What do private schools do that state schools don't?

[Mommymoments]

For me the local private does
Weekly swimming
Learning an orchestra instrument (extra cost)
Debating
Language (Spanish, French, German & afterschool Latin, Mandarin & Russian)
Yoga
Hockey & Lacrosse
Lots of sporting & drama opportunities
Excellent field trips out of school
Ski trip from Y7 onwards..

Would love all that for my dc's but can't afford it. But would love to hear about all the nice extras your dc's get at their private.

Having worked in both state and private schools, I'd say private schools often have more facilities. They also have the ability to select pupils (sometimes) but this is over hyped, as many entrance exams are just for show and only a handful of pupils will be rejected.

The teachers are the same, sometimes better in state schools as private schools are leaving the TPS in droves.

Unless very rich, I'd choose a well regarded and high performing state school over private. Never forget that private schools spend a fortune on glossy marketing. A top exam grade is the same wherever it was achieved.

Number 1 thing - safety.
I'm not worried about my DD witnessing violence on a daily basis.
I'm not scared she's going to be assaulted or persistently bullied.
I'm not worried about her being afraid to go to school.
I am not worried her having to put up with her lessons being continually disrupted.
And in the event that any of the above does occur, I know the school will deal with it swiftly and appropriately.

As is the case for a lot of the points on this thread, this is an individual school issue, not a sector issue.
I know private school children who have been bullied and the school response was to deny it could happen at their school.
I also know that my DS was assaulted by a private school child when on a school trip.
But I'd not going to assume that these experiences are indicative of the whole sector in the same way that one violent state school would be indicative that that was the case everywhere.

No. But it is the case at our local secondary school, hence my personal decision to pay for private school. I don’t care what decisions other people make for their children, it’s none of my business.

Our local private school is better in every way than our local state, so if you can afford it it's really a no brainer

On the point about entrance tests being hyped -0 it depends on the school. Most who apply don't get in at say Habs and NCS and MTs where my older children went and the fact the entrance test is not easy is not typed. Other private schools further down the list almost every parents has in their head in my area will take you if you are not particularly bright. We chose academically selective single sex private schools. There are all kinds of private schools however.

My children's father who taught in both sectors (now in private sectors) said the state school experience was like being a policeman. That does not of course mean there are not state schools with quiet classes and children who are bright and all behaving - London has loads of different options, state grammars with very rich parents and all sorts.

Our town is totally the opposite @Plirtle !

This thread has really proven it's about individual schools, and there's nothing about private schools as a whole that makes them better.

Being one of 4 siblings, all of which were all privately educated, I find this so amusing. This is such a false belief, you don't get a roller-deck of contacts to help you coast through life when you leave...

What you do find is you have old pals who have gone on to do great things... patents, started what are now successful companies etc.

Yes, I don't personally know anywhere not in a grammar area where the comprehensive schools are better than their private counterparts but I'm sure they exist. I'm just not fortunate enough to live near one.

It’s a trope because there’s truth to it, and some examples of ‘leafy comps’ in a deprived areas doesn’t negate that.

Some children will do well anywhere, others will sink when they would otherwise have done well with the correct support and in an academic environment.

Aside from that, should school be sink or swim? Is it a good thing that children have to prove themselves able to overcome in order to gain an education? To prove themselves able to succeed despite an environment detrimental to that?

I agree with this. DH and I met on the same graduate programme so arguably got the same results from our education. I went to state school, he went to peonage school. I succeeded despite my extremely poor comp, and hated every minute of it. DH loved his school days, and felt supported and encouraged.

I’ve never understood why ‘my kid succeeded despite the odds!’ is supposed to be a badge of pride. Presumably you’re sending them to school, not the hunger games. Why wouldn’t you want the odds to be in their favour?

and it’s always something said by people who can relax knowing their child did succeed, but what if they hadn’t? If they had been negatively impacted by their environment, despite ability, and had their lives shaped by that? I’m not sure the sentiment would be ‘oh well, survival of the fittest’.

I agree. I’d rather my children don’t have to battle the odds!

I think there are "odds" and "odds". As PP says, none of us want the hunger games, but equally it's not great if children don't occasionally have some challenge or difficulty to overcome. The current buzz word is "resilient" - your child can't become resilient if everything is very easy for them.

