Are more of you planning to move your DC from private to state for 6th form now?

Yes that's true, but we are rural, so they can't get home! There's a bus but not to our village. It seems like a silly reason but it makes the state school inaccessible.

Agree it’s pointless to generalise as so child / area specific. I’ve known children who are so happy at private and may have struggled at state but also the other way round a friends cheerful not so academic dd was a bad fit for her rather uptight girls private school and would have been far happier at the local girls
comp as her mum now freely admits. We’re all just trying to do our best in the circumstances as parents with what’s on offer locally

I don't live in London either. There are excellent state schools outside of London. 3pm is fine, mine starts at 8.20am so it's a long day. There are extra curricular if they want to. Plus is secondary, at that age surely it doesn't matter if a parent is still at work, they don't need wrap around at that age

There's limited value in people citing their own individual circumstances because everyone is in a different situation. In an ideal world, no one would feel they need to pay over and above what they already contribute in taxes, but I understand that some people feel they have no good alternative or have a child with specific needs who won't achieve in a maintained school.

That said, I'm really glad we now have a cabinet where the majority attended comprehensive school and I can't disagree with the policy of removing the VAT exemption from fees.

Ultimately, considering about 93% of children attend maintained schools, that's where the focus needs to be, removing inequalities between schools and making the profession attractive for the brightest and best graduates.

Having read the news and seen that the new state policy is to be not to send disruptive pupils out of the class room very much,.I'm bloody glad mine are done with school altogether!

I believe you!! I've seen it first hand.

All these private school threads are usually dominated by posters that made up their mind about things 15 years ago and just parrot the same old shite on these threads.

I see that 9 pages on, people are still trying to convince me and others that we have misunderstood the Bristol access policy 😁. Believe me, for their increasing access list of schools, there’s no other context other than the name of the state school. The last child I know that got a lower offer lives in a £3m house with their two university educated parents pulling in a seven figure income. No other contextual flag whatsoever …

Yes state schools can work very well for the extremely academic. My DC prove that point.

Bristol really does seem to use the school
you are applying from (or your home address, to be eligible under a different criterion) for contextual offers:

We use the 'applying from' school code on your UCAS form to determine the school or college you have attended

Other universities will use different criteria.

And also for those who are extremely academic, they also work very well. They can work well for both types of teen, although the dcs school was definitely more academic and didn't do a huge amount of academic cossetting.

Schools like the one you describe serve bright DC with good social skills very well. They are likely to go on to top universities if they want to. For ones who are likely to struggle a bit more academically or socially, private can work better as they are more cosseted there.

Unless the parents were lying, I know three kids who moved to the local state after private and got contextual offers from Bristol. I actually felt as though I'd made a mistake keeping mine at private school. I know for a fact one got BBC and went to Bristol.

I think Bristol knows full well what it is doing!

maybe, but that will not be WHY she got the offer.

Read the whole policy - you won't get a contextual offer from Bristol just for attending one of those schools for sixth form.

Yes, I hear that a lot on Mumsnet. Maybe we are just unlucky, or don't live in London, but that isn't my experience of state school (excellent extracurricular and amazing teachers). They also finish at 3pm, which is shit if you are a working parent.

And that's great. Not every private school parent has experience with state tho but still think they know everything. They carnt possibly. My kid is on track to get all grades between 7-9. Is in an amazing state school, excellent teachers and lots of extracurricular. I doubt he would have done any better in private and I didn't even have to pay for it.

My dcs have been to both state and private, so I know what works for us and what doesn't, and what I like and don't like about both systems.

It's really not hard to understand how state schools work.

IME, private school is better for some kids, which is why people use them - also not hard to understand.

The same can be said for private school parents. Trying to convince us they know how state schools work, how applying to 6th form and college works, making out it is lesser than private. Do you really expect us to just take that when we know it's not true?

These threads are always the same, people with experience / children in state school trying to convince those in private schools that private schools aren't better, do not have better teaching, do not have better facilities and the children are not better behaved preferably throwing in will be on drugs

💯

Agree. Sometimes I wonder if its just the same poster with a name change!

These threads are always the same, people with experience / children in state school trying to convince those in private schools that private schools aren't better, do not have better teaching, do not have better facilities and the children are not better behaved preferably throwing in will be on drugs,

And yet here we are with a government telling us that private school children have unfair advantages over state and therefore they need to be penalised....

Be happy with the choices you make in life for yourself and your families, no one is going to be convinced you know more about their school than they do no matter how many schools you apparently have been employed at blah blah blah. It's ridiculous.

And there is even more inequality between the private and state sector.

I know a school that has expelled a pupil for calling the head an F C. All schools are different, and private schools are often limited companies so can apply their own rules. Been in many and all had separate policies. State schools are set by the government.

I love being told I've never set foot in a school. When I'm sitting in one right now - UCAT practice day. It's v hot, the roof is leaking and I need to empty the bucket.

"But we don't have the luxury of just throwing them out on a random Friday. The process to exclude is long and arduous. Mainstream education does not suit everyone, but these days there are few alternatives. If I was sworn at in a private school the child would be excluded."

You see, this is what someone who had never set foot in a school, never mind a private school, might think. Even my friends who are staunch state school teachers are aware of the rules and regulations regarding private schools!

No private schools would expel for swearing at a teacher.

Dh went to a very smart public school many years ago and he laughed when I asked if that would be true.

The expulsion rules are not taken lightly and has others have said its a long process.

Maybe you worked at a school that didn't have proper safeguarding, a long time ago? Because you don't sound as though you really know much about modern private schools.

DD sat iGCSE maths. It was considered more rigorous than GCSE when she took it in 2016.

@mumsneedwine - I'm not saying that money buys good parenting. Of course it doesn't. But what I'm saying (which you also agree with) is that kids who are growing up in poverty, or from deprived backgrounds, are more likely to have challenges that can lead to behavioural issues.

So mix a more challenged cohort with - as you say - less funding to cope with SEN and so on, and you will inevitably will end up with a school where the pupils are broadly, less well behaved than the kids in private schools. That's the reason - NOT because the private schools are kicking out more disruptive pupils all the time (or that pupils are so scared of expulsion, they behave well).

Again, yes there are brilliant state schools and crappy private schools. But there's too much silly defensiveness on this thread. There are posters on this thread that would try to argue that my local comp where there are high levels of school absence, serious problems with knife and gang violence, and a poor pass rate at GCSE is a better school, with better teachers, than my kids' private school - where the majority of pupils are happy and thriving and there's a 100 percent pass rate at GCSE. It's just silly.

It's not a fair system, and even though Labour's VAT hit on fees will mean I have to pull my kids out of the private school they love so much - I hope it will level things out by the time my kids are parents themselves.