German expat questions value for money of top English private schools

rabbit Most of my DDs time is actually spent having nights out but there is something about being part of the buzz and having the intimate knowledge and skills to navigate it. I did long ago toy with moving back to my roots but after many years and a stint in another buzzing world city I would miss all that buzz and opportunity. In my families case, and indeed Herr Holle's, our jobs and academic opportunities are tied to London as a financial, administrative and academic centre. I am glad I didn't go and train as a teacher as a means to returning oop North. Now all my DDs peers, two years graduated, are moving to/staying in London or other capital cities. I can think of only one settling outside London in the UK.

What we've all noticed since we moved back is that being Londoner, actually living it, is not vaguely comparable o being an occasional visitor.

Rabbit, oddly a diversity which includes the children of high achieving international expats is not all bad. Staying in the centre was slightly accidental and left us with few alternatives to private. (They did not get into Grammars, we don't have enough religion and our catchment school takes a fairly troubled demographic and though it does well by them is not really up to pushing the more able.) I don't think we expected London education to be as competitive as it was, but DC have sailed through, had some wonderful teachers and have enjoyed their education. I hope they are turning into nice, giving, young adults. The exposure to other aspirations has probably helped cement what they don't want from life, but has helped their own confidence.

I think DS was five when I first had my ear bent by a mother telling me how brilliant her son was. I later commented to DS that Tom must be very clever. Not at all, apparently. DD is now surprised at how many of her peer group expect to go to Oxbridge or a top US University. She has decided she does not want to tackle the hoops. However it does her no harm to know she is as good as those who think the world belongs to them, and to feel confident in aiming high. Plus knowing that if she wants to aim high she needs to work hard. They have both also worked out that incessent competitiveness is draining and life is more than collecting the honours. (FWIW both DH and I are public sector and both DC will probably be as well. Banking does not seem to appeal, even for the would be economist.)

There are, obviously, some big issues with education, but beyond that London is great with amazing cultural and other opportunities. And for teens, great public transport.

rabbit I think if you make a concerted effort to make the most of what London offers, then it is unrivalled in terms of culture.

However, many do not do this. Which means the get all the balls-ache of living there, without the compensation. Madness!

When we decided to move back to London for part of the time (we split between London and country) we made a pact to make the most of it. So our visits to lectures/theatre/music peformances etc etc are a very usual part of our lives.

And of course it does open up a whole world of work and money.

But Poisonwoodlife - my dcs have access to London's culture and food on day trips. What would they gain from actually living there, if their education were segregated from a lot of the reality of London life, anyway? Is it really just the jobs and money? (Which seems a shame, given that the money is all apparently swallowed up by the colossal expense and stress of living in the capital).

SheGot Sevenoaks has a year 7 intake as well.

Needmoresleep: Thanks also for your response. Our DD, who attended an ultra-relaxed primary school (no tests, proceed at your own pace, mixed ability, etc), has also drifted into a "name school" with her teacher's full blessing because she feels it provides the best learning environment for DD. We hope our DD will have the same positive experience as your DS in a similarly academic environment.

a thriving capital with all that brings in terms of ... encountering other cultures etc.

Ha! I wondered if someone would trot that out. H Holle seems to have issues with that sentiment!

Shegot But he doesn't actually say he regrets the decision, in fact he sets out the reasons, to get the best education in the context of a British cultural identity, and does not say that their education, or Sevenoaks, fell short in terms of what they chose it for. However with hindsight he is saying what his experience has been compared with the brand that British private education has in Germany, and what he regrets it wasn't in terms of diversity and superiority to the education he had. I can empathise with that, I wouldn't change the decisions we made (apart from putting one of my DDs into a particularly dysfunctional cohort) but I can still compare it to my education and find it wanting in terms of the education I had and the social diversity Of my peers at school. Though far superior in terms of building confidence and supporting my DDs academic ambitions. It isn't all black and white.

Yes. But who knows the point at which he began to change his mind?
We all change over time.

My views on the educational choices I would make for children are certainly very different to what they were over a decade ago.

rabbitstew being part of a thriving capital with all that brings in terms of culture, food, encountering other cultures etc. and jobs and money .

Just in the last few months my DDs have seen James McAvoy in The Ruling Class, Damien Lewis in American Buffolo, James McAvoy in Macbeth, Benedict Cumberbatch reading from letters, Benedict Cumberbatch (nude) in Frankenstein........... like I say culture

maybe prep school takes nine years.

And he had four DC attending.

So his experience of that prep school was over a decade!

Who waits a decade to stand back and see if they were happy with what was on offer? Especially when that person has an embarrassment of choice?

Sevenoaks is slightly more understandable. Kids start at year 9 I presume. And they will be in the midst of GCSEs very quickly. So if you're not happy it's harder to move ( though very easy to do for sixth form - and many do).

I for one don't see the problem with him having made decisions of one kind for his children, then reflecting on them at a later date.

He may have realised the implications of the lack of social diversity as his children got older, but by then they were settled and it was a bit too late to change.

senua I very glad my DC did prep school out of London ( and a few years ago).

We were utterly spared all the competitive/ high anxiety hoo-ha.

I'm also glad DD was spared when she moved at 11. I was all for joining the throng but DD and DH had other ideas.

So she spent years 7 to 11 in a low anxiety, highly nurturing environment.

Now at 16 she is ready to join the throng! Bolstered and well armed.

DS was always going to be impervious to the throng.

London certainly is made to sound like a pit of snakes on Mumsnet! .

Anyone care to share what is actually nice about living in London, rather than just visiting it from time to time?

