Possible to emulate a private school education?

[Palmolivia]

We are not in a grammar area so the dc will be attending a state secondary in a couple of years.. We cannot afford private school but I'm looking for ways to emulate a private school education. Is it possible & if so ideas please?

This is what dh and I did for our DC to emulate an excellent private school or an excellent state school

Tutors for core subjects - and any subject they struggled with
Extra language classes- dh is Spanish so the dcs are already bilingual
Piano / drum lessons
Dance / sports outside school
Theatre- cheap local theatre
Discussions on current affairs
Fostered a love of poetry
Travel
First aid classes
Volunteer work at food banks
Encouraged financial literacy. Taught my kids about ISA s, mortgages etc

All this has meant that my state school educated kids are well rounded , confident young adults who are thriving

Numbers of children in Welsh medium education is on the rise. There are new schools opening every year.

If you visit an Eisteddfod (the Urdd is in Margam park next year and the national is on Anglesey) you will see and hear thousands of young people and their families using Welsh as their first language.

That's fantastic! Something to look into actually.

II agree about Indian and Chinese children achieving even if they aren’t well off.
Also many Nigerian children do well too

The vast majority of people at private schools are not highly influential people.

My ds x2 went to two leading public schools. Most people were highly paid professionals. But not some sort of super influential type.

I went to a fee-paying primary school. In the 80s so a different time. What it did give me was high exposure to lots of different activities and sports - I was on the school swim team, did netball, tennis, gymnastics, dance and was in the school orchestra.

I went to state secondary school and obviously things differ between primary and secondary anyway but I didn't notice the same focus on music, sports and activities.

I can't say private school gave me lots of fantastically useful connections for later in life - I am from a working-class background and didn't stay in the private environment after primary- but it did give me a level of proficiency in a number of areas.

Edited to add: I got a good degree and Masters but that was more to do with parental encouragement and support - from a young age my mother encouraged the idea of university. I have a good job and earn well. DS (age 6) goes to a state school and does various extracurricular activities.

For me the biggest advantage is small class sizes. I know there are some rural state schools with very small numbers, so looking for one of them would help emulate this

Mostly said above but;

• Extra curricular - ideally spread across sport and arts (and including team and individual)
• Tutor for key / challenging subjects
• Taking one or two GCSEs via adult night classes in year 9 and / or 10 (paid for) this reducing the number done in year 11 (and usually with better teaching and grades given adults don’t tend to mess about)
• work experiences in the summer (from year 10)
• lots of discussions at home about a wide variety of topics (philosophy, politics, economics etc) - supported by books and programmes etc

It’s exhausting but possible.

The big corporates tend not to take friends of staff as work experience and people save that for their own dc as they know they can't shoot too many shots.

Really, people way overestimate the sort of connections people make at school.

What they do have are friends that are all well off middle class in the whole. So if they choose to go into the city for example, they bump into each other a bit and that means they sometimes know someone at a client firm etc. but increasingly less as city firms tend to recruit top performers at uni now. Not kids of current staff.

They don’t need to be super influential to be able to talk to students or offer work experience.

A lot of good advice about music + big academic expectations.

I agree with PPs that the actual connections aren’t necessarily helpful - but I do think that there is a not-enough talked about social polish that really helps…

• confidence with introductions - looking adults in the eye and shaking their hand when saying hello
• thinking about who they are going to meet in advance + planning some good questions to ask (whether it’s a visiting speaker at school or a relative they haven’t seen for a long time - it’s good practice to help encourage pro social behaviour)
• Foster good etiquette by thoughtfully preparing the house for visitors, choosing gifts for people and insisting on thank you cards being written.
• practicing public speaking
• reading lots at home to develop a wide + interesting vocabulary
• travel opportunities with a cultural bent to build up the ‘cultural capital’
• being total stickler for table manners - familiarity with a wide range of cuisines + eating implements eg not being phased by chopsticks / wasabi at a sushi place

etc etc

Edited to delete accidental extra words at end

@Mabs49

I have precisely ZERO connections. Please can we drop this myth of connections?

