Just wondering... how do you think the financial turmoil will affect private school applications this year?

[PrincessPeaHead]

It was difficult enough to see who the hell could afford boarding fees of £8800 per term in a boom economy... now? Do you think there will be a big move from boarding to private day options (cheaper) or in fact also a big fall in private day applications as people try for grammars/use the good local comp ?

Just musing really.

Nobody has a view?
Or maybe just doesn't care.
Ho hum, I think it is interesting, I'll just go and talk to myself...

Hmmm, the people I know who are applying to boarding schools have already made or inherited their money so are unaffected. I suspect that it will hit girls' schools more than boys. I doubt the "premier league" or whatever one wants to call them will be unaffected, and those schools who do have day pupils as well (I think Winchester have a few) don't have that much differential in their fees IIRC.

I hear you PPH!
I do wonder if competition may be higher for the grammar schools this year.

Are you thinking 11+ then?

DD is losing a classmate because the family just cannot meet the fees for 2 kids now and have heard other people muttering.

I've heard that all the local options have spaces, including our local "big name" public school.

The family down the road from me won £3.5 million on the lottery 6 years ago. their kids have gone to private school until this September. They are in their early 30's and know they can;t afford to keep sending their children to the school so have switched..

I doubt it will affect boarders much
Day schools might drop though

I have no idea!

How did your move go?

My children go to the local independent day school. Currently the school is oversubsrcibed, partly due to there being a shortage of local state school places. I think it is unlikely that the school will be affected too much, as I think most parents at the school would choose to sacrifice other things first rather than ditching the school fees. I don't really know about boarding schools, would have thought possibly the same applies.

What??? £3.5million - what did they spend it all on???

£3.5m on the lottery and can't afford private fees? no hope for mere mortals then.....

Have emailed you office girl

Message withdrawn

wibble

there will be even more chinese students in boarding schools i think as schools who have had them but on a quota dfrop the quota

they have been very very sensible.

they both still work (he is a roofer), they own their house outright.

They have made provision so that when they are still alive in 60 years they won't be skint.

However the school they were sending their children to is expensive and once you add all the extras that go with it they have decided the outstanding state school is a good alternative choice.

OH works for HBOS - apparently the office was full of people arranging to pull their kids out of private schools yesterday. We couldn't afford private education anyway, thanks to a mortgage the size of Florida, which we probably won't be able to afford soon. Oh what fun.

I think all independent schools will notice a change pph. The ones that will have problems are the ones that struggle to fill their spaces rather than those that are currently over-subscribed. Some private school users are already making all the savings they can to send their children there so can quite easily be 'priced out' and if there's a recession people who lose their jobs will be unlikely to be able to make/continue that commitment.

Me thinks they have been too sensible and tied waaaay too much capital up until later in their life.

I would question the financial advice they received that has lead them to have to remove their children from the feepaying schools as it doesn't sound as if it was structired correctly for their needs prior to retirement.

It must be awful for the children to suddenly be pulled out of their school and presumably they will have to go to whatever school will have space for them, a bit of a sudden change of environment

£3.5M would bring in an income of over £150,000 per annum net of tax in a non fancy deposit account. That is without touching the capital.

Unless you are an investment banker or an estate agent, nothing major has changed - has it? A large proportion of school fees are settled by grandparents so you can't necessarily judge how much someone earns from how many children they have at fee paying schools.

think the lottery couple haven't done their maths right per the above postings...

swedes - this will hit us all in one way or another though? pay rises will fall off drastically (unlikely school fee rises will do the same) and as other companies begin to suffer, so ther will be more redundancies??

My DCs are at a private London day school with a fairly mixed intake. In the part of London we live in, there are some very good faith state schools, a lot of private schools, and very few/no "good" non faith state schools.

Firstly, I think a lot of people round our way have scrimped to go private as a response to the local state schools (ie it is not neccessarily a "status" option round here to be at the private schools); I suspect these may be the people who are the hardest hit, together with those with a lot of children (we are paying 2 lots of fees - paying 3 or 4 must be a killer).

Secondly, there are obviously also a lot of people who are in the hedge fund/lawyers/investment banker mould. I suspect they will stay - and I think it will be a huge shame if it makes the school more "mono-cultural", because at the moment it really isn't.

I know the owner of our school from something unconnected with the school. He told me ages ago as a general observation that you would be surprised at the number of fees that are paid by people who he assumes are other than the parents (just due to knowing the parents/names). He says their experience is that in difficult times that you see changes in who pays the fees - he assumes a grandparent or god parent may step in - but his view was that private schooling was one of the last things that people "economise" on.