Income for Secondary private for one

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Hi, We are thinking of sending our four year old to private secondary but he will go to state primary. We currently earn £67k a year which gives us a take home of £4200 a month . My husband will get a pay rise next year and hopefully a promotion before our child is secondary school age so take home will hopefully be 5k a month. We live in a cheap part of the country and our mortgage is £800 a month . This will stay the same as we will upgrade our home before he reaches 11. The school fees in our preferred school are currently £1k a month for senior which I expect will increase but not massively as they haven't historically.
We only have one child so we want to provide him with all the opportunities that we can. Is it realistic to pay fees out of income? I currently work part time but I could go full time if necessary. Thoughts?

Budget for fees to rise 5% per year. Look at the finances of the school three small cheap schools have closed in our area in the last month as they didn't gave the financial reserves to survive these times.

It sounds like you'll have enough to me, especially as you have the scope to increase your own earnings quite substantially by working full time.

Thank you for your replies. School still open as it seems to be filled with the children of doctors and it's over 100 years old so I expect it to weather the storm.
I guess I was worried about the extras. Everyone goes on about how much more they pay than just the fees!

We didn't pay for many more extras, until exam years where we had to pay for all GCSE, AS and A Level entries. One of my daughters did music A level and one did drama, so there were lots of visits to concerts and plays, but we were very happy to pay for those as they directly supported their learning.

They had music lessons outside school. They had school trips but many were optional, especially the expensive ones, and the ones that were more relevant to the curriculum eg battlefields tour, were probably no more than you'd have to pay in a state school.

That's good to know. Thank you

sounds doable to me.
Try to put away the equivalent school fees while your child is at State primary in a relatively easy access account so that you have a few years school fees put aside in case your circumstances change. That way you will still be able to afford for your child to continue at their private Secondary school whatever happens.
Its what we did

@Hoppinggreen that sounds like a really good plan actually. We were going to overpay the mortgage for the next few years and then put away two years of fees before his starts.

And don't worry too much about extras, we are also in a relatively cheap part of the country and fees are similar to yours. Uniform was about the same as local state schools and so are optional trips, lunches etc.
We have Ds starting soon in Y7 so we will have 2 lots of fees to pay but DD gets a part scholarship, Ds will get a sibling discount and there is only a 1 year overlap so not too bad.
There can be a lot of scaremongering on here about fees shooting up, uniforms being extortionate, expensive trips that "everyone" goes on and snobbery if you don't have a flash car etc and its probably all true in a lot of cases but its not our experience at all of DDs school. It might depend on where you live - we are in Yorkshire so no Bankers or Oligarchs !

@hopping green , yes we are in South Wales so no bankers here either! Just children of the traditional professions go private here. That's really reassuring! We have friends in the South East who are paying £2k a month for senior school with scary extras!

Just to give you an idea of exam costs, most GCSEs cost between £50-80 (for the qualification not each paper) and most children would take about 10-13.

A-levels vary a lot more in price, from £80-200, and AS levels cost £50-120 (not every school sits AS levels anymore, but if your school does sit them it's unlikely you'd be able to opt out). Most people take 3-4 AS levels and 3 A-levels.

You'd also usually need to pay for any reviews of marking etc, if you ever felt these were required.

These fees do go up year on year, but usually only by a small amount.

I think that sounds fine :)

Sounds doable to me too. DH earns circa 140k which by the time tax & pension is taken out, leaves surprisingly little. Dual income of 70k is of course much better financially than a high single earner on top rate. We’ve managed two lots of school fees concurrently...which was incredibly tough, and required remortgaging at one point, but we don’t regret it.

I think that would be quite tight but probably manageable.

We're in the silly south east, so we do have bankers and oligarchs, but plenty of more normal folk too. Our experience is just the same as hoppinggreen's - reasonable uniform costs (we got most of ours secondhand), hardly any extras apart from music lessons and occasional trips (local trips cheap, foreign ones not, but by no means everyone goes on them). Food costs included in the fee, so an upfront known expense. And the school is very considerate about any additional costs and does not assume that everyone's loaded. I think to a certain extent that if you're the jealous type then you'll be the jealous type regardless of what school you're at - the Bentleys and massive houses at DS's secondary don't bother me any more than the Range Rovers and (pretty) massive houses at his state primary did.

