Mother in Law: Doing our homework on the right schools

The time came a few months ago, for the second time in our lives, to consider schools for our children. 

To recap, in case you haven’t read my articles before or are confused by my sarcasm, we love our children so much that we could burst. We are in love with them. When they go for a play date or sleepover, we wander around the house aimlessly, touching their things. Apparently this can be true as well as it being true that they are super annoying.

It is also true that we value education very highly. Some of you will remember my homeschooling efforts/guilt. We are conscientious; they are conscientious. In terms of clubs and extra-curricular activities, we give them every opportunity we can.

We are, I would say, pretty high earners. Actually, after a quick Google of the average household income, I can confirm we are definitely high earners.

And, yet, in September Deceptively Angelic Looking Child 1 is going to go to the comp down the road.

The average cost of a private school place is £15,000 a year. So for five years for both my children that would be £150,000 just for secondary school. After tax. In order to assess whether this is good value, we needed to look at the benefits, the disadvantages, and what else we could spend that money on.

To be honest, I see very few benefits. Yes, it would have been nice when I was at my red-brick university and people asked what school I went to for me to be able to give them the name of a school they had actually heard of. Rather than feeling rather awkward because you were unlikely to have heard of my school if you lived 10 miles away let alone across the country. In those moments (plural – it happened a lot) it would have been nice to fit in. In fact, there was also a job interview at an old, niche London firm where the interviewer kept telling me I had to have ‘the right personality’ to work there. She meant ‘pedigree’, not ‘personality’ and it was all a rather humiliating experience. (I’ve just googled them and the firm is permanently closed. Shame. My career is flying.)

But do I want my children to fit in? Hell no, they are way too awesome to simply ‘fit in’. I went to a party once where everyone was from a private school and every single one of the girls had expensive highlights in their hair. There was an element of polish about them that I didn’t have and I felt very aware of it. I’m not going to pay £150,000 after tax for polish; plus, I like my children as they are – in the words of John Legend with all their curves and all their edges. It is a British myth that ‘posh’ equals ‘accomplished’. Moreover, in the ‘real world’, I think they are more likely to fit in if, like 94% of the population, they go to a state school.  

So what about the important bit – the quality of education? I can tell you those girls at that party didn’t do better in their exams than me. I think, quite possibly, it comes down to the kid. When my economics teacher (never liked him, later went to prison, story for a different day) told me I was going to get a B, I took it as a challenge. For other kids, no doubt, a smaller class size will be the difference between passing and failing (or whatever they call it now). I get that. Generally, though, because of my very positive experiences and those of my husband, I have a lot of faith in state education. The state primary education my kids are currently having has been delightful, and well rounded. The only thing that could be improved is behaviour and discipline, but even our school’s approach to that (which seems to be to support the difficult child rather than beat them with a stick) seems to be a good life lesson in how to treat people. Anyway, presumably you get difficult children in private schools too.

I have even more faith in state education when it is supported by parents, and this comes to my next point – what are the disadvantages of sending my child to a private school? Well, there is that £150,000 after tax. I could give them a house deposit with that. Or, I could continue to work part-time so that there is usually someone here after school for a debrief on their day, to check they are doing their homework, to pull letters out of their bags and realise if a school has a particular weakness that may mean my child needs a bit of extra tuition. I don’t think I could carry on working part-time, keep our current standard of living and pay for private school.  

And what about that standard of living? A colleague told me recently, very proudly, that they hadn’t had a holiday in years because their priority was to pay for private schooling. Imagine what my kids could learn from £150,000 worth of holidays! I don’t want to lose my holidays – I want to take my kids everywhere. And I will pay ridiculous prices to take them in the school holidays because both the holidays and 100% attendance at school are equally important.

I expect there are some readers who move in certain circles who feel guilty that their children don’t go to private school. I guess the point of this article is to say I am making an active decision in the best interests of my children not to send them to private school. I genuinely think that is best for them. There are all sorts of reasons why you may disagree with me, or why your situation may be different to ours, and that is fine too.

Some facts and identities have been altered in the above article