The private school rip-off

It is about this time of year that I begin to question my own sanity. The streets of Kensington and Chelsea were churning last week with bright-eyed children in their faded polyester sweatshirts, proudly clutching their homework folders with the name of their state primary school on the front. They were skipping to their Ofsted-inspected schools, many with beacon status.

Meanwhile, I sit hunched at my desk. My three children, who go to school this week, are in the playroom playing on our PlayStation. (The amount of time they spend at school is in inverse proportion to how much their education costs.)

On my desk, under the new Toast catalogue, lie three school fee invoices totalling a whopping £15,000. (One child is changing schools, and as I failed to give a full term's notice, I have to pay two sets of fees for him.)

I work out that at this rate not only can I not afford the very covetable gaucho boots from Toast, but we will be bankrupt by December.

I'm not the only London parent of children in private primary education, by a long stretch, to be feeling slightly bonkers right now.

My friend Charles rubbed it in by smugly telling me his children went back to the establishment he calls "Free School" last week, along with 3.5 million other children aged five to 10, compared with the 250,000 in private school of that age, nationwide. (The proportion of privately educated children is much higher in the capital.)

When I see other mothers - an opportunity to have long moans about the endless summer holiday and all the extras we have to pay for, not to mention the daily torture of the school run - the big question often comes up: why are we doing it? Is it really worth it? (It is estimated to cost £250,000 to privately educate one child through primary and secondary education.)

As one mother of two raged to me yesterday, "Will someone please tell me what on earth am I paying my three grand a term for?" having just dropped off her five-year-old at his private school, into the care of a teacher who didn't bother introducing herself to the new parents, and who was in a classroom without even any coat pegs. The £70 blazers ended up in a heap in the corner.

"In my opinion, spending any money at all on any child under the age of nine is throwing it away. It's like flushing it down the toilet," says Miranda, a mother of five children, three of whom, like mine, were moved to the private sector in midstream. "But by the time the child is nine, and having to sit exams at 11 or 13, parents like us suffer such middleclass angst that we crack."

She's right. There is, believe me, no more anxious-making sight for a parent, however unpushy, than to see other people's uniformed children being ferried to Poncy Prep with their violins, Greek lexicons and 3-D maquettes of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, when one's own, by comparison, seem to be knuckle-dragging their way through Key Stage One at the local primary.

It was at that stage that I cracked and removed my own three children from their perfectly good multiethnic Church of England state school, a mere five minutes' walk from my house, and enrolled them in private prep schools half-an-hour's drive away - each way. My thinking was: this may be ruinously expensive, un-communitaire, mad, etc, but at least they'll get into somewhere good at secondary. And speak nice.

But now, as I near the end of primary for the two eldest, I am having doubts about the wisdom of my investment.

Certainly, there are state primary schools in London that are appalling, and which force many middle-class parents to scrape together money for the private alternative. But the standard of teaching at my children's C of E state school wasn't that different to the one my children are at now. Have my extortionate school fees really bought me a standard of education that is completely unavailable in the state sector? I think not.

All last term, our private primary didn't have a playground because of construction work, and its sports ground takes an hour out of the school day to get to and from. Furthermore, my boys have no local friends. I no longer see their friends' parents, as I used to, daily. Their former state primary rightly feels I rejected them, and turned down flat my application to be a non-parent governor. I am locked into a killer of a school run, have no money for holidays, and all for what? Well the idea is, I suppose, that they will "get in somewhere" very fancy next.

But as I have learned (and, to be honest, I already knew) the bright ones at state primaries have every chance of getting into top public schools, if that's what they want, particularly since switched-on parents are spending the money they have saved on private fees on tutoring. At St Paul's Girls' School, the high mistress Elizabeth Diggory actively seeks out talent from the state sector, and they have endless succulent bursaries to help those in need.

"If a child is at a decent local school and a parent is sensible, calm, on the ball enough to keep up with the changing requirements of secondary public schools, and prepared if necessary to tutor, there is no need to spend money on private education at the primary level," says Megan, whose two children sailed into top London day schools from a C of E primary in Clapham. "And I'm so grateful they had the experience of walking to a local school, rather than seeing them chauffeured about and never putting their precious feet on the ground."

And here's a last thought for all the other parents who, like us, are grimly getting their pens at the ready to write those stomach-clenching cheques.

Let's say little Jemima and Harry steam their way into the premier league of big schools, with flying colours. The private primary delivers.

But then, big Jemima and Harry leave St Cakes with 2As and a B at Alevel. Just like every single other child in the country appears to have done this summer. Well done everyone!

But won't we, admit it, be then wondering not only whether we're mad to spend money on primary, but on secondary education too?

In the meantime, I seem to have mislaid my chequebook...