Perhaps Eton? Perhaps Radley?
Ha!! Exactly what I've been saying.

People gave very strange views on what goes on in private schools. Even Eton!

As others have pointed out, what they get is small classes, aspirations because everyone's parents is relatively successful.

They aren't all Lords and senior executives who are recruiting their dcs friends. It doesn't work like that 😂

They need to be in a school where the majority of the parents value education/ support the school. It’s more about the attitudes of the other parents in the area you live in than the type of school. The school can’t work magic on their intake however good the school is.

What with blind cvs and E&I agendas by big firms think school networking is not as key as it once was.

@Muchtoomuchtodo

They don’t need to be super influential to be able to talk to students or offer work experience
True there are always parents who can come and give talks.

But work experience is not something that gets offered around.

Big city turns are VERY tight on things. .people have to priorities their own dc so they aren't offering their dc friends work experience.

Often even your own dc can't do work experience these days.

You can’t replicate it, but you don’t need to. I went to a failing sink estate school, with burnt-out teachers and no extracurriculars whatsoever other than a couple of sports, neither of which I did, and went to Oxford anyway, and people assume I had some expensive education, lashings of cultural capital etc, but my dad is a mechanic, my mother a cleaner, and they both left school at 14, and wanted me to be a hairdresser.

I say this because most of what the parents I see on here want from a private school seems to be cultural capital and confidence, and you can get those via other routes. Personally, my confidence came from working several very different, demanding jobs during my school days and in university vacs. Being a relief milker with responsibility for a big herd is going to do a lot more for your sense of responsibility and agency than viola lessons.

Academically -
Tutors when needed
Revision courses for exams ditto
High expectations for results and colleges, get them on university open days
Support to make study as easy as possible, including limited screen time, study space
Get in professional support help when needed eg of struggling with focus
Encourage them to do what they see good at or passionate about - and chat to them about it
A language is always useful extra capital,

Cultural capital -
Extra curricular activities
Lots of different experiences in the holiday - go abroad even if to camp, go to museums, theatre, concerts, gigs, festivals
Watch the news, encourage reading, watching good drama or docs, intelligent games playing, listening to music
Talk around the dinner table about the news, arts, science, life in general - this is really important

Independence / confidence

Encourage independence - sleepovers, camps, meeting new people
Walking to school, getting yourself ready for school yourself
Character building stuff like DOE and exchanges, interrailing
Work experience or Sat jobs - not long hours, just as a confidence builder
Do kids cook Fridays - when they cook for you

Contacts
This is a bit harder - but really it’s only major schools that give you a major network
However put them in for activities where they will meet the cohort you want them to meet, and focus on getting them to good universities where they can build a network for themselves

Money
You can’t give them inheritance if you don’t have it, but you can teach them to manage money which is v undertaught
Give them some sort of an allowance and get them to invest part of it
Get them to understand compound interest, investments and pensions

Self care
Make sure they eat properly, look after their teeth and do some kind of exercise. A glossy appearance is more common and exercise far more regularly enforced in the private sector.

If you can get them to get the results, then being at a state school is an advantage

My children both had extra curricular activities; a musical one, a sport one and a team one. Ds played keyboard and guitar, played football and debated ;DD played keyboard and flute, danced til she was 17 and went to rainbows. I encouraged both of them to have a Saturday job. And both children joined in fully with school events. But yes, there was an expectation that university was the logical next step

I don’t think that’s what people mean by connections though (obviously you do get that at major public schools and v handy it is) - but generally they mean you will have a cohort of friends who will do well, let you know about job openings and introduce you to an appropriate partner

@FlaggyShore

That is great but you are an outlier - most people from your background don’t manage to move up like you. I agree about work mind you.

At secondary level, you may find the school offers a lot more than you think it will.

This was our experience: DC was a pre schooler in the US, he was also very prem so we didn’t want him to go aged 4 and few days. He started reception in pre prep aged 5 and was oldest in year/smallest in school, wearing age 2 clothes. We chose a private school because it was easy to achieve an out of year placement. This was a while ago and I gather it’s not so difficult now. Yrs Reception. - 2 were ok but looking back I was already suspicious that we had gained nothing other than a deferred entry.

