Is private school worth it?

[Tristar15]

Yes, I know another private school thread but I am genuinely curious if it is worth it in terms of if you know people who have been to private school and it has helped them become more ‘successful’ than people you know who went to state school.

I realise that a lot of responses will make reference to how you define ‘success’ and I guess for the point of this thread I’m thinking in terms of job / profession etc

Me and most of my friends went to local comps. We have jobs ranging in salaries from 30K to 100K. I have friends who went to private school, all earn in the same range. No particular differences in life style between us. Private school friends came from families with money but not stupid amounts, it was a choice to send them there and they could afford it. Their kids have the same jobs, earn the same money and live in the same area as the kids of parents who didn’t spend thousands of pounds.

Out of people I know who went to private school some are now building boats, some are working as bar managers. Most have very normal professional jobs. Just like the people I know who went to their local state school.
For context my state school friends and I all went to schools that were not outstanding (in my case, not even good).

If in my small, anecdotal case, we’ve all ended up in similar positions in life but it cost some families thousands, is private school worth it?

It all depends on where you live and what is going on there.

Private v state with no context is just a ridiculously crude argument about nothing at all. It’s rather like an argument about whether McD or BK fries are better.

If you think people send their DC to private school to be successful, I don’t think you understand what they are about.

I have a first class degree, and post grad qualifications. My DH has the same. We both went to state schools. I have earned a lot in the past, but my DH is very successful. I’m talking senior level in the City of London.

I’d say both DH and I have had crap educations and we are where we are despite it, not because of it. DH and I are not “well educated”.

I want my DC to be well educated. They are all quite academic, have or are on target for top GCSE’s and A’levels. One has a great offer in a top Uni. They may get a great paying job afterwards. I care not.

What I care about is that my DC are educated, and they are, and it is because of their school. They have very broad interests in books, music, art and sports. They study 2 languages. They are studying Latin and Classical Civilisations to a high level. They are very confident but not arrogant, they are extremely articulate and have no qualms about getting up in front of an audience and giving a speech or performance. Their manners are immaculate.

I’m sure some state schools do some of these things, but the one I went to didn’t. I left my state school at 16.

So, you see, many people just do not get what a private school is all about. You think we send them there to hoover up all the top jobs. We don’t. We just want our DC to have a really great education and come out with the confidence and motivation to go and live a good life experiencing what is on offer in the world.

To answer your question, yes it was worth it.

Which one is it? Sounds lovely. It's very rare for state primary to do all these.

If the state option is basically decent and your kids don’t have any particular issues and their peer group is like minded and nice probably isn’t worth it. That was our conclusion anyway and it’s turned out well.

If you live in an urban hellscape and your child is hoisted up the flag pole every playtime you probably would opt out.

Our local public is horrendous & there's constantly police there, so we've chosen a small private secondary school where DS can thrive, rather than just survive. It doesn't have better education opportunities, in fact, it has less facilities & options than the public & is more inconvenient to get him there every day. But the school values mental wellbeing & genuinely has zero bullying tolerance.

Educational outcomes are also influenced heavily by their parents. I truly believe if I'd attended a school like DS's, I would have learned confidence instead of learning to be invisible to avoid being a bully target. This transferred to the workplace, too. Support at home & I would've had the confidence to pursue my dream. We can but try

3 anecdotes

Friend sent to private school and achieved one O grade (GCSE equivalent in the olden days Scotland) is now a SAHM.

Flatmate at university sent to private school god 5th and 6th year and developed bulimia as a result of the bullying is now a librarian.

An old boyfriend sent to boarding school and became a drug dealer for several years after school eventually cleaned up in his 40s and went to college and is now a data analyst.

Obviously theses are anecdotes but they are my experience of private school kids.

Maybe that would also have been there state school experiences too.

The only place in the country that isn't catchment based for Grammar is London. Grammars are on the whole for the wealthy and cause huge issues in other local schools with their achievements and behaviour dropping as a result. I am not a fan as I wouldn't be paying for dd to go privately if the other options weren't sink schools.

I work in the NHS and there's a clear division between schooling and job role. Most of the doctors I work with went to private school and send their children to private school.

Most/all of the nurses, HCAs went to state.

Don't be fooled by the responses here; private schooling does give people a huge leg up (unfairly) both in terms of academic success and networking. Arguably having good networks and family friends makes the biggest difference. There are loads of intelligent hard working people out there, not all of those are able to be at the right place at the right time.

I think it's probably a slightly different proposal now and going private probably doesn't have the same impact it once did. Secondaries are often twice the size now than 30 years ago, primaries have bigger classes, the curriculum is more intense, less money and more stress in the system. Teacher recruitment and retention is a big problem in some areas. The very large classes with a very prescriptive curriculum aren't helping a lot of children with SEN which then impacts everyone.
I suspect private school doesn't give exactly the same leg up that it once did to the majority that went. However if I had the money I would choose private (obviously assuming it was decent!) because of the problems in state schools.
FWIW 15 years ago I would have been very anti private schools but having had my eyes opened to the state system I wouldn't like to send my children there if I had a choice. I wouldn't choose private expecting better grades or more doors opened.

