Private fee increases

[Modup]

If you are either squirrelling for indie fees or currently paying them, what level of fee increases are you budgeting for over the school career of your children?

How high can they really go in a Colc before there is a great impact on demand even in affluent areas?

I put 7% yearly increase on current senior fees (£24k) and by the time my toddler is doing A levels the annual fees will be around £60k per child. 7% feels conservative in view of current labour govt proposals. However that means a family with 2 children would need one parent pulling around £250k gross just to pay £120k schools fees from net income. Meanwhile the other parent is keeping the lights on. That must price put even high earning professionals?

Curious as to other people’s budget methods.

If it’s relevant the local non selective comp got 25% A to A at A level and the selective indie in Q got around 50% A to A at A level.

Appreciate it’s just one data point and the results will change by the time we get to A level, but is it really worth it?

I recently budgeted for both my kids to do y7 onwards private.

I took current fees for target schools and assumed a 4% p/a inflationary increase (almost certainly too low, 7% sounds more likely) then from 2025 onwards I assumed an additional 16% increase due to Labour gov doing away with VAT exemption.

We budgeted 7% pa. Not enough!

You need to budget for inflation plus 3-5% on top of that.

Given this year and last year were 10% and 8% I'd suggest budgeting for 12-15%

Set your figures based on inflation now or close to the start point. Early big fee increases have a cumulative impact and are much more damaging than a big final one. So if starting now or next year, I’d be setting at around 7-8%. In the last 10 years,I’d have been allowing for 5%.

My DS finished last year. We had budgeted for 5% cumulative increases. Most years it was actually 3-4% and the final year was about 7% if I remember, but because the early years had been a bit less than we’d expected it was okay.

Dont forget that some schools hike at certain key points too, like Yr3, Yr5, Yr7, Yr9, Yr12…in fact some do all of those.

To the person asking if the better grades mentioned are worth it…..I’d say it all depends. Most people are paying for something beyond simply grades, but the different experience along the way too. Personally I’d say it’s not worth it if it totally changes your lifestyle and especially if you have decent state options nearby. Probably is worth it if you can afford it without too many adjustments and the state options are poor. Increasingly the high fees will mean more people decide it’s not worth it…but there are still plenty of people queuing up for lots of schools and significant ive-application. These schools will become more of a minority though.