Are the 'contacts' children make at private school really worth the expense of sending them there?

(the actual old school ties are still quite often seen in the fuddyduddier places - my sister went to great lengths to get hold of some school etc cufflinks to bring her in line with the tie-wearers...)

Sounds like wishful thinking/justification to me.

you mean Jandals? (yes, I'm that kind of alien ).

I don't think we're to blame for the wardrobe thing. We were very surprised when we arrived (back in 2000) and were told that there was a "dress down Friday" policy (not to mention, peeved, as the only work clothes we'd brought with us were formal work suits, and we'd spent the last of our Australian pesos paying for them to be drycleaned so as to make a good impression). I recall DH being absolutely HORRIFIED at the prevalence of pink shirts.

(that was to legalalien, the meaning of whose nickname is now dawning on me)

And flipflops.
(Do you think they're to blame - or to credit - for other bits of wardrobe relaxation, eg women being able to wear trousers to work, even in bluechip sorts of places? Which only just started happening 15 years ago. (Further - do you think there is any correlation between the parallel dissolutions of the Old School Tie and Rigid Work Uniforms? Discuss.))

It may get them an entry into certain areas ... but what they make of any 'on a plate' opportunities after that is down to hard work rather than connections I'd have thought.

And ask yourself ... would you really want your own dc's to work for a dinosaur-like organisation or with people like that? As flowery has said, that type of thinking is on the way out.

Anchovy / Bink - and let's not forget the cultural impact on the law firms of recruiting large numbers of antipodeans with funny, impossible-to-pin-down-social-class accents and egalitarian ideals

barnstaple's post is a classic example of why this kind of thing is so wrong, and, fortunately, is so outdated.

IME even those types of organisations who did actually used to give people jobs because they knew someone rather than because they were good don't tend to do it anymore. Even they have now cottoned on to the fact that, as well as being unfair and making them legally vulnerable, it's doesn't make much business sense recruiting that way either.

A very very very distant relative of mine went to Eton, he's thick as the proverbial and left with no qualifications whatsoever. He now earns over £500,000 as the Head of Europe something or other. His boss is the daddy of a chap he knew at school. Having said all that, he is utterly charming, kind, generous - absolutely lovely personality. But no brains. If he'd gone to a state comprehensive he'd be a dodgy second hand car dealer!

All networks are potentially useful. The more powerful/successful the people within a given network, the more potentially influential the network will be.

You can, however, be in a network that is of little use to you - if your personal/professional interests are wildly divergent from those of the majority of the network, for example.

Personally, I think networking is a very useful tool and one that women underestimate hugely...

lynette - if james may went to school with clarkson he was clearly taking more in than clarkson was

anchovy right- re the fact doesnt help anymore to get jobs - work for one of big firms and there is a definite trend away from the public school type which is good to see.

I would agree with soapbox that can help on work experience . And maybe also you have higher aspurations cos of the parents/background of those around you -but as someone has already said that can be a bad thing too as its not always the right choice to go for tertiary education/ go the banker/doctor/lawyer route (i know I'm massively generalising here but there is a bit of trend in this direction when careers etc are discussed).

what is more important isn't where you've been but where you are going and if you haven't got where with all to show that (which school may help bring out but will not actually create in you) its not going to do you any good.

starlight.

I always think James May only presents Top Gear because he went to school with Clarkson, though.

Definitely not any more. I used to work somewhere where there happened to be a high proportion of public school pupils, not including myself.

Being in charge of the work experience programme meant I was occasionally on the receiving end of people trying to make the most of contacts. They didn't get very far with me. Especially when it was their mum who rang in for them.

Oh no? Didn't you catch Matt O'Connor's mayoral candidacy manifesto? It's all about Scotland. (And in rap, too. It was quite something.)

Yes. I will not be drawn on how I deal with this issue. But I do Deal With It .

It may feel Scottish, but Scottish influences have not been the driver, I don't think.

Anchovy, how funny - I was about to post a whole Thing about how the professions are more meritocratic (and I was even going to use that word), but I was going to claim it was Scottishising not Americanising. As Scotland has always been more level in that way - viz. the old term "lad of parts" - or "pairts" even - which let you get on no matter where you came from. The professions/financial sector in London now are much more like the Edinburgh I grew up in. Which is nice.

But - re vac schemes - we had a Partner Special only last year. Not for very long.

Ah that's good to hear Anchovy. I'm glad it has changed.

Thing is, Jimjams, the City may have been like that 15 years ago but it really isn't like that now.

In the 20 years I've been in the City there has been, I think, a major change to meritocracy. I'm involved in Graduate Recruitment and it simply is mostly irrelevant where you went to school. You also will not get a vac scheme, Bink, depending on parental connections (this issue being one of the banes of my life!). I know that banks are very similar, plus the accountants and large corporates, as we do a certain amount of pooling of info.

I think the advent of the US banks has a lot to do with this. We may laugh at their "politically correct" ways with huge emphasis on diversity etc, but the City is a very, very different place these days. Another factor is "internationalisation" and the EU - a lot of recruitment in the City will come from European schools and universities, meanng that a few small UK public schools simply no longer dominate - there is a much wider catchment.

Anyone who thinks private school connections will get you a job is either deluded, or is working in a very small/niche field.

May be different if/when Dave Cameron gets in!

Well, absolutely soapbox - bigging up school contacts like that does suggest an odd lack of confidence in Enid's dinner party person's own non-school contacts.

I think it is moderately useful for arranging work experience but beyond that my experience thus far is that the parents of the DC's (private) school mates are not any more 'well-connected' than my general pool of friends.

The DC's school does maintain a little booklet of all the 'old boys' willing to offer career mentoring or work experience which might come in useful.

In any event, I'm sure a shout out on MN would yield a far better quality of contact should the DCs ever need it

friend did, but it wasn't enough to overcome the gap (she had more than one job offer- in a recession- all from foreign banks...)