School fee hike - freaking out slightly

[wingingthings]

I'm under no illusion that we haven’t been very lucky to be able to send our 2 children privately. However, we've done this without foreign holidays, new cars and making sacrifices- we shop at Aldi etc. Choices we've made happily and it's been fine. We also worked on the basis of 5% inflation each year. We just got the fees increase letter of 12.5%. I'm freaking out as this pushes us very close and will still have another 5 years to go. Curious as to others experiences this year??

And yet, here you are on the thread. Engaging..

I would look at state options for sixth form - would that speed it up a bit? Our local education system is not the best, but the area does have a brilliant sixth form college which gets great results.

You say you still have 5 years to go, which implies to me that you could break off earlier.
You could break at the end of y11 easily, and also with limited detriment at the end of y8.

@Cornwallintherain are you actually in Cornwall? Just interested as I am adjacent, similar social mix, & I wouldn’t say our private school was full of bookish quiet kids. In fact the only child going to the private school from our Y6 state this year is a mildly disruptive & not very bright boy.

If the private schools need 12% increase just to keep up with running costs,feel sorry for the poor state schools who have the same running costs but will get pretty much nothing extra in funding.

A friend worked in a private school. One family (3 children) left, and that was enough to turn the school from profitable to non profitable. It closed within a couple of months

In this financial climate, I expect many parents of young children who could afford either option will opt for state school, from the outset, rather than private. And even when the economy improves, people have long memories. Future parents may remain cautious about committing to 13+ years of private school fees

And, when Freddie goes to local state school and turns out absolutely fine, Betsy's parents will feel more comfortable following suit

I think finances will become increasingly tight for private schools in future

That's not my experience either. Od more conflicted about where my DC go of there was an option for quiet, bookish kids! (As it is the state comp is serving them just fine).

The children from independent schools that we know (my DC do a couple of sports where private schools are disproportionately represented) are often the ones who have self confidence to a fault and frequently believe themselves qualified to question the adult running the session or refereeing. On more than one occasion I have been extremely shocked at the way they talk to their parents in public. I never come away wishing my DC were spending all day with these characters. (They are exposed to all sorts of poor behaviour at their comp too, but I'm not paying through the nose for the experience!)

We know a family living just outside Bedford - their children have just gone to their catchment schools the whole way through and they absolutely thrive, seem to be involved in all sorts of enrichment and sports etc. I get no sense they're struggling to find like minded friends.

Some people need to realise that you can use the word 'sacrifice' and sacrifice things that are NOT the absolute basics and necessities of life. If you go without one thing, E.G. a new car, so that you can afford another, E.G. private schooling for your children, you are still making a sacrifice of one thing for another!

I'll add that children are very adaptable and if you have to take them out of school as the fee's are too expensive, they'll soon get used to a new school and may even thrive. Case in point that I did not want to go to a 'fancy' school and be average. Being top of all my classes in my comprehensive pushed me on to be the best and excel.

@Truestorypeeps This is reflected in the studies done on uni students. The privately educated tend to struggle a lot more than state school kids. Having your hand held through your education does help, but it can easily disadvantage you. I've seen some awful state and private schools so it's not really one Vs the other. There's some awful bullying and drug use in some of our local privates. Even those with money prefer the state.

Anecdotally that might be correct @Dodgeitornot and there’s always the exception aka my DD who was privately educated, awarded a first class honours for her undergraduate degree and a distinction for her Masters degree while her third year uni housemates spent their time watching daytime TV and are still watching daytime TV as they’re unemployed.

@JustanotherBerkshiremum Oh of course! A good school will have a curriculum that is broad and each student should be able to find or be guided towards their niche. The A Level to Uni machine is so redundant. There are uni kids right now doing what your daughters housemates are doing. They will be made up of kids from all walks of life. Private schools have the pressure of results and Uni destinations so often pressure that route, whereas state schools don't have enough cash to to offer the breadth they'd like. That's the only reason I always say it's school Vs school not private Vs state.
I am not against private at all. I'm for choice. Not every school suits every child but unfortunately only those with money have true choice, whether that's by moving catchments or paying fees.