But that's my point: my children don't have to battle because they have supportive, middle class parents. Adding private eduction to that frankly gives them such an advantage that they can't fail. Life isn't smooth. There will be bumps on the road post school. You can't always be there to smooth them out.
I really don't feel I left my children in a compromised position by sending them to a (non leafy) comp.

And as I said upthread, life isn’t easy for them. My older 2 have a severely disabled sibling who can’t access education. They have parents who provide him with almost 24 hour care while also both working. So I’d really rather they didn’t spend their days at school being refused access to the toilets by the older kids, avoiding fights and trying to concentrate through severely disrupted lessons. They’re already more resilient than most, whatever school they go to.

Unfortunately I've taught in more than one school where violence and verbal abuse was a daily occurrence, as has my mum and most of my current colleagues. And not all the same town or city but all over.

I live in what is considered a wealthy "leafy" town on the outskirts of a major city. The problems seen previously only in schools in deprived area are now here too. Police regularly on the school gates at the end of the day to deter the gangs for example. And it's not just secondaries, but primaries too. I know multiple teachers, myself included, who have had to barricade themselves in offices to escape being attacked by students, and in some cases, their parents.

You only have to read threads on here to see how widespread the problems are, because simply put, they do not have the means to address the needs of many of the students in front of them. Schools are underfunded, overstretched, and expected to not just be educators, but also perform the role of social workers, councillors and the police too.

I think wanting your child to very easily access a good education in an environment designed for that isn’t a particularly unreasonable desire, or a disservice to them. Life can be tough, yes, but if you can ‘smooth it out’ when you have the power to do so, in regards to their education that will inform the rest of their adult lives, then why wouldn’t you?

And I’m not sure why you’re assuming that going to private school means someone hasn’t been challenged in their life, or that they won’t have developed resilience.

Such a strange attitude that if a child is privately educated they can’t possibly experience any difficulties in life and won’t develop any resilience.

Resilience is just your bounce back ability after a difficult experience/situation. Im not really sure your school itself should be a difficulty you have to bounce back from. It might carefully structure in some challenges and support you dealing with them so you have strategies to be more resilient going forward.

I was replying to the comment about "my kid succeeding despite the odds" and that parents wanted the odds to be always be in their child's favour.

This covers the entire spectrum of a child's life, not just the bit spent in school (I totally agree that if e.g. the child's home life is particularly challenging that making it as easy for them at school would be very desirable).

I at no point said I don't think private school children don't develop any resilience. I do think that some (note I said some) private school children do live in quite a protective bubble. That's true of some state school children as well, of course.

Yeah, and living in a protective bubble is akin to child abuse on mumsnet 🙄

More than happy to ‘protect’ my children from the hideousness that is our local state secondary school by paying to send them elsewhere TBH.

I don’t really get the network thing. Apart from anything else, it’s very uncool to make up to people who are rich / famous / influential. That sort of thing will put people’s backs up, state or private.

A few of the responses make me wonder if people are writing about private schools or society in the 1950s.

Yes, I think when it comes to something as fundamental as being able to access education, the odds should indeed always be in favour of that, and I disagree that it’s in any way unreasonable of a parent to want to provide that.

A child’s life may or may not be ‘easy’ outside of school, but either way I don’t think making school something to overcome is, to say the least, ideal.

As far as ‘protective bubble’ goes, I’m guessing this is an extension of ‘private school kids don’t know reality!’, except of course they do. That their reality is a different one to that of someone living and being schooled in a deprived area on little money, does not mean it is not in fact a reality, or indeed one that doesn’t foster resilience. A deprived child isn’t said to not be living in reality because they’re not privately educated, and someone that didn’t develop resilience through growing up in say, a war torn country, isn’t said to lack resilience by virtue of this fact (or to not be living in reality).

You can always race to the bottom by finding someone that’s overcome greater odds, or someone that’s developed greater resilience by going though hell. If we are of a mind to throw up roadblocks to gaining an education, how much struggling is desirable? How much exposure to the grimmer aspects of realities? How much resilience and overcoming do we want to see?