Our school fees include all exam fees (except fees for resits or reviews of marks) and lunches. The only extras are music lessons and uniform.

Start a spreadsheet and allow a 5% increase per year as suggested. Start putting some away now. We always worked with 2 years' school fees in a separate fees account so that if we had a sudden change of circumstances school fees were still covered. So it is good to plan now. In fact I believe there is some kind of school fees policy/payment plan thing that you can get and start paying into too.

our only child will be starting at a private senior school next year. we have been putting 2/3rds of the fees into savings for the past couple of years and once the fees become due we should be able to pay 2/3rds from income and 1/3rd from savings, effectively spreading 7 years fees out over 9/10 years which makes it more manageable. our income is a bit higher than yours but so are the fees of our local schools so should even out. you should be ok.

though what with covid, it's all more uncertain of course. I have no guarantee my well-paid job will still exist come September.

Thats really helpful. Thank you everyone!

My child is in state primary if u can send to private primary honestly

There may also be discounts for paying a year’s fees upfront.

I do think you have to guard against your child being permanently disappointed if you cannot afford extras for things they are really interested in. My DDs fees were for boarding but a glance at current day fees for y7 show they start at £7200 per term. They rise to £8500 per term in the 6th form. So it’s not just inflation you need to consider, its price banding too.

There are extras at most schools. Any musician will want music lessons. Drama lessons can be popular as well as sports coaching. Uniform and sports kit are rarely the same price as Tesco special deals. Lots of things were included such as food, exams and books but bargain basement fees can hide a myriad of extras. So check exactly what your money is buying.

As for trips: most DC like to go somewhere with their friends. I can barely think of any of DDs friends who did nothing or went nowhere. It’s part of the DNA of private schools to offer a broad education and that isn’t just confined to the classroom.

True, though the flip side of that is that one of the potential strengths of an independent is precisely the all-round education that it can offer within the fees. So yes, we pay for individual music lessons, because music is DS's 'thing', but we could and would have done that anywhere - arguably the real benefit of the school is the quality of the provision and opportunities he gets in sports, drama and wider music that we don't have to pay any extra for and also don't have to logistically arrange.l, which is a huge bonus as we both work pretty much full time.

I agree that you might not want to go the independent route if you can't afford any extras - we've budgeted an amount for music extras and also aim for DS to be able to go on an overseas trip maybe every two years (though these will be the £500 European study trips not the £2,000 Caribbean sports tours!). But I don't think you need to allow for loads of unforeseen extras as long as you research your school first. The only extras we've paid for in our first year have been a school photo (totally optional), two local trips (between £10 and £15 each), a couple of school-organised socials (both under £20) and a couple of evening meals when DS has stayed on for evening concerts etc (a godsend, and cheaper than feeding him at home!). That's it. Uniform was affordable (most M&S, the logoed stuff mostly secondhand), and no need to buy a laptop or ipad for school, or any books, resources etc.

Dd(Y10) has been on every trip she’s asked to
Lake District £250
France £500
Skiing £650
The latter 2 were paid in instalments over 3 months.
Her school don’t do expensive long haul trips so your child won’t necessarily be “permanently disappointed “
There is a lot of difference between Private schools in London and SE England and those in Yorkshire and Wales for example from what I read on MN. DDs annual fees are not far off termly fees at some schools in other areas and her school is excellent

Also, it's not just private schools that do expensive trips! All of the more MC state schools round here do ski trips, longhaul study trips and sports tours costing thousands. Perhaps a smaller percentage of the students go on them, but your child would still have plenty of opportunity to feel disappointed...

I think it's doable. However it does depend on any future interests. Extras at my end are nearly 2k per term for 1 child. Gulp.

Drama and sports coaching is part of the normal curriculum at our school and not chargeable as extras.

I would just ask each school you view what is included and what is extra as it seems to vary a lot.

Also noone bats an eye if people don't do trips as there are quite a few on offer and not everybody goes on them all so it is never noticeable who is not there. Some go on none.

There is a big difference between the Public Schools and more "regular" private schools.