Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Flip

1 2 3 4 5 6 ··· 10 11

Original poster

State school teachers sending their own children to private schools

269 replies

abitwobbly · 13/03/2011 21:12

AIBU to think we are not immoral or anti state and that we have just chosen the right school for our child??

OP posts:

gallifrey · 14/03/2011 11:45

School fees around here are £4500 a term, I don't know how anyone could afford it tbh, especially with 2 children.
My husband earns as much as 2 teachers and we can't afford to send our children to a private school...

JoanofArgos · 14/03/2011 11:46

Right, so they do the ballet and the rugby and the piano at school during the day, and there are no tired-making hours spent doing those things after school, or at the weekend. How efficient - though it makes me wonder how the lessons fit in, if there are not extra hours for the hobby stuff which might make them tired?

Sending your kids private is bad enough whoever you are, but state school teachers should be ashamed of themselves.

Adair · 14/03/2011 11:46

(realised I am arguing against no-one [blush. Back to what was actually said; I believe lots of teachers earn a respectable salary so would be able to pay private, however, yes of course lots of people - teachers or otherwise who couldn't. Not sure where we fall - 3 kids, one ft, one pt teacher..)

myredcardigan · 14/03/2011 11:47

Think it would be £34875 or something. That's top of scale plus 2 lots of threshold.

Dh is a lawyer and earns 4x what I earn despite the fact that I have more qualifications than him. So yes, salary is ok and probably above national average but evrey so often I wonder what else I could have done...Maybe if I'd gone to law school too instead of doing a PGCE we'd be in a lovely position.

jasminetom · 14/03/2011 11:47

I used to go to a crap state school. My mum was a teacher in a nearby private school. My History teacher and tutor at crap school had a son who was head boy at mum's school. She was constantly making snide remarks about why my parents didn't think it was worth giving me a "decent" education. (they didn't really bother because I was ok, my little sister was dyslexic and terribly bullied at her state primary and was then moved to the private sector). I am pro private education and personally think it is better. That is why I have always worked in private schools. Any state school teacher who believes their kid gets a better education in a private school is a great, fat hypocrite.

gallifrey · 14/03/2011 11:48

Saying that I am more than happy with the schools in this area, maybe if I lived in some grotty inner city slum it would be a bit different!

ZZZenAgain · 14/03/2011 11:50

I don't see why state school teachers should be ashamed of themselves Joan. They are doing a difficult job presumably to the best of their ability and I for one, under no circumstances, want to do it. If they have the means to provide something else for their dc and choose to do it , I really don't see why it is anyone else's business. I mean they don't sell their soul when they take up a job, any more than the rest of us

ZZZenAgain · 14/03/2011 11:51

I don't think it is being hypocritical, I really don't but it makes me wonder what they see at state school level, that made them choose private tbh

myredcardigan · 14/03/2011 11:52

No need to be so cross!
The piano is part of their music lessons. Rugby obviously covered in PE. DD1 does ballet after school one day whilst DS does chess club.

Fees are around 3k per term per child so from September when DD2 goes, it will be 9k per term. Not cheap but worth it for our family. DD2 can't wait to go as she sees how much the older 2 love it!

I hav enothing to be ashamed of. I am not a polititian. I am not dictating to anyone else what they should do.

I do my job-very well as it happens and feel comfortable with my choices.

cazzybabs · 14/03/2011 11:52

southeastastra and abitwobbly would you go private if you could?

ZZZenAgain · 14/03/2011 11:52

do you think a higher proportion of teachers' dc are winning scholarships maybe? They may just be more in the know re educational possibilities than the rest of us

JoanofArgos · 14/03/2011 11:53

So what they are saying to all the parents whose kids they teach, who can't afford not to send kids there or - just maybe - have a couple of principles - is 'what we offer is fine. If you can't afford 'better'. I can afford better, and so I wouldn't touch what we offer, but you can't, so here you go'.

They can do what they want, but I would think massively less of any teacher who sent their children privately.

cazzybabs · 14/03/2011 11:54

don't forget most teachers work well away from their catchment school so it is unfair because simply they can't send their child to the school they work in.

TBH I don't really understand why you seem bitter about it

gallifrey · 14/03/2011 11:55

There is a boy in my daughters class who's parents are both teachers, I'm sure it's no fluke that he is very intelligent!

JoanofArgos · 14/03/2011 11:57

I think it's a dreadful message about how you feel about the system you work in, if you won't send your kid to state school. I mean, I do despise all users of independent schools, but state teachers especially.

myredcardigan · 14/03/2011 11:57

Quite!
Why should social workers bother helping those less fortunate when their own kids don't need support?

Should you be a midwife if you never want children yourself?

Maybe Dh's best friend shouldn't bother stitching up the idiots who come into his A&E at the weekend. He thinks a lot of them are drunken louts; should he just leave them to bleed to death? Do you think he stitches them any less well than he does the MC mother who comes in after slipping on some houmous?

ZZZenAgain · 14/03/2011 11:59

you don't think a teacher in a state school is making a reasonable effort to give yourdc the best education s/he can in the circumstances within which s/he has to teach (size of class, type of head, curriculum restraints etc etc)?

Joanofargos: "'what we offer is fine. If you can't afford 'better'. I can afford better, and so I wouldn't touch what we offer, but you can't, so here you go'."

well maybe Joan. Maybe. Worries me a bit to think what they are seeing that they personally don't much like tbh

JoanofArgos · 14/03/2011 11:59

That's a ridiculous argument. The equivalent would be if the hypothetical midwife didn't trust her own colleagues to deliver her if she was pregnant.

JoanofArgos · 14/03/2011 12:00

I do think they are making a reasonable effort, precisely, yes! So hopefully a teacher would know that too, and would trust that her own child would get the best education also.

If they don't like what they are seeing, all the worse that they think it's ok for everyone else but not their own kids!

myredcardigan · 14/03/2011 12:01

But Joan, many teachers teaching in challenging areas but sending their children to the nice, MC catchment school where they live are saying the same, surely?
Believe it or not, there is a world of difference between some state schools too. Lots of state school teachers wouldn't dream of sending their kids to the school they teach in.

Adair · 14/03/2011 12:01

Tbh i would be even more aghast at teachers who thought they were doing something charitable by teaching in state and helping those poor, unfortunates. It's not quite the same. Children are children. Jeez.

ZZZenAgain · 14/03/2011 12:02

I wonder if it is a lot to do with the curriculum - that they don't like the NC

I don't know . As I said, have never asked anyone about it. Just seems teachers ar in a position to know (more so than the rest of us)

cazzybabs · 14/03/2011 12:03

"If they don't like what they are seeing, all the worse that they think it's ok for everyone else but not their own kids!"

that is quite an assumption .. maybe they don't think it is OK but how can they change it???

ZZZenAgain · 14/03/2011 12:04

changes can take a long time and you have to get past a lot of other people with more say usually, don't you?

where did the charity thing come in, I didn't see what you are referring to?

ZZZenAgain · 14/03/2011 12:05

Adair, that was to Adair. Where is this thing about teaching as a haritable thing?

Flip

1 2 3 4 5 6 ··· 10 11