What % of your monthly income do you spend on school fees?

[Heatherbell1978]

DH and I are seriously considering sending 2 DCs to private school after primary. They're 1 and 3 so we have a lot of time to plan and it's only something we've recently considered. Our state primary school is excellent but high school is just ok. I went to a similar performing high school in the area and hated every minute of it but did leave with decent results which got me to uni.
At the moment we pay £2.3k per month combined for our mortgage and Nursery fees. We're overpaying our mortgage so it should be repaid in 9 years when DS would be starting high school so technically we have this £2.3k to spend on school fees which would cover the two kids but they won't both be there at the same time (only for 3 years they would) so most of the time it would be half that. Our take home pay is £6k a month so this would be 30% of our salary for 2 of them but with no mortgage. Not sure if this is reasonable or we'd struggle with all the extra costs involved. Interested to hear other people's situations.

Oh, and on fee increases, DS started 5 years ago in P7 and at that time I’m pretty sure the fees for the Junior school were a bit over £8k and now they are £9200 (I can’t remember his S1 fee).

18% net. They go up beyond inflation each year, 6% this year. Not sure how they justify such big increases but they have you over a barrel.

wicked how much have the fees increased since your S4 started? I've put together a spreadsheet assuming a 3% rise each year but not sure if that's realistic. Are sports all included (aside from uniform of course)?

Heather I’ve been trying to remember and I think 5 years ago the senior school fees were just over £10k and they are now £11,900. They certainly weren’t less than £10k.

Having said that, we just got an update from the school and in it they discuss the upcoming removal of non domestic rates relief in the Scottish private schools. It’s supposed to come in force in 2020/21 and the school says they will do what they can to mitigate it, but if passed on in full, it would add another 2% to the fees.

At our school, some sports have an additional fee- rock climbing at Ratho has a fee, horse riding does too, not sure what others. DD briefly did hockey and DS briefly did rugby and there were no additional fees for those. Most schools have the list of extra curriculars on their websites so you could see what might be of interest and ask the school.

Wicked that's a lower year on year rise than I've budgeted for so that's good to know...I was showing DH my spreadsheet last night and he was a bit when he saw how much it would cost per month to have 2 kids there (we'd have 3 years of two sets of fees like you) but I've not assumed our salaries will rise at all between now and 2026 which is quite unlikely!

I think I know what school (GWC?) you're talking about which is my preferred alongside GH. It feels such a long way away but it needs some planning!

Yes, we’re GWC. DS was also accepted at GH and I kind of thought he’d want to go there as my uncle went there and I’d been really selling it to him. We’d only applied to GWC for more testing experience but he fell in love with it and was adamant that was where he wanted to go.

For him it has absolutely been the right choice. I couldn’t imagine a better school for him. It’s been more difficult for DD- socially, not academically, but I’m not convinced elsewhere would be better.