Does anyone else feel this way about the education system in the uk?

State school it is then 🤷‍♀️

Public taxes do not subsidise independent schools in the UK. Parents pay the fees.

On the whole private schools have much better behaved children for the simple reason that they'd get rid of them if they weren't

Are you saying that private school kids are well behaved through fear of expulsion? Because that wasn't my experience. My experience was that the schools ethos was that it was cool to do well, academically and in other areas. They would make it their business to find something that every pupil could do well in, often working with the parents to nurture whatever it was, academics, music, sport, drama,.public speaking, entrepreneurship. Once a teen realises they can do something well,.they grow in confidence and start to enjoy school = better behaviour.

I can't imagine state schools have the time or resources to do this.

Except public tax doesn't subsidise indy schools in the UK. There are no subsidies. Parents who choose indy pay for that education through the school fees, which aren't subsidied by the tax payer.
Education is VAT exempt by law in EU as a matter of principle. We left the EU but the principle remains, or it did until Labour. This is a tax on parents, not schools. Parents who already pay their taxes for state services.
The fact that governments choose to underfunded state education is not the fault of indy schools/parents.

I'm just going to put it out there. I don't believe in public tax subsidising private schools. ( I am in Australia). You want a private school - you pay for it. Here we have schools that are getting millions in funding and have huge grounds and actual stadiums, and state schools that don't even have air conditioning in the class rooms ( in summer you can easily have a few days of 40 degrees) . Disgraceful. You want your own education then pay for it!

So you chose to ignore the SEND issue and give no evidence for the for the claim the majority gets paid by grandparents NB my parents are dead.

However the misuse of stats is a heinous offence 😮😉
The average UK income in Sept 2024 was £35,829. You claim this is an household income. Why?

1. Why do you assume a one earner house household? Have you heard both parents are allowed to work? (yes a lot of kids like me were brought up by one, but for your statistical purposes that’s irrelevant)
2. This is an average so <50% earn above this average

This is exactly my experience of our state secondary which was supposed to be one of the best in the area. Terrible violence with no consequences and endless disruption to lessons. After a year and a bit we were forced to swap to private. The change in behaviour was night and day. Could not be any more different. If you have an excellent local state school you are very lucky. For the rest of us it’s private if you can afford it, or the risk of traumatised kids if you can’t. It’s an absolute abomination.

I'm not sure what you mean by "normal," as, surely, you'd need very high incomes indeed to be able to spare enough for school fees and have enough left over for rent or a mortgage on top of living expenses. It's feasible for one child, perhaps.

The average household income is around £35,000 a year (after tax), so there's probably not much left for a normal family from that after school fees. If it's an average fee of about £16,000 a year, it's feasibly possible for a normal family with one child, as they'd be left with 19,000 a year for rent/mortgage, food, fares and bills.

Private sch is not an option for us, so I was very nervous about sending DD off into Y7 but I have been pleasantly surprised. House points (my old comp didn't bother), lots of rewards/incentives/praise for good work (my DD likes to hear it), enrichment activities by the truck load (none of this at my comp unless you did sports- by which I mean football).

Totally agree that enrichment activities are important, and not just sporty ones. Cultural and scientific things should be available too. Also music for those who don't learn an instrument - orchestral and other concerts and low-key recitals in school etc.

I hated the 'Gifted and Talented' initiative - don't know if it's still going?? Enrichment outside the curriculum should be available to any student who wants it, not just those designated 'G & T' by some nefarious means.

Where I worked a boy brought a knife into school. I don't think anyone seriously believed he meant to use it - he was just an idiot. But that's not the point.

His parents were called into school within the hour and the boy was out that very day. Oh, that state schools could do the same.

Drug possession/knives/proven racist behaviour in the school I worked at meant pretty much instant expulsion..

In private schools it often depends on who is doing the disrupting. A clever child who is bored will he tolerated longer than an average child who’s struggling.

I find it the opposite. In the 90s when I went to school, the comp across the road from my house was rough and scary. I left after 2 years to go to a better place.

