How to pay the school fees - a literary guide |
Another day, another report on how many children have had to leave their private schools, thanks to Labour’s VAT raid on fees. This particular survey, by wealth management firm, Saltus, found that almost one in ten parents have had to take their children out of the independent sector altogether while 65 per cent of those questioned admitted to making ‘significant changes’ to their circumstances to keep their children in private education.
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When belts can only be tightened so far, parents need to get creative. Frankly, the only affordable ways of educating your children privately today are either: a) access to masses of inter-generational wealth (which presumably you don’t enjoy, or you wouldn’t have read this far) or b) being born in the past.
Recently I read Tennis Shoes by Noel Streatfeild to one of my children and the only thing that really dated the book, published in 1937, was that of the four children of a South London GP, the eldest boy was at a public school, the next brother away at a prep, while the girl went to a ‘good day school’.
Consider that the starting salary of a GP in England today is just shy of £70,000, and their take-home pay (of around £51,000) wouldn’t even cover the fees for one child at a minor public school with an active sex abuse case going through the courts. A friend’s husband, who’s 47, went through a famous cathedral school in the 1990s on a full scholarship at no cost to his parents. But if Merlin shows an........