what would you do?

[MyOneAndOnly]

Hello,
My elderly parents who live abroad, both professional, retired people, want to give a great gift for my child, by giving us their life savings so that I can invest it in a property, for my child?s future. Sounds fine but I am extremely stressed out, as there is an immense pressure for me to do the right thing when I cannot see clearly what is the best thing to do, my decision will change our future and I cannot afford to make mistakes.

A-) Whether to buy a property to live in and sending DD to a local school
or
B-) Whether to buy the property in order to rent out for income so that I can afford private school fees for DD, which in turn, probably will be causing her some problems, ie social exclusion due to where she lives (ie council property), especially since girls tend to be clickey, bullyish etc & maybe more underhanded than boys.

I cannot do both ie buy a house to live in AND at the same time send her to a fee paying school... I have to choose. Sctate shools in our area are just average and there are rough kids as well as average kids.

I am originally from another country, married to an Englishman for almost two decades, recently had a child together and as soon as we had the baby, we are divorced. So I am a single parent although not by intention. I will not be getting any financial help from my child?s dad. He is in a very bad shape financially as well as some other problems on his part. So I have no support system in any shape or form. I am totally alone in life with my only child, my parents abroad, are very old and fragile. I am very well educated, graduate, and working part time in a very demanding / tiring job which I like. Education is extremely important to me and to my family and although I was not privately educated myself, I want to provide private education for my DD. I feel that a good schooling would be the best investment I could give my child as well as the best suppoer system for both of us...

I am 45 years old (feeling too old and most importantly too tired of life to be tied to a mortgage for years and years), I work part time in a good job but at the same time it is very pressured and tiring job.
We live in a council flat in a poor area, before having DD it never bothered me, I was using the flat like a hotel and was living for work and travels. I had a work-based existence. Only now that I have my lovely DD, schools, investing for her future, home for her etc all making me question everything.

Where we live, there are lots of immigrants who formed their own communities which I am NOT part of ( even if they were from my own country I could not find it easy to join any groups and could not fit in, I am a loner and a bit geeky). I used to live for work and travels, now I live for DD and trying to make quality time for my parents. I am running out of time.

I would like to buy whatever small place I can afford outright without mortgage and either move there with my child so we will have a quality housing or we can stay in the flat we have been living and rent the property for income which would hopefully go a long way to pay for my child?s private schooling.

What would you do?

PROS FOR LIVING IN OUR CURRENT SMALL FLAT : In my country, even middle class people in major cities, live in luxury / large flats in nice and exclusive areas so living in a flat is not a scary as English people would feel. I personally feel fine living in a flat. Additionally, although in socio-economic terms, the neighbourhood is poor and underachieving, the area around our flat is really green with large - well kept parks. So I have some sort of access to greenery and nice view out of my windows ? although I do not have my own garden.
Secondy, the area is developing fast. Soon there will be lots more facilities and transport links available. It is bound to go up (when, don?t know).
Thirdly, tenancy is secure and affordable. Therefore if we keep living here cheap, I can afford private school fees with rental income plus my salary.

CONS: It is a tiny flat and it is not ours and it is not in the best area. And children need gardens to be happy, or is it so ??? I honestly don?t know that last one cos I didn?t live in a house with a garden so I don?t really miss one. Gardens seem to be hard work to me. I said I was geeky .
Also if we keep living here and therefore I manage to afford to send DD to a fee paying school, I?m afraid it may cause her some problems in terms of mixing with other kids in her class living in better housing / better areas etc and girls especially tend to be clickey or bitchy ? I am thinking of her not being invited to parties / not being able to organise sleepovers in the tiny flat and getting upset over it. Am I being too sensitive ?

I am learning life with DD in a brand new way and it brings new challenges.

What would you do, kind people?

Myoneandonly They have homework diaries that they write notes in and you'll get a twice yearly report which is actually written about your child, not cut and pasted from standard text.

I would move to near a very good state school if that's feasible. It might give you more of a feeling of inclusion in a community and you won't be under the pressure to rent out the property at all times to meet the fees.

But I think it's hard to make these decisions in the abstract and it might help you to visit some actual schools (private and state) and actual flats to see what your gut tells you.

