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.

My parents paid central London private school fees for one of my siblings on about £45,000 a year, around 15 years ago. It was hard for my sibling as the other children came from far wealthier families, had expensive clothes and holidays, etc. and some made unpleasant comments and taunted my sibling about it.

Ulhuilay I’m sorry to hear that many students end up with major mental health issues. Is that because if the work load, or living away from home for the first time (for many of them) or having to be self-sufficient?

Bought first house in early 20s so no housing costs now. Prioritised mortgage over cars/ travel/ lifestyle in 20s and 30s.

GPs pay for uniform/ trips/ music etc.

We have below average income. Only shop in charity shops.
No debts at all.
Buy yellow sticker dinners most days.
Not been to a hairdresser in years!

It can be done, you just have to make sacrifices.

@Andante57 Many often walk in first day saying 'I need a 1st' (and with their A'levels that shouldn't be too difficult) but when they start working realise they only get 2.2s or 2.1s.....we've always had students struggling with being away from home etc etc but the numbers of students who can't cope with a 2.1 is quite high. Then they don't feel like they can tell their parents, are really worried about getting that internship etc so it snowballs.

That’s so sad.

For those of you who sacrifice life's extras to send your children private, what do you hope they achieve in life?

I ask (genuinely although the question appears sarcastic) as I had a private education and obtained good exam results etc but have a very average "career" (perhaps not even a career, more a good job!). In terms of a return on investment, I am a bad one!!

So, are you paying to instill a love of learning, or to take advantage of facilities, exam results, future career or just because you feel you should?

Always interested (my DC will go state throughout).

Ive heard fees are about 30k per year so for 2 kids I'd assume you'd need to have a salary of at least 250k per year?

@ulhuilay8947r would you name the institution? I find your perspective very interesting

They earn more than you?

I think it would be a bit unfair but let's just say in the top 5 of UK universities. My impression is that it's got worse over the last ten years or so.

We have a household over £165k (SE) and school fees are £20k per year for two children and it is more than doable. I believe £10k is on the lower end in terms of fees. We also send our two children to weekend and after school sports clubs, swimming, music lessons etc and they have a good range of other experiences (e.g holidays etc). We afford it because we have a relatively high income (?) and low mortgage (around £600). We also don’t have a desire to spend lots on things for ourselves. We live a pretty simple life!

Having gone to the best comp in my city and it was one of the best in the country at the time I would say those who did very well still have invested parents. I was bullied for my colour, I was always put down but a particular teacher who liked to humiliate me in front of others. I came out with top grades because I am very bright but it was a horrific overall experience. Still geared towards white middle class children whose parents moved to get them into that school. We got in because of other criteria.

I don’t want that for my kids. There might not be financial diversity at our independent but there are kids from all racial backgrounds. I did try our excellent local primary but they didn’t celebrate Eid, Diwali etc there was nothing about those festivals.

Also my youngest DD was the only child of another ethnic background. I found the parents ok to my face etc but they’d often not involve us in things.

loving the diversity of the prep school.

When I was a teen 25 years ago my friends and I fell in with a group of boys from the local private school, a good, well regarded on the outskirts of London. They lived in nice detached houses and their dads were lawyers, accountants, doctors, surveyors.

Now my parent friends are all doing similar jobs (often both parents), we live in semi detached houses and our kids go to state school. Money just doesn’t go as far as it did, housing takes such a huge amount of money, and the days of being a fairly well earning professional and being able to send all your children to private school is a thing of the past. My husband earns 350k a year, I earn 20k and we don’t consider it enough to educate 2 children privately and still have a comfortable standard of living (NOT pleading poverty or moaning at all, just stating the facts of my life).

My ds went to a state primary rated 'good' and the most popular in our area. By year 5, he was angry, bored frustrated and completely lacking in confidence when it came to sports. He got distressed at every PE lesson and it was getting worse.

I moved him at 11 to the local non-selective but quietly good quality independent school. It took about a week for him to cheer up in lessons, and about 18 months before he was actually enjoying PE. His confidence has returned, he is happy and engaged. He is doing well academically but the fact that he comes home smiling, telling me about his day, is positive and enthusiastic justifies the fees.

Our two very happy in their single sex state. Nice friends sport clubs out of school and dd1 just received a string of 9s at gcse and is on a program to assist with Cambridge application. Dh and I were both state educated and ended up in the City via red brick / Cambridge. Really not understanding what we have missed out on by not having gone private. Guess we will never know!