Private sch is not an option for us, so I was very nervous about sending DD off into Y7 but I have been pleasantly surprised. House points (my old comp didn't bother), lots of rewards/incentives/praise for good work (my DD likes to hear it), enrichment activities by the truck load (none of this at my comp unless you did sports- by which I mean football).

On the whole private schools have much better behaved children for the simple reason that they'd get rid of them if they weren't. Pressure from other parents, who are paying huge fees, would be brought to bear pretty quickly if a child was disrupting lessons on a regular basis. I wish state schools had this power - obvs they couldn't be that quick-acting, but the situation has swung much too far in the direction of no consequences for sustained bad behaviour. Parents and children know schools can't get rid of them.

Mine were state-educated, as I was, but I worked in private schools and it was satisfying to see highly disruptive children (rare) dealt with very promptly.

marmadukedoggo · Today 06:44
Did they end up amazing? Not trying to be rude but the amount of privately educated kids I know ( all 25-30) have done nothing more than their publicly educated friends. Often worse. I just wonder what parents think they are buying? A smart child? Your child is going to be smart if you put them in public or private. The end.

It's not just about the end product, though. When thinking about schools for my children i didn't actually waste much head-space on their future careers but I did want them to have a great experience of school. I remembered how much I'd enjoyed my own school days (state educated, but a grammar for secondary). To adults, the 7 or so years at primary and 7 at secondary go in a flash, but to children these years are very long and hugely formative. They loom incredibly large in most people's memories, for better or worse.

Both mine were state educated but luckily they got into very nice schools where lessons were calm and the teachers could actually teach. There was good music provision - and lots of take-up - and teachers stayed for decades because the schools were pleasant places to work. Relationships between staff and students were excellent, and a great model for the future - that scary moment when you have to engage with the adult world!

We were very lucky, but there's practically nothing I wouldn't have done to ensure my children had as good an educational experience as possible, whatever their future would hold.

Honestly, none of this bears the slightest resemblance to my own experience either as a pupil or parent, and a lot of it is breathtakingly insulting to teachers, parents and kids in the state system. 93% of the population attend state schools - they are not holding pens for the ineducable masses.

For what it's worth, I attended an average state comprehensive, got 3 As at A Level and went to a Russell Group university. My husband went to probably the most academic public school in the country, got 3 As at A Level and went to a Russell Group university.

I'll try this to be short and on topic.
I am from the Continent, I've been living in the UK for nearly 15 years.
2 kids in state primary schools. DD1 one is taking his 11+ next year. The amount of study/tutoring that we have to do with him is shocking. Minimum 2-3 hours a day. It's because at school they do nothing. Like, every day is Harvest festival, mental health week, anty-bullying week, etc. but what about the actual curriculum and study? I think especially the math level is very low. And it's not like we've just recently woken up because of the exams. He's been doing the age-appropriate practice since Year 3. What I mean is, we bought the math books and did them with him every year. But at school they did maybe 1/4 of the content that is there in the books, so barely minimum that they could escape with, I guess. It should not be like this, because this means that if you don't have money for tutoring or you are not educated to a degree level to tutor yourself, your child has barely any chance of going to a good secondary school, even if they are academically gifted. Nothing is fair about this.

Now, about the infrastructure and the buildings. Most of the primary schools in Herts, where we live, look like some temporary garden sheds. Where I grew up, schools were proper brick buildings and the schools were quite big, with many floors, many classes, etc. How come these school buildings here pass any kind of EHS regulations is a mistery to me. However, the equipment and accessories at schools here are top-notch and that is great, cause I remember in my childhood years we didn't even have any toilet paper and teachers prepared their lessons using their own equipment and materials at home (and as kids we studied and did homework from books that we had to purchase and that was obligatory from the age of 7). And I won't even start about the poor pupil behaviour and lax parents' attitude, as last year the kids stood up during the class and started strangling their horrified friends in front of the teacher following some kind of Tit-Tok challenge. How on earth 9-year old kids are even allowed access to this kind of content is beyond me.

To sum this up, DD2 just started Reception in the local CoE school and I'm saving the money for the local private prep from Year 3. Not because we want to, but because we have no other choice, really.