The vast majority of people went to state schools. So obviously the majority of high paid earners went to state schools!
Private schoolers may be proportionally over represented in some higher paying professions (in 2023 21% of lawyers were privately educated). Politicians, no surprise, have many who were privately educated. Some sectors have an unexpected amount of privately educated people at the top of the field - actors and journalists for example. Here's an interesting (and short) article:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-35641061.amp

My first child did not get in to the four nearest very good or excellent state schools due to oversubscription. We could afford it so went private. During the pandemic my children had full days of online lessons from day one. One child was not academic and has pursued a vocational route after GCSEs. The other is and is going to a top university soon. But she (so far) has not chosen a particularly high paying field. We shall see.
But a person may be very successful in their field without it being particularly financially rewarding. And I remember all those City boys making loads of money with just GCSE level education back in the 80s.
There are differing levels of quality in private schools as there are in state. There are plenty of excellent state schools. There are plenty of mediocre private schools. And it still comes down to the individual: going to a private school does not automatically mean you will do better in exams. But entrance exams, GCSE requirements to pass on to Sixth Form, all these help keep the stats high. And state schools are catching up in academic achievement, and with contextual offers and widening participation hopefully things will become more balanced.

Maths - Gloucestershire grammars also have no catchment areas. A large proportion of pupils are from out of county.

No! Just genuinely curious as I haven’t necessarily seen any more ‘success’ in my privately educated friends than state school friends. A friend of mine went to Eton and got 2 ‘E’ grades at A level! Many people are citing smaller classes and extra curricular not academic achievement or wanting their DC to have ‘better’ careers which I find interesting.
For reference I would not use private schools (could just about afford it if cut back) but I had an excellent experience at school (even in a sink local comp) but accept that my parents were pro education and that I just got on with it. My school had loads of extra curricular and I actually became a teacher as I loved school and had some great teachers! I no longer teach but still work in the sector and know that many state schools offer huge amounts to the kids that attend.

The majority of the population go to state schools and do pretty well. We both got to the City from state schools. Lots of people I went to school with have high flying interesting careers. Agree there are big problems in the state sector in the last few years though. Although those issues also affect probate schools to be fair. But not as badly maybe.

I think it was for my DS not just in terms of job opportunities but he's so confident. But he primarily went there because the catchment school for our area was shocking and I couldn't afford to move to a better area. He and his friends have professional jobs.

I was at state school and I've done well.

I would much prefer a decent, reliable state school system.

It shouldn’t really matter why people choose private school.

15 kids with 1 teacher and 1 assistant compared to 32 kinds in a class with one teacher was reason alone.

It’s peoples own money and am not sure why people are so invested in what other people do with their cash. It’s bonkers

For us, private education wasn't worth it.
We are fortunate to have very good grammar schools which both DC went through which achieves far better academic results than the private and state options. We were able to use the £45K a year that private school would have cost us to pay for the DC to participate in all sorts of hobbies and sports and for me to reduce my working hours to school hours only to be there for their after school activities and spend time with them. It also meant we had the budget to travel as a family and show them a bit of the world.

My sole aim was to access single-sex education, and as there were no state options for this, it's worth it in that respect. But I totally recognise that growing up in a middle-class family in a house full of books my daughter would probably manage to get a good set of GCSEs at the local state school.

This can only ever be an "it depends" answer. It depends on the child, on the private school(s) you can afford, on the state schools available locally. No one school will suit every single child, even if money is no object.

A good state school will out perform a poor private school, at least in terms of exam results. Despite league tables, education isn't all about results (I absolutely would not have believed this as a teenager, though.) A well-resourced school will probably be able to offer children more opportunities to try different things, be it sports, musical instruments, arts, a wider choice of MFL and so on. I have a cousin who became quite a good fencer at her private school. Maybe I could have been an Olympic fencer, but we'll never know, because I have never been anywhere with the opportunity to try - and I had a good state comprehensive education, with Latin to A-level.

For some people, the choice of school will be because of bullying at their old school, or SEN, or because it offers stability with parents in military careers etc. These are factors some people just won't have in their calculations. And children who get scholarships are probably academically, musically or sportily talented and would also have done well in the state sector - perhaps not as well, but without access to the parallel universe which took thst path, we can't ever know.

The top private schools also offer networking and confidence. I have extended family, a former boyfriend, friends who were educated privately and they know people in positions of influence and have the confidence to ask them things, which can help get jobs and so on. I think the confidence makes a difference - a lot of state educated friends don't feel entitled to ask for introductions or advice in the same way. But you'll still get some public school people who just won't be interested in using that system they were brought up in.

And that's the thing - everyone is different. For some children, the investment will be worth every penny. For others, it absolutely won't be. The parameters will be different for everyone.

There will never be one answer to this.

If you are trapped in the catchment of an awful school where they're lucky if one kid a year goes to uni, has gangs, knives etc then I'd pay nothing to have my dc not be exposed to that.

But if you are in a nice house in a leafy suburb/village with access to a top comp or grammar for free it's daft to pay for some of the privates that aren't any better.

You can't make a blanket judgement on this.