to consider private school even if...

[stella1w]

... it means no holidays, treats, nice clothes etc etc ever for the next 18 years?

My parents scrimped and saved to put me and my sister through private school even though they had a very low income.

I also have a low income but feel I should make all sacrifices necessary.. on the other hand, I don't think putting myself under severe financial stress during the recession would make me such a good parent either.

Feeling guilty either way..

Bright spot is local infant school just got "outstanding" ofsted report, though the juniors was only "satisfactory"

And I have to add that, in this day and age, I believe it is shocking that the quality of education you have access to should depend on how much money you have - be that private schools, or being able to afford to live in a "decent" catchment area.

The school is in a disadvantaged area. Very much so. But that doesn't mean the DC aren't able. They still underperform.

The teachers are a mixed bunch really. Some good, dealing with a difficlut stiuation. Some average. Some dire. The head was very hopeful when she took over but the combination of the problems with the staff, the pupils and not least the buildings has ground her down I think. The other governors do their best. What can they in reality do? At least two would resign if we could get anyone to replace them...but we can't.

I can hand on heart say that I do not belive a bright children will do well there. I wish it were other wise.

And mal it may well be that your children mix with very challenging families. If you say that they do then that's great. But you know as well as I do that the vast majoirty of kids in those situations are virtual parriahs and that nice MC familes do not mix with them. I represented kids in the care system and we still foster and let me tell you, the isolation these children are in is part of the problem.
Similarly, go to the SN boards here and see how much inclusion there is for their DC.

It sounds very much as though the lassitude is coming from the top,word. Things won't get better if the HT is downbeat, isn't issuing warnings to 'dire' members of staff and two governors want out while another despairs.

Poor kids, they deserve better leadership, surely? Have you been to other schools working with a similar intake to see whether they've got ideas?

I think that the problem with poor schools is more than simply money or their intake. There is something fundamentally wrong with the way that state education is dealt with/managed/administered/strategised in Britain.

Our slightly crap, in and out of special measures, secondary school is the only one in the town. Its headline 5 GCSEs A-C is 44% its ebacc is 4%. The nearby private schools may be creaming off a few at the academic top but still these are dreadful results. More than half the students leave school without 5 GCSEs or their equivalents. So far as I can tell the town is fairly normal. The school isnt a sink school.

The school should be getting average results.

It doesnt.

The reason it doesnt, in my opinion, is that the decision makers dont send their children to this school. If they had to because there wasnt a genuine alternative (as where Portofino lives, as in the Netherlands) the school would improve. The marginal improvements to class sizes, SEN provision, facilities, staff turnover, management etc etc would all occur.

As it stands now there is always a way out for politicians. Move to a nicer area, sacrifice more, as an individual buy your way out of the problem. Dont solve the problem just leave it behind for the poor sods with unreliable incomes and too many children to make the best of it.

Devil take the hindmost.

I admit to 'cacking' on earlier about our 'brill' school, because I thought it might be useful to counter the sweeping generalisations about state schools being poor. There are people on this thread suggesting that state school is never a good choice for children.

'They're not so keen to have their DC mix with kids in care, or kids whose parents have substance abuse problems, or kids who get pregnant at fourteen, or the kid with behavioural problems, or the dirty kids who get sent to school without breakfast.'

I would say getting to know these children when I was at school was a formative experience which has helped me relate to patients who have had troubled upbringings and who end up with poor health in later life.

Agree with originalposter.

I was only one of 4 daughters not to have any private education, and the only one with serious ambition (I was at Co-ed schools too) and who LOVED her school days. (Co-ed might have had something to do with it)

DH went to private and hated it, so I guess we were never going to seriously consider it.

DS2 just joined DS1 at local outstanding comp in south london. Ever improving GCSE's Ebac not good because guess what Govey-babes made the rules up after this year's (and next's) GCSE candidates had made their choices.

My advice ( and people do ask) is do what's right for your child. However in my wholehearted advocacy of state education I also add 'Give your children the credit to maximise their potential surrounded by children from their community'

Pot39 when I went to secondary school in 80s in an inner city comp you had to go to your allocated school whose catchment area included children from every social economic group no child had more than a 25 minute bus journey to school and it meant we all mixed and had to get along. It was the first time I had ever mixed with middle class people or children from council estates. However it was the middle class parents who didn't like there dc mixing with us and lobbied for parental choice which was introduced by Kenneth Baker. Parental choice IMO has been the main reason why our schools are so socially divided as the rich can buy themselves into catchment areas of " good" schools. If I was in charge I'd get rid of parental choice.

Good post pot39. I went to out local comp in the 1990's - we just did nobody thought anymore about it.

At my primary school my headteacher had 'a word' with my mother about me sitting the entrance exam for a scholarship to a famous private school. (My parents could never have afforded school fees). My mum asked me if I wanted to and I said 'I want to be with my friends'. My mum was very keen on the ethos that education begins at home (and so am I) and that if I was going to do well I would do well anywhere. As a result I loved school and went on to f/e and became a lawyer - and a very grounded one at that.

In answer to the OP: No way on earth would I give up holidays and the 'fun' times with my children to send them to a private school. My opinon is that education is about so much more than which school you go to. Naturally I want the best for my boys but this does automatically begin with a state v private school choice, it begins with much more than that.

I agree with 369-childhood is short but the memories stay with you for ever, I would rather had the holidays and the fun times than go to a private school (and always be the poorest, watching others go on holiday and have fun).

Actually I agree that school is a very small part of a child's education. I consider myself a home educator and school just one of the many resources I use (it just happens to be private).

But I must admit to chuckling at folk claiming to be blissfully happy at their kids mixing with children from extremely challenging backgrounds yet coming over all nauseous over the term cacking on.