I'm astounded at the cost of private schools in England. We live in another country and I teach at a local, very exclusive, single sex school. Our fees are among the very highest around here at the equivalent of £17,000 per year. The private school my children go to is still considered elite and very pricey, but quite a bit less at £9000 per year. Plenty of other really good private schools in the area are around £5000 per year. I don't know how you would put one child, let alone a family of children, through private school with fees like that.

@Sunnidaze A big proportion of the private school fees in the UK are for paying teachers' salaries which can be a lot higher than private schools elsewhere in Europe (but probably not asia/middle East). In the UK schools have to pay NI and significant pension contributions which schools abroad usually don't, and that's what pushes up costs and therefore fees.

I don't doubt there are good reasons for the fees being so high, I just don't know how families pay them.

If you work in finance OP, you should be able to increase your salary significantly over time, as you'd need to be on more than you are to comfortably afford it.

I work in finance and have just got a new job which means I'm now seriously considering sending my DC private for secondary. In my new job I will be earning 12 times the salary I started on 20 years ago as a finance assistant, and am a single mum, so it's doable.

@HalloweenShenanigans · Yesterday 20:30
For those of you who sacrifice life's extras to send your children private, what do you hope they achieve in life?I ask (genuinely although the question appears sarcastic) as I had a private education and obtained good exam results etc but have a very average "career" (perhaps not even a career, more a good job!). In terms of a return on investment, I am a bad one!!So, are you paying to instill a love of learning, or to take advantage of facilities, exam results, future career or just because you feel you should?
Always interested (my DC will go state throughout)

I think it would be very useful - although probably impossible- if private schools published snap shots of what their alumni are doing 10/20/30 years after leaving school.

whilst the upper echelons of society might have high numbers of private educated people, they are a tiny proportion of those educated and the vast majority of privately educated children go on to do very normal jobs- and ones that certainly don’t pay sufficiently well to allow them to send their own children privately.

in todays society if you child is going to pursue a career in teaching, nursing, social work, policing, any form of caring role, surely you’d be better giving them 6 figures in their 20s for a house deposit that spending it on education where they come out with a job that doesn’t enable them to buy a house.

@Trainfromredhill My impression is that people who currently send their kids private would see any of their children doing such jobs as failures and would very very strongly discourage them from pursuing them. Ultimately, if the expectation is your aim is to make money then kids won't go into nursing or teaching.

in todays society if you child is going to pursue a career in teaching, nursing, social work, policing, any form of caring role, surely you’d be better giving them 6 figures in their 20s for a house deposit that spending it on education where they come out with a job that doesn’t enable them to buy a house

Unfortunately that's very true on a financial basis. whether the love of learning and the opportunities it can afford are 'worth' the cost, well that's another matter. I do definitely question the commitment when people can't fund their own pension or live their own life. Paying fees that cripple you (unless your child has an issue that requires it) seems misplaced to me.

My impression is that people who currently send their kids private would see any of their children doing such jobs as failures and would very very strongly discourage them from pursuing them. Ultimately, if the expectation is your aim is to make money then kids won't go into nursing or teaching.

I wouldn't see those occupations as failures (not least because they're probably contributing far more to society than my job). I think it's more kids perhaps wanting the same lifestyle as their parents, who are usually reasonably well-off to be able to afford the fees.

My son's dream job would be a personal fitness trainer but he's pragmatic and realises that, if he chooses that route, he's going to have a more financially constrained lifestyle. Nothing wrong with that but that's not what he'd choose.

Our friendship group mostly work in financial or professional services, so he sees that as the route to being able to afford a flat in London, nice holidays or whatever. We'd support whatever career our kids choose so it's coming from them, not us. I also don't think that's a private school thing, it's probably common in higher socio-economic areas.

Above all, my kids have loved being at their school because the sports provision is brilliant. That's made it a worthwhile investment for us, together with the very good academic results the school achieves (as do some of our local state schools).

Fees definitely vary widely and a lot of the time, from what I can see, you are paying for the "name" of the school rather than actual results.

We've looked at 3 local independent schools to try and get an idea of the fees so that we know if it is feasible or not. They are not "big name" schools as it were but have good reputations and one in particular is very well regarded academically. The basic fees (so no extras for music lessons, etc) for the three schools average out at about £20,000 per year. Music lessons seem to average out at about £1,000 per year and there is variation on whether you get charged for lunch or a school issue laptop, etc.

We're budgeting £24,000 per year at the moment to cover the vast majority of costs, but like I said in my previous posts, we're not wedded to private school but think if it is going to be a viable option we need to save now as paying out of monthly income would be doable but probably too tight in reality. If when the time comes, we decide that private isn't going to work for our DC then we have a very nice pot of money to fund something else!

@MsTSwift has anyone said your children have missed out on anything?