Controversial dilemma...should I go from part time to full time work to send DC to private primary?

[MmeMoufle]

Ok girls, please be nice to me on this one. I know I don't live in the Gaza strip and have any real problems at all but I am spending much time mulling over this one and would appreciate your thoughts...

I have 2 DC and I work in the secondary part of an independent school for 5-18 year olds. When DS was born I dropped down from full time to 0.5 which, for me, was the perfect balance. I get to spend time with my wonderful kids and keep my job which I love. I am now on maternity leave after having DD and will also be going back part time.

However, my school offers a 50% discount in fees for staff's children. This means I could send them both there for £600 a month. But the discount is pro-rata so if I continue to work 0.5 I'll only get 25% off (and less salary of course!) so we wouldn't be able to afford it. If I went full time, we could afford it with the discount.

JObs don't come up very often in my Department. My HoD is retiring the summer after this one in June 2010 so if I want to go full time I would have to apply for some of her hours from Sept 2010. If I don't get the extra hours then, it could be literally years until they come again.

BUT DS will only be four and DD will be two. Going full time then would mean a year of full time nursery for him and, much worse, three years of full time nursery for her. I always said I wouldn't return to full time work if at all possible until DD started school

We have a good local primary but at the end of the day, the classes are still twice the size. I don't know what to do - would I be insane to pass up on a 50% fee remission? Or would I be mad to put a two year old in full time nursery? I want to do my absolute best for my children, as do we all, but I can't decide which will do them more good in the long run - two days a week with Mum while tiny or an independent education?

My thoughts, as a person who has always felt very strongly that I would keep kids at home with me until the age of three, is that I would take the full-time position and get the hols and 50% discount. IMO the long-term benefits outweight the short term sacrifice, particularly if you can find a superb nursery or CM. If dd shows signs of unhappiness you can rethink.

My dss are both in school FT and I am looking to retrain as a teacher and I am now seeing that flexibility is needed with bringing up children. I loved having dss with me FT as babies/toddlers, but now they are in an OK/good state primary and ds2 in Reception is very bored as his reading/maths is quite ahead of his class. Ds1 would also definitely benefit from being more challenged and from smaller class sizes. I'm not actually unhappy with the school as obviously they have to have 25-30 kids to a class and realistically there is only so much that one teacher can do.

I'd say go for it. As others have said, 18 weeks' holiday a year is not the same as the standard 4/5 weeks, so I really don't think you need to feel any guilt over working "full time".