If you pay for private school fees will you pay uni fees?

[Allotment123]

As the title says, if you pay private school fees will you pay for uni fees, tuition and maintenance for your kids? On a combined income of about £90K and wondering if it was feasible? People say they'd rather save for a house deposit, but do they actually save it? Really hate the idea of my kids starting life in debt

To the extent that they look at what your net income is, yes. They don’t consider it in the same way that they consider other debts though, more like tax.

We didn’t, but we did give a generous allowance so DC could enjoy life and not work in term time although they did work full time in sixth form and university summer holidays - more to build up the CV. We helped towards flat deposit and towards wedding (not that much) and they are just about to pay off student loan. Employer has funded post grad study in full.

DD1 got a tuition fee only student loan and we paid for her living costs including rent, bills, food and expenses.

We are, but DD is in the US. She's also working a term-time job and in the summer, so contributing.

We had to make huge sacrifices to send ours to a private school, but were not prepared to continue with university fees. We do, however give some help to living expenses.

My kids go/went to state school so we didn't have private school fees to pay, but our income is now very high and we are paying the uni fees and maintemamce for our eldest. I did a lot of research beforehand and played about with the assumptions on the calculator on Martin Lewis's website and decided it was worth it.

If my two boys go into modestly paid jobs, and only get a small inflationary rise each year, without promotion, they may have never paid back the student loan, but I decided that is unlikely. I looked back at my own salary history and my husbands and both of us would have earned enough to fully pay the loan back if we'd had the same system (even though I had career breaks).

We don't pay school fees as our DC go to a state school, but we are planning to pay their uni tuition fees so that they don't start work with debt. As @tennissquare says, the terms of the loan have changed recently to be a lot more punitive than they used to be.

We did, decision was made easier as DD inherited a chunk for a house deposit when my grandmother died so didn’t have the fees vs deposit dilemma.

Thanks real variety of responses, will do some sums and have a look. Hoping Labour will announce a better deal on fees at the next election

@Allotment123 don't bank on it. If they apply VAT on private schools then they will have to do the same for universities as they are private institutions too.

We didn’t - she took out the loan for the fees (medical degree) but I paid for the accommodation and £120 living money each week so a compromise

We paid for living costs but not the tuition fees.
Our accountant strongly advised us that our DC should utilise the loan (and, if determined to give monetary gifts, we should give any similar amount for house deposits).
I'll pay school fees because they’re children and choice of school is very much my decision. I very much agree with this statement however.
I don't want to infantilise my DC and I want them to understand education is a privilege.

If they do, it won't be a better deal that benefits families that can afford to pay the fees. Why would they? There won't be any extra money in the coffers, so they will redistribute towards the least well off.

A better deal on the loan repayments helps all students though - not just those whose parents can afford to pay the fees.

The Govt has bought in a worse deal for students this year to try and increase the amount that gets repaid, so lower repayment threshold and longer term. (Also sky high interest rate that was capped as it could have been 13%! )There is nothing to indicate that future govts won't keep changing the terms to ensure more pay back.

There's only one way that deals on things like loan repayments goes, and that's to worsen them.

I predict that next government will leave earnings thresholds unchanged (which is a stealth lowering at a time of wage inflation) and will make a modest increase to repayment rates, because of general inflation.

The government has pretty extensive scope to change the T&Cs - that in itself does not justify a decision to pay full university costs, but if the costs are lower than school fees then in makes sense, especially if you/grandparents have also been making longer term savings for the DC

We do not pay the tuition fees or maintenance cost but top it up as she lives in London. This has taught her value of money, budgeting and planning. We have used any spare cash we had for holidays. We have scrimped and saved for private school fees so we are living our lives a little now.
I have another child in private school, when we no longer have to pay any private school fees, we will help them in whatever way we can.

We did and a living allowance- however DD had already received a significant amount from her grandparents (inheritance) which covered the deposit on her first home - had this not been the case we probably would have taken the student loans to pay the fees and saved the money for a deposit after uni.

No and no.

But we did pay for accommodation and university and a contribution to costs. They were both expected to work. One is now a doctor and one on the way to becoming a solicitor, so long courses.

We paid for accommodation, tuition and food. The silly money he earnt in the holidays whenever he came home.

That will cover spending money not all the fee's accommodation necessities transport and social life

interesting thread - we've been really torn about this as want dc to have some sense of ownership of the university decisions they are making.

Would also like kids to have a work ethic and earn their own £ to help finance their lives while at uni - but problem is that ds is doing engineering which is pretty much full time so a part time job might actually be counter productive...

think we're going to fund the first year (with a whopping £9k on self catering uni accommodation plus £9k fees plus £?? maintenance - good luck to all those thinking they can fund the whole thing on £18k!!) and then see how he gets on.

Ours took out fees loan, but we paid rent, living expenses etc.
We were able to give them deposit for houses that way.

I agree it may be more than £18k, depending on local factors. Mine is going into second year at a London uni. As well the £9k+ fees, his London flatshare will cost £11k in rent, and we'll be giving him about another £4500 for food, bills etc, as well as funding his Oyster travelcard and phone. He has a casual job - he is a competitive athlete, so committing to regular hours is not easy.

We never thought about house deposits because they both worked abroad so arranged their own finances. They'd drop in back home for holidays. They didn't marry till mid thirties, then we helped out with deposits.

The third has no itch to travel so we paid two months rent for him and girlfriend in their first flat. They're only 21 so the burden of a house seems ridiculous. We'll wait and see what happens. We did buy him a car, but that's had problems/bills already 🙈