By Yr 4 it was apparent that the curriculum was stale, repetitive and not moving in line with the state model. In common with many prep schools that are feeder schools to a Yr 9 entry independent school there was high emphasis on sport, in addition encouraging excellence in sport and fielding school teams - which is good - in the prep school they spent a lot of time doing PE and Sport lessons. Marks for ‘Effort and Attainment’ were given in a report in three subjects - English, Maths and Sport.

After some utterly duff teaching in Yr 4 and a lingering feeling that ‘academic’ was not a compliment we left and went to small local school. Where we discovered that writing and maths skills were not up to National Curriculum standards. DC caught up.

He passed an entry exam to a top independent school locally, but wanted to attend a state secondary school new friends were going to.

What advantages do they get that can be replicated in the state system : sport is out there, you can find clubs for extra curricular outside of school and sometimes within schools. DC’s primary had no sports field but they used one at a local secondary and the boys football team trained there. At secondary the facilities for sport and opportunities were great, DC has 2 friends who are Olympic hopes for the future. Learning an instrument was better organised outside the private school, far less ‘invitation only’ much more equality and encouragement to joint local bands and orchestras, plus - nearly free - holiday orchestra.

Getting into uni - Oxford and Cambridge like state school students

My very bright DCs went to a normal comp and are now at uni studying science. The school has a very small sixth form and for some reason science was not a popular choice for A Levels even though the science dept in that school is very good. It worked massively in my DCs' favour because they were in classes of around 5 or 6 for all their subjects. This obviously meant they had some very personalised teaching and pastoral care. I often used to say at tbe time that the school's sixth form was like private school.

I paid for DC1 who was applying for Oxbridge, Imperial etc to have coaching for university interview technique.

For DC2, I paid for various tutors during the GCSE years to give them a boost in certainAreas and also paid for university interview coaching and a review of their personal statement.

Apart from that, we went on many educational trips, like science festivals, and holidays. We visited China, Nepal and the US.

Both DCs had sporting hobbies at the local leisure centre. They then both worked at the leisure centre as lifeguards because I paid for them to train. They both matured a lot doing this work. DC1 also did the DofE which has a massive impact on confidence and maturity.

As PP as said, I don't think you can replicate the connections you get in private school. The thing that always makes me wonder is why are private school kids generally so much more confident.

Similar actually and I do wonder sometimes whether trying to make your child something you want (with the best of intentions) when they are in an environment that doesn’t support that is a bit damaging for confidence. I remember doing a lot of calculations about what I would tell different groups of people and maybe it took me longer to be comfortable in my entire skin which as people have said is the main benefit of private ed i.e the confidence

@dizzydizzydizzy Yes great to hear. I know many in state who have similar successes and quite fed up of the whole state bashing that goes on here as there are some exceptional state schools.

@playdadifreyr However... These are not the things that make you cool and popular in normal schools. Which isn't the be all and end all. But I'd have given a lot for the occasional naff holiday
This is incredibly insulting. There seems to be a self serving justification here of parents who send their kids to PS because anything 'geeky' or 'posh' is not the norm in the state school. I have known many horse riders at state school, it's not that elite you know? Sorry if you think it's reserved for the rich only but many of us working class like to ride horses too. And also we don't just go on 'naff holidays' but believe it or not, we can do exotic holidays too! There are also plenty of 'geeks' in state schools who do just fine while I know in turn there is also bullying in PS too.

I think you've taken the post in your last comment/rant completely the wrong way - that's not how I read it at all! Maybe breathe and have a re-read of what was actually written?

@gaininginsight

I know many in state who have similar successes and quite fed up of the whole state bashing that goes on here as there are some exceptional state schools.

No one has said all state schools are crap. There are, of course, lots of brilliant ones. Trouble is, like the NHS, the variation in standard between different schools (and hospitals) is the problem. People who are in catchment areas of crap schools are entirely right to look for alternatives and ask how they can improve their childrens' chances if they end up in a crap comp.