The extent to which parents struggle to pay for a private education is laid bare today by a study that shows that average day fees now amount to a third of average salaries.

According to the research by Halifax Financial Services, fees have risen by 41 per cent – or 23 per cent in real terms – since 2002 and are now no longer affordable for key public sector workers, including police officers, nurses and teachers.

But in spite of average day fees having risen to £9,627 a year, and government spending on education having increased by two thirds in real terms since 1997, 37,500 more pupils attend private school across Britain than did five years ago.

While the rich are getting richer and school fees remain a drop in the ocean for the highest earners, for the majority of families it is becoming harder to meet each term’s bill.

In the South East, the average annual day school fees now amount to £10,908 per child, almost £3,000 more than those in the north of England, where they are £7,944. In Scotland, where one in four children from Edin-burgh attends private school, fees are less than the average at £8,427.

For professionals, such as engineers, teachers, police officers and trading standards officers, the luxury of private education has gone beyond reach.

While five years ago these professions spent between a fifth and a quarter of their gross annual earnings on a child’s day school fees, the relative rise in fees means that they are now looking at spending nearly a third of their income. For many, especially those with more than one child, fees are now unfeasible. Although average day school fees represent only 6 per cent of a chief executive’s take-home pay – at £149,000 a year – for teachers, they amount to 28 per cent of the average salary, and for nurses they comprise 36 per cent.

Jonathan Shephard, the general secretary of the Independent Schools Council (ISC), which represents more than 1,200 private schools, said that the study was flawed and ignored the fact that many households had a joint income.

“Affordability is always an issue, but independent education is within the reach of many more families than is often believed. By ignoring the likelihood of two income earners, the Halifax survey is flawed and misleading,” he said.

“The survey is also inept: the statement that a writer cannot afford independent education could hardly be worse timed just as Harry Potter hits the streets. ‘Writer’ covers an enormous range, from the unpublished poet through the successful freelance writer and on to the bestseller.”

Mr Shepherd pointed out that one in three (31 per cent) of pupils at ISC schools receives support to attend, with one in four getting help directly from the schools, worth more than £300 million.

He said that families obviously had to make hard choices, but that few were wedded to only state or independent education. In his own case, with three children, two attend a private school, while one attends state, “because it suits the child better”.

Only 7 per cent of pupils in England are privately educated, but they achieve more than half the A grades in A-level French, German, Spanish and all other modern foreign languages.

They win 46 per cent of A grades at A level chemistry, 44 per cent in physics and 54 per cent in further maths.

Overall, 509,093 children attend ISC member schools, where the average pupil:staff ratio is the lowest ever, and there is one teacher for every 9.7 pupils. This compares with a ratio of 17 pupils to one staff member in state schools.

The Independent Schools Council covers 1,276 schools from nursery to sixth-form level, including Britain’s most elite, of a total of 2,500 independent schools.

Fourteen schools now charge more than £25,000 a year, and the average boarding school fee at secondary level is £20,000. Of the half a million pupils, only 67,335 are boarders.

Several million pounds are still spent on scholarships every year at private schools. And Mr Shepherd said that he hoped to see more schools moving this money into means-tested bursaries, in an attempt to allow more families to benefit from private schooling.

However, Alan Smithers, the director of education and employment research at the University of Buckingham, said that in spite of the fee increases, private schools would remain popular.

“Independent schools have benefited from not having to follow government initiatives, so they could concentrate on the basics of education. As a result, international tests show that our independent schools are the best in the world,” he said.

“The difference between the education in the state and private sector is also the biggest in the world, in England. So parents are prepared to make sacrifices because they recognise the quality of independent schools.”

Professor Smithers added that the problem for state schools was that they had been forced to place too great an emphasis on test and exam scores, to the exclusion of everything else.

“Independent schools have concentrated on high academic standards, but in the context of a good all-round education, a child’s personal development and sports.

“Good independent schools pay attention to developing as a person, as well as developing them academically,” he said.

— Pay as you learn

Average day school fees by region in 2007:

Scotland £8,427

North £7,944

Wales £8,763

West Midlands £9,114

East Midlands £8,874

East Anglia £9,396

South West £9,513

Greater London £10,587

South East £10,908

Source: Independent Schools Council, calculated under old methodology

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