Do people expect ROI after paying private school fees?

Honestly, CurlewKate you post a lot and you seem smart enough to know there is not anything in life that can have a blanket assumption attached to it. No parent, no child, no family, no school are ever alike.

We have twins - both who passed the grammar school exam and got places at free grammar schools. One twin struggled with her mental health (later diagnosed with severe anxiety and SEN) and was so distressed and refusing school we felt (at great expense) we had to move her to a local private school.

Our son at the free government school does much better academically than our daughter at the private school - but we choose our daughter's private school because we know the school does not put pressure on the kids to achieve grades and they are more interested in their mental health and that is what she needs not great grades.

Every parent wants the best for their kids - and most good parents will try and give them the best they can. But wanting the best for your child does not equate to meaning you want less for other people's children.

Of course all kids need and should have a good education - but private school parents are not the reason the government has under invested in the free government schools.

In fact, I still can't get my head around why you have some countries like Australia giving private school parents rebates for not accessing the free government school system...and you have the UK, who in theory is saving money when a parent pulls their child out of the free government school system, stopping continuing to give that school the £7/8k a year they were paying towards that child's education. It's madness.

No-one is saying we as a community should not pay more taxes to making all school's great. But targeting one section of the community who is already saving the government money in this area just seems morally wrong to me. My daughter is in yr13 and so this tax won't affect us for long. It would make more sense to increase all our taxes going forward towards paying for better schools.

I’m not anti state school at all. There are some truly excellent ones out there, which if you are lucky enough to get your kids into then you are living the dream. I have one SEN child in private due to extensive bully. Physical attacks on a daily basis and the school being powerless to address it. I have other children in the state sector who are not being physically attacked, and though there is a lot of classroom disruption are bright enough to get by with the textbooks for support. What I wouldn’t give for a great state school where my children aren’t assaulted and the classrooms are free from disruption. They exist, just not where we live.

I think everyone wants a "ROI", just that for some people that wont necessarily be a high flying career or a certain university.

Mine are still at primary and I am still debating private school for secondary. The local comps are excellent, so it isn't a requirement. But I went to a private school, and do feel I got a lot out of the breadth of opportunity available. The endless sports to try on the excellent facilities, any music you wanted with own auditorium and orchestra, trips abroad. The value I would get out of it is in them being exposed to more experiences than I think I plus the local school would be able to offer them.

Genuinely I haven't seen anyone say that. Posters, including me, will talk about their experience of their local school and will often be very careful to say they know many state schools and most state kids are fine / great but that there was rife bullying, violence, anti-learning behaviour etc. I don't think there's anything wrong with identifying particular individuals as problematic at all but you get a lot of real nastiness about any child whose parents send them private when they are perfectly nice kids.

Private school will still benefit the OP's friend's daughter even if she decides "just" to become a personal trainer. It'll have given her a certain amount of confidence and chutzpah, which she'll need to start her own business. She'll have plenty of contacts - affluent friends who can provide a starter client base, peers in her social group with financial and/or marketing expertise if she needs it. Same goes for lucrative sponsorships. She'll be able to afford things like quality equipment. She'll probably be able to absorb initial losses and teething issues without going under. Not all of that is the case if you're trying to start up a personal trainer business from nothing.

It very much depends on the individual.

I went to a private school. From my school year, one classmate tried to be a model, but the best she managed was a job for Ethel Austin… she’s now glamour model/does babe station/homemade porn. Another classmate was very high up in government until the last election and can expect to be pretty powerful and very well paid for a very long time to come.

Same school year, same quality of education, two very different careers.

Also, doesn't stop the anti state school brigade who think they're full of disruption, drugs and dimwits

I like to respond to these with unfair sweeping generalisations about State school kids.

In terms of diversity, i disagree

Pretty much nothing can be claimed to be universally true of either sector but that doesn't stop vitriolic anti-private posters making sweeping generalisations usually sneering at "Jemima and Sebastian" . There is economic diversity at most private schools though of course you rarely get the very bottom end. Plenty at ours though with one or two parents doing very normal m/c jobs and living in modest homes.

Yes agree depends where you are. I'm in the a rural part of England and when a boy with black heritage joined the primary school there was a buzz of interest. The state school is almost completely white. Dds private school had a large percentage of overseas students from various countries, plus many black and brown students.

