The Real Cost Of Putting Your Child Through School

Conversations about the cost of education in this country are usually focused around a university. Rises in tuition fees and the cost of living are making a lot harder for people from poorer backgrounds to get a degree. But what people don’t often realise is that the cost of sending your child to school is going up too. Schools are struggling with their budget and so a lot of the things that they used to supply for free now need to be paid for. If it’s almost time for your child to start school, you need to be ready to bear the financial burden. This is how much it’s going to cost to put your child through school and how you can save a bit of money.

Uniform

The costs start before the first day of term because you’ll have to get everything that your child needs for the year. The uniform is one of the biggest expenses for most parents, often costing as much as £70 per child. It’s particularly expensive if you have to get school-specific items like a blazer with a badge on etc. You’ve got to make sure that you’re getting good quality as well, otherwise, you’ll be buying it again every couple of months. If you shop around, you can get good prices on quality uniforms. The Littlewoods’ school uniform range is a particularly good one. You should be able to get all of the basics from there but you might have to go to specialist shops to get anything with the school logo on it.

Computers

This is a cost that you might overlook because it just wasn’t a thing when you were at school. But these days, most of your child’s work is going to be done on a computer and they’ll need one of their own to do homework etc. You can’t afford to get them a cheap one because it might not do everything that they need it to do. That’s going to cost you somewhere in the region of £500 which is a massive expense, especially if you’ve got more than one child.

Lunches

In the past, schools sometimes offered free breakfast and the lunches weren’t too expensive. But with a squeezed budget, they can no longer do that. That means you’ll have to pay for it all. Giving them money for school lunches is going to get expensive so you’re better off sending them with a packed lunch. The cost of a packed lunch is about £1 a day so you’ll be spending £190.

After School Activities

After school activities also used to be free a lot of the time, but these days you’ll probably have to pay for them. It all depends on how many you let them attend but remember that they’re an important part of their education. If you’re sending them to one or two activities a week, you’ll be spending around £100 a year.

Once you’ve added up the cost of all of the back to school supplies you need to buy before they start, all of the lunches and the after school clubs, it’ll cost you roughly £860 a year per child. That’s a lot of money so make sure that you’ve got some put aside before the school year starts.