Cheaper to pay fees?

[Judy1234]

As I'm reading last week's papers.. hate getting behind this was interesting in the Sunday Times:
www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,2771,00.html

347 out of top 500 schools are private as you'd expect but the interesting bit is about house prices and those who think they're saving a fortune by not going private but pay more for their house in the right area than had they gone for the private school and then they lose power too because boundaries of school are changed so they don't have the control they might have had had they paid the fees rather than took a chance on catchment areas.

money money money
you are odd.

i actually though this was an interesting slant on the old fee vs state argument.... we moved house to get into a catchment for a better school...!

and money is a driving force for many people..and getting value for money too

So people can't do either. And some people are happy with less than perfect state schools anyway.

Send child to private school and then recoop the extra savings by buying house in dodgy mega cheap part of town. Do people really do that??

We moved to a smaller house in a lovely rural setting with good school (state not private). We could have had a bigger home but in less than nice areas or with less choice for schools. Feel fortunate we could afford a tiny house in nice area and nice state school. no way we could afford private or big home in nice area.

i don;t know...we moved to get into a catchment for a state school, which is fantastic...and i appreciate not everyone can do so.

Well in this part of London the grammar schools are the most over-subscribed state option (and academically highest performing), and not all of them do use proximity. Even for those that do, the catchment areas aren't that tightly defined - all depends on how many children in the year etc.

Interesting that the article was looking at the additional costs with moving into a catchment area (eg commuting). I guess this isn't always the case (equally not every privately educated child costs £347k). Most people who pay a premium for a ctachment area would expect to maintian the premium when they sell which is the main attraction of paying the premium int he first place. Must be devastating though if you have paid a premium to not only have to move to another area but also to have lost out without actually getting to the school that you wanted.

That said I was trying to persuade dh to be open to moving about a mile west - being in a different borough equates to an additional 5 points on the 11+ exam for one grammar (which has a horridly complex admissions system).

I have always said this was my theory, pay for school and buy the house cheaper where ever. However the problem is that the kids from private schools all live in lovely houses in lovely areas too.
So i rented a house in the lovely area for 12 months and got them into the lovely school anyway.

LT, I think that's the idea - that you live where you like or can afford and don't worry aout catchments and then the money you save you spend on the fees and that sometimes it's cheaper to do that. And so parents who have done that then find rules are changed on catchments and they are up in arms but have no power or control over that and cannot get siblings into the school they moved near. Just an extra thing to think about.

So move from Central London to a commuter town, pay your £X [ massive sum] to commute to London for work every day, buy house near the good state school of that town, find you paid extra for living in the catchment and add on fares and you've paid more than for a state school place buit that for some will be worth it as they may have political reasons why they would never consider private schools anyway and yet it's selection by class by the back door by house price anyway so all a bit fake.

LT - that's basically what we do - live in big old house in unfashionable part of county, take boys to excellent fee paying school based in a part of cityX where we couldn't possibly afford a house (not that i'd actually want to live there anyway, but even if we did we couldn't)

on the subject of provate education, this is an interesting fact re Oxbridge enrty:

here

Oxford and Cambridge have revealed that over half of entrants from the state sector come from just 150 schools, most of which, of course, are grammar schools

I can see that I'm going to spend the next year worrying about what to do for the best re education

I know of a few people who have moved house, paying more for a smaller house in the right catchment, to make their chances of getting intot he better schools more possible. IMO this is definitely no different and no worse than paying for education int he first place.

I also know of a couple of people who live in a less desirable area and send their child to private school (not same as DDs, another one) through choice.

Us? LOL! We deliberately moved house into the catchment of one of the better schools in the city. We paid a lot more for our house than we would have done had we moved to a different area. Then got there, went to visit the school and really didn't like it. Still ended up paying to send DD to a private school! Fortunately we moved into an area we really liked, as well as being in the catchmeent!

However, the financial aspect is NOT exactly the same. If you move house to a better area, you have the increase int he cost of the house - which is often likely to go up more that one in a less desirable area. With private school, you don't get your money back.