To ask teachers in the state sector what it’s really like at the moment?

The short answer is to state primary, private secondary.

The longer answer is, it depends upon what your local schools are like, whether your child is academically minded and would thrive in a private setting, what support looks like if your child is ND, what you can afford, if there are scholarships etc.

DH teaches in state secondary and finds the behaviour challenging- with a lot of staff avoiding the reality of dealing with it. They can’t face the toes with parents who simply can’t see that the rules apply to everyone, yes including their own child. Letting low level stuff slip means that it all snowballs into bigger issues which should have been nipped in the bud a year earlier. He’s been teaching nearly thirty years and it really is getting to him.

I left state primary teaching for state specialist provision. I knew I wasn’t able to provide the support needed by the children with SEND in my class. I now feel that I am meeting the needs of the most vulnerable children (I teach in SLD) and giving them the education that they need.

However, increasingly there are strains in our system. My class of eight is about to become a class of nine as another child joins me from mainstream. It will make a huge impact on the provision my team can offer. I understand that it sounds ridiculous to complain but my class has a very high staff ratio for good reason. One extra child is five additional language therapy sessions a week, around 15 new pad changes a week plus additional EHCP target sessions, behaviour management and socialising (usually 2:2 sessions).

There will be a point where parents will realise that even in our settings we cannot meet the needs of all the children.

DS went through state system and is happily settled at uni. Maybe we were lucky with the school, maybe he was out of compulsory schooling before things got to the current state we are in.

I'm not a teacher but I am a governor at a state comp in a fairly mixed income area of London. Behaviour is generally excellent and we have a reward policy which means high achievement is encouraged by peers as well as teachers. Loads of extracurricular, including leading scores in several activities traditionally dominated by private schools. We're just a normal comp, no entry requirements, banding, or other social sifting.

It is single sex (f). But if you're in London you will usually have excellent options. My kids went to a private international school for a few years and the behaviour and teaching was bloody awful. All the state schools they have attended have been streets ahead of it.

This sums it up in my mind. Whether you can justify the additional cost is perhaps another argument, but to suggest they are the same seems counter-intuitive given the choices made by the wealthy in society.

I have never heard of a state school informing parents on Wednesday that the school is closing for good on Friday leaving Year 11 and 13 to fend for themselves weeks before their exams.
Some schools in both sectors are shockingly bad. Loads are great.

I’ve heard of private schools fudging their data to make it look like their students are doing well to justify the cost. True or not I don’t know 🤷🏻‍♀️ I’ve taught in state schools and it does vary by area. Some lovely and some absolutely shocking. The budgets are really tight atm though. Unfortunately those state schools in ‘nicer’ areas get the worst of it because they don’t have the PP funding, grants, etc. that those in poorer areas get. My DS are currently in state primary and are happy. Not pushed academically though really but I make up for it at home. I would 100% send them to private secondary if I could afford it.

Every school is different. If you leave in an affluent area with a restricted catchment then you will likely have a good school. If you live in London, there are some excellent state schools too. I am a teacher who has taught for over 20 years in a school in a deprived area, and it’s a pretty depressing place. Now I’m in a school in an affluent area and it’s wonderful. The schools are 6 miles apart, but the difference is unbelievable. It’s sad really.

You have to look at each school individually. In our area, we have 3 outstanding primary schools. There would be no value in private education. The state provision is excellent with small, well organised classrooms and excellent facilities.
Secondary however is fairly dire. The local state school is in special measures and has been for years. The alternatives aren't much better but we do have 2 Grammars. Many people tutor their children for the 11+ and aim for the Grammar and if not successful, then pay for support during secondary at the state school.

Our biggest issue is attendance. Behaviour can disrupt learning at times, but that often depends on how experienced the teacher is, to be honest. Attendance is awful and we get a lot of reports of cyber bullying and behaviour incidents on the buses to and from, but I don't know how that would compare to a private school. This is an oversubscribed secondary school in Yorkshire, with a fairly deprived catchment area. As everyone's pointed out, it varies school to school.

Private at primary is a luxury - you’d maximise your impact at secondary if you have to choose between the two.

Probably varies by school and by area, although I would say the level of need is higher than it used to be across the board. I teach in a deprived area and the number of children with very high needs who would never have been in mainstream schools in the last has increased a lot, whereas the support they receive has decreased a lot. This impacts on all children in school. Another thing is that the curriculum is packed and quite boring. Private schools can choose their own curriculum although I would expect the more academic ones to still have quite a dull curriculum.

Agree. If you can comfortably afford both private then great, but state secondaries are more noticeably different to private than at primary.
It obviously varies with each school but beware of hothouse secondaries - more a risk in grammars and private schools, and state schools that are just too big to be manageable for kids. Such a shame to be one of thousands of students where no one knows who anyone is. I wish all schools could be smaller and more personal - reckon it would sort out loads of the issues.

