Are private school fees really likely to increase by 7-10% a year?

[Ani57]

We are trying to put a financial plan in place and have been looking into the possibility of private schooling for secondary school. Our kids are only 4 and 2 right now but I read recently that you should expect a 7-10% increase a year. The fees are currently £21k a year for secondary which would mean £300k for both kids. However with a 7% increase per year, this would be £600k for 2 kids by the time my children go! Is there anyone with children finishing school that can confirm whether this is true or not?

Ours have gone up about 3% before but this year it's 6%.
I went to a state school in another country but both my kids have been to private. Our initial intention was to try state primary first but failing to get in to our nearest FOUR state schools (all very good) and offered an adequate one across the borough decided it for us.
My eldest was not academic and left for vocational college at 16, my dd is predicted to do very well at A level (though ironically is going in to a creative field where grades do not matter so much). Would they have had different outcomes at state? Would they be different people? Would it have made any difference in the long run considering the fields they are entering? Who can say?
You can't tell at 4 years whether your child is destined to be a brilliant scientist or artist or what have you. Or if they would still become those if they had gone to a state school. You just provide the best you can under your individual circumstances.
I do know people who only had one child as they felt they could then give that one the best of everything (schooling, time etc).

While you could possibly pick out the prep vs non prep dc in Y7 at my kids Private school they were all pretty much the same by Y8.

@Fudgeball123
State 'plus' doesn't work for everyone but its a seriously great option if you have someone working part time who can do the after school running around. I love the fact it is so highly tailored to our individual children as all of mine are so different.
Re galleries etc - we don't live near any either but we have the the time at weekends and 'fee' money to spend on lots of trips to London / Stratford/Paris for theatre, galleries etc and then we get to enjoy it too. Ditto trips skiing, to things like Commonwealth games etc, we get the fun too.
I suppose what I am saying is that if you care about extra curricular you don't have to do the school fees route and have kids face potential at discrimination at Uni/work place due to usually outdated ideas about what a fee paying person is like (I went to private school so faced some of these myself over the years, I usually play down where I went to school TBH.)

To my knowledge, the vast majority of private schools are run as charitable trusts and so they don’t make profits as such. Everything does keep on getting more expensive and so the fees do too.

BumblingBy I agree state plus seems what our London friends do. Their schools are mostly very good and they have plenty of after school activities. They also do pretty much an extra curricular activity daily and at weekends. They also do museums, city farms etc. One of them works part-time so this works well for them. State schools in London and now some of the best in the country and have improved massively since I was a child.

For us the nearest state schools are pretty dire and distances to activities are significant. We'd need someone to drive them around which we don't have. We did as much state schooling as we thought we could and will certainly consider boarding grammar (though we don't really want our kids to board) and will consider the 6th form college as that's very good.

I think its horses for courses, different families and children need different things. We also went to the Commonwealth Games :-)

@Fudgeball123 soundslike you have e down the right thing. But universities and job interviewers don’t care about ‘reasons why’ I don’t think. My brother is partner at one of the big 5 accountancy firms and their employment policies have changed massively since he was taken on (he was privately educated too and says it is very different now how candidates are viewed .)

Such an odd educational system we have compared to some other countries!.

The value of charitable status is estimated at around £200 per pupil per term, which is less than the variation of fees between schools (whether legally charities or not). I have never seen a proposal on how this would be achieved (just headline ‘let’s do it’ sort of stuff) which under current laws surrounding the winding up of charities would mean closure, assets sold off and proceeds donated to similarly aimed charities. Also, if provision of education were removed as a charitable aim, it would have a big knock-on effect on all other charities which have education as an aim - they might need to cease funding those activities from charitable funds and pay market rent for using charitably owned assets. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but I’ve yet to see a proposal which wouldn’t have major unintended effects.

VAT on fees themselves is unrelated to charitable status, and is currently exempt because our VAT still matches EU version, where there is no taxation on education (in a broad sense, crammers where you buy individual courses rather than the full experience are not exempt). Now post-Brexit, that’s something that can be more readily changed. But still needs a level of administrative competence that I’m not sure we currently have, as nurseries and universities rely on same exemption and no-one wants unintended effects on those.

Rubbish advice. It’s proven children who go from nursery are more socially active and involved in sports etc. more than their non private peers

But apart from a few hours freenursery after the age of 3 everyone pays for nursery. So it’s all private. How do they measure it if this is the case?

We absolutely can, even with 3 kids if fees stay at £21k per year or inflate in line with salaries (2% for example) But, at 7% inflation we are looking at fees of £50k a year by the time my children are doing their GCSEs. Even 2 kids then would be tough unless our salaries rise by that percentage every year which absolutely will not happen!

If you’re not going to send them private until secondary, it probably makes sense to start saving the equivalent of the fees every year from now

Do it partly as an experiment to see if you can do it and still live comfortably, and partly to give yourselves a sink fund to cover fee rises once they are in school

We did it for a year before our eldest started school to make sure were weren’t overstretching ourselves and it was a worthwhile exercise

So, the outcome from this discussion is that the OP is going to save the money she would have spent on school fees and use it to buy a house in the catchment of a good school (thus making it marginally harder for poorer children to get a place). She will then use more of her money to supplement her child's state education with extra activities and perhaps tutoring if needed. When her children apply to university, they will avoid any potential discrimination which they might have attracted if they'd gone private. In future years, she may also have money left over to help them with house deposits etc.

I'm interested in how the 'private schools are unfair' posters think this is a fairer or more equal system than paying for a school place?

(NB OP I'm not remotely criticising your choice, whatever it is!)

