State grammar schools compared with independent schools

*"There's a British Pakistani boy in my son's class at prep school, among many other ethnicities in the school"

"However no matter how diverse the ethnic/national makeup of the school might be, I'm not sure you could say it's diverse. The Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, etc. children might look different from the white British children, but they all come out with the same prep school accent, the parents all have million pound houses, 4x4s, and so on"* - to quote the OP.

What a strange sounding school and not representative of any of the 5 or 6 Prep schools I know.

Seriously - All the parents live in £million pound houses?? All of them? All* the parents drive 4x4's????

Glad I don't live where you do OP.

As all good geographers know Asia comprises of 48 countries including India China Bangladesh and Pakistan.

The other point you seem not have grasped even if these boys were on bursaries it doesn't mean that you will qualify for one.
exotic it tectonic plate movement Pakistan is no longer part of Asia its now part of Europe!

It's odd btw to equate 'Pakistani/Bangladeshi' with Asian

Why? Have they moved continents?

""If people want to pick up on the Pakistani/Bangladeshi bit and ignore the point about going to state primary schools, so be it. If you think you can't begin to guess whether a child comes from wealthy family or not, again, that's up to you."

Well, the reqson I didn't mention the state school thing is because it is wholly unremarkable- a significant number of year 8s in an independent school will be from state schools. And no, I can't see how you can tell whether a 12 year old boy in school uniform is from a wealthy family or not. Unless they are wearing hand made shoes, I suppose. Or smell of Trumper's Extract of Lime.......

Agreed that the OP has not seemed particularly open to advice on this thread and has some very strange ideas about what is and isn't acceptable to 'assume' about children met at school open days, but to add some general points to the original question:

No, you will most certainly not get a private education for free at a state grammar. The facilities will be nowhere near the same as independents and probably worse than the comprehensives (certainly in our county anyway - pre-academisation as an option, the grammars were 'starved' of budget compared to the other schools). And the class sizes are very large, too, for again the obvious budgetry reasons. (Again the comps can sometimes put on smaller class sizes because their budgets are slightly more favourable).

Yes, the 'behaviour' of the dc will on the whole be good (by which I mean 'motivated' and not necessarily 'kind') and the types of after-school clubs/curriculum options might be closer to an independent school than some (and note, only, some) of the comprehensives/sec mods but by no means can you make a sweeping generalisation. Indeed, the best resourced school in our county is a comp (one of the very early academies - 'flagship', not forced to become one) which the county chose to fund and fund and fund purely as a vanity project. Indeed, it is vastly better-resourced than ds's small independent school (which has to use a local comp's playing fields) but, of course, the class sizes are still the usual large state size.

Dc with ASD can do well in a grammar (the right one, it has to have good pastoral care, which ours does, and not just be pushing purely for results at the expense of everything else) for many reasons but mostly because (as I think you're implying) quite a lot of the dc are borderline/undiagnosed on the spectrum anyway, so your dc will not 'stick out like a sore thumb'. But I think from your description of your ds and, much more importantly, from what seems important to you, I think you will do best in a small, caring independent.

The OP has certainly managed to ignore all the helpful suggestions. I think we've frightened her off!

Neither am I! I also think she will fail to find the sort of school and child she wants.

Im not convinced being irritated by a child scared of a bush compensates for her rather judgemental view of Asian families in the UK and those on bursaries.

I missed that bit.

Reminds me of a friend of dd's who, ages about 8 was horrified when dd threw a snow ball at here "iIn my house,"she said "I throw snowballs at people, people don't throw snowballs at me"!

Be fair- she did say Frisbee Boy got on her nerves a bit.......

I never worked out whether the DCs thought someone else should go in and get scratched or whether someone else should just buy them another. My thought is-you got it in-you get it out (unless it is dangerous).

A wind up?
No one in their right mind would see it as a virtue I know schools are becoming increasingly health and safety conscious but they haven't yet taken in that far!

I haven't got over the fact that it is seen as a virtue that you wouldn't get your frisbee out of bushes in case you got scratched-it seems very wet to me!

I have a friend who teaches in an independent school in Surrey and they are certainly streetwise-mainly because a lot of them get far more money than is sensible as pocket money.

IM beginning to agree with the above comment that this is a "wind up!" Surely no one in the UK can be that out of touch maybe if your a hermit living in the middle of no where but I understand the OP lives in Surrey the last time I was there it looked pretty populated and even cosmopolitan to me!

The fact that you would wonder how an Asian family could afford school fees shows how out of touch you are with reality.

Totally out of touch I would say. They will also have a lot of Chinese pupils.

Don't want him to go anywhere 'streetwise'

I think that you will find many of those who go to independent schools are extremely 'streetwise'.

*None of them are allowed to go anywhere on their own, etc.

Don't want him to go anywhere 'streetwise'*
thats quite odd IMO, don't you want him to learn to be independent of you?

The fact that you would wonder how an Asian family could afford school fees shows how out of touch you are with reality. In many parts of the country Asian families are absolutely the ones who can pay the school fees. 2-3 generations of hard work mean that many of these families are incredibly successful. 25% of the children in my children's independent school are from British Asian families, most of the fabulous houses near us are being bought up by asian families, most of the partners at my DH's accountancy firm are british born Asian. These 2 boys were most likely from a state school background because there were good state schools in their area with lots of other like minded families and they are probably at the school you looked as precisely because their parents can afford to pay the fees through exactly the same means as many other non Asian families.

Oh, and even Prince William doesn't really sound like you would expect him too, more like very well spoken rather than truly poshly spoken.

Oh and I have an XC90, you should try one. They're great cars.

Have not gave sorry typing error!

You could also ask your head about which schools have generous bursary policies he/she should know.
If you gave been able to afford your prep fees then you may not be eligible for a bursary or find that you are no better off if you get one. Our fees nearly doubled from £17 000 pa at prep to just shy of £34 000 pa at senior but we pay the same amount after assessing our earnings and non existant assets we just get a bigger % reduction at senior.

Not only think of asking just think it!