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Original poster

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

85 replies

Enid · 05/06/2008 12:49

As someone said this at the weekend - that their children met so many 'well-connected' families through their schooling that it would make it easier for them to get a good job later.

Is this true? How does it work then?

I lived with four incredibly successful people when at uni but I have never needed them to get ahead with my own career.

OP posts:
Original poster
Enid · 05/06/2008 13:15

they have 4 kids at private school at senior level

they know what they are talking about you would think

OP posts:
AMumInScotland · 05/06/2008 13:13

Does she actually have children in school yet? Or is it just wishful thinking?

Bink · 05/06/2008 13:12

Ah. If it was said on Mumsnet, I'd have given it some rational consideration. But dinner party remark, well

Original poster
Enid · 05/06/2008 13:10

it was a dinner party remark

seemed quite convinced of it

OP posts:
Bink · 05/06/2008 13:08

Was that said on Mumsnet, or in real life (eg throwaway dinner party remark)?

I wonder. I can see that there might have been a time when work experience of a certain, possibly otherwise hard-to-find, sort (summer in a law firm eg) could come via schoolfriends' parents; but I think the days are gone when a whole career could come out of just such a foot in the door.

I guess, though, that there might be a sort of value in being exposed, when you're a teenager, to your mates' parents having high-profilish jobs [obviously I'm making an assumption about private school users here] as it gives you a sort of horizon for ambitions that you mightn't otherwise have. Something to aim for, that you can really see is real. But that wouldn't help a feckless teenager, and presumably an astute & energetic one would get their ambition bearings anyway - at private school or not.

motherinferior · 05/06/2008 13:07

I tend to feel my children are the good connections that other people ought to want to know . Although admittedly more for the sheer joy that contact with an Inferiorette will bestow rather than the career opportunities.

AMumInScotland · 05/06/2008 13:03

I'd have thought these days at private school their classmates would be just as likely to be the children of plumbers and accountants - though personally I'd say that was a more useful "connection" anyway . But there you go, people are weird...

Original poster
Enid · 05/06/2008 12:56

no it wasnt eton or harrow

a minor public school

OP posts:
FioFio · 05/06/2008 12:56

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AMumInScotland · 05/06/2008 12:55

Possibly at Eton or Harrow? I can't imagine most people would give someone a job because they knew them at school . I thought the point of private schools was smaller class sizes and more opportunities for team sports and music, rather than meeting the right sort of people. (Though for some, it's also about avoiding the wrong sort of people...)