Postcode lottery. Does where you live really make such a difference to how you educate your DC?

Well again the London housing profile is very different from the norm. A house of the same size as our current one but in a good catchment area would cost £200k more (well at least at the time we were looking for schools). Our school fees will cost less. Many parents compromise by buying a smaller house in a good catchment.

I suspect that there are many places in the UK where the house price differentials weren't so stark, and where the differences between a 2 bed and a 3 bed property wouldn't fund private education.

Someone on a previous thread posted a link to the % of privately educated children by area/county. We're in Surrey, and it was one of the highest at about 25% iirc.

no "normal" here because of the social demographics, but I think if people could afford it then they would - in general the state education round these parts are pretty poor.

And of course this "normalising" leads to discussion of it as just one of a range of "choices" available. It's like caviar being discussed in a book of healthy recipes for normal people, and the only real question was whether to use a bone or silver spoon.

I think some London boroughs have closer to a third of children in private schools.

Very postcode specific here. At primary level there are some excellent schools with very small catchments and then other schools where the best that can be said is that they do a good job in difficult circumstances. At secondary level we are affected by the existence of grammar school in neighbouring boroughs, and church schools in this borough.

For parents who don't accept that they will pay at one or both levels then there seems to be a reasonable amount of angst involved in getting into the best schools. But equally there is a large population who want a local school regardless of facilities or results.

Ormirian - I think people can be seriously misled by the demographic on here into thinking that going private is "normal". It seems to me about 50-50 on here, at least among those who join in the Education discussions.

In real life it's 7% of people, and that's an average hugely weighted by a large London private school population. Further north it can be anything between 5% and 0%.

Not norm here either, again out in the sticks in a reasonably affluent area. (South Devon)

definitely not the norm to go private here,but it is an affluent area with excellent state schools so yes
I would prob go rpivate if I lived near shit schools