If you send your child to private school…

Yes, my kids at private school hang out with their friends plenty! They have all their friends from their state primary nearby, but also I’m a constant taxi to take them to the areas of their friends from their independent secondary! Hanging out with friends independently is a necessary part of growing up and becoming responsible adults.

This sounds a throughly miserable existence for a teenager. Learning to socialise with friends, independently on your own is such a healthy part of development for a teenager and such an important part of their young life.

I can't imagine depriving of them of this opportunity. Surely we want our teenagers to have more of a life than watching TV and chatting to friends on their phone. Some of my happiest memories are being my friends as a teenager out and about and I sincerely hope the same for my kids. It can't be doing anything for their own mental health to be inside all the time and with no socialisation.

Another thing that’s a “tell” for non genuine “experience”. The “state schools only need to get all children to the same average level” trope. At least until very recently (I haven’t looked at any recent changes) schools were assessed on progress made by individual children, and could not get a good grade from inspectors if they did not make good progress from their starting point.

I went to private school and can assure you it makes zero difference where your friends live!

in fact, it meant sleepovers became parties in houses where we had access to alcohol more than my friends who went to state school/working class families.
children in private school are often given more disposable cash to spend on what they want at a younger age, given more freedom if parents work longer hours/have longer commutes.
more kids that I knew in private school tried drugs than in state school and I grew up in a very working class (bordering on deprived) area.

I don’t think anyone on this thread has said any of those things though. I was only talking for the one state secondary school that was available to us in our area. I know there are plenty of excellent state schools, and if I lived near any of them I definitely would have sent my kids there.
Trust me, I’d rather have that £36k a year in my pocket.

I'm fed up of lazy stereotypes that all state schools are drug-ridden hotbeds of violence, with pupils / parents who don't care at all about education

My kids had a great experience at state school and would have been a complete waste of money to go private

some private schools will be good, others not so much
some state schools will be good, others not so much

Hard agree! Love that teens here meet up and have fun. Often a mix of schools state or private irrelevant. How tragic if your teen years are spent furiously studying then you can’t get a job anyway!

Dear God what an appalling view. Spending time with friends as a teen is one of the best things that most people will ever do, it forms memories that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

Depriving children of that so that they can study more is monstrous.

I'd be thrilled if either of my sons became builders. There's good money and lots of opportunities in housing and construction!

Likewise if they wanted to be a hairdresser!

It is very geographic. Where we live a small city there are 5 state schools 4 are pretty good. One is in an area of deprivation and has challenges. I wouldn’t send my kids there. It is the catchment school for the pretty villages just outside the city so pretty much all the parents I know in those villages go private. If they lived in town they probably wouldn’t.

My 2 children are in nursery and year 1 at a private school and we absolutely believe it’s worth it already.
the resources they have access to, the opportunities they are given through school, the extra curricular things on offer already are excellent.

already, in nursery, they have time spent on computers, they do french, have one afternoon a week of forest school (and this area is being developed of the summer to increase the activities done there for all of the ages in the junior school)

the nursery class has 26 children to 1 teacher and 3 TAs.
In reception, they will split into 2 classes with 1 extra child joining, so 13/14 to a class of 1 teacher and 2 TAs.
my older child in year 1 is in a class of 16 (2 year 1 classes of 16)

these ratios allows the children more time with the adults, as well as being split into small groups for focused activities

You are forgetting social housing

I have one child at a private school and one at a state school - same year group.

It will absolutely depend on the schools involved, but the two my children are at are very different. Just a different outlook and approach to everything. The private school offers opportunities and assumes students will take them and supports/encourages if the kids are reluctant. The state school tells them to do things, the kids push back, the weary teachers cajole, then eventually make it mandatory and push the kids into things.

It all just sounds like hard work for the teachers and the kids at the state school. And genuinely a lot more collaborative and fun at the private school. I absolutely understand some of the reasons for the differences, but it’d be wonderful if both schools could achieve the more collaborative approach.

'Disaster' like in a disaster movie?

I wouldn't engage if I were you. That poster weirdly always pops up on Private school threads to tell us we're morally bankrupt for sending our children to private school. I think they're a little obsessed.

Always very goady and minimising negative experiences of state schools. Pay no mind, they have a political axe to grind.

Failing isn’t about how many kids will pass GCSE (although our local one is below national average), it is also about the wellbeing of children. We have another school not too far away that is actually just above national average, but:

• the building is literally about to fall down, so science, technology and food tech have been cut to the absolute minimum
• the ambition is a 6 at gcse. No support for anything more.
• drama, music: pretty much non existing
• PE: bare bones that won’t inspire anyone to a healthy lifestyle
• Food offer: disastrous (kitchen also in the condemned building ), but several fast food outlets within 15 min walk, which is obvious if you look at the kids’s sizes :(
• Sendco: 1 person….

