Private or move house for state school

I would move house. All my siblings send their kids privately, they all went to different schools (even within the same household), one academic, one sporty, one not academic or sporty, one allrounder.

We live between 30-60 mins drive from them and the state schools near us are fab. House prices reflect that.

We downsized to a more expensive house less than half a mile from the school, early days but it seems like the right decision for us.

If you cant pay for the full private school lifestyle for 3 kids, then I would move house. If you can, then I would research all the schools and pick the best one, quality of education varies massively between schools in both sectors.

Independent school for three DC will be a very high cost. Increase per year for us 5%, so bear this mind. Trips, uniform, extra courses/clubs can be additional to the basic cost.

Moving to a state school catchment area. Beware that some catchments are reducing. Check the birth rate for the years your DC were born as some years are very oversubscribed. If you do this then buy a house as near as you can to the school, even within the current catchment. Thoroughly research the state school. Don't just believe everything on its website.

As others have said, it depends on individual schools. For example your say you want smaller classes but our local private school option has classes of 25 in KS3, whereas state school has classes of 27. Is that worth paying for?

Also, if your finances are in any way precarious, bear in mind that a lot of extra tuition and out of school activities can be bought for less than the cost of a private school!

It would depend on the state school options.
School 1 - There's an 'outstanding' state school which got it by entering every child through ECDL and forcing vocational courses to boost progress 8 scores. Narrow curriculum and the loss of creative arts means fewer enrichment opportunities.

School 2 - put into special measures (quite openly considered a political and predecided opinion by most in the area as there was a push to get rid of LA schools). Nice school, decent catchment, good staff, a coasting type of school but actually ypur normal well supported child would do just fine there.

School 3 - Outstanding school which gets strong results and have consistently dominated the region for decades. Broad curriculum and lots of enrichment.

School 4 - the school that seems to teeter in and out of special measures, has loads of issues, has a long history of educational disadvantage and the issues in that school are the same issues as there was 10-15 years ago when most of the parents attended the same school. It's probably been rebranded and taken over lots abd probably was given a new building to solve the issues.

I'd say state for school 2 and 3, but go private if the option was 1 or 4.

Being clever I meant

Some Private schools are better than some State schools.
Our dd goes to a Private Secondary as our state provision is dire, she’s very academic so probably would have been ok at a bad school but we didn’t want to risk it, we also wanted her to be in an environment where being cover and working hard is seen as something to aspire to - our local state Secondary is NOT like that ( although some are).
We aren’t posh or super rich and dd hasn’t had any issues at school, however we are in Yorkshire and the School is full of teachers kids and other similar professions rather than Bankers and Oligarchs. I went to Private School on a scholarship and had no issues there either.
Moving house for a school can be risky if catchments change or the school goes downhill but paying for 3 at Private School is a big commitment

It depends on the private school. Some are utterly amazing-some are a waste of money.
But supported children will do well anywhere.