Last year Kingston Grammar School had 1000 (year 5 pre test and year 6) applicants. The new Head made the decision in the face of the numbers to do away with selecting pupils based on looking at all the evidence in favour of first past the post in the exam (he comes from a state grammar) . I can't help feeling that may signal a change for the worse both in the ethos and the grounded pupil body

Bonsoir, you may gloat and I recognise a consistent theme of MN has been the superiority of the French system, yet oddly with pupils who then want to attend British Universities. However my experience is that quite a few from Lycee CDG are keen to swap to British schools at different points during their education. As one father put it, and his did not move to a school that carries quodos in H. Holle's circles, the day his children left the Lycee was the day they started enjoying their education.

I also suspect the school your children attend is not representative of the majority of French schools. In short your DCs schools provide what you are looking for, but this may not be what other parents want.

WhattodowithMum: I hope the teachers will prevail. Totally agree that the focus should be on learning for its own sake.

Poisonwoodlife: Thanks for your response.

needsmore your experience chimes very much with mine.

DS, also at W, is spectacularly unaffected by the over-anxious or the party crowd.

His friends are clearly clever but extraordinarily ordinary. Football, play station and pizza still feature highly on a list of priorities.

The other parents have almost no impact on our day to day lives.

I'm sure there are some awful ones, but you'd get that everywhere.

whattodowithmum from the other end of this I would say that whether it a name school or not teachers enjoy the pursuit of an education in Year 7 to 9 but it becomes a part time activity in Years 10 to 13 when it is all about getting the best grades. As the Head of sixth form put it, we would prefer to educate you widely but you need the best grades to achieve your ambitions so we have to teach you how best to pass the exams. Ever more prescriptive mark schemes to accommodate less qualified markers have made it all a bit of a game and my DD has struggled in the first year of uni to present ideas and argument rather than what the marker wants to see. I can only imagine that the changes to the exam system are going to make that worse. To be fair the teachers will stand up for a pupils personal ambitions in the face of tiger "Oxbridge STEM subjects or bust" parents but they are doing their best in the face of a system. As far as I know Winchester is the only school with the confidence to completely shun the exam system in some subjects.

It's about where your child will thrive

It seems to me that the answer might be "not London".

(just to wind up Bonsoir)

Glad, I accept it is variations on a theme. Private education is economically selective. There is also no alternative to looking round and deciding what feels right for your child. Plus schools seem to be responding to parent demands for supurb league table places, University destinations etc, and are changing. So schools like Ibstock and Latymer Upper which a decade ago might have been seen as places where you could avoid the worst of the must get A*s in everything culture, possibly are not the same now.

It so much depends on the child. DS drifted into Westminster and gained a place at SPS. We had no idea how competitive it was, and only learned that others prepared for pre tests etc once he had a place. He was a studious child who enjoyed education, made some lovely (from diverse backgrounds) friends and though realised some of his peers were either over-anxious and pressured, or serious party goers, was not affected. I think he was very lucky to be at a school where nerdiness was normal.

DD (dyslexic) was much more insecure and was more suited to a school with a broader intake. She did a lot of EC so met children from a range of West London schools. It is clear that if parents are putting a lot of focus on their children getting into one or two brand name schools (and the amount of tutoring some got was phenominal) those children will pick up the idea that other schools are not good enough, and that the children in those schools are somehow lesser.

She says if she were in Yr 6 now she would want to apply to Kingston Grammer. Wimbledon High also has a nice mix. Yes some Wimbledon Village girls, but a catchment that spreads through Merton, New Malden etc. GDST schools have an advantage on the diversity stakes as their fees are lower. To be honest, the ex pat Chelsea crowd might sneer at schools like Emanuel, but all these schools are high in National League tables and all are more than capable of getting good students into good Universities. Its about where your child will thrive, and also (H. Holle) about what you want from a school.

Eastpoint both St David's and Putney Park suffered from a poor reputation. I can't say how far it was justified, certainly I heard good things about St David's (whose site is now another private school) but ran a mile after my visit to Putney Park. However in general the demand for private schools in West London is increasing fuelled by a big pupil bulge, in Richmond the number of pupils leaving Year 6 will have increased by 17 % between 2013 and 2017, and the failure of local authorities to cater for it. A well publicised battle over state school provision in Richmond, the fall out was the LA got away with sponsored the founding of an exclusive Catholic School and a Free School was left without a site, plus hearing the experiences of parents in successive rounds of state school applications, outstanding comprehensives oversubscribed by over a 1000 on first preference, the last one saw parents offered places at a new free school they could only access via a pedestrian footbridge across the Thames a couple of miles away, and footpath through a wooded common, means parents are increasingly anxious. They are feeling the need to get involved in a parasitical tutoring culture to get into private schools which are getting record numbers of applications with the resultant increase in the level of competition. Even prior to 2013 Richmond had more than half it's secondary pupils in the private sector.

In that context you can see why a venture capitalist might see a market opportunity and start a very successful secondary school, Radnor House. Other schools that might have been less popular such as Harrodian and Ibstock (which served that niche who wanted a less selective education that valued creativity over results but has now been taken up the league tables by an ambitious Head) have also become competitive to get into.

Glad with the exception of Hampton Court House which offers a somewhat unique proposition and has a mixed reputation that competition has meant most private schools are bent on improving their academic reputation. If you wanted an education in a less selective school with a more nurturing atmosphere you would now be pushed to find it in a school that wasn't faith based, ie outside the St James's (boys and girls ) and St Catherine's.