The cost of a putting a child through school is now almost £16,000, according to a study.
The bill for sending a child to state school between the ages of five and 16 has risen by more than £1,500 in the past two years, the Schools Sums Index found.
Parents will pay out a total of £11.4billion over the next school year on everyday items for their child's education - an average of £1,449 per child.
Top of the costs is transport, with parents spending just under £3billion (£366 per child) on getting their offspring to and from school.
Lunches will cost £2.8 billion (£358 per child), with nearly twice as much spent each week on school dinners than packed lunches.
Sports kit - more expensive than text books or technology - will cost £1.3 billion (£169 per child).
The index, compiled by Norwich Union, calculated-that the total cost for each child would be £15,940.
A survey of more than 1,000 parents with schoolage children found that seven in ten were concerned about how they would afford everything their child needed for school.
Two thirds said they aimed to cut costs by buying school clothes from supermarkets and cheaper outlets.
The index revealed that over a child's school lifetime, parents will buy, on average, 59 pairs of trousers or skirts, 46 shirts or blouses, 53 jumpers, 46 pairs of shoes and 30 school trips.
Trevor Bailey of Norwich Union said: 'If parents do their school sums now, they'll know what they need to put aside and be more prepared for the future.'
The index was calculated by asking parents for the average cost of a selection of school-related items and the frequency that they were bought in a school year.
The sum of all the items was taken as an average to give the cost per year per child.
This was multiplied by the number of school years from five to 16 to give the cost over a school lifetime.
And the price of driving is still on the increase
The cost of keeping a car on the road has far outstripped the rate of inflation over the past decade, a survey showed yesterday.
It costs an average of £2,395 a year for motorists to insure, service, tax and fuel a vehicle, according to price comparison company uSwitch.com.
It added that if costs had stayed in line with inflation, drivers would now be paying £1,787.
The company also said that if running costs continued to rise at the current rate, by 2017 motorists would be paying an average of £3,659 to keep their cars on the road.
--By Daily Mail Reporter 31st August 2008