Yes, it does depend what the actual schools are like - there are good and bad private, and good and bad state. I strongly recommend that you go and visit any that you are considering, and get a feel for them, before you decide what to do. Good luck!

My DC's school has a daily diary and also a weekend 'school-to-home' book. Each term we are told the curriculum themes week by week so that we know in advance when they are going to do, say, 'Egypt' or whatever. Then the school-to-home book has a weekend 'activity' such as (for example) finding photos of the pyramids or drawing them....
The daily diary records their reading and numeracy progress every day, and is accompanied by the daily reading book so we can if we want go over the book they have been reading during the day. At a later stage it is replaced by a homework book recording all their homework and feedback.
We also have a 'contact' book where we write in the non-academic things as and when they crop up. For example we wrote in to let the teacher know that the family dog had died, so they weren't surprised when my DS asked in assembly if everyone could pray for 'Chaos' (they changed the schedule of the lessons slightly as well and had a session on pets so that all the children could appreciate that pets don't live forever etc).
And of course there is the termly parents evening and termly written report. And we have regular email contact with the head and often text back and forth with the teacher (we have their mobile number so that we can contact them during the school day for anything - and they use it too to contact us.

If it sounds idyllic, that's because in our view it is. There are 16 children per class sharing a teacher and an assistant, a forest school classroom that they use, and sport for all children every day. And of course it is expensive: we are very very lucky to have the opportunity to send out kids here and we know that many private schools are not as geared as this - that's why it takes a lot of legwork to find the right place for your child.

We are obviously very very biased, so do please take that into account.

In the OP's position, I would buy a property in an area close to good state schooling. A property for one WOHM and one daughter needn't be too large. How about a little cottage in a grammar-school county, a cottage that is safely within catchment for good schools (grammar) but too small to be a family home, and therefore doesn't attract the price premium of being within a good school catchment area?

"How about a little cottage in a grammar-school county, a cottage that is safely within catchment for good schools (grammar) but too small to be a family home, and therefore doesn't attract the price premium of being within a good school catchment area?"

Not being funny BA but families of 6 are living in properties in grammar school areas that are probably too small for the OP and her daughter, I know we are.
This is the problem at the moment GS are only a reasonable traveling distance for the very families wealthy and OAP's in our area, any child from a normal family has a 40 min bus ride each way.

Near my parents (Weald of Kent) there is definitely a two-tier thing going on in the housing market - that's where I got the idea from. There is a huge price gap between tiny cottages that cannot reasonably house families and family houses.

You could pick up a tiny cottage in the weald of Kent for about 300K last time I looked.

£300k so you'd be earning what £90,000 a year to afford that, hardly an average family income is it ?

I would move and buy a house in a better area. Like others have said if you support your DD and are passionate with her about reading, education, etc then that will make a big difference. You will have the security of your own home for ever.

If you stay where you are would you be happy for your daughter as a teenager mixing with local kids, roaming the streets?

Remember you can always spend some of the money on private tuition if you feel the need which will be a lot cheaper than private school.

There are really good state schools in the UK. My dd does to a very small village school where there are only 16 in her class. There is a full time TA as well as the teacher so there is one adult to 8 kids which I think is a fantastic ratio. Her teacher is in the playground every morning and afetrnoon and only too happy to talk to you about progress/answer questions. I couldn't have a better education for her if I paid for it. I realise these schools may be hard to find but theey are there.

I vote for moving to a grammar school county - mine (Gloucestershire) has small village primary schools and excellent grammars. Obviously you'd need to do research; but the tenagers can hang out in small towns and a relatively safe environment.

Just read your comment re. swapping; I met someone a few years ago who'd done this - moved fro Lambeth to lovely Glos town!

90k for a part-time job! lets hope the OP comes back to tell us what she does

I think schools are so variable you can't generalise in the way that you are tempted to do and would need to go and look at them sorry there are some bad private schools and some excellent state schools what can be bad for one child can be great for another it's tough getting it right

I would be surprised if you'd get a weekly report at private school. We get two reports and three parents evenings. You can arrange meetings if you have concerns but these are scheduled around school hours. Not all private schools are better than their state equivalent and not all have smaller classes than state.

