What are the main reasons for choosing a private school?

[beelegal]

My sister-in-law and I were chatting over tea this afternoon about private schools for my nephew, who’s coming up to secondary age.
She’s been to a few open days earlier this year and was particularly taken with one school nearby. However, during the headteacher’s speech, he said: “The teaching is the same in all schools — what we offer is more outside the classroom.”He then went on to highlight the school’s pastoral care, facilities, and wide range of sports and activities.

Perhaps we’re being a little naïve, but we’d always assumed the teaching itself would be better in a private school. For example, my daughter once had Maths taught by a PE teacher at her state school. We thought that in the independent sector you’d have subject specialists — a highly qualified Maths teacher for Maths, for instance.

We also imagined class sizes would be much smaller, with more opportunities for a child who isn’t particularly sporty but enjoys academic study. Yet the average class size was around 25, which isn’t especially small.

Pastoral care is so vague that schools all seem to determine themselves if theirs is good. All the private schools claim excellence.

So it does raise the question: if the teaching really is no different, why not choose a state school and simply join a local hockey or swimming club at the weekend — which would be far more affordable?

Given fees of around £25,000 a year, what are the real advantages of private education, and what justifies that cost?

I know, and it's worrying!

At the moment for primary, I'm working off the year 6 term fees, which are the most expensive compared to reception, year 1 - 5 etc. That equates as X amount per month once I've broken it down.

We can cover this from my salary, which is fine, it just means gone are the long haul holidays, (which we still have to save up for, but it's perfectly doable to save for them) the "Oh I just popped into m&s for something for dinner" or "a friend had a sad week, let me send her a £30 bunch of flowers." I'm aware of how lucky we are that we can survive on one salary.

Secondary is where it gets trickier to predict, simply because god knows what will happy by 2033 when DC is due to start year 7...
If I work off the current prices again, and just add 20% on it right now, then it takes away my salary plus a smidge of DH's. Again, that's doable, but means the holiday budget will probably fall from one week in europe each year to / not at all / once every couple of years. Again, I realise how lucky we are that we can even consider this.

If anything goes shit creek with our jobs, then we will have to pull DC out. Especially if DH's job goes wrong. Luckily he's in a stable career and I hope things will pan out fine. We do have savings that would cover a year or 2's fees if we absolutely needed to, but if things were bad enough we needed to consider pulling DC out then I presume that money would go towards the mortgage rather than the school.

Basically, long story short - it's going to be expensive, it's going to be tight, we will be changing our lifestyle for this, but I think it's the right move. If we lived in a grammar county or had an outstanding wonderful all singing all dancing state secondary..... but we don't.

Edited to add as I realised I didn't actually answer your question after all that waffling...! Currently, I think it will cost about around £350,000 - £400,000 to get DC from reception to end of year 11.

@OneOrTheOther It sounds as if you’ve got a good bit of wriggle room. Have you considered the extras too - transport, uniform, trips, exam fees etc?

Our dc are older now and we could not have predicted the massive fee increases that have taken place since they started school, as well as the addition of VAT. I am very pleased that we opted to stick with our gut feeling and not send them to private schools. It’s so hard to know what’s coming.

Good luck!

@Muchtoomuchtodo is correct about not being able to foresee the rising costs. While I said upthread I don’t regret the decision we made, as our kids have had had an excellent time and education at their private school, it has been utterly crippling and we just didn’t think through what we’d signed up for tbh.

if was doing it all again with the knowledge of how things would play out, I wouldn’t send them to a private school. It wasn’t just massive rising costs, but also we banked on our income only getting better over time. It hasn’t happened that way - both mine and DH’s industries have imploded (both different areas of media), and in real terms with cost of living and stagnant salaries, we are earning less now than we were a decade ago.

So do tread carefully, OP. It’s very difficult to leave once you are in the system, if that makes sense.

Poor quality state schools
Smaller classes
Better quality teaching and education
Better behaviour
Better Results
Extracurricular and sports offering
Confidence building culture

We’ve tried both and I’m sorry to say it but in our experience private is a completely different, better and happier world!

We wanted an all round education, not just academic in the classroom. We wanted a school that nurtures the child and treats them like an individual, instills confidence and pushes them to get out of their comfort zone and try new things, to take what they love and encourage it even more. The more extra-curricular activities the better to broaden their horizons and open up a world of possibilities. Duke of Edinburgh award? Absolutely. Great DT labs? A must. A wealth of different sports to try? Yes. Opportunities to travel and give back to other communities? Definitely. There is so much a good private school can offer.

I personally hate that so many people think private schooling is just about getting good grades.

@OneOrTheOther I would definitely consider state for infant years and then look at 7+ / 11+ / 13+ when private education really pays in terms of pastoral, extra curricular and academics they deliver.