Don’t pay £100,000 for state education

By MoneyWeek editor-in-chief Merryn Somerset Webb Sep 05, 2011

Merryn Somerset-Webb

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Getting a good education for your children in Britain isn’t easy. Too many of our schools now focus on performance rather than on learning. As Google’s chairman, Eric Schmidt, made clear last week, we worry endlessly about (increasingly pointless) GCSE results while rejecting the kind of polymath education that used to create people who were able both to “write poetry and build bridges”. Worse, despite our “great computer heritage” (the world’s first business computer was built by the Lyons chain of tea shops), we don’t even teach computer science as standard in our state schools. So what can parents do?

The answer, as is usually the case in Britain, is to pay more for houses. According to research from Primelocation.com, it costs £77,000 more on average to buy a home in the catchment area of one of Britain’s top 50 state schools. That’s 35% above the average cost of a house elsewhere. Some of this can be put down to the fact that many of the better schools are in the south, but it isn’t just that. Property expert Henry Pryor notes that, in some parts of Camden in London prices are £100,000 more on one side of the road than the other. Why?The pricier side is in “the prescribed area for a good school”. But none of this means it makes automatic sense to buy a house in a good catchment area. It may hold its value better than others. But if local councils change their applications process or their catchment boundaries, it may not.

Parents prepared to spend £100,000 extra on a house might ask themselves why they don’t just buy a house where they actually want to live and spend the extra on a private education. The average cost of a day school is about £9,000 a year. So, leave your children in the state system until secondary school and then shift them into the private system for five years and your total cost per child will be £50,000 or so (I’m adding a little for uniforms and so on). Put two children through and it will cost you £100,000. So, if you had two children you could buy a house on the right side of the road in Camden for £100,000 over the odds and spend your days praying the council didn’t change its policies. Or you could buy one on the wrong side, send your children to a private day school and spend your days fretting that they won’t get the value from the education you would have got from investing in a house in a better location. Neither is ideal. But sadly, nor is the system as a whole.

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Published in Money-saving tips | More articles by Merryn Somerset Webb

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  • 1. Noneleft

    (06 September 2011, 01:22PM)  Complain about this comment

    The fundamental problem with our school system is that parents who don't want their children brainwashed by the state are forced to pay toward the system - money they could otherwise use to educate their own children properly the way they see fit.
    This is something the British tradition of leftist state control cannot contemplate.

    The problem is similar to the compulsory BBC licence fee (i.e. tax). Required by those who watch commercial TV, but prefer to avoid filling their homes with BBC propaganda, and don't wish to help fund it from their own money either.

    Just as the BBC should not have a right to help themselves to my money to make programmes I don't want to watch and don't agree with, the government should likewise not take my money to prop up a failing school system I don't use and don't support. This is all about choice, freedom, and free market competition - increasingly endangered concepts in modern Britain.

  • 2. Leyman Bros

    (06 September 2011, 06:36PM)  Complain about this comment

    If your kid is bright, success beckons. Its an unfortunate truth and is the way of the world. In the midst of all the happy clappy nanny state 'everyone's a winner' philosopy - maybe we have all forgotten this. No matter how much the state tries to involve itself, and no matter what the cost - truth is, you cant make a race horse out of a donkey?

    I guess the argument is unpalatable - but that in itself does not detract from its cogency.

    ps - I am working class and pregressed wholly via state education.

  • 3. Leyman Bros

    (06 September 2011, 06:44PM)  Complain about this comment

    ps. forgive the minor typing error in regard to 'pregressed'. This was due to an affliction of poor sight - as opposed to poor education!

  • 4. Stuey

    (07 September 2011, 12:44AM)  Complain about this comment

    whilst i agree with Merryn's analysis to a point, i'm not sure if i'd want my children in the state school system until the age of 10/11. Won't the damage already be done? Can a private school teach an illiterate 11 year child, who has already been a victim of an incompetent state primary school?

  • 5. RRP

    (07 September 2011, 09:36AM)  Complain about this comment

    If you buy a house in the 'right' side of the street and the council doesn't change its policy the extra £100k you pay for the property is recoverable if / when you sell. £100k spent on a private education is a sunk cost.

  • 6. Mombers

    (07 September 2011, 01:36PM)  Complain about this comment

    Better to rent in the catchment area, get an 'anchor' child in, then move out to a more suitable house - whether buy or rent. Short period of inappropriate housing but worth it. It's cheaper to rent than buy (in my North London area with a 25% deposit at least) so the only opportunity cost is missing out on a punt that the place you buy will appreciate wildly.

  • 7. Mombers

    (07 September 2011, 01:39PM)  Complain about this comment

    @Noneleft - the fundamental problem with your argument is that people who send their kids to private school still reap enormous rewards from state education. No doubt they employ people who are state educated, own shares in companies that do so, etc. Name a country that doesn't spend public money on state education that is successful. People who don't have kids also pay for state education. I'm sure some would love the idea of cancelling the £89bn education budget and but I imagine the country would be a basket case within a few decades.

  • 8. Bingo

    (07 September 2011, 02:40PM)  Complain about this comment

    There is no road in Camden where one side is in one 'catchment area' and the other is in another. There is no such thing as a fixed catchment area for school admissions .

    State schools take their pupils based on several criteria. 1 - special educational needs 2 - children looked after in care 3 - (if it is a religious school) your faith, and attendance at a particular church or churches 4 - whether the child has siblings already at the school.

    After places have been filled based on all those criteria, they allocate the remaining places on the basis of distance from the school gate to your front door measured as the crow flies.

    How far they go depends on the number of places left and the number of applicants. It can change every year and you have no idea where it will be.

  • 9. Motivated parent

    (08 September 2011, 01:26PM)  Complain about this comment

    @ Bingo

    There are definitely catchment areas for some of the schools in Stockport and they do include houses on one side of the street and not the other. So you can live closer to the school as the crow flies than families on the edges of the catchment area and still not have priority.

  • 10. lmearns

    (16 September 2011, 12:51PM)  Complain about this comment

    I rent in the catchment area of a good state school. Flexibility is one of the few perks of being priced out of the property market - that and being able to sleep easy at night through the crisis of the last few years.
    I was state educated in a terrible school and believe it lessoned my chances in life. However, I still came out with better exam results and more of a clue than many people expensively educated in private schools. I therefore wouldn't waste my money paying twice for education unless you are paying for the connections they will make in private school. That could prove invaluable when it comes to getting a good job. Lets face it it's not about the degree you get, it's about the job you get after it. People still hire on snobbery, so the things you get in the state sector like an accent and a complex count against you in an interview where the private school accent and confidence/arrogance wins almost every time.

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