It's interesting what is one person's view of idyllic. Squiffy says her school is idyllic because they have daily updates and the teacher is contactable during the day (among others). This would turn me off completely. What is the point of daily maths and reading update? So you can work on gaps in the evening? (Poor child!) I sincerely hope this is not nursery or rec. Also what are the children doing while the staff are writing in these books? And also reading 1 to 1 each day by the sound of it. Again what are the other children doing during this? Imagine 16 parents having the potential to text and annoy the teacher during the day? Again it's something that distracts from the teacher's attention to the children. Not for me.

Personally, I would rather know that my child struggles with b's and d's, for example, than to sit in blissful ignorance of this until parent's evening. DS's teacher and I have also worked out that if DS does his reading in three very short bursts each day instead of one longer one then his performance improves immeasurably. Stuff we worked out together, that kind of thing. I presume that whist the children are doing their individual daily 1:1 readings then the rest of the class are being supervised by the TA (I would guess this happens during the child-led play times which happen three times a day). I am more concerned at the thought of a classroom where my DS does not have daily 1:1 attention, than the concept of one that does.

I am sure that many teachers would find the pressure of the constant feedback to and fro very demanding, and I know that they themselves have to commit to very long hours - their only 'breaks' are when the children go to dance/forest school/music/PE/French. And I know that they use those breaks to contact the parents and write up observations and stuff, so they have no rest even when the kids are off somewhere else in the school. One of my friends is a teacher there and admits that she feels as if her own children (who are at the school) are a bit abandoned during term times because she has to work such long and stressful hours herself. I have no doubt whatsoever that the teachers have to work their socks off to keep the parents happy, and it probably is OTT in other peoples' eyes. But this is the nature of the private system - you work on supply and demand and if that is what the parents want most, then that is what they get.

I'm far from convinced that it would benefit me or DC for me to know if my child is confusing B and D in the first week or so. It makes sense to wait until the teacher has had 5-6 weeks to assess the child as a whole and give specific and balanced feedback about weaknesses and strengths. Focusing on the micro-changes, spurts and plateaus or even regressions in possible development, on a day to day basis, is complete overkill, imho.

I don't know about private school.
At our (very bog-standard) state primary, I feel like I get plenty of feedback about things that really matter.

It's funny what someone said about private schools don't let DC give up easily (like that was supposed to be a good thing). That is precisely what put me off our local Prep. It completely hot-houses the children; an hour's worth of homework each night in reception, hours of after-school activities, etc. And if I were paying thru the nose, I'd durn well make my DC do all that, too . But as it is, DC just want to chase around under trees and play It after school, not have yet more focused, most sit-down, goal-oriented learning. They need time every day to just lark about and be kids.

An hour's homework in reception? Sounds absolutely mad. As I think everyone who has looked into private says, you have to be really careful about checking out the schools themselves and find one that is right for you. Alardi - am not surprised you ran a mile from the place you describe.

MyOneAndOnly
I am a single mum and have been for 15 years. Not paticularly well off although my house is mow my own as i am now 53...( house was mine b4 i met my ex so i have not achieved it at his expense)
We spent all our money on educating our children at a local private junior and senior school. It has been the best thing we ever did. 22 children max per class, time to talk to teachers, even tho my eldest is now 21 , the friends he made at senior school are all still his best mates and they stick tog when they come home from uni. the camaradarie has been fantastic and they are a really nice group of children.
T he decision was made when we went to the school that they were supposed to go to and there were 42 children to one teacher. Worked our backsides off ,but it was worth the investment.

This is interesting. My friend, who has children in a very prestigious private school says that the thing she envies about our state primary is that I can pop in and see ds's teacher any time I want - I can catch her for 5 minutes before or after school almost any day, and she feels that I am much more involved in ds's schooling than she is - she is expected to let the school get on with it.

you can do this at my childrens public one , but the state ones in the area have a really bad reputation in my area and i was dreading them going there.
I have been in at 8 am in the morning to see heads of year and individual tachers and they will spend as long as it takes to sort anything out. Cant praise the school enough.
It all depends on each individual school i reckon. You get a feel for it when you have the initial interviews as to wether the svhool has open doors or not.

Thanks Alypaly and everybody...
I appreciate the all replies...