My daughter goes to a state school, she’s in y1 and is happy but I don’t feel she is pushed (differentiation seems very limited, her reading books are so easy she could have read them 12-18 months ago, the work in her maths book is stuff she knew how to do in preschool). Behaviour is good at that school.

i am doing supply at the moment. Behaviour varies from mostly ok to absolutely atrocious. I’ve not seen any violence but behaviour which massively disrupts the class and prevents those who want to learn from learning is fairly common. Even in classes where behaviour is good, there’s limited challenge for the most able. They finish the work quickly and then read a book, help their peers or just mess around. Support for the less able is better, with TAs taking kids for intervention and so on, but some are so far behind. No TAs in lessons generally, so some kids are just lost in every lesson.

A year ago I worked in a private school and the difference is stark. If i could afford it I would put my daughter in in a heartbeat. Though, 2 have closed/are closing so that would concern me, particularly with smaller cheaper ones.

I have taught in two beautiful private schools and two big state secondary schools. The first state one was in special measures and I would rather die than send my children there. Sex, drugs, abuse everywhere. Very little learning able to go on because of behaviour - lots of assaults and exclusions and despite changes in leadership every few years no progress has been made. The second state school is also tough but there are some lovely children here who do well. There are also some very badly behaved children who bring drugs and weapons into school and who disrupt learning whenever they can, but there is a chance for the others to learn and progress well. It depends whether your own children will behave regardless or will be led by others.

It also depends where you live. Anything less than ‘good’ at Ofsted and in my opinion private is worth the sacrifice. The differences are stark, mostly in terms of the environment, the children are not exposed to such terrible things (lots of children here with sexual exploitation, county lines, violence etc), and they can learn well because there’s very little going on in terms of behaviour. There are also more options for them subject wise at GCSE (many children in both state schools only get two ‘options’ on top of the usual subjects, and even then it’s often dependent on budgets and numbers so they end up too often with something they don’t want), and more opportunities in terms of clubs and trips.

I’m currently trying to move back into private so we can send our children private rather than state. It’s expensive but it’s also a completely different world.

A lot of people on here will be familiar with my views on state education. 🤷‍♀️

You should be able to infer from my post that I think that private schools should be better than state schools because they have lots more money.

Well primary is nearly always fine. Myself I left secondary less than ten years ago and it was fine then although it will vary with secondaries some are shit.

I teach Year 6 in a very socially deprived area. We are an Ofsted-rated ‘Good’ school. Our children are gorgeous and yes, we have occasional problems with parents, but nothing regular. My class are mixed ability with a high ratio of SEND children. I teach children working ‘below’ age related expectations, children working ‘towards’, children working ‘at’ and children capable of Greater Depth. I push my Greater Depth hard, keep tabs on filling gaps in learning for my borderlines and working towards, and ensure basic skills are prioritised for my working belows.

My class are an absolute joy. Yes we have behaviour issues but what class doesn’t?! I love teaching them and rarely have to interrupt my lessons for poor behaviour. I have taught classes where behaviour is more of an issue and barrier to progress, but some classes are like that and some aren’t.

In our school, the children largely are ready to learn, happy to be there and are pushed by capable and committed staff. I’d happily put my own children there if I lived nearer!

Depends on schools. I have been doing supply on and off and I find state schools are going down, money is tighter and tighter each year, no money o replace resources, government push more kids with SEN into mainstream, classes are bigger, behaviour is worse. I guess in private you get a lot of the same problems, but you definitely have smaller classes for kids and more 1:1, better resources, etc. I do love the state sector and would not want to work in an independent school as a teacher for a number of reasons, but it seems amuch better deal for the kids.

State schools vary massively.

primaries tend to have fewer issues regarding behaviour than secondaries just because teens are intrinsically much more difficult.

state schools have less funding than they did and are running with fewer bells and whistles (extra curricular and trips etc) than before but some are very good and others are not.

Depends on the school - funding is poor but some schools are good at raising extra cash through good business plans.

Depends on the behaviour policy too - strongly echo pp who said a good removal system works - we have this and yes, there is disruption (they're kids after all) but persistent disruption which impacts learning (as opposed to one incident of shouting out) is dealt with outside of the classroom so the teacher/rest of the students can carry on learning.

Save money for tutoring as state secondary find it difficult to recruit specialists and tutoring can be a good top up for this.

Takes a certain amount of arrogance to assume that I should know the views of some random MNer. “Don’t you know whom I am” etc etc.

Anyway, I infer from your (still snarky) answer that (a) you think private schools are better or (b) you don’t have experience of private schools so you don’t know?

I was bullied in state because I did my homework and got good grades. Sent my ds to private for secondary and I'm so happy : all kids study so it's normal. No bullying whatsoever because everything is taken very seriously. Lots of quirky kids that would have been bullied in state.

I have many views on the state of state education which are pretty well documented on here. Underfunded, under-resourced and understaffed. Teachers are overworked and underpaid with ever increasing expectations to solve all society’s ills, and to fill the gap of collapsing SEN and mental health services.

So I repeat, if private schools aren’t better then that, what the hell are they spending all that money on?

This is what we would have done if we could have.

In reply to state primary and private secondary.