I've had a chat with other non-UK born parents and we all share the feeling that here the state school is just like a social club for kids and primary purpose of the school, which once was to study, is now secondary (if not gone altogether). My son said once to me, "I just go there to play football...".

Finally, I know that this is biased and I'm sorry, it's probably because we come from high-pressure education environments where it was normal for us to study 3 hours a day, every day, and we had tests/exams every week. But still we managed to have a social life, so it's not like one excludes the other. And everybody, rich or poor, had a chance to study like this and succeed because every state school provided that chance and knowledge (private schools were extremely rare and only in big cities). Here I chat to a supposedly educated teacher who tells me that the capital of India is Mumbai and doesn't know the formula for the circle circumference. UK seems to have gone in the other direction - poor quality education for the masses and high quality for the rich/most determined (parents) - maybe it's the reflection of the old class division here? I'm not sure.

To answer the actual question, in your shoes I'd educate at private, unless you can move closer to a better state option.

I think it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you live somewhere without a private school, there are often a few really good state options because most parents who could afford private use the state schools, making them more attractive etc.
If you have several private schools (like most big cities), these parents often go private. The state schools suffer, and the pressure increases on the remaining parents to go private too, even if it means stretching themselves.
Basically the opposite of how you would expect competition to work.

I sympathise with you OP as you clearly want the best for your child, however this is predominantly a parenting issue. When you went to state school nobody would dare misbehave & the teacher had total control over the class, unfortunately now there are more children with SEN struggling to cope in mainstream with inadequate support & funding, more children coming in with trauma & seeking asylum & not being able to speak English yet, generally behaviour is awful in schools as the parents refuse to believe their kids are anything but perfect, teachers cannot punish children for bad behaviour anymore. I'm not a teacher but I do work with children & the behaviour that is accepted is off the scale. The difference with private school is that the parents are motivated for their children to do well, bad behaviour is not tolerated & if you're paying a lot of money for something you're not going to let your child ruin it for themselves. State education isn't valued as people see it as 'free' obviously it's a lot more complex but these are a few reasons.

I think I was replying to someone who said you don't get a mix of kids from different walks of life in state as you do in private but my child goes to a school with a catchment straddling poorer areas and areas with massive houses that are wealthy.

You really are very shortsighted here. Dh and I were state educated although in another country. It wasn't even an option here for us to go state. Read a few threads here just on the children who are punched and bullied and just have to accept it. Posters will say it's just the area, but start a thread as a teacher who is leaving education and you will hear all the horror stories. Your comparison of the two visits is exactly what is the current state of schooling.
I'm in a very affluent area with a lot of good state schools. However I'm also on our local community Mums FB group and the stories are all very similar.
I don't think private is just all about the education if you're comparing. It's also about the overall experience. I want my dc to look back and love their education journey, every aspect of it.
I attended the parents meeting last week for dc, chalk and cheese when comparing to friends in state schools.

As if only state schools have poorly behaved kids and shit parenting.

Private schools are as reflective of global society

They aren't because many people on the globe don't have money.

A calm, purposeful atmosphere, motivated students, supportive families and teachers who are actually able to TEACH is why people pay for private education.

My children went to good state schools - we were incredibly lucky. We couldn't have afforded private, but I did a lot of research into the local options.

I worked in an independent school and yes, it was a different world to the schools I'd taught in in deprived areas of cities.

I never cared about the 'facilities', which so many parents seem to value - new buildlngs and fancy sports/drama/science blocks meant nothing to me. I was only interested in 2 things: what were the other students like and what were their families like? If you get well-supported children, you'll get what is ridiculously called a 'good school'. It's a matter of who you are keeping out, I'm afraid. One open evening I went to had parents (not children - parents) physically fighting in the playground before we were admitting. I would have done everything in my power for my children not to go there.

Politicians talk about making 'good schools' available to all. Ha ha! Do they think schools are buildings? Schools are the students, teachers and families - and if they're not right, it doesn't matter that the site has had an expensive makeover. Give me peeling paint and a purposeful atmosphere any day.