Would you choose private school over the local comprehensive in our situation

[canichange]

We have two sons aged 9 and 7 and we are starting to think about secondary school. The eldest is going into year 5, so we will start looking at options in the autumn.

We live rurally, although only about a five-ten minute drive from our nearest town. Decent transport links to other towns. Kids are currently at the local village school which is about 5 minutes drive. Village school is good. Local comp is average to poor - not dreadful, but with its fair share of the usual issues.

The local town is small and has very little going for it. No decent shops, not much to do for children of any age. There is a leisure centre and a library, but that’s about it. It’s a typical poor town, pretty run down and low level drugs, anti-social behaviour etc. Moving far from this town would not be possible due to my husband running a business here.

We can afford private. There are two options. One is in our nearest city approx 40 minutes away. Would involve bus or train journey. The other is in a more rural town approx 30 minutes away and would involve a mini buss journey. Some local kids go to these schools, but not many.

Kids enjoy school and want to learn. They have decent potential with the right support. They both do a few local clubs.

I want to send them private because I think the education and extra curricular offerings will be great. However, I’m worried about them feeling isolated and lonely. They get on very well with eachother so are never really without company, but I appreciate that may change as they get older. I don’t work and there is no urgent need for me to work, so I can be a taxi. I grew up in very similar circumstances (lived rurally, went to school half an hour away), so I hope I appreciate the difficulties and I’m therefore happy to ferry them around to clubs, friends etc.

What would you do in these circumstances? I want them to have the best education possible and it seems daft not to send them to private school when we can afford it and the local state option is not brilliant, but I also worry they are already a bit isolated living where we live and that I could be making life even harder by sending them to school further afield.

What would you do?

Sounds like youve decided, so why are you asking? For permission to send your own children to private school? Why?

Private with sixth form, without a doubt.

The journey is less important when you’re at secondary school. You make friends far afield. Plenty of kids at my school travelled - I went to a great (state selective) school where kids commuted an hour (train then walk or bus as school was on edge of town).

There’s a school near me - Reading Blue Coats - and it takes kids as far away as 1hr10 mins on the school bus, in two directions (High Wycombe and Camberley). A neighbour with a son living really close to Blue Coats said her son only had a short trip to school but his best friends lived at opposite ends of the bus routes and it was ok as her house became the hub for meeting friends.

My own dd has a 40 min walk to school and no public transport.

It is incomprehensible when your kids are small, but by 11 they’ll take it in their stride.

In that situation I would definitely opt for private.

I would go private in your situation. If you believe your sons will benefit from the environment and additional support and can afford it then why not.
My son went private and commuted approximately 40 minutes each way, he loved it and has a wide range of friends both at the school and locally.
The reason we went private was because local school is terrible, and he the extra support they could provide in a number of different ways.
He has just finished 6th year and off to uni.

I would send them private. My kids live approx 30
mins away from their schools and it has not hindered them. A lot of the children attending those schools will also be travelling so I wouldn’t worry about having to facilitate friendships. Also if your boys attend local sports/hobby groups they will make some friends more locally too. As for 6th form - there’s not much point worrying about that now as with the way exams and apprenticeships are going, it’s impossible to know what a 6th form will look like in 5-7 years time.

@canichange I think from your descriptions that I can guess roughly where you live and the schools you are considering. FWIW, we had lunch yesterday with a retired teacher friend who knows all of the schools and taught in several of them, plus the big Sixth Form college 25 miles away. Her advice would be to choose the small school that stops at Y11 for now, and defer the 6th form choice. What she said was "I'd beggar myself to send little Jonny there!"

I don't think this is outing, but free feel to report it and get it removed.

Does it begin St J?!

It does!

That’s very interesting, thank you. We’re booked in to go to the open day this autumn.

I have known quite a few kids who've been there over the last 30 years, including contemporaries of our DC, and they have all been happy and successful.

Said friend taught there too.

One of my friends was in your position a few years ago. Her local secondary school hasn't great results, poor behaviour of pupils along with poor support and poor pastoral care.

She decided to apply for a far better school in the nearest big town and got her child into this school. The school is about a 20 mins drive away from her house. Her 1st child needed some extra support. The support and encouragement they received help them to do far better in there 1st set of state exams.
Her other children are happy here and all the kids have nice friends. This school would have pupils from the town but also kids from up to a 40 mins drive or bus routes away. Yes she has to drive to the school. Her or her husband have to drop and collect them to friends and event's. Her kids are not hanging around the town meeting up with other teenagers and potentially getting into trouble. My friend is happy with her choice after hearing about and seeing what's going on in the local school.