Totally not economically diverse though I'll admit!

I don't think it's at all possible to claim that all private schools are more diverse than all state schools or vice versa - they all vary so much.

My sons' state school is incredibly diverse - my sons have friends who are refugees, from all religions, from a huge range of different countries (off the top of my head, Korea, China, Brazil, Columbia, Mexico, Poland, Romania, Albania, the US, Jamaica) and that's just their friends, there are more backgrounds in the school as a whole

Im spending a lot of money on tutors for my son as he is desperate to be a doctor and needs really high grades.
If he changes his mind and decides to be a bin man to be honest I think I would be relieved as I wouldn't have the stress of trying to help pay for 5 years of medical school. Plus I know 3 separate people who are Drs and hate it and his happiness is the most important thing to me.
I would feel 🙄 that he didn't realise he didn't want to go until I had finished paying out for the tutors though. I would never tell him that and he knows he can change his mind at any time.

(I know you said private school not tutors but I couldn't afford that ever so this is the nearest comparison I could think of.)

No, I think that response added nothing.

When I say bin man I became a volunteer recycling loader when recycling was a niche activity that very few people did. Most people only had a collection of rubbish but we pioneered the collection of recycling at the kerbside.
My dad actually said they were very disappointed in me. That was 30 years ago. Still hurts.

My parents were very disappointed. I became a bin man.
I dropped out of uni. Had a major breakdown with no support. I joined a well known environmental charity as a volunteer recycling collector and that was the making of me. They gave me a purpose and they and my boyfriend now husband gave me a reason to be here. I'm well respected in my field and love my job.

Not one bit. I expected them to do their best and that is all anyone can do. There are no guarantees in life. All my kids really enjoyed school and were exposed to far more opportunities than they otherwise would have been. I totally avoided passing any comments on the fees I paid, as that was clearly my choice, not theirs but absolutely no regrets here. I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

It might sound similar, but it won't be.

Sounds very similar to my kids state school

I'm pointing out that the oft repeated argument that state school offers a more diverse social group and that this is beneficial (even if some of the diverse groups are disruptive and uninterested in education) is fallacious. That actually many private schools offer a greater diversity and they do tend to mix because the one or two from Albania or Ukraine or Estonia are not a big enough group by themselves so they mix with the UK kids, to everyone's benefit. The UK kids are usually really interested in the international students' background and learn a lot about what it's like to grow up in a repressive regime / war zone / strict Islamic state.

So like doesn't cling to like in your kids school? Whats the difference?

But I really don't think that's true. Either a catchment is very small and homogenous or it's bigger and as others have observed, like clings to like. Just being in a classroom of 32 with other kids who have a different background to you does not mean you're actually going to really take on board or be aware of their circumstances and so on. If it is a mixed catchment there's no reason to be suppose there's any less one-upmanship about phones and labels and cars and holidays etc than there might be in a private school. This idea that it's somehow worthy and character building to mix with the less fortunate always makes me think of "Common People" by Pulp.
I teach in a private and as I stated upthread, the kids there are from a range of financial backgrounds and are from all over the world. My kids now mix with a fat wider range of backgrounds than they did in their previous urban comp.

My DC goes to boarding school (her choice...Due to being military and moving)
She owes me nothing.
Not grades.
Not a "top" career.

I simply want her to get through school and be proud of herself. And for her to know I'm proud of her too.

@Withless "Posts like this always sound so patronising"

I certainly didn't intend to be patronising. I was trying to explain what I think is one of the main benefit of state schools-that all kids have a more diverse range of companions.

@CruCru

i think you make a really valid point. I went to a really good comprehensive - but had a totally different experience of it than other kids there. One example: a full range of excellent music ensembles on offer (often winning national competitions) - but the rehearsals were before school. So I could go to Orchestra/ Wind band / choir, because I lived a ten minute walk away. The kids who lived on the other side of the city and were reliant on the school bus, couldn’t participate because they were never there on time. The difference being I lived in the leafy catchment around the school where houses cost an arm and a leg - they lived in the slice of catchment that included a large social housing estate (my parents were wealthy, theirs were not). Apparently all these kids getting equality of opportunity- but bollocks we were. I was vastly more privileged, in the same school, with ostensibly the same opportunities on offer. People who make out that private school is the only marker of privilege are being disingenuous in the extreme.