Cost of Latin Crisis

The average cost of sending a child to boarding school looks set to top £500,000 this year for the first time.

According to the Independent Schools Council (ISC), parents pay £37,032 a year. There are now 544,000 pupils at ISC member schools. 70,000 are boarders.

Parents will pay an average of £505,955 if fees increase by 2% each year. If they increased by 5% a year, it will cost £654,919. Even parents with six figure salaries will struggle to meet the rising cost of sending youngsters to boarding school.

At the moment, Harrow School in London charges £46,710, a 7% increase. Similarly, Winchester College has risen to £45,936 a year, having gone up by 6%.

Analysis by The Times found that parents will pay an average of £505,955 for a child who boards from the age of seven.

Despite parents forking out more for educating their children, British universities are instead choosing to accept wealthy foreign students.

The Sunday Times reported that record numbers have been turned away by elite universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, in favour of overseas students.

It comes after a mother-of-five, who was outraged by a 7% fee increase at her child's private school, was met with little sympathy when she took to Mumsnet to vent her fury.

The unnamed woman took to the British parenting forum to say that she doesn't feel the 'whole private school thing is good value', but that you become 'trapped' once you send your child there.

Complaining about 'CEO-headmasters' who declare they have 'a vision' for schools, she continued: 'Is this the norm now? I realise prices are going up but shouldn't they try and contain costs/be as lean as possible? Apparently they need to build their bursary funds and go green.'

However other users were stunned by her comments, saying it was 'in line with inflation', and if she wanted, she could take her child out of the school.

By Jonathon Rose