Those who have paid for private education or taught in a private school… advise me please!

It really depends where you live. We've moved a few times but have always been in one of the poorer areas of wherever we've lived because we've never had much money. That means our catchment schools have often been poor.

Our eldest 4 started out at the same state primary, which we were reasonably happy with until the Head blocked our eldest going to Grammar. She ended up at a private school (assisted place) simply because as a child that was very easily led I could see her going totally off the rails. DC2 on the other hand took no notice of peer-pressure, went to a comprehensive and was in the top stream the entire way through school, moving to the Grammar for 6th form.

DC3 we moved to the private prep linked to DC1's school at the same time and he really flourished. He then went to Grammar at 11. DC4 we moved to a different state primary and he also went to Grammar.

DC5 grew up in a different area. Went to our 2nd choice state primary which turned out to be very good for her when she was dx with dyslexia. She then went to a selective Girls school which was great until Covid and a change of Head. She went to 6th form college instead of staying at school.

For all of our children it's been very much a case of finding a school that fits the individual. Private also has the bonus of wrap around care, so we could drop them off early and still get the others to school on time/ get us to work on time, then pick up after prep/ tea. They were at 4 different schools for several years so we needed the flexibility.

I’d sell a kidney to pay the fees if I had to. It’s 100% worth it. I’ve tried both. Advice from those who have expertise of both is much more reliable than the posters on here spouting their own bias.

Mine looked baffled when I asked them about disruption in lessons. They were in mid to top sets in a state girls school. It wasn’t really a thing.

More of an issue was teachers leaving. Not sure if that’s a state / private issue but gutting when excellent teachers who were the reason you opted for that A level leave.

"most people I know who have kids in state say much of the time it it behaviour management"

So do these people work in a state school? Do they attend lessons with their children so they have witnessed the entire lesson being about behaviour management?

I have taught in state secondary schools for well over a decade. It depends massively on the school, but just go and look round and ask them "what is your behaviour for learning policy?".

My lower set I do a lot of behaviour management initially, but my higher sets and any mixed ability classes it is very little. Anyone stopping others from learning get sent to isolation room.

Both schools I've worked at have excellent extra curricular activities too, and pupils who put the effort in thrive.

I am very glad our DC went to private secondary. Not because it was private but because it was by far the best school for them, and the state schools on offer were absolutely wrong for them.

I wasn't impressed by their state primary's attitude to academic work or to pastoral care. The local secondaries were, at the time, heavily oversibscribed, and my DC were only offered a place at a school two bus rides away which got closed down as it was so chaotic and badly run. Even the schools with good reputations locally really depressed me when we looked around on open days. Not that they got offered places there anyway.

Instead, they went to a private school which placed enormous value on wellbeing, friendship, anti-bullying, as well as encouraging real pride in working hard academically and in all areas of extra curricular. Our DC emerged with good grades, a very close friendship group, semi-pro skill levels at their favourite hobbies, got places at good unis, and have a work ethic that has helped them during Covid and at the outset of their careers. The school was what I hoped it would be.

I've taught in both and my children had a mixture of both,none of which were the same schools.

You need to fit the child to the school,if you can. It's what will help your child to thrive that matters. A top performing academic school is no fun for a middle of the road,slightly struggling child. But a school where crowd control or low level disruption is a feature of everyday life isn't ideal either.

In my experience though, a top academic independent school will go above and beyond in terms of enrichment in and out of the classroom, and it will strive to move way beyond the exam syllabus. A less academic one can be very nurturing and encourage individuals to find their strengths.

A good comprehensive should be able to cater for all abilities and provide a wide variety of co-curricular options but it depends on how well it's organised,plus a wide enough intake.
And all schools,no matter the flavour, depend on good leadership and excellent teaching standards.

You need to look at a few different schools, but not on open days which are usually window dressing. Then trust your gut.

I was at a private school 11-18. State before that; at 11 I was slightly academically behind the girls who'd been to the junior school, but I caught up fast. Academically it was good - I am old, so did my exams before A*s came in, but got all As at GCSE and A-level and I went to Cambridge, but socially it was miserable. Absolutely toxic mean girl environment with a lot of emphasis on the clothes etc you could afford. I survived, kept my head down, haven't stayed in touch with anyone.

DD is in the local very good state comp. Mostly 9s at GCSE, and she's socially confident with a good friend group (after a bit of drama and a complete change of friends in year 8), and is also looking at Oxbridge. And we can afford to pay her tuition fees and give her a house deposit in due course, which we definitely couldn't have done if she'd gone to private school.

