A nosey question - re school fees

[Creole]

I'm trying to find out what is the average rate for Independent schools.

So how much do you all pay and how do you pay for the fees? Do you pay from savings or monthly income?

I would like to start saving for fees for when my son goes to secondary in a few years time.

The Good Schools Guide only covers some schools for a completet list plus fees you need the Independent Schools Information Service site,ISIS

Everyone got their cheques ready for the new term?

We've already handed ours in , a week ahead. Can you see the new parents' halo shining !!

We pay £750 a month over 10 months and that covers all the annual fees plus extras like fees insurance, school trips, clubs etc. DS is in Yr 5 now, it will go up to about £850 a month for Upper School (with inflation adding more). I earn £15K a year, like most parents at school. We are not "average", just willing to go without for the sake of our kids' educations and ejoyable "School experience"

It amazes me how anyone manages if their kids are in private school and you have more than one child. If you had one in senior school @ 3,500 per term, one in prep @ 2,000 per term and one in pre prep @ 1,500 per term thats a whopping 21k per year! Without all the extras. Even if you were on a really good salary i.e £75k by the time you have made your mortgage there would be nothing left. How do you do it?

Windemere you earn an obscene amount of money to pay for it!!

However there are many at my DCs school who don't and how they manage it is beyond me!

purse

I work in order to pay the fees, we also get some assistance from the RAF (dh works for them).

In addition , when we moved house last we made a concious decision not to upgrade the size of house etc. Since we moved from an area of high housing costs to a lower one, this allowed us to pay off our morgage early. In this we were very lucky.

We take holidays abroad, but we go camping. The last holiday cost us less than £700 for all of us.

I realise that pirvate schooling is out of the reach of many people. I also realise that we are very lucky to be able to afford it. We live a comfortable life but have little by way of material 'wants', not interested in cars, designer clothes, expensive holidays. We have not 'given up' these things, we never realy wanted them in the first place.

We are fortunate and earn morethan the average, but we are not loaded

DH and I don't have trips out or take-aways, we visit the MIL for a holiday (if you can call it that!) and I have 1 pair of shoes a year. As with most parents, my kids are dressed entirely by George, Hennes or in cousin's hand-me-downs and we gave up Sky/ cable as well. DH drives an L-reg car and I have a diesel to save cash.
Every sacrifice is more than worth it when I see DS blossoming at school

ks, we are very similar. I am fairly thrift by nature, tend to buy own brand where I can, cook from scratch, neither of us smoke, dh is teetotal, seldom if ever go to the pub. We shop in Asdas for clothes and primark....top of the range for us would be M and S for something special. None of this makes us feel hard done by....we would do it anyway

Ohh I drink! But DH doesn't.An we also stocked up when we were in France. We have a holiday planned in Holland in Easter and we will get some more then

I honestly don't feel hard done by, I know that I am very, very lucky. I also know people who spend large sums of money on holidays (£4,000 plus), nights out, fags and seemingly endless games for their kids x-boxes who think that I must be loaded because i send my kids to private school.

There are one or two mega welthy parents with kids at the school. Most of the parents could be roughly described as 'professional' I suppose. So not strapped for cash but not rolling in it. Most are doctors/nurses,teachers (loads of us!)/ RAF personel/ and some are self employed .

I have just sorted out the kids uniform and quite a bit is second hand and the rest is from Asdas! Not being 'poor orphan Annie' about it, I just can't abide waste!

HMB - You are a teacher right?

Can I please ask, why did you choose private schooling for your kids(aside from class size)?

I have just read this thread with interest as we begin to contemplate dd's secondary education. She's in a good state primary, but the secondaries around here really leave a lot to be desired. We looked at a couple of websites for local independent schools and was horrified at the fees. £3,500 per term. Lots of thinking to be done I feel. Suddenly I really don't like being a grown up with all these hard decisions to make. I just want to close my eyes and let someone else sort it all out.

Creole, it was mostly class size. Instead of being in a class size of 30 ds is in a class of 10 and dd 14.

The school is better suited to my children's needs that the local state schools would be.

In addition it has pre and post school care which allows me to go to the school I work in with the minimum disruption to the kids....and me! They run a variety of after school clubs, so that the kids can go to football/brownies/karate without us all having to spend hours in the car driving from A to B to C.

I teach in a state school, went to one myself (as did dh) and have no interest in the snob value!

For dd we had no real choice, local state has small classes because no-one wants to go to it as it is that terrible. The next two nearest schools are over-subscribed, unfortunately after we moved in the catchment areas were changed to try and bring more into the terrible school's area. It was so bad we complained to the LEA as we thought the children were at risk.

Dd is a class of 20, so not tiny, but they have a full time classroom assistant in KS1 and for 50% of time in KS2. The school has an indoor pool, computer rooms etc. which we thought great facilities, but it was how welcoming they were (dh could not make open day due to work, but they said arrange any time and it was children that showed you around as they said they have nothing to hide). The other point as with happymerryberries was the wrap round care, we worked out how much it would cost at the state school for extras (swimming, lunch, childminder for about 5 hours a day etc) and it was not a great deal.

For secondary it will be a different matter, but hopefully she will get a partial scholarship or get into the grammer school as I don't think we could afford the fees then. We currently pay the fees in advance for a discount of 2% per term early plus £100 off per term. It was about £4200 pa for year 1 when we paid last Christmas, for reception we had discounts due to early years funding for all three terms (dd was five in August). At secondary it is about £4500 per term.

Ds is now in his last year at school - thank goodness 'cos the fees are crippling. He had a lot of problems as a kiddie until he started boarding at his prep school. He LOVED boarding - so when he went to senior school he continued to board. But the fees have got more and more onerous. We are paying £6000 per term!!
We started a savings scheme for fees when he was 1yr but have only had to draw on it once. We've also benefitted hugely from wealthy grandparents. However we still live in a tiny flat above our pub cos we can't afford a house AND school fees. But we have brilliant holidays cos the flat/pub is unbearable during school hols.
Dd's school fees (day only) are much more reasonable at £2000 per term, and she'll probably go to 6th form college after GCSE - HOORAY!