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??

@Whatusernameisthis It depends on their Ts&C's. We saw a few schools that were very clear about being able to increase fees anytime. One even said it on their website underneath the fees.

7.5%, north east day school.

Whereabouts in central London are you? There are many outstanding state schools in W1, W2, W6, W8, W9, W10, W11, W12, W14, NW1 and SW3. Low competition as there are not many kids in the Westminster and Kensington borough.

I don't think schools forget this, I'm pretty sure none of them want to be increasing costs so much but energy bills + staffing costs + costs of consumable resources and so on have all gone up dramatically this year. I think most schools on this thread are not passing the full price rise on to parents this year, but unless the school has huge reserves, they have to pass something on, surely? Or reduce the quality of provision.

It's not quite the same if people stop using the coach - if enough people stop using the school can stop running it or use a smaller bus, which will save a lot on fuel. If people stop music lessons, they don't have to employ staff for that and so on.

I'm not sure what else you would expect a school to do?

@Postapocalypticcowgirl I completely understand your point but our school make quite a big deal about them preferring you to use coaches (it causes massive traffic issues otherwise for the local residents) and also are (rightly) very proud of their music offering.

I don’t blame them for passing on costs. I’m
simply saying that we will cut our cloth according and I’m not sure that they have acknowledged (and certainly not from our governors letter) that this will impact on the things they are rightly proud of - so they will have more complaints from the locals re traffic, there will be a less good music department if one member is sadly made redundant.

They seem to be assuming that we can just absorb it all and nothing will change from their provision. I was just making the point that we will cut out cloth to pay it, spend the same overall money but in different ways but those ways will have an impact on the school offering itself.

And am sure just one person doing it won’t cause them any issues. But lots of parents we know are cutting back this way to both afford this and the the possible VAT. So there will be ripple effects - be it in staff redundancies and (assuming they don’t own the coaches themselves - (which would make swapping to smaller ones harder) in the coach companies. Sad all around.

@Gloaming23 For a lot of parents, if the coach becomes unaffordable or stops running, the kids stop going. Many schools have vast bus networks they run and also use those buses for fixtures and sports.

Don't then.

I have heard from friends that in some private schools parents are getting together to sign letters and petitions to keep costs down… for example, one well known and highly oversubscribed school did 1 lot of double digit increases plus an almost double digit this year. Meanwhile the headmaster is earning hundreds and hundreds of thousands…

Schools can absolutely start cutting extra curricular if they have to. There is a trend at the moment in the top schools to pour everything into free and heavily assisted bursary places. Meanwhile lots of existing parents are struggling.

I expect we are going to see a big backlash in the next few years. Schools absolutely should prioritise their existing pupils and their existing staff etc

Agree there is plenty of waste and loads of room to cut down admin costs. Not entirely sure if schools really need all those secretaries to start with. We’re way past the age of long formal letters and typewriters after all

The right thing to do is to protect the quality of teachers, students and welfare staff, and let the dead wood float downstream

I also think if Labour comes in and charges VAT on school fees the schools are going to have to structure the fees differently. People might be happy to pay an extra 20 per cent on pure teaching costs but all the extra curricular nice to haves will have to be structured differently … I reckon there will be ways around it to keep costs down.

I am not an accountant so don’t know how it works but I reckon with professional advice a lot can be done with the right sort of deductions. At the moment these schools could just keep racking up costs and passing them on. Successful state schools have had to severely cost cut and have managed too. Unfortunately though I reckon less will be done for local state schools in the future as there will be increasing pressure from private school parents to keep costs down. We are already seeing that and the top schools have already hired advisors to figure it all out.

@Intergalacticcatharsis yes our school is very vocal about having increased bursaries substantially - a significant percentage don’t pay full fees. I fully support that but the fact is if the full fee paying parents can’t afford to pay full fees and all the extras - so cut back - that is going to impact on the school overall - and also on the ability to offer such places. if VAT is put on fees that will also def impact on that as well - whilst lots of businesses do have a community element, not to the same extent as (some) schools have been trying to increase it to, if their provision is taxed as a luxury item rather than charitable. I don’t think there is an easy solution to any of this, but I do think governors should not just assume parents can absorb the costs with no impact on the school from their belt tightening.

@Dodgeitornot oh yes I agree. But presumably th school has factored that in when considering some parents may cut down on usage to save money if they can. If they haven’t then - it reinforces my point that I’m not sure schools have considered the ripple effects of parents belt tightening where they can.

There are some things which can and should be cut immediately - glossy brochures, anything printed and sent out to prospective parents, free drinks etc - all the marketing stuff basically needs to be cut down immediately. It should all be sent electronically.
Printing concert programmes too - if there is free Wi-Fi just get the parents to logon to a code to download it on their phones. A lot of the heads of departments need to get with the times.
Secondary, CEO type headmaster salaries and incentivies… hmm. It is a recent trend that has gotten out of control.
Experienced and high performing staff that has been there for years absolutely most be kept on as usually they are the ones that make the school not the CEO management style management teams swanning in and out every few years. Staff turnover needs to be avoided and good staff kept happy and incentivised as much as possible.