I never went to a private school, and neither do my own children, but my line of work brings me into contact with a lot of children from private schools.

Personally, I think that unless you are attending the top 10% of private schools, then in 15-20 years, you won't be any different, or have achieved anything greater, than someone who went to a state school.
I think a lot of it is more about the parents buying access to an aspirational social circle.
A few weeks ago I was chatting with a 8yo girl who attends a local well-regarded prep school. I asked her how she'd spent her weekend.
"Oh, we went to the drops the surname of a guy who used to play (a sport) for England 5 ish years ago, but I didn't recognise the name right away's house for a party."
I say, "Oh... Is that *names a mutual acquaintance with the same surname*s parents?"
"Oh, no." She replies, "He used to play for England and "local club."

She's only 8 and already understands the currency of having a particular social circle.

I did say ‘in my experience’ @fieldsofice (30 years of it). Which is all any of us can bring to the table, isn’t it?

No.

Private school classes are around 22-24 for lower school, usually with small a level classes. It's really not a barrier to making friends and nor is having 30 in a class a protection from a bully.

Also irrespective of state or private I am extremely wary of these much vaunted small classes. You need a decent selection of same sex friends. Opposite to most we wanted a large primary for ours. The village primary we went to was too small my poor sister was trapped with a bully for years as no other friendship options <shudder>.

See I never had friendship issues . And was all girls so definitely not boy heavy.

When I ended up in a state school in year 8 ( long story) far more bullying and chaos . 240 kids in a year

I'm sure this is true in a number of locations, but I don't think it's fair to say you should always go private if your only option is a 3-4 form entry run by a trust.

The local large schools here are both staffed largely by experienced teachers. Some of the local privates are not worth paying a penny for while some are beyond incredible in every way you can imagine. My nearest one-form entry has a large number of non-teaching members of SLT and I have no idea how they're managing to afford that. These schools are all doing similarly academically, aside from the top private which is ahead of the others.

Parents really need to consider their local schools and their DC's individual needs as any one of these schools (aside from the low quality private schools) could be the best one for their DC.

I went to a state comp (leafy, in a nice village) and have taught for the last 20 years. I’ve taught in boarding schools, very selective day schools, private prep and secondary, state grammar and rough comp. We chose to move house to send DS to a good state secondary and he is very happy there. He’s made nice friends and it’s at the end of the road so he walks/cycles with his mates. He’s done some excellent school trips abroad and is generally happy (although he moans about school obviously!) his teachers are nice and he’s encouraged and has positive relationships with them.
IMO state school made me more determined, a more independent learner and more resilient socially and I didn’t want to shield him too much.

when DS was little he was at the prep school attached to the school I worked at. Class of 15 kids, loads of lovely attention, etc etc etc. I left that school and he started at a state school in year 3. 6 weeks in I got called to a meeting with the teacher and he was significantly behind his peers who’d gone to the state infant school. Sometimes it’s genuinely not worth the money 🤷‍♀️ he caught up and then Covid hit 🤦‍♀️

When we moved to this house for his school our mortgage more than doubled, it will cost us the same as school fees by the end of it.

Can't speak for the changing teachers in primary but I went to a very small international school for both primary AND Secondary. It was a combined school so I didn't need to move at 11. Probably equivalent to a grammar school in this country. ISH.

Academically, I loved it - came out with a good enough Baccalaureate to go to a top 10 uni, but socially? I was lucky in that I was there all the way through, I think. Everyone knew me before the cliques kicked in. If I'd moved there in my teens, it would have been hell.

I'm still in touch with a couple of girls from those days, but none of them from my own year! And my oldest friend still complains even now about how the teachers always made such a big deal of us being friends, just because she was three years older. This is fifteen years ago,so it clearly bothered her. 😂 Apparently she got all the comments....

So yes, I agree, small schools can be a pain, socially...

Ironically, I'd still probably choose that system for my own kids if I could (the language teaching was second to none) but I would only do it if I could do it for both Primary AND Secondary... I wouldn't choose to start them there in Secondary...

I work in a university counselling service and to be honest a lot of the students I see who went to private school have huge guilt if they aren’t massively academic as they feel they have wasted their parents money, particularly if the parents aren’t wealthy. They have also received the message that academics are everything so find it really hard to work out who they are or what they want beyond what they have been told is good for them. Also met students who turn against their interests as they think they should be studying something that makes it worth the cost of private school so are ultimately really unhappy.

this is why I wouldn’t send me kids to private school.

