My wife and I just got back from dinner with some friends who are about to have their first child.
Unsurprisingly, there was discussion about the cost of buying things before the child is born and so on, however, eventually the discussion progressed towards the child’s education. And the cost of said education.
Interestingly, the father to be is a teacher at a private school. The annual cost of sending a child to this school is roughly $30,000 per year.
As it turns out, the father has no intention of sending his soon to be born child to this school or any other private school for that matter. The cost is simply too great and the difference between the education gained at a public school in comparison to a private school just isn’t significant enough to justify the cost.
This surprised me. I would have expected that a person teaching at a private school would see the value in the education standard provided at these schools. However it would appear that at least some public schools provide a similar standard of education. And this makes the private school fees completely unjustifiable.
My wife and I are yet to have our first child. For a long time I had planned to send our child (or children) to private school and was expecting to have to suffer this expense. However if a private school teacher does not see the value of the education that his institution provides then perhaps I can save myself somewhere in the order of $150,000 in education expenses.