If you went to a "posh" school, what was your experience?

[LookAtMissOhio]

I went to a local girls grammar which was considered to be quite fancy.

School song in Latin
Wool blazer
Ridiculously expensive uniform
Very strict rules on hair clips etc
Skirts measured from the knee with a pen!
4 languages Inc. Latin (Caecelius est in horto... )

Great extracurriculars
Sheltered feeling
Good library for quiet girls to hide in

Positive peer pressure- studying was seen as a good thing
Other pupils didn't swear
Mild teasing about my broad country accent

Others went on lots of holidays, some had second homes, went skiing etc.
Parents were much older than in my primary
Ambitions were higher than in my primary

Negatives:
V v stressful in later years. Intense pressure
Constant threats about "not getting back in" for sixth form
Nasty behaviour due to stress
School prone to forcing out under performers, rather than helping them.
School very image conscious. You had to be pretty and well-connected to get on head girl team etc.
Fawning over rich girls. Prizes handed out to girls whose mothers were on the judging panel

Not everyone realises this but you don't have to have a teaching qualification to teach at a private school. It's only state school teachers who need a PGCE. So we'd get the occasional teacher who really wasn't very good and it was very obvious they were out of their depth. Luckily these teachers were very few and far between, and they never lasted long.

@SalveVagina

I went to a girls' private school from 5-18. It was known for being "posh", but it wasn't. It was just a solidly middle class academically selective day school.

My experience was that it was academically very good and socially less so.

The best thing about it was that it never once crossed my mind that girls/women couldn't do X, Y or Z, because the expectation was that we would all become professionals (medicine, Law, engineering, dentistry, vet science, academia etc). There was no mention of marriage or babies or anything other than what jobs we might have. University felt weird to me as I was so used to talking in classes and then found that I was the only girl who did talk because they boys dominated. I'm glad I didn't have that at school.

We were all pretty well off, so that wasn't an issue. Wool blazers, below-knee skirts, gym knickers in the school colours etc went without sayihng.

I hated a large proportion of the girls there, though.

My experience was very similar. Although I didn't hate anyone really, there was no bullying as such, I'm in touch with most of the girls still via Facebook. Was a fairly small school. Everyone has gone on to good careers from what I can see. I enjoyed it very much especially the 6th form.

I went to a private school, mainly because both of my brothers had SEN so my parents realised they weren't coping in mainstream schools, and they thought it was only fair to let me apply for a private school too. It wasn't terribly posh as private schools go.

Pros: I was rigorously taught very good French, good Latin, and Art. The buildings were beautiful - it was a big Victorian place (with add-ons), and at Christmas there were trees in all the alcoves, and fresh greenery everywhere. I suspect the music was very well taught if you were musical; I did love listening. A major pro was that, although I went to school in the heyday of Section 28, my school very courageously decided ignore it. We had lessons about dental dams and lesbian relationships. It was so prosaic and medical we had no idea how radical that was.

Cons: Coming from a state primary, I was explicitly told I was behind and unlikely to catch up. Even by sixth form, my teachers discouraged me from applying to Cambridge. On the whole we were told that professions like medicine were good, but the assumption was we'd likely end up married so shouldn't worry too much. This was in 2003.

I also remember spending a lot of time feeling out of place, and getting the message I was doing things wrong. I don't think it was great for making me feel confident, or even basically capable - I managed to come out with the best A Levels in the school, and still thinking I'd fluked it or was a bit thick really.

I do think often, we were punished for things we couldn't be expected to know or change. I remember teachers insisting you stayed until 10.01 at their lesson to hear the homework set, then another teacher at the other end of school being furious we weren't there at 9.59 to be settled when she walked in. That was a bit crap.

But on the whole I do have increasingly nostalgic feelings about it now.

sarah Dental dams! Good lord

Exact same thing happened to me re. lesson times on a massive campus. I should have explained but was too shy and awkward.

I'm not in touch with very many people - one or two maybe. Some I would chat to if I met, others I would run to avoid.

On a more serious note, our sex Ed was the absolute minimum required by law. I only figured how to know you were ovulating after a quick Google years later. A light bulb moment...

Sometimes I miss the simplicity of it all. No laundry, no cooking, getting taxied around doing stuff I liked. A lot of laughs, during the good times.

