Private school fees

[muffinhead4]

I have been try to work out if we can afford private school fees for our 2 children in the next few years but after doing sums we could barely manage 1 let alone 2 😔
Before tax we earn approx £100K which is most definitely not enough, this got me thinking how do parents pay for private school for more than 1 child? Am I missing a trick? I know some grandparents help but those that pay them selves how do you do it? What kind of jobs? I am in finance and DH is in training, neither very high up.

I should say we are not from rich families. My dad worked in a foundary and my mum at Sainsburys checkout. Educating us was No1 to them and I was pushed at school as I was bright.

If you read my post it’s not 5% of Irish children that attend private school it’s 7.8% of boys and 5.8% of girls, this is 13.6% a greater number than UK children.

I think you’ve been mislead by rumour and misinformation. It’s a common theme but total runbish

@Weirdlynormal what is total rubbish? That private schools are getting lower percentages of their children in to too universities. There have been countless stories in the broadsheets about it backed up by data.
it is positive discrimination and a positive sign of things to come.

Top

Lower than they used to perhaps but private school kids are still more likely to get to top universities than state pupils

Only 72% of Cambridge were state , yet 88% of a level student are state educated

@Sago1 you might want to review your maths up thread........

We have a joint income of 100k; 1DD at day school with fairly reasonable fees (not London or SE) and she had two scholarships giving us a 20% reduction. It is manageable but I looking forward to having more disposable income for holidays etc when she leaves.

We don't earn as much as you OP, but put two kids through private school - secondary only though. We saved up a bit before secondary, and of course fees vary. For comparison, our fees were around 12k per year per child I think, and they left around 5 years ago.

I'm a single mum on half that income with one dc at independent. I started saving when he was 4.
Ds went to state primary then independent at 11. I pay half out of savings and half out of income. He has an academic scholarship that helps a little. It's a big stretch for me but ds is happy.

Only 4 years to go!

Or 6.8% if you do your maths right

What that hot housed children don’t have the automatic red carpet into the top universities? Oh no, that’s true. Rebased results meaning bright kids from sink estates get an EQUAL chance.
Parents that thought they were buying an ADVANTAGE (key word) are finding that’s less the case, are now outraged.

I personally know an admissions tutor for Oxbridge and he is not trying to give advantage, he’s try to gauge the bright from the polished.

Data showing falling numbers does not show these independent kids have been disadvantaged, it shows that mummy and daddy’s wallet can’t always buy what they want.

Every child c8 that applied to Oxbridge from our independent got a place at Oxbridge.

I personally know an admissions tutor for Oxbridge and he is not trying to give advantage, he’s try to gauge the bright from the polished

Surely they’ve got a way of distinguishing between bright and polished? I mean given the number of different intelligence tests available - non verbal reasoning, cognitive intelligence etc I’d have thought universities would have come up with a way.

.

We have a slightly higher income and can't afford private without sacrificing things like holidays, gym membership, pensions, savings.

But in part that is because we have a fairly large mortgage on a nice family house in the catchment of a state second school that gets excellent results. So we can use the money after the mortgage to have holidays to interesting places, to sign the children up for whatever clubs they want. Plus I work part time so I can be there to ferry them around as necessary.

Without the mortgage (or with a much smaller one) we could send one but two would mean sacrificing luxuries or me having to go full time (which would mean getting more help in for the house and garden).

DS1 is doing well at the school, he's got mild SEN and they have been fantastic with the pastoral care. He's played in the sports teams a few times as well. DS2 can't wait to go with friends from his primary school and he's looking forward to walking there and back with them.

Raw intelligence isn’t enough. Passion, perspective, enquiry, application, vision, will drive learning and understanding. An interview used to be a good sift, but the top schools give as much attention to this (debrief every attendee, brief all applicants etc etc) as exams! He told me it becomes very tough to really see who is shining. Raw results need to be given context.

Parents used to throw money at the problem, and the institutions allowed this (lazily) to continue. Now they realise it’s not actually fair. Parents who are still doing the throwing somehow see this as unfair!

I should add too, that there are enough ‘clever’ kids to fill the spaces, I suppose what they are talking about is X factor!!

Weirdly thank you for answering my question. Application and drive must be very hard to detect - in fact virtually impossible I’d have thought.

In answer to the university question, it's quite hard to figure it out plus what we are looking for is resilience and being able to do things by yourself. So many kids are tutored or get very hands on help through a'levels that they don't know their own level of ability and are not always very good at figuring things out by themselves. So a lot do end up really struggling despite getting perfect grades. Others who've mostly done things by themselves can therefore be that much better. But yes it is quite hard to detect

In answer to the university question, it's quite hard to figure it out plus what we are looking for is resilience and being able to do things by yourself

Yes, I appreciate it must be hard to figure out. How do you test for resilience?

If people are allowed to pay for better education for their children, their children get better opportunities. It keeps rich people rich and it keeps poor people poor. It is a cruel system. And it is not just about school, it defines you for the rest of your lives. Private school people stick together , long after school is over.

I'm not sure that isn't partly an issue of perception. I'm from a grammar school and ended up working in an investment bank where 95% of my colleagues were male and from some of the more elite private schools.

The only 'them' and 'us' vibe came from a couple of state-educated male colleagues who had a chip on their shoulder about colleagues looking down on them because they hadn't been to private schools. It wasn't the case but their obnoxious behaviour made sure they were excluded socially. Which they took as clear evidence that they were right all along.

What I'm saying is that if you hold your head high that you've come from a state school and are just as good as anyone else, it becomes self-fulfilling. I haven't encountered anyone at university or in a work setting who sticks in some kind of private school clique and shuns the state school people.

I'm not sure you intended this but comparing a state school to battery farmed chicken is offensive.

Being able to save in advance is a huge help. With compound interest you can, in theory at least, have school fees covered. We’ve been saving for a few years and by the time DD is in Y7 will have saved approx 5 years worth of school fees if we decide to go down that route, that will cover the majority of secondary school. We’ll then start putting money away for DS (3 years younger) so by the time he is secondary age we’ll have 3 years worth of fees covered.

@Andante57 Mostly we can't test students for resilience so a lot of them end up with major mental health issues every year. Uni often ends up the first time that many of our privately educated students find out what they are actually capable of without all the external help.