Mini buses going to sporting fixtures at far off private schools multiple times every day, cut it down and play more local schools including state schools. Or just get the kids in the year to play each other. There is a huge cost involved with this and often the kids just sit on buses for far too long anyway.

As regards bursaries, if they are funded by existing fee paying parents, that is no good. They need to be funded by benefactors, alumni, endowment funds going forward. Or land sales to build an endowment fund, but again, this is risky.
To be honest I think they need to start appointing really financially savvy governors and lawyers primarily now.

@Intergalacticcatharsis I agree with everything you and the pp have said about this. Ultimately private schools are in the same pickle state schools were in years ago when budgets were first slashed. They had to get creative. Ultimately kids are going to school to learn in a safe and warm environment. All the other extras are nice, but biting the hand that feeds you won't do the school any favours. Too many private schools are wasting vast amounts of money.

The fixtures thing is actually a really good example of this. The money spent travelling could easily subsidise sports coaching sessions for local schools and get local fixtures going. A lot of this is a balance of pleasing those snobby parents Vs keeping the books balanced.

@Dodgeitornot - also although I am a Labour voter I cannot in the current circumstances get on board with the VAT on independent schools at this point. We were in a totally different position previously, before Covid and the cost of living crisis. Killing off a sector and the weaker players in it at this point at the cost of mostly hardworking families and children, a big no no from me.
I also think the early reports and analyses done on this pre Covid already painted a bleak picture. It is a lot worse now. Preps in particular (primary level) will be a disaster if it goes ahead.

The rich private secondary schools will be fine and the rich parents will prepay before the VAT comes in and the schools will sit on a lot of prepaid money and will hire the right financial advisors to make that money work. They will also use Capex and VAT spend on that to set off the VAT payable by parents. So the whole thing will be totally unfair.

Still waiting for the fee increase letter here - term starts on Monday so it is starting to feel tactical now and I'm expecting a whalloping great rise.

Private schools are a premium luxury good and are priced accordingly. While some schools may need to keep prices down to remain viable, where I am in London most private schools are oversubscribed so shouldn't have a problem finding people to pay the fees. Indeed, if one school starts cutting back on its offering, it will drive the full fee paying parents to competitors. I couldn't imagine being asked to pay £20k per annum but not getting a coffee at an open day?! Besides, most costs go on staff and facilities (including energy costs)... I don't think scrapping some glossy brochures is really going to move the needle.

People pay these fees because they want something more than they can find in the state sector. If the private schools cut back, their relative advantage will diminish and more people will question if it's worth it - like how BA cut back on its service in order to compete with the likes of easyjet on price, to the point where it's no longer viewed as "premium" and therefore can't charge a premium, leading to more cost cutting... it's a vicious cycle.

As for cutting bursaries, again that's not going to move the needle in terms of overall fees and it would be a rather immoral and small minded thing to do. Let's not give a handful bright youngsters a chance to excel so that the "struggling" middle class parents don't have to give up their holidays abroad?

I agree it's painful watching prices spiral upwards (on everything, not just school fees) but I chose a premium product when a free one was available, so I feel like I can't really complain. Nor would I want the school to water down the product I'm paying so much for!

@belladonna22 i guess it depends on the numbers of kids on bursaries - at our school it is not a handful but a significant percent. I agree it would be a very sad outcome.

The Sunday Times had an interesting article out over the weekend looking into who goes to private school - while the schools would suggest it's most middle class parents who would therefore struggle with a 20% rise, the data suggests it's actually mostly wealthy families who could absorb the cost: twitter.com/tomhcalver/status/1647528103546159104?s=46&t=5I31IBMAm0ZMPLlHoP8xBg

@belladonna22 i couldn’t see on the graph what level of income they said the wealthier parents each earned? Anecdotally I would say our school is full of middle class both working parents but often grandparents help with fees etc - so not sure this study takes full view of this. Plus the bursary data used is 2015 so not current. It would be interesting to see what it is now.

@belladonna22 - OK well there is a very oversubscribed very well known successful school in London in a very nice area where the parent group have gotten together en masse recently to complain about school fee rises… the parent group is not all bankers, lots of media & creative types etc too. I am not going to the name the school but I think you are incorrect in your assumptions that parents want to keep paying for a luxury product. What they want is value for money and fairness and a good return on their investment etc and high quality stuff. Not nice to have luxuries.

London is indeed its own market but if we see further crises in the global financial sector, god knows what is going to happen.

That was meant to say high quality staff and pastoral care

Parents are entirely in their rights to get together and make these demands, but what I'm saying is that if the biggest line items in the school's budget (staff, facilities, energy costs) are the ones increasing by 10% or more, it's hard to see how they can avoid passing on those costs. Yes, they can make cuts elsewhere, but they are unlikely to make a huge dent versus the big and fast growing items. And surely you don't want schools to start firing teachers and increasing class sizes to keep costs down?

I just feel like lots of parents weren't concerned with "fairness" when they were able to buy their kids a better education than most others, but now that they are starting to find themselves on the other side of the affordability line, "fairness" seems to have moved up the agenda. People usually think that "fairness" just means them getting what they want and think they deserve, rather than any objective measure!