I went to a tiny pre prep, no uniform, I remember the teachers being very kind but from what I can remember we moved up a class when we were individually ready rather than a whole class moves up together. The cane was still in use. You had to pay the head by cheque because cash disappeared without a trace unless you asked for a receipt. Hugely multicultural.
Next school was all girls, brown scratchy uniform. Again hugely multicultural, my 2 best friends were Dutch and Jamaican. No drama between girls ever, I don’t remember any snobbery, girls came from all sorts of backgrounds, some had scholarships. No corporal punishment.
Chapel every morning, church at the end of every half term, church and chapel part of the school.
I left at 13 because we moved 70 miles south.
Never take your teen out of private and put them in state, the next 3 school years were hell, to say I didn’t fit in was an understatement.
Shout out to anyone who went to Old Palace in Croydon.

@LookAtMissOhio

sarah Dental dams! Good lord

Exact same thing happened to me re. lesson times on a massive campus. I should have explained but was too shy and awkward.

I'm not in touch with very many people - one or two maybe. Some I would chat to if I met, others I would run to avoid.

Oh, it was very detailed! Also so incredibly po-faced that you'd have come to the conclusion lesbianism was terribly boring rather than excitingly forbidden unless you'd been quite determined already.

Sarah ours involved some very judgemental remarks, from a teacher, about Jade Goody. I won't repeat it here. I thought it was bollocks then, I know it's bollocks now.

Also a comment from same lady: "Raise your hand if you think guys should be locked up!" And one girl actually raised her hand this was in the 2000s. Shameful.

I went to a girls’ school that had a lot of these pretensions, but it was a bog standard comp underneath. All the uniform skirt length checks, and houses and hockey and chapel and Prizegiving ceremonies were just a decorative front for the crap teaching and the male teachers who shagged around with the fifth and sixth-formers

I went to boys boarding schools between the ages of 9 and 18 (I am of the male sex).
I started in the mid 1980s, might as well have been the mid 1950s.
We were often very cold, more often than not quite hungry, sometimes quite cruel, we wore shorts, shirt and wool jumper irrespective of snow, rain, etc.
Smoked fags from around 11, drank cans of special brew from about 15 onward, dropped a fair bit of acid in the later years, but there were no girls, so for many of us the experience retained a certain innocence.
It could be pretty fucking miserable, but we lived a childhood closer to the bone than my kids will ever know, for which I suppose I am grateful.

Yes to the confidence, the unshakeable belief that you could do anything if you wanted to, there were no barriers holding you back bar yourself.

Went to a secondary modern and girls grammar school. The difference was like night and day. In the grammar girls were "disappeared" before we even heard of any bad behaviour, and it was never even acknowledged or spoken about. One girl got pregnant, one got arrested for credit card fraud but they just disappeared from thin air before we heard anything, and it was never, ever spoken about by the teachers. This was the mid 90s BTW, not 1950!

@Hb12

Yes to the confidence, the unshakeable belief that you could do anything if you wanted to, there were no barriers holding you back bar yourself.

I've never understood this "private school confidence" thing that people go on about I MN. I was constantly told I wasn't good enough and I had some of the lowest grades in my year group. I think there's a big misconception on these boards that everyone has this mysterious unshakable confidence. Not me, I'm a total disappointment to everyone.

Same. The shame of being in the lowest stream will never completely leave me.

Had psychotherapy when i left an abusive bf in 2007 and again in the last two years. Being in the bottom stream came up both times 😢

Same as the last two posters. I went to a private day school from 3 to 16 & mostly hated every minute, was constantly told I wasn't trying hard enough. In truth, I just wasn't very academic & had a rubbish home life

Once I left & went to college, things got a lot better & I found I could achieve a lot in the right environment, although even 40
years later & with a v successful career, I am still plagued by self doubt. School has a lot to answer for in my opinion.

I went to a state school which tried to model itself on private schools. Our hockey and lacrosse teams used to play against private schools and my friend who was in them was embarrassed about our school's ancient minibus.

Awful blazer, gym knickers and very short PE skirt (but woe betide anyone who showed a glimpse of knee at any other time...), lots of petty uniform rules (and petty rules in general), school chapel, song and pretentious Latin motto, nuns.

I hated it. There was far too much academic pressure. I was bright, but the overpressure exacerbated my anxiety and made me miserable. We used to have to call out all our test results publicly in class and I can remember having my first panic attack waiting to get a result in maths. I remember going to their 'careers service' and asking for advice on what to do after my GCSEs, as I planned to leave school then. They couldn't help me because they only dealt with careers that involved going to university first. Nobody in my family had gone to university, I had caring responsibilities at home, and was already sick of being treated like a child with all the ridiculous rules (and often like a child from a bygone era, at that).