I’m suggesting that SOME of them are-not lying exactly, but using generic anti state school stereotypes as if they are their own lived experience.

If I choose to spend £18k on fees instead of Ikos or horse riding lessons or a more expensive home is it anyone’s business other than my own? I pay my tax (and my VAT) and not one person is losing out with me doing that. Whether my dc become astronauts or brickies is not within my control but I can choose to spend my money on something now which I feel brings us a benefit.

If you genuinely had spare money what would you do with it? Saving it up for university or a house deposit for your dc isn’t fair to all either, as most dc won’t get those advantages. Neither is paying for tutoring or extra curriculars or anything else most of us do for our dc. We are all trying to make a failing system work the best we can with what we have got, that there is so much disparity in state education is a massive failure on all those who have governed us for the last 20 years.

Are you suggesting they’re lying?
Our one state secondary option isn’t ‘failing’, but it has a reputation for bullying and low level violence which they are really struggling to get a handle on. Having been there myself (and hating every minute), and having multiple friends with children there, and indeed friends who teach there, that hasn’t changed. My kids wouldn’t have ‘failed’ there I’m sure, but my eldest in particular is the type of child who would have been an immediate target for the bullies (my friends who teach there agreed she would be likely to struggle). We don’t all have socially confident kids who fit in, sadly, and we don’t all have the option to choose the state secondary school that would suit our child best (there is literally one state secondary nearby that we would get a place at).
Oh and we do live in a low income area with high levels of social deprivation. This is where I grew up, and I moved away after uni (to London). I then spent 10 years working and living in various European cities, before settling back in the SE. However my brother was murdered so we moved back to support my family. We then finally got our disabled child into a suitable SEN school after a 3 year battle, so moving isn’t really an option for us for the time being.

Another interesting thing is the number of private school parents who seem to live in the catchment of terrible failing state schools full of disruptive low achieving kids. When such schools are usually in areas of poverty and social deprivation. Unusual for people who can afford school fees to live in areas like that…..

Our son has thrived in his fantastic state school but we sent his sister to a private girls school in the January of Year 7. She had started at one of the most successful state schools in the country and would likely have come out with very good grades, but it was such a strict, joyless environment and it seemed like sending her to a workhouse every day. For a well behaved child, it wasn’t ideal for her to be pushed to be even more compliant and get behaviour marks for her pen running out or worried that she wouldn’t be allowed to use the loo etc. She’s loved her much more relaxed private school since day one and the curriculum has been far better suited to her (the state one was very STEM focused and only gave one arts option for GCSE). The cost has been hideous, especially since addition of VAT. Being at a lovely school has enabled her to have a very happy adolescence but we still have 20 years left on the mortgage and I wish we had had a suitable state option for her nearby.

I will never vote Labour again. I know this thread isn’t about VAT, but what an ill thought out, damaging policy which has done nothing to help the state schools I work in anyway.

Unless you have so much money you don't care about the cost, I don't think the question is really "is it worthwhile to send my children to private school" but "is it worthwhile to send my children to private school compared to the alternative?"

Lots of posters on here saying their state alternative didn't meet their child's needs, for example, so private was worth it for them. Their neighbour's child probably had different needs, and private school might not have been worth it.

The other comparison of "alternative" is what you would be doing with the money if you weren't spending it on private education. In our case, we looked long and hard at private schools and decided it was better for me to work part time when the children were younger so I could be about after school (I would have had to work full time if we'd gone private) and they could benefit from that; and to put money aside for house deposits (we couldn't have simultaneously paid private school fees and done that).

And our local school is in the category of what I would call "good enough" - it's not amazing (GCSE results just below average) but we supplemented with tutoring, extracurricular activities and parental involvement. Would the DC have had a nicer all round experience if they'd gone to private school? Possibly, if we just looked at the actual "being in school day to day" bit, but as a long term broader picture including benefits as young adults, state school looked better.

(I went to a private school, was bullied and left with my mental health on the floor. These problems are not absent from private schools).

Job snobbery is officially dead. Most parents now would be thrilled if their kids had a decent income if it’s hair dressing great. Tbh none of it matters when these poor kids hit the job market 😢. Having gone to a private school won’t solve the problem I have met too many mums tearing their hair out at the graduate recruitment market - state and private. The middle class entry jobs are being hacked away.

Exactly this. I’m not trying to ‘buy’ a particular career for my kids. Builders and hairdressers are perfectly respectable careers, and AI proof!

In what way was it a disaster and in what way is the private school ‘better’. Not being difficult just trying to understand.