German expat questions value for money of top English private schools

i don't know how widespread it is. Not exactly something you can ask to measure. But it is out there. This is why I think all schools should be subject to Freedom of Information requests.

You are KIDDING boffinmum. Please tell me this is not widespread.

The one that I am crossest about is the practice of grading parents Gold-Silver-Bronze according to their donations to the school or status in society, and then offering their children different quality teaching and pastoral support according to the supposed 'grade' of the parents. All whilst charging people the same fees to attend the school. So basically a family could be practically killing themselves paying for a private education for their children, but not realising that their children are on the bottom of the pile at school simply because they don't appear rich enough. Some of these children then slip through the net and do worse than they might do in a state school where they would be treated more equally and fairly.

Boffinmum: "Many independent schools in the UK have utterly lost their way. You would all be horrified if you knew some of what I knew about their practices."

Would you be able to elaborate?

Maybe he thought he was buying a nineteenth century boarding school experience for his children and was thus disappointed that floggings, cold showers and stiff upper lips have been replaced with chats about the dangers of cocaine, centrally heated boarding houses and holidays in Mauritius.

In the Gymnasium I went to in sn affluent area 30 years ago people liked to list how much their outfits cost, the most expensive "won"

The children of Romanian immigrants in our year didn't get a look in...

Senua, exactly. It really suits my dyslexic DD to be able to drop all essay subjects at 16, whilst a different child might opt for IB (which is offered by Sevenoaks). I am glad we have the choice.

And to pick up Grauch's point. Of course there are bursary students at a school like Westminster. All schools, state and private have different tribes within them. The cool gang, the nerds, the sporty kids etc. They will differ by school, but the principle is the same. The joy of Westminster is that it is fine to be a nerd (just as well in a school where 50% of the year group opt to take double maths at A level) but they have "the rowers" and "the safe group". (For those without teenagers of the right age, "safe" means cool.) Neither DC rowed, played rugby or was safe. They both have lovely friendship groups where money, possessions or backgrounds did not seem to matter much. DS has never understood why you would own more than two pairs of jeans and 4 T shirts, and sees shopping as a once a year chore. His friends are similar. The fact that one might have a billionaire father, and another was living in an ex-council flat with his single mum was really neither here nor there. (And as much credit to the billionaire father as the cash strapped mum.)

Teenagers are greatly influenced by their peers. Perhaps H. Holle might consider instead who his children choose to hang out with, rather than blame a school for a lack of diversity. As Kindle suggests above, you can have children of Turkish migrant families within a school but it does not mean better off German teenagers mix with them. In all schools I am sure there are kids who give weight to possessions, and in private schools the bar will be high, far beyond having the right brand of trainers or the right school bag. Ditto most schools will have a party crowd, which if you are at a private school means a child's Facebook feed can resemble Rick Kids of Instagramme. (There are only two or three degrees of separation within the London private school world so DD will know people who party with the rich and famous - even if she does not.) H. Holle might not be seeing diversity but it will be there. Sevenoaks will have plenty of straight forward day pupils whose parent work hard to pay fees, there will be bursary children, there will be teachers children. We know four families whose children were or are at Sevenoaks and none are from H. Holle's rich London ex pat banker world.

Different cultures have very different expectations about education. European cultures are broadly aligned on the relative emphasis between academics and other aspects of teenagerhood, say compared with some Asian cultures. But there are still differences. One mother managed to bemuse me by starting off complaining that Westminster had not offered a place to her second child, but then continued to complain about Westminster itself. Her verdict..."it was too English". This may be H. Holles other problem. He thinks he will be buying a superior German type education, but instead is buying a well regarded British education. Which is better probably depends on what your expectations and priorities are.

Regarding the differences between the German system and the English system, I quote (from elsewhere on MN*) someone who works at a British University:

"And those all round qualifications usually aren't at A Level standard, no matter what the boosters say (IB HL is, but you only do three subjects at HL, which takes us back to where we started). It's educational to look at a medical school admissions page and note the wide range of European qualifications that they reject out of hand with no negotiation, including the German Abitur. That's because they want a level of Chemistry that you simply won't get without, to some degree at least, specialising.

You can argue whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, but the UK can run three year degrees to Bologna-process Bachelors' level when most of the rest of Europe takes four mostly because of earlier specialisation, and with (in the more selective universities at least) very low non-completion rates. Many European countries run a first year which has a very high non-completion rate to do that initial specialisation we do at A Level. They're different systems; ours is more efficient (fewer people take courses in HE that they do not complete) and quicker (you graduate at 21), but theirs offers more choice and more chance to make mistakes."

So supporters of the Abitur can call it 'broad' whereas others may describe it as 'jack of all trades and master of none'.

(*Hope you don't mind me quoting you, but it is in the public domain.)

Forgot the

In addition, there are virtually no scholarship recipients at English boarding schools ...