In your position I would go the private route. You want to give your kids the best chance possible. If one of your kids needs more encouragement and support to get through exams a private school will be better. Then they could offer more subjects and smaller classes which gives both your kids better options long term.
One of my friends parents did not send her to the he local poor secondary school. She did far better in school than people of similar ability to her in primary school. She made new friends and has had a better life than most of the people she went to school with. She has told her friends to look into and send there kids to the best school possible for them and if there local school is poor send them elsewhere.

I agree with this. In our experience friends come from a wider area and also many international, so can be more diverse than the local comps in rural areas.

Yes, lots of ferrying around, but in terms of group stuff and as they get older social stuff friends parents and yourself sometimes share the load.

DGD now 15, getting train and buses into town centre and meeting with friends. Parents all very good at putting them on the train for short journeys, you meet at other end.

@canichange It really makes no odds regarding local friends. They don’t stay friends with dc in your village wherever they go! They will mix with others.

We have around 40 houses in my hamlet. It’s tiny. In my many years here, dc have been to at least 8 different state and private primary schools, and very few dc to the local catchment one! Grass is greener even when it’s not! Move on a few years, dc were going to 4 different grammar schools, 4 different senior private schools (including Eton) and a special school plus a few who went to the local secondary. Some families moved in and dc didn’t change school. Most barely knew each other. My DDs were perfectly content and I used yet another prep for my youngest and we used another boarding school. Having other dc around at secondary age isn’t that important but you must facilitate meet ups.

My DDs go to private schools 40min-1hr away. They still have local friends from primary school, partly helped by going to guides. That works quite well for us.

I'm very much in favour of comprehensive education but I can see why you'd pick private. Stopping at Y11 can be quite a good thing I think.The students all grow up knowing a lot of them will be going to state sixth form with state educated peers which can damp down some of the tendency towards "othering" of the 93%.

The larger the sixth form, the more extensive (often) its bus network so you might be surprised how accessible some of the sixth form options are. We're just in a small town with fairly rubbish buses and no sixth form options in walking distance, but my sixth former can get to at least 7 different colleges and sixth forms by either public transport or a college bus.

the private with 6th form would make more sense so you do not have to uproot him at a crucial time if that is the path he chooses.
The commute is not unusual though you could consider weekly borders

@Migalow That might not happen though. There’s probably a private school 6th form dc go to.

There are limits with 11-16. Often the best teachers want to teach 6th form classes where dc develop into more interesting people. The sport and drama and music capability is inevitably capped by no 6th form. The role models are not there either. You don’t know who is going to an elite university. The ethos at 11-16 just isn’t the same where I live. Most people want a vibrant 6th form at a school and here, only a tiny few don’t have them because they tend to take lower achieving dc. Appreciate not everywhere is the same and there are huge 6th form colleges in some LA areas.

imo bright kids will succeed anywhere

Research done by University College London (UCL) and the Sutton Trust shows that in fact students of similar ability do virtually as well in Comprehensive Schools as in Private Schools - at most maybe half a grade difference for students of similar ability at A level.

However `Comprehensive schools do better than Private for students of average or lower ability.

Perhaps most interestingly Comprehensive students of similar ability to Private School students at A level do better than Privately educated Students both at University graduate and post graduate level.

This may reflect the difficulty some private schools have increasingly had in retaining specialist staff as many Private schools have stopped paying into the Teachers' Superannuation Scheme, to save money.

You should also be aware that Private Schools are not required to employ qualified teachers as state schools must. It might be sensible therefore to ask if the Private Schools can supply you with a list of their staff with their academic qualifications ( eg are they teaching the subjects they have degrees in?) and importantly whether they have eg QTS (Qualified Teaching Status), or PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate in Education) Dip Ed ( Diploma in Education) or M Ed (Master in Education).

@LandSsmum They do not. Time and time again poor teaching limits outcomes.Where progress 8 is a minus, dc are not teaching their potential. I’d always look at quality of teaching in Ofsted inflections because it makes a difference. Dc do under achieve in poor schools and it doesn’t matter how bright they are!

Of course the parents most likely to have bright dc are not in those schools anyway. They live in areas with good schools. This is why not all comps are the same and some are significantly more challenging.

DC in private schools are rarely there just for exam results. For many parents its ethos, like minded parents, wider opportunities, better sport, arts, music and drama. It’s getting dc away from disruptive behaviour and in some cases, dreadful parents. You pay for smaller classes and more individual attention. You don’t necessarily get better teaching but you get less disrupted teaching. You get a decent uniform, good school meals plus good educational trips because parents will pay for these instead of moaning.

There are some great comps but the highest achieving schools are all private and are selective. Comps cannot compete with these. Many parents in selective schools are very high achievers themselves so they want dc educated with similar people. Obviously a bog standard private school is not like the top private schools but a good one will provide a wide range of opportunities and good teaching. The fees often reflect the cost of teachers and private schools can pay very well.