I wonder what would happen if all the private schools closed and the government had to fund all schooling. It's ridiculous that independents get no government funding IMO.

@Milksheikha I actually agree. In quite a lot of countries private schools get the equivalent of that child's state school funding and the fees top it up. I don't think that would go down well in the UK though.

State funded independent schools? 🤔Isn't that something of an oxymoron? Don't you think that if the government was giving money to a school they might want, not unreasonably, to then have some influence on how that school was run? You can't have your cake and eat it. And the "but we should get the tax we pay towards education back if we don't use it" argument doesn't hold water either. Take that to it's natural conclusion and childless people shouldn't have to contribute anything to education or maternity services, healthy people less to the NHS and so on. That's not how our society works.
(Though actually, some specialist independents do receive some government funding - or at least the pupils do, via the MDS scheme for example, but that's a bit different)

I think it really shifts the accessibility and therefore the argument shifts - eg the Australian system where all children get a baseline funding and therefore private schools are cheaper and less 'elite' as a whole - a third of kids in private education in Australia vs 7% overall here.

There are still massive anomalies in that eg funding for Catholic schools is higher than for other private schools. But at least it gets faith schools and faith admissions out of the state sector.

That said, overall, the systems with hardly any private schools and much broader take up of state education seem to get better outcomes overall than either the UK or Australian systems.

@JassyRadlett I agree completely. Poland has an new middle class post communism and there's a lot of private schools popping up. They have the same system as Australia in terms of funding and it's screwing up the public school system that was previously excellent.

Yeah the Australian system was basically a fudge with the churches in the same way as the UK fudge was arrived at - they just took different models ie Australia said 'your faith schools need to be outside the state sector but we'll enable ongoing state funding, and higher for Catholic schools' while the UK said 'we'll keep your faith schools within the state sector and pay nearly all your costs but you have to give up a little more control.'

Both have the same outcome of class-stratified schools (recognising that faith schools with faith admissions criteria in the UK have a disproportionately wealthy intake) which then has a big knock on to other schools.

What would happen is that a whole privileged and capable sector of society would have skin in the game and would both engage with and give to their local state school, and also would be far more demanding of government and the education system and the government would have to up it's game in response.

I absolutely don't agree that schools for privileged families and children should be state funded. I find it mind blowing that grammars already are.

It wouldn’t do much more than it does here already. Parents pay through house prices and access the better state schools that way.

Two of mine are at a private school* abroad with this system and it means fees (or 'parental contributions', as they are called) are extremely reasonable and means tested. Parents with the lowest incomes pay a low two-figure sum per month.

*It has to be a state-approved school, though. Not all schools qualify for this. Ours is a faith school, which can't be a state school as education is constitutionally secular, but effectively acts as a fairly 'normal' schooling provision in our town, with a very broad socio-economic mix. Somewhat smaller classes than the state schools and a few additional things but not massively sparkling facilities.

Shopping at Aldi , no new cars and no holidays are for some the lifelong norm, not a sacrifice but thanks for acknowledging your privilege

One private prep is closing this summer in the area I used to live in the UK due to rising costs and the parents not being able to cover the shortfall. They would be left with too few students to cover costs if they were to remain open. I suspect their attached secondary school isn't far behind.

On top of this there will most likely be lots of nurseries closing once the new rules on free hours come into play as a lot of them are already struggeling. Where are all the kids going to go? Both young and older. When the prep closes this summer there will be 168 children without a school place in an area with oversubscribed state schools.

I think that was just a way to point out that they don't have lots of extra cash to pay for schools. To say that they can pay for the necessities and school fees but that is all. Of course it's still a privilege to be able to send your kids to private school, but that doesn't mean that we can't talk about private schools.