Although it wasn't a private school, the vast majority of the girls were middle class. I was the only one in the top set who got free school meals - it might be more accurate to say that I was entitled to them. I used to go without lunch because their procedure for collecting the tokens was a needless daily humiliation. I had second hand sports equipment, and uniform that started out much too big and ended up much too small because it was so expensive - I didn't feel bad about those things, but they were unusual.

I don't miss anything about it at all. The one positive was that I never thought that maths or the sciences were 'for boys' because obviously everyone in the top set was a girl. I think I'd have done better at a much less pressurised school that was a better cultural fit.

@LookAtMissOhio

Sarah ours involved some very judgemental remarks, from a teacher, about Jade Goody. I won't repeat it here. I thought it was bollocks then, I know it's bollocks now.

Also a comment from same lady: "Raise your hand if you think guys should be locked up!" And one girl actually raised her hand this was in the 2000s. Shameful.

Oh, no, that's awful.

@seekinglondonlife

Went to a secondary modern and girls grammar school. The difference was like night and day. In the grammar girls were "disappeared" before we even heard of any bad behaviour, and it was never even acknowledged or spoken about. One girl got pregnant, one got arrested for credit card fraud but they just disappeared from thin air before we heard anything, and it was never, ever spoken about by the teachers. This was the mid 90s BTW, not 1950!

This happened at my school in the late 90s/2000s. I remember one girl in the sixth form who got pregnant (she was 18 and months off leaving school) and she was never seen again. Also, rather horribly, a girl who got pregnant aged 12 or 13, who was pressured to have an abortion. She came out as a lesbian a little later; we were all very innocent and never understood half of it or made the connections, and we naively assumed she'd got pregnant by a boyfriend. It is now obvious she must have been abused.

Mine was a Catholic school and taught us in no uncertain terms that abortion was wrong. Yet if a girl got pregnant, she was told that if she had an abortion she could stay in school, but if she wanted to have the baby, she'd be expelled. It was so hypocritical. All about appearance and reputation.

@Hb12

Yes to the confidence, the unshakeable belief that you could do anything if you wanted to, there were no barriers holding you back bar yourself.

That is so different from my experience. We always had it drummed into us that any success was down to working hard, being lucky, and being good. If you worked hard and were good, you might get a prize and you'd be told at length how lucky you were. If you achieve some good result and the teachers did't think you'd worked hard for it, you'd be told you didn't deserve it and it had only been pure chance.

I remember my teachers congregating around me when I got my A Levels to tell me triumphantly how little I deserved my results and how they were really nothing to do with me. It was such a weird thing.

Hated private school. Freezing stately home, too many rules, bullying was rife, full of snotty girls who seem to only care about designer handbags and where they went skiing, very little diversity, Latin...

I went to grammar school from kindergarten up. Age 4 onwards.

Girls only after mixed prep, but boys' school was across the road where we 'shared' the swimming pools and lunch courts (again, after prep- and even then the times were staggered so we weren't supposed to ever see the males.)

In mixed prep, boys did rugby and girls did needlework.

Private girls school in the late 80s, early 90s for years 7 to 11 (or years 1 to 5 as it was then!). I agree with what one of the PPs said, great academically but did me no favours socially!

It was a massive culture shock at 6th form when I transferred to a state school. Not only were there boys (!) but I was made fun of for answering questions in class. I went from a school where it was cool to be academic to one where I had to learn to hide it.

I went to private school from ages 7 to 16- I only left as Mum ran out of money.

Uniform lists (including the shoe styles you were allowed to buy).
Hats- straw for summer, felt for winter.
Uniform rules were strict- when over-the-knee socks came into fashion, any girl caught wearing them (and they were found out when sitting cross-legged in assembly ) was made to stand up and roll them down to below knee. Skirt had to touch the floor when kneeling for prayers.

Prayers every day and twice on Fridays.

Most girls came from very rich families and would sit around at break discussing their monthly clothes allowances/trust funds etc, which was very daunting for someone who got 50p a week pocket money

Teachers were pretty much like any school- some good, some bad.

School dinners were REALLY good though- roast dinners twice a week, plenty of potatoes, veg and gravy to help yourself to. Everything was made from scratch in the kitchens.

Very little practical careers advice- if you liked English, for instance, you were told you could be a teacher. No other options were forthcoming. Mostly they seemed to be setting us up as wives of businessmen or above- there was much talk at the only school reunion I went to of one Old Girl who'd married a minor peer of the realm.

Oh and we were awarded Posture Badges.