This thing about being the poorest, and "watching others have fun" just seems so nonsensical to me.

We never do fancy hols (usually a week at the coast, once a year) but we do visit friends and family and have loads of fun at home and in our own village. I don't even think I deprive them of fun.

If anything, I think going to the park with friends is great fun for kids, then a BBQ at home. My kids don't hanker after exotic holidays, as neither do I.

We have 1 car (oldish), we NEVER go skiing or to exotic places. We only have a small TV. We don't feel like "the poor relation", we just don't go in for that sort of lifestyle.

I have no issue with the word cack. No-one was objecting to the language used because it's a mild swear. It was the fact that you were dismissive and rude about other people's opinions and experience (before you started cacking on about the school you know that's not very good which means the whole system is shit and there's no point ever saying any state school is good, of course.....).

If a 14 year old at any school said their history teacher was 'cacking on about making sure you do your revision' (or something), or indeed worse, that's fine. When a grown woman chooses to make a swingeing dismissal of other people's valid points, I don't care if she uses the phrase cacking on, wanking on, boring on, or fucking rambling on - it's just annoying.

Regarding holidays I find it odd that it would be a tragedy to be the child not being able to afoord swanky holidays and have to watch on as others in your private school take them...but it's perfectly fine for you to take nice holidays while other very disadvantaged children in your state school look on.

What the hell is that about? The need to be top dog? Seriously don't get that.

mal sigh. Either you're delibertaley misreading me or you're...in a rush. I said there are obviously great state schools. But that doesn't help the op at all. She might not have a good school that she can access anywhere near her.
It's the idea that all state schools are fabulous that it pure crap. And pretending so is just patronising to all the DC and parents being let down.

And if my choice of words annoys you, well sorry and all that. I suspect I'd annoy you in person too. People with different life experiences and opinions tend to do that eh?

I completely agree with Malcontent, hence my saying that you used an ugly word in an ugly way.

word I tell you what I find amusing -and more than mildly- is the notion that you consider yourself a 'home educator', given the particular schools that your DC attend! Expensive, selective N.London schools! They attend full time I assume?

I find people with different life experiences very interesting on the whole.

No, Word, you said there was absolutely no point in anyone cacking on about how their local school was good. I think that was offensive and pretty silly, really. And people who say that they know of good schools aren't necessarily saying they live near an Ofsted-rated Good or OUtstanding, either (although the OP actually does!).

If school is such a tiny weeny part of your child's education, why must it be private?

And no, I know many people with different opinions and experiences from my own who I don't find annoying at all.

Ah but yellow I consider education a life long process. I'm still educating myself daily long after I left any educational establishment.

I consider my DC's education entirely my responsibility (as does the law actually). From the moment they were born I began my role as their educator. I taught them to use a loo, eat with a fork, and the difference between right from wrong way before I even registered with a school.

Yes they go to excellent schools (htough not in N London). But that doesn't and will never be the main source of their 'education'. Life and home and family is that. What's to sneer at?

This, Word, is what you had to say about state education:

And all this breast beating about all state schools being fab. Uh huh. So that's why the vast majority of home schooled children dropped out of state education, cos it was working so well? That's why under 25% of the DC in the school where I'm governor didn't even achieve 5 GCSEs is it?

I read that as

1. 'uh huh' - dismissal of idea that state schools even can be fab - and any suggestion otherwise is 'breast beating', not any sort of rational argument
2. Home schooled children dropped out of state school - proves state ed no good. Well, in my experience of children I know who were taken out of school to be HE, there have been other issues, generally around family ideology of what constitutes a good childhood/education, which don't fit either with state or private schooling - anecdotal I know but I tend to think that HE families don't only pull out because they don't like a school.
3. the school you work at isn't as good as it could be if its catchment wasn't diverted into independent and grammar schools and so people need to shut up saying any state school is good.

As for full time school...well they get almost 22 weeks off. So they're at home a lot. Only just got one of them back today after being at home eight and a half weeks.

As far as a I can tell they were still learning stuff every day of those holidays.

mal if you look at the Badman material (I was inviolved in the enquiry, such as it was). The figures speak for themselves.

The vast amjorityof home educators dropped out of state school due to problems within it ( lack of proper SN provision being the highest factor) not due to ideology against school per se.

There are families like that of course, and many become utterly evangelistic after they begin HE, but they initially dropped out because the stae system let them down.

Come off it word, we're using the term education in its narrow sense of notching up A's, A's, B's and the rest. And that's the main reason you've chosen smart fee-paying schools for your kids. You want them to notch up as many A's as they possibly can and then go to Oxford or Cambridge or even another RG/'94 failing that! That's the 'education' up for debate.

We're not talking about etiquette at table or the inculcation of good reasons not to murder or steal.

Er, we call them school holidays down our way .

yellow I really really didn't choose my DC's schools for the string of A*s they might or might not get. Who even considers that stuff when they're three and can't pronounce 'th' ?

What I wanted was for their school to continue in the same way I had been educating them. So I chose a school with acres of green space, that was around the corner and seemed to share my ehtos of child rearing. It was most definitely not a hot house and most definitely was not one of those schools where you just hand your DC in and expect them to take over.

At secondary level DD has chosen to attend a not very selective girls school. Again, there are schools at our disposal that would be all about the A*s (habs, nlc, stalbans high plus she got a place at grammar) but we didn't go there.

Education just isn't about that for me or her. And it's certainly not what I pay for. Don't get me wrong I want her to reach her potential but along the way to smething much more valuable.

DS is a different geezer. He has deliberately chosen the most selective high achieving secondary in the near area...strange child.

And as to your pos aboout school hols, well yes they're away from school, but they're not away from life and learning and an education. That all carries on.

But stops the moment the walk through the doors of a state school? Hypothetically.