So, the outcome from this discussion is that the OP is going to save the money she would have spent on school fees and use it to buy a house in the catchment of a good school (thus making it marginally harder for poorer children to get a place). She will then use more of her money to supplement her child's state education with extra activities and perhaps tutoring if needed. When her children apply to university, they will avoid any potential discrimination which they might have attracted if they'd gone private. In future years, she may also have money left over to help them with house deposits etc.

I'm interested in how the 'private schools are unfair' posters think this is a fairer or more equal system than paying for a school place?

(NB OP I'm not remotely criticising your choice, whatever it is!)

I don’t know anything about sending kids to private school but I would anticipate those increases might not be unreasonable.

if your state schools are decent I’d just send them there. My son just got all As in his exams so I’m glad now we didn’t spend money on school fees or moving to a more expensive catchment as it wouldn’t have served him any better.

In terms of the confidence in my profession there are a lot of private school educated types. It’s not always a good thing, I’ve come across a lot where the confidence is extremely misplaced and/or just comes across as arrogance.

I'm not sure money for private school = buying in catchment of an amazing state school as opposed to a just bog standard one, loads of extra curricular activities and still have money left over for house deposits. So your conjecture is very much a false one.

Not to mention that good state schools don't get "priority" for university admissions anyway.

@frostrime the OP is choosing not to take money from GP’s and they are doing it their way. I respect that.
I went to private school and to this day it shames me that I didn’t have friends from state school when I was growing up. I had no idea how people lived if they didn’t go to private school and live the way we did. My children are at a good comp in a nice m-ish catchment area, have music lessons, go on nice holidays etc etc, but they know SO much more about live’s very different to their own than I ever did and I am so glad that they do. I hope they will go forth in to the world and put that knowledge to decent use.

Hmm. I find these arguments slightly unconvincing tbh. My kids go to a private secondary. They went to a state primary. I know others who could afford private secondary but don't (grammar area). My overwhelming impression is that, generally, children and families socialise with others who look a bit like them. The rich families I know at state secondary tend to gravititate towards those who have a similar lifestyle - they go to the same parties, weekend activities, ski resorts etc. Same at primary - yes, kids might rub shoulders at school with those from a different 'class', but again, people tend to gravitate towards 'people like them' for their long-lasting friendships. Just the same, at private secondary, my kids tend to gravitate towards the more 'normal' kids than the super-rich - they just have more in common.

@frostrime My children have friends who have similar and very dissimilar lives to them. they are also very understanding of neuro difference having witnessed how hard children with difficulties find it to cope with a school day. And not the well cared for high functioning ND kids you get in private schools. The ones with ADHD who get a Mars bar for breakfast (if they are lucky) and have huge amounts of anger bubbling that can sometimes explode in lessons.

I agree with @frostrime about the socialising thing. In my area, there are several leafy comps, but it is very unusual to see kids mixing across class and race outside of that school setting. I also have friends with DC at both independents and these comps and one mum friend was relieved that her state school DC only went to parties with independent school DC. I am pleased and relieved that my own DC have genuine friends from all backgrounds and they are always welcomed in our home.

@Soma but they are mixing within that school setting and that is important, really important IMHO.
round here the indie kids have the best parties (most booze and drugs 😂)

@BumblingBy you may well be right. But I get the impression that they may only have a superficial awareness of DC not like themselves and would never actually socialise with them in any meaningful way.

@frostrime I suspect you're right that most children will make friends amongst the "people a bit like me" - after all friendships are built on something in common. But whilst at school, they work in pairs and small groups, and have to get on with, the whole range of people that attend their school. The range of different types of children at a private school is, by reason of having to pay, or having sufficiently switched on parents to apply for a bursary, automatically less broad.

My observation is also that people who send their children to private schools do so, in part because of the range of extra-curricular activities provided there. That gives their children even less chance to mix with others as they don't do these activities out of school, whereas, as cited here - it's much more likely that state school students will go to activities run outside of their school and expand their peer group that way.

To play devil's advocate - actually, the range of people my DC mix with at private school is very broad - but in the other direction. As well as the (relatively) normal families and the bursary kids, they mix with people who go yachting around the Med for the summer, and the odd foreign royal. And tbh, they have as much in common with those kids as they did with the kids they spent time with in primary who had a parent in prison or who couldn't afford shoes. That is - nothing. I'm glad that my children have had exposure to those much less privileged than them - but I'm also glad that they've had exposure to those who are far more privileged, so that they are totally unphased (for example) by the prospect of encountering someone in a job interview from a background of immense wealth and privilege.

As for outside clubs, I guess it depends. My kids do a non-school weekend sports club - I would say the vast, vast majority of kids there are either private school educated or have gone down the middle class 'state school plus' route - indeed, that's the very reason why most of them are there, to buy the privilege they're not getting from their state school.

We have friends in London who's catchment area is 180m. The primary school is outstanding. Within the area houses are over 1 million pounds. There is no social housing. The population is racially mixed but economically homogenous. These families are driving smax and 4x4, going skiing etc. They are hanging out with people like them... There is no mixing with other socio economic groups.
Our village primary has no racial diversity but is much broader economically..

I would work on the basis that they could potentially go up that much but probably (hopefully) won’t, and certainly not every year.

ours are going up about 3% this year after several years of no change. At a recent meeting to discuss it the governors said that they really needed to put the fees up more to be able to offer exactly the same but were conscious that if they did a significant number of parents who were stretched to the limit financially would have to remove their children, so it would be counter-productive as numbers would fall. Things may be different in London and the SE where competition for places is much more intense though.

Choose the private school well. It’s predicted a high percentage will close over the next few years and many are struggling right now. Private schools often have many large old buildings so heating costs are going to hit them hard.