My DC attend state schools - one selective, one non-selective. My DH teaches at a private school. I would say it massively depends on the schools and the children.

• DS passed 11 plus and chose not to go to grammar. He has flown at comp because he is bright and they nurture bright kids. Had he been middling, I suspect he would not have done so well. He came out of GCSEs with all 8s and 9s (we’ll gloss over the failed art….) and is predicted As and A*s at A level - we shall see if that comes to pass.
• He was unhappy in year 8 and did a trial day at the local private school - he said it was as bad as the comp but just in smaller classes. (Fab use of a day as it saved us £25k a year and he settled in to the comp properly and did brilliantly).
• If you are in a grammar area you may find that the private school is full of children who did not pass the 11 plus and that the grammars are academically more rigorous.
• DD has gone to a small selective all girls grammar. It works for her.
• i would say neither love school but neither hate it and both are doing well.
• DH LOVES the private school but it is only peripatetic and therefore only there 2 days a week but he raves about it and is furious that the Labour policies mean that it has had to be taken over and its future is insecure. So do your due diligence on private schools and make sure it is financially secure before settling DC.

My sister actively chose not to send her to boys to private school. Even though they could afford it, and even though they had some mild learning difficulties (dyslexia and dyscalculus and one is autistic).

Instead, they saved the money and have spent it on their now .Adult children like this:

1. They have left uni completely debt free.
2. They have house deposits of £50k for each child.
3. They have given them £50k for long term investment ( potentially meaning they can retire early).

I attended private school and was unhappy. I might have been unlucky with my year group, I guess. I left at 16 to go to a college for A levels, which I loved.

I teach at a state comp and my kids are at state school, they receive a superb education with expert teachers and lots of opportunities.

It genuinely depends how the schools are in your area.

My daughter's prep school was incredibly academic - excessively so in my view. The school literally gets kids to do GCSE papers and pushes incredibly hard to prep them for the 11+ entry. A lot of homework. It actually had very good teaching to the point that my daughter (and other kids who went through that school) now say that most of the things they learned they knew from primary school 😀 They had different teachers for every subject- again to prepare them for secondary. However, was it a friendly nurturing enjoyable environment for a 4-11 year-old? No.

It also had tiny class sizes of 12-15 kids as you say, which is actually not very nice when you fall out with a friendship group or get bullied, as there is not much choice of other kids to play with (especially as our school was very boy-heavy).

I taught for 30 years in the sort of state secondary schools that serve very poor areas in East and South East London. These schools were always middle or bottom of the league tables. I saw children walk out with amazing results and some of them overcame the sort of awful things that I didnt know existed before I came across them in real life.
Increasingly the number of children with SEND and the severity of their issues was making more impact overall on the total experience of school. I retired as the Sendco for my last school this year.
I would say that there are few actual specific things secondary schools can do to help send children apart from having calm quiet classrooms, no or hardly any disruption to routines, and no as far as possible bullying. Send tends to mean that a child needs longer to learn than their peers, this is actually the legal working definition of send.
Any school can do these things but state secondary schools are less likely to in my experience. However this point is just about send so may not be of interest to the OP.

I sent all mine private. The eldest wouldn't have managed in state school and then I sent the other two because it seemed odd not to. State schools where we lived then were awful. I was a teacher so I knew what I was looking at and I didn't think school should be an endurance test. If I was doing it again I would definitely still send them for secondary but probably have kept child 2/3 in state for primary. But that would be a financial decision. Have they benefitted from private?. I would say so but of course I don't know what they would have turned out like if they had gone to state schools. One massive positive was their school had v v long holidays so I saw them much more than if they had been in state schools 🙂

I live in a nice area with fantastic grammar schools. I made the choice for my children to attend private school from 3-11 before moving them to grammar. Private school was brilliant for nurturing, small classes, lots of extra clubs and specialist teachers from age 7. I feel like I gave them a really secure early years experience. They both got scholarships for the senior school, but it felt like the right time to move them to the grammar school. If I didn’t have the grammar schools on my doorstep I’m not sure if they’d have gone to a comp if I’m honest.

I chose state as I had a bad experience at private school, and was mercilessly bullied. I enjoyed state primary, but lost all confidence with private secondary. We lived in an area with a good state comp, and I liked the idea of DC going to local comp with all their friends from primary. Topped up with tutors and no regrets.