Hmm ... Sevenoaks appears to run at roughly 5% on some form of bursary. If he wanted diversity perhaps he should have looked closer to Windsor, where he might have found an independent school with around 20% receiving financial assistance.

Surely he should realise that more money will have diminishing returns - just as £1,000 gets you a car with 4 wheels that mainly works, £10,000 gets one that's reliable and looks decent, £100,000 shows you have money to spare for slightly better looks and performance, and £1M gets one that those in the know will notice the extra spend but may or may not have any actual advantages over the cheaper versions.

He's managed to impress his mates with using boarding schools but they weren't quite right.

It's fascinating meeting alumnae from my boarding school and others and seeing where they are educating their kids and why - there's a lot of "well we have money and so using private as it must be better", probably more people than saying "we looked at options and liked private school X" - though outnumbered by "couldn't really afford private though our parents are gutted - will see how it goes and if dc aren't doing well, worry about private then"...

Up the Rhein is spot on with her comments regarding the German school system. I am in Bavaria, considered one of the toughest Bundeslaender re difficulty of curriculum, so I am told.
I used to teach secondary in the UK. The difference in syllabus is particularly in languages and mathematics. In the equivalent key stage 3 they are doing key stage 4 material.
In that regard I can see what Herr Holle means re Gymnasium being a decent education. It is highly demanding and if you are not uni material, you won't make it. As for more cultured? erm...no. There may well be helicopter parents making their child read Goethe but most teens I see are typical whatsapping instagramming normal teens. They may be a little more independent but nonetheless, are emoji loving meme citing teens.
I do not see the extra curricular as being that much better than state schools in the UK, and certainly not like the uk private sector. The pastoral system in Gymnasium in my experience is a lot worse than state, as is support for providing for pupils with individual differences and discipline is not consistent nor teaching/marking monitored. Books are marked rarely, if at all
as learning is judged by continuous class testing. But as for diversity, (and I am in a city where the feeder primaries were multicultural rather than a village somewhere) there is still clearly a gap between German children and children with a migration background/Turkish background. The only reason my child made it to Gymnasium was because I knew how to play the game and worked my arse off coaching her. Plus she is white British.

The wealthy French do it by holiday activities or post school. As you say it is very rare for them to opt out of the bac and take the risk of the IB. However it was n't that long ago that taking an English degree would have been regarded as near suicide for prospects of re insertion back in France so perspectives do change.

I realise he was writing for a different audience. I realise he was driven by particular family circumstances, as we all are.

But boy, it really strikes me that he has little self awareness. He can't see that he is the problem. He is the rich foreigner driving up prices making schools ever more elite and gilded.

He says he sent his sons to the Ambosius Blarer Gymnasium in Germany for Y 9. This is a private school, not a German state school. So I am now even more confused about what he is saying.

Interestingly as a personal observation, the Spanish do quite often send their DCs to UK boarding for a year or so, often at prep school stage but Germans (not talking about those living in the UK) seem to send their DCs for the whole duration of UK boarding senior education or at the least for sixth form. Somehow somewhere along the line the rich Germans decided this was 'a good thing' whilst the wealthier Spanish just focused on shorter term stays for improvement of their DCs' English.

Maybe he should advise his fellow compatriots not to go into a career where they earn more money than they have good sense. There doesn't appear to be a single thing he has done with his life to indicate that he cares one jot about social mobility or inequality, yet now he is suddenly bemoaning the lack of one and excess of the other. What an idiot, to have gained less advantage than he thought and now be bemoaning the fact his children never got to mix with the hoi polloi he deliberately avoided when he moved here. Never mind his kids, I'll bet his own friendship circle is exceedingly light on gas station attendants, in any event...

I analyse school systems for a
living, at the highest levels. And I think he's correct on many counts but should have bitten the bullet earlier and pulled out his kids in favour of sending them to good comprehensives (exactly what I have done with three of my own kids).

Many independent schools in the UK have utterly lost their way. You would all be horrified if you knew some of what I knew about their practices. They should be subject to FOI in my opinion, so it can all start to emerge.

To be fair Hannahause, his article was quite openly for his 'mates' back home - it was written for a German paper.

Actually I think it had a genuine purpose; it is increasingly common for better-off German families to send their children to English schools for at least a year, and they have no feel for what things are like here. When you add social media into the mix - which no parent of teenagers grew up with themselves, it's a different world.

There is no parallel in Germany for a super 'elite' boarding school - even where private schools do exist, they are much more low key in what they offer in extracurricular activities (I spent time in one). Also there was less of a 'cool gang' mentality - and definitely far, far less drug taking than at my English private school. That's not something that any number of open days would really reveal.

Anyway, why shouldn't he share his experiences? His opinions aren't invalidated by the fact he didn't take his children out. People make parenting mistakes; very few people are brave enough to admit it.

I know how much I would love it if a parent told me which German bookI really should read

Quite possibly - Germans can be very literal

Maybe the 'couldn't read it' was actually a joke to cover the 'did n't have time, not really interested in this particular book' but Herr H did n't quite catch on .