To want to educate my child in state but provide the straw that make it like a private education?

One is from Alastair Campbell and one Daily Mail. Bound to be right.

That was the difference I experienced. It wasn't connections or better teaching or better resources. That was my point.. In one we were treated as potential wrong'uns not to be trusted in the school building when it's pissing down outside and in the other we weren't. I had a nice, warm dry home too but would have still preferred that for my school environment too!

It’s not coke it’s ket and mdma. And it’s at parties. Attended by teens from - shock - all sorts of school. You just have to hope it’s not your child’s thing.

My local private schools have lessons on Saturdays, which is when my state-school educated children have orchestra and sports matches, so the private schools have to provide those opportunities in-house.

DD is doing A-levels in the local sixth form college. She would be there even if she started off in an independent school, as the college is the best in region for what she is studying. There are several pupils from independent school backgrounds on her course.

I am fortunate in that all of my local state schools are excellent - DD tells me that the comprehensive she attended before sixth form was not typical compared to those attended by her peers from the wider area. But the state primary school that my children went to is about as close to my idea of a perfect school as is realistically achievable, and there is no way that I would have chosen a private alternative. So there is only a 5 year period out of 15 years of DD's education where an independent school would have been anything other than second best.

Come on, Google it....

Show me this evidence that private school kids are taking more drugs?

Sport and team work is another area they excel in.
Every year in June the local councils run a Sports Day for all age group. The top of the top selected from each state ans private schools come to that event.
I was pretty shocked that private school pupils were not better than state kids. And I thought perhaps naively that if private schools have sport scholarships then they will secure winners in council competitions.
Not really...

Well that’s bullshit. No offence.
drug dealers aren’t ’hanging around’ any school. Private or state, due to the fact that mobile phones have been invented and they deliver, particularly to people who can pay £££ at a time.
Kids get offered by other kids.
Not every kid using drugs suddenly dropout school and ends up in the street either, just as kids who drink at parties don’t become raving alkies.
Independent research has shown,
time and time again, that private school kids take more drugs and start drinking at a younger age than state school children.
Money, a sense of entitlement ( rules don’t apply to them or mummy and daddy will ‘deal’ with any trouble they get in), and lack of parental involvement are all factors.

I know that private school users don’t like to hear this, why on earth would they when they’re shelling out a fortune to buy advantages.

I wouldn’t say that my privately educated DS oozes confidence but he has learned to go beyond his comfort zone. He is able to stand up and do a presentation in front of a group of people because he has been doing it since reception. He’s now nearly 20 and starts uni at the end of the month, he’s been working in the construction industry, labouring over the last 12 mnths, I suspect this has done as much for his confidence as school but in a different way.
The one thing I have noticed is the manners. We have always taught him the usual stuff but he greets friends and new acquaintances with a handshake and eye contact, holds doors open, opens car doors for women. Walks on the outside of girls. All gradually assimilated at school. I don’t think they are given a long list, more likely they are constantly corrected in a kind way so that it becomes normal.
The connections start before they leave school and continue forever for most with very strong alumni associations.
Pretty much all his year are at uni so it’s no surprise that he knows several in the city he is going to. He has already planned his birthday celebration which is on the day he arrives.

I wouldn’t say that it gives them the academic edge but DS’s school was academically selective and their work rate was accelerated, most pupils joining from the state sector at sixth form struggle to keep up initially. Parents often comment on how hard they work, but for those who have been in the system it is business as usual.

Sport and team work is another area they excel in. Learning to work well in a team is a valuable life skill. I would encourage anyone in state to take their children to organised sport.

It is your impression that I think little of parents. They go in various kind and shapes. Some were laughing stock, some very nice and cooperative. And I tend not to judge kids. Kids are kids. Reflection of parents and not only.

Teaching hard work and independent thinking.

All roundedness. Volunteering, extra curricular, sports, debate, music etc.

Tutoring.

If connections you are worried about then go private for sixth form.

Study schools for subjects they struggle in. I went private and I went to a study school for GCSE maths. It was 5 days over the Easter or Summer holidays.

@Ozanj

The goal is fluent enough to visit france and communicate 100% in French by year 5.

I would love that but simply it is not true. Children in Y5 don't speak even at B1 level at private schools. It is more of a A1, and if they lucky A2 level.
The exception to the rule are the schools like Ecole Jeannine Manuel, EIFA International, Stewart Bilingual, French Lycee Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle in London. The rest really are not schools that prioritise French. That is why my son has private tutoring on the top of what is in the school.

Naah, apart from spending over a decade in marketing departments of two private schools

Why did you work in private schools for so long when you seem to think so little of the pupils and their parents?

OP, spend your money buying a home in catchment for the best state school you can.

Naah, apart from spending over a decade in marketing departments of two private schools. ,👈😀

Might be true in a few top private schools, but not for the vast majority. They're kids, they're making friends, not connecting on linkedin ffs

We would not have an insight in what is happening at that end and trust me the school would not advertise that it is happening. I am pretty sure they do but that is just my guess. What matter for the private school is their opinion. They cover all things like that

I think @PeachSalad may dislike private school children and their "superior" parents.

But from your posts, it is clear that you have no understanding of what actually goes on in the vast majority of private schools.

And actually most teen drug use now is synthetic cannabis/ spice in vapes. Something posh kids are repulsed by as they see vaping as common and wouldn't be seen dead doing it.

This has absolutely not been my experience of drug dealing in schools. Drug dealers are not that stupid to be loitering about in generally affluent areas targeting posh school kids! But people love to say that as they are wealthy they are all coked up!! Do you think the schools would be getting the results that they do if it was the case?

Drug dealers target vulnerable kids who are disengaged and with no adult looking out for them. Not the middle class kids fretting about which Russell Group uni to get into.

Because those children have more money to buy drugs, because those schools will do ANYTHING but deal with the issue in an open, school wide manner ( the brand needs to be protected) and because, quite frankly, many of those parents have gone private to have as little to do with the day to day education of their kids. Long days, homework and activities all taking place at school =
less contact with the children.
Friend’s DD is out of the house on the school mini bus from 7am back at 7pm,
sometimes later… they have very little to do with activities or contact with the child - leaving them free to work long days to pay for the fees…

Of course it is possible.
The best thing about having money, time,
resources is that you can give your child the rich experience of a state school education AND other opportunities.

What is all this rubbish about "connections"? From my private school, I have a couple of doctors and the odd lawyer as a facebook friend and might send them an occasional message to ask how they are. I know just as many doctors and lawyers from state schools. The rest of my classmates are probably doing something in a bank somewhere, idk, I certainly don't know who their fathers are to be getting given jobs. How many school friends does the average person keep in touch with?

It seems to me that people think every private school is Eton or Harrow. Our school played a rugby match with Eton once and they put a photo where Harry's red hair could be spotted on the pitch. No-one made a "connection" to leverage.

If your child is bright, well-behaved and academically motivated, a top-set education in a good state school won't differ enormously from private school. The biggest difference will be class sizes, and closer teacher attention, which not all children need.

Private schools rarely involve musical instrument lessons or or extra sport as part of the regular offer, it's just that private school pupils are more likely to do these in addition to school.

Are you surprised?? Birds of a feather flock together. As someone else above has said- the children get used to being around wealthy, ultra confident people and have experiences most of their state schools peers don’t. It breeds this aloofness.

My kids get nurtured at home and is carrying books around really such a deal breaker?