of school fees, I think you are thinking of high quality childcare, not the sort of childcare most people can actually afford... there is a colossal range of prices for different types of childcare arrangement and some arrangements are considerably cheaper than the annual cost of private school fees plus holiday care... I think you also vastly underestimate the number of people who are totally reliant on family to help them with childcare in order to make staying in work affordable, rather than something which costs them more than it gains them, financially. However, you aren't really interested in those people, are you - you are only thinking of people who might consider private schools and who would therefore also not touch with a bargepole some of the childcare options other people have to consider as an alternative to themselves.

university academic or barrister or other career with holidays and terms.

It is going completely off topic but can I point that academics don't have long holidays or terms because their research is all year around. Indeed academics have to use the breaks from teaching to catch up on research. An academic working in a lab definitely cannot work from home or take their children to work.

I do think the costs of vacation care for school aged children are a bit of a red herring, though. As an academic I need childcare 52 weeks a year (I even work over the Christmas period) but the costs on top of school fees only amount to around 1k-1.3k per year per child, taking into account that the DC spend some parts of their vacations staying with their grandparents.

Oh yes, grandparents cropping up again...

Having a teacher at home is very handy. Better off to assume that people don't have one when doing the costs.

Indeed, Marsha

Re: bursary eligibility, from the information provided by a few private schools I've looked into they do to tend to state an upper figure but look at the following:

-not having an excessively large or expensive house
-not having much equity in said house
-not having any second property
-not having a new or expensive car
-not having a lot of savings etc
-both patents working full time if all DCs are school age (disabilities aside)
-not having foreign/expensive holidays
-not having or contributing to a big pension pot
-not having other assests of value (jewellery, art, etc)

I think this would rule out most middle class professionals tbh.

People I knew who got bursaries tended to: live in private rent or council houses, have a single parent, have a parent or sibling with a disability, not have a car, never been abroad etc.

Tbh I think that's fairer than giving small bursaries to the 'squeezed middle' who are likely to have access to better state schools than the kids from the families above.

Jilly I also think you've massively under estimated how many people use family for childcare or other cheaper options. 10 years ago, or even 6 years ago you could go to a baby singing group for example and there would be 10 nannies and 2 mums. Now, there are 2 nannies, 3 au pairs and 7 grandparents. School pick-up looks like a day out for the elderly, loads and loads of grandparents. The number of people employing nannies in full-time, long term roles has plummeted. Most people in the 'squeezed middle' that we're talking about now use family members, nanny-shares or au pairs because they cannot afford £15k on childcare long-term. These are the same people who cannot afford £15k for private school fees.

I'd just like to clarify that in suggesting above that private schools could assist parents by reducing fees, I meant reducing fees for everybody across the board, just charging a bit less. This is what The Times suggested last Tuesday: it's a choice which is open to these schools if they put their minds to it.

I think there is a huge variation between the north and the south. I think by and large this is dictated by property but also demand. Schools in the north have to look at the parent body and that is probably why fees are so much lower. Look at the difference between say MGS or GSAL or NGS and the likes of SPGS - SPGS charges double and so do similar schools in London and it's not quite obvious why.

I would say that in the north the prevalence in most independent school is still middle class professional parents (in the main).

Here's some examples of means tested bursaries from one well known school:

The three examples below illustrate the types of families which have benefited from our bursary scheme.

Parents both working; one employed by the police and one by the NHS. Modest home with mortgage. Two children, each receiving 10% fee remission.

Parents both working in low paid employment. Modest home with mortgage. One child receiving 40% fee remission.

Single mother running own business with very low income. Living in rented accommodation. One child receiving 100% fee remission.

Those were the examples I was talking about up thread MN164. I saw them and wondered how the low paid couple with modest mortgage could afford the 60% of fees not covered by the bursary but I suppose it depends what the school mean by 'low paid and a modest mortgage'. My idea of low paid might be very different to the schools.
It would be much better if all bursary policies were transparent (some are) and they said if you earn X and your child does well enough in the exam then we can offer you Y as a bursary.

I have been watching this thread with interest. I have always used private schools and never been mega rich. We just adjusted our other spending like holidays and cars. I do think some middle class or middle income professional people have an "entitlement" mindset. Just because GPs or solicitors in the past could send their dcs to private schools does not mean that the current GPs and solicitors have an automatic right to do so. The schools, in the main are businesses and, quite rightly will charge what the market will stand....just like the solicitors do.
When these schools were an option for these middle classes they were not crying foul because they were too expensive for the bright but poor kids.
Some people just want it all, a big house with big mortgage, decent cars and holidays and private schools and are complaining because they can't have it all.
Buying a house is not compulsory...rent and pay the fees. Is it essential to have a car in London. People make choices. Of course the schools will put the prices up as long as there is fierce competition for places. I would if I owned a school.