Paying for private school fees

[boygirlmom]

Curious to know how many on here pay for fees themselves out of salary , or have financial support from schools and grandparents?

We applied for bursary assistance and were told according to our income at the time that full fees were affordable! No bursary offered. We were on a combined of 130k and had two kids we wanted to put through a Surrey school with fees of approx 4K each per term.

That's not affordable of full fees. Don't understand the logic but hey ho! I guess a LOT of sacrifices would need to be made to send them on our salaries!

Gosh all we did was IKEA and that adds up. It's not even that cheap to be honest!! And we did actually end up using a sofa from my father in law's house and a table we obtained from a recycled wood place so yep, nothing different there. Just didn't have the funds as the reality is that we needed to buy a home close to our parents so all we could afford was an ex council property which required some work to make it safe for our kiddos and we had no furniture beds pots pans nothing as we had been living with family to save up a deposit which we used on the purchase and agent fees. House was less than 500k so we did get some stamp duty relief which made it affordable.

I like the suggestion of moving elsewhere and we would love to but being close to grandparents is a must. Our home is not in the catchment for the greatest schools.

As I said it's good to hear from others in terms of how they afford / pay as gives a good indication of what's realistic for us a family.

We pay for school fees ourselves, but household income is much higher, £300k+, some years much more. Prep school for just one DD1 is £5k a term, DD2 will also be going private in a few years. We plan to put both girls through private from 4-18. We have a hefty mortgage (London zone 2) and don't restrict ourselves in terms of holidays and extracurriculars, although we don't pick luxury options. No car, , no loans, no cleaner and we don't use any childcare at the moment.
I think if we had an income below £150k or so, we would have opted to move to an excellent state school catchment rather than pay school fees. The reason we preferred not to is that most areas with a top state primary and secondary in London are not very central and/or have poor transport connections. We love Central London living with a car-free lifestyle so we've preferred to pay for a good prep to enable that, but I fully accept it's a choice we've been lucky to afford.

Hey, at our SW London prep there is a disproportionate number of lone children. Additionally a few friends have said that GP are paying.

the composition of parents paying full fees for 2 or more children is lawyers/big 4 partners/city works. Most with an income close to £750k to £1m

4k is very cheap for a term in the south east - is that for reception? If so, it'll be even more by the time they are at the top of the school.

I would have thought nurseries and scholarships were for families on less than £50k, not for those on over £100k!

Sending two private would be tight on your joint salaries, you'd just have to make sacrifices that you're unwilling to make.

If I were you (and in fact I actually am doing this), I'd save for private for secondary, rather than trying to do it all the way through primary and secondary. I'll be paying from salary, although mine is higher than yours, I'd like to have at least 5 years fees saved as a buffer before taking the plunge.

We earn a similar amount combined (slightly more) and while we could just about manage it . . . . We choose not to because I don't want to make all the other sacrifices you refer to! If I am being honest with myself, I also know what I am like and if I made all those sacrifices I would struggle to prevent that pressure coming through and affecting the children (I'm bad enough as it is and it wouldn't be fair).

We earn significantly less, so we're only doing year 5 of primary and up, however we also knew this was a priority for us, so we pushed hard to clear the mortgage before school fees started, we have no loans, no car payments etc, basically our only outgoings are those we couldn't pre-pay for ie utilities, food, council tax etc. Our cars are both new so hopefully will last the next 9 years until fees are over with. We have been overpaying my private pension for a few years because we'll be stopping or severely reducing once the kids go to private school. We love to travel, and the kids get a lot out of it, but we will be cutting back once fees start unless promotions come our way.

Correct - this is the Guildford area and there is a significant jump at year 3 when prep starts.

Thanks all for the insights much appreciated.

Think we will reevaluate at year 2 unless my son really continues to struggle in the other class size so we may to but the bullet. Who knows!

I meant we may have to bite the bullet! Autocorrect!

We have a combined income of 120k and pay for one. If I’m honest it would be tight to pay for 2 currently. My son won’t start for another 4 years when my income will be significantly higher (combined more like 180k). We will be able to pay fees and live very comfortably. I do think it’s hugely contextual to other outgoings, but nurseries are meant to be for those who cannot afford it without… not needing to make sacrifices

*bursaries

We pay for ours out of making a killing in the London housing market in the nineties and noughties.

We also make sacrifices. No fancy car or enormous house.

Jesus this thread. We're on 56k joint income and paying our fees in full.

On that income it is possible but you can't have it all. Ie big mortgage, cars, holidays etc.

My DC are at private schools and we have made huge sacrifices but it's been really worth it

@boygirlmom You also need to factor in to your sums a possible/likely 20% increase in fees (specifically, vat on fees) in the event Labour are elected late 2024/early 2025.

Don't you mean 24K?

@ReamsOfCheese I agree to a point (re this thread) but in London a joint income of £56k would, after tax and NI of, say £10k, be pretty much wiped out by senior school fees, which are in the region of £7k per term, with some closer to 10k a term. I guess it would be possible if you had no rent or mortgage to pay.

Oh yeah! Haha! My kids obviously didn't get their private school brains from me 😂

We send DD to a good state primary school. For secondary we are planning on going private for a number of reasons. Our joint income is around £140k and we are currently overpaying on our mortgage as much as we can so by the time she starts secondary (7 years time), we should have greatly reduced our mortgage to enable us to comfortably afford school fees. We both drive cars that are over 10 years old, don't each out very often etc. so we can pay lots on mortgage.

Your probably right though, 24K for two DC fees, add in lunch, PE kit, sports kit, trips, those book fair where they fleece you to buy a book, despite your DC having a library worth at home, after school, tennis club, Mandarin club, dance club, birthday constant presents for other prep kids and about £500 a year on birthday bashes for each DC, it would easily creep to about 32K for two kids at Prep at a 12k a year school!

As others have said, your choices are your choices. I don't mean that in a nasty way - you're supporting disabled parents, which is a wonderful thing to do, but it is still your choice to do that - presumably the state would provide that support (at a much more basic level probably) if you either couldn't or wouldn't. Now, of course, that's an incredibly worthwhile thing to do with your money - but if you think about it, you're still effectively asking other parents to pay your school fees so that you can make that choice - or, in effect, to pay for your parents' care so that you can put your kids through private school. To think of it another way, it's a little bit like applying for a bursary because you earn a really high salary but give a lot of your earnings to a very worthwhile charity - the money would be going to a very good place, but it clearly wouldn't be reasonable to expect other parents to fund that decision.

Assuming your kids are primary age, what people do in your situation is save at least half of the fees each year then you've got a pot which you can use and add to for secondary, at which point you're looking at £7k+ per term

I'm a single mum on £mid-50s. I pay half ds(14) school fees, About £9k

it's a stretch but it matters to me.

This. We were flat broke for several years after our dd finished her education, but it was worth it. Looking back we had very little money for a long time, even with her scholarship.

We are currently paying two sets of boarding fees and two sets of vvv expensive london prep school fees. I’m too scared to add it up…