Private and state parents

Yes cos posh people dont swear, own dangerous dogs, take drugs or have 'unsafe' homes

This whole post is weird. It's like someone came from working class, posing as upper working class and worried that the benefits mums will take offense and ...want advice on how to speak to their previous working class peers?

I was being funny about it - the lives of these people aren’t so far from everyone else’s… in fact the standard of accommodation in a lot of SW London would be considered very modest if anywhere else in Britain…

In our state school, there are some families with dangerous dogs at home, marihuana plants, teens who swear etc, unsafe homes. So a bit of interrogation is required before you arrange a playdate or sleep over. That is just a fact of life in some parts of London. Would be rarer in most of SW London though I would have thought.

Oh, wow! Colour me impressed!

Given she’s talking about SW London, they probably still live in the terraced home, it just costs >£1,000,000

Also in SW London and I don’t really recognise this attitude you describe…

The description of their jobs and £100k childcare thing… well, those are just normal conversations. Thats how they can afford to live in these areas - they make good money.

There is definitely a sense of exasperation among the people I know locally that the cost of living here is so massive - while then being excluded from eg childcare. I’d be amazed if anyone in SW London earning >£100k was using a private primary school, the numbers just don’t add up.

The ‘private vs state’ conversations I’ve had (and 95% are using state primaries) has been ‘oh my god it’s £30k a year for reception, I just don’t think I can justify it’. These are people earning multiple hundred thousands as a household - who had probably assumed they’d be using private all the way through but have opted out because the cost is so absurd.

I actually don’t feel I meet anyone who ‘needs to prove their status’ - they don’t need to!

My DS is at a private school, both went to state primary.

Parents at the private are MUCH more friendly and approachable.

Never said she was a friend… Our DC are best friends and we help each other out occasionally but we don’t socialise at all. I
also said it made me feel uncomfortable, I don’t get off on bragging about my job and actually don’t tell anyone unless asked. It’s usually when they see my title and I have to explain but I don’t go out of my way to do this. I wouldn’t judge a mum who didn’t work or worked in a supermarket but I reckon she might have done had I said either of those things.

@Sartre Well your “friend” cared! You seem to notice that your job gave you status with her. It’s like this everywhere. People judge.

Agree with this. Think of your child’s education above what the mums at the gate are like ffs. Who even cares? I know this can be an issue though because I’ve experienced it when my DS started hanging out with someone new in year 1. They’re still best mates to this day and we do favours for one another sometimes with lifts to Beavers camps and such but she interrogated me that day and I felt really uncomfortable. I think she found me acceptable based on my career choice.

@Araminta1003 Many city professionals afford private schools.

Just move to Walthamstow or Hackney or South East London or better still Tower Hamlets and find a state school there. If you don’t like SW?
Pick a Green Party area and join the club.

Didn’t you know - all the keeping up with the Jones’ types are now stuck in state school bitching about wealth?

Only the true upper class and the worthy and the internationals are now in private schools, for the greater good of all.

Ive lived in SW london, am now (just) into Surrey and have experience of 5 schools now and think you're full of shit sorry 😂😂. In DD's state class most of the parents are affluent and we just talk about normal stuff, some people have expensive cars and holidays but it's not really a big deal.

Fwiw I am considering private for secondary for my ND child although would prefer state.

But I've genuinely never had people boast to me like this,

Load of rubbish

This is exactly how it is in my area of the Home counties. Dc have friendships curated by parents! It’s all about parental jobs and status. Cannot speak for London but it’s rife here. People are judged on husbands career, mothers career and money and house. There’s clearly a pecking order and a strata in the local society. Medics, solicitors and highly paid business execs being top and they don’t mix with the carpet fitter or the chippy - unless they want work done!

Private school felt far more equal even though the very rich were present. They didn’t tend to ignore people.

I work in SW London across both private and state schools.

I have never read such a pile of nonsense.

Private school parents are "more vulnerable". Maybe the parents working two jobs at NMW are past sharing their vulnerability with random strangers at school Open Days. Or maybe you're not looking at that sort of state school?

I think this is a location issue and not a state vs private issue.

What kind of private school? I’d expect the famous academic privates to be very different from the small unknown ones.

What kind of state school? If it’s the sort who send kids to grammars then I’d expect the parents to be looking at the competition but in terms of academics rather than social status. How do you end up finding out social status anyway? I’ve never met anyone dropping stuff like their car or holiday homes in an initial conversation.

I would also be extremely wary of too small schools after experiences as a child in a tiny village school. A nice deep friendship
pool is essential then you have other options for friendships if it goes wrong. We picked a 2 form entry.

Your post comes across like this: I know I'm better than everyone but I want to mingle with the lower class, the diverse, you know. In order to appear as though I'm something better than I am, as it were, you see. One need not let all know that one started out life in a terraced home with a brown Datsun parked on the kerb. Quite the opposite, in fact. What do you peasants think, if you think at all, about this perplexing quandary? 🤔

I decided against one independent school because it was just too small. I worried the pool of friend options was too limited. They ended up going to a normal sized state primary and then the nearest local private for seniors, which was big enough to have friend options but considerably smaller than the local state (which was under ‘needs improvement’ and became an academy, and I really didn’t want that. Thankfully the choices I made turned out to be the right ones. Today they would have to go to state as private would be far too expensive for two kids. They finished schooling at the right time.

Could you move your 5 yr old to another school? State primary is usually fine in most cases, if no private.

On behalf of all state parents, I'm so sorry that we didn't live up to your hopes for "experiencing diversity".

I have had kids in both state and private school. I think the small class thing can be fantastic socially or it can cause issues. It literally always depends on the specific cohort.

I have had children get 'lost' in classes of 30 and not find a special group of friends. I have heard about lots of my friends' children in really large state schools wandering around alone at playtimes completely unnoticed by teachers. Conversely though I do think some kids need a bigger peer group to find their tribe and there is obviously a risk in small classes that they don't find anyone they connect with. In my experience this is a particular problem in small co-eds with limited number of kids of the same sex.

Right?

I'm a snob but want to pretend I'm not.