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"

"You arent Mr Gove by any chance are you?"

Not last time I looked, but you made me laugh! :o

I can understand you wanting to do this, but I don't know how well the dc would be able to fit in with their peers i.e. having friends back to stay and potential snobbery. You can probably answer that better than I could because I wasn't privately educated. Could you use the infants of the local primary and save up to send them at junior school? I would love to send mine and if DH remains in the forces it may become reality, but I always wonder what the friends would think if they are from an affluent background and whether this would cause any bullying?

Having had my eyes seriously opended about Private Education locally, I will be sending my children to State schools. It still shocks me how many parents don't even bother to look at state schools locally and yet if they really knew how poor the teaching was in private schools locally they would be shocked. The extra curricular is fab but this is something you can easily arrange yourself.

We are lucky atm to have dd1 in a good school which I feel should be outstanding rated. We are also lucky that dd is bright and very self sufficient in her learning considering she is just 5. Yet we are likely to be posted several times and at each posting you don't know which school you could get into. The local secondary is not brilliant so we feel a) to save disruption to education and b) save on the upheaval socially due to lots of moves that private boarding will be an option later. If they don't cut it there is a maintainance allowance for this so we know finding the fees (at least as it stands now) would be fine as I could work full time once dd2 goes to school and we would potentially have a joint income of 75k per year. At this moment it is not an option as I don't want to work full time.
DH views independent education as the way forward based on his awful school which served a huge underprivilaged population, where most parents chose to be on benefits and didn't want to work (legitimately anyway) and most had no interest in becoming educated. Most did drugs, alcohol etc at a young age and most of his fellow students have been in jail at some point. DH also used to go to schools for recruitment fayres and he has observed that the children in independent schools appeared to have far more ambition than the state school educated ones in deprived areas.
I however had a great secondary state education because it did not serve a hugely underprivilaged area and classes were always attended with severe punishments for truanting.
As many have said it does depend entirely on the school.

think it depends entirely on your choice of schools locally plus however your children and whether they'll benefit/enjoy private school or not. Am kind of convinced that success/results etc depend more on child themselves plus encouragement from parents than school

As the cc says it can depend on the school. However you cannot get away from the fact that the 7% of children are private schools get 50% of the best university places and then make up ridiculously high numbers of some professions and jobs.

"70% of judges went to private schoolsand 28% to state grammars.
In medicine, 51 per cent came from private schools - exactly the same as in 1987.

As for the chief executives of the top 100 companies in the FTSE, 54 per cent came from private schools (compared with 70 per cent two decades ago) and 20 per cent from comprehensives (double the previous percentage).

Oxford and Cambridge had the biggest hold on judicial and media jobs - 78 per cent of judges had been to one of the two universities and 56 per cent of journalists. Only 15 per cent of medics had, though."

It's certainly a massive advantage if you can buy it for your children.

or want to buy it, Xenia!

or can afford to buy it.

Xenia. I have read your biog and you are truly inspirational. I want my dd to look to people like you to see what is possible in life, but surely your life is only possible for a small number, no matter how clever, no matter how hard they work at school?

Have skimmed but wanted to add my opinion.

Many families go without holidays, nice clothes etc and dont have the option of private education. My family did and me and my sister have done very well. A friend I was at school with was from a family of the same financial situation as mine, went to Oxford and was recently named in the top ten female entreprenaurs in the UK.

A truly talented and determined child will achieve if they go to a decent school, be it private or state.

and despite my great academic results, I have lost the ability to spell entrepeneur!

Bogey, I think the point is though "what if your talented and determined child" ends up in a crap school?

I think for me the differentiation required for very bright children just doesn't always happen and stops them from achieving their potential in many state schools i.e. they might get all A* at GCSE, A at A level etc but it may still be less than their capabilities because they weren't streched due to the class sizes and other pupils who are disruptive for whatever reason. Independent schools seem to have less disruptive pupils which then gives teachers more time with children who want to work hard and provides a more conducive learning environment. I think this is definately an over riding benefit of an independent school.

Personally, I'd think you were mental, but it's your money, so YANBU.

State schools are highly regulated, and their teachers have gone through rigourous training, with constant appraisals, targets, continuous professional development, etc...

Private schools don't even have to employ teachers with a degree, let alone teacher training. They only appear to do well because they have a lot of rich kids whose parents have provided for every need of theirs, and small class sizes.

I don't trust league tables.

Don't mean to sound bad here but why would you? the only reason I feel would be because you either feel you have to or are (bad me) a bit of a snob. I say this because I went down the church route for what I thought would be a "good" school. Was told that the catholic schools were the best. Toddled off to church. hated it, preacher or whatever you call him was banging on about being anti-abortion! poxy man! it was a no... then went to C of E, got flipping baptisted the lot (wore white as got a bit carried away), anyway, I digress. Ended up putting my son in a very small (not a bloody academy) state school round the corner and he is doing wonderfully! The school has had an ofstead inspection lately and was "outstanding". Son is doing GSCE's now in year 9. Its not worth putting yourself in terrible debt for a school for

At the end of the day, if a child is academic it shines through. I know loads of adults that went to private schools and they are very low achievers. Or daddy has the money but they're still thick, living in a bubble. Lets face it half of them are in government. Very very worrying!

But missym the statistics of jobs, exaxm results and just about every other marker (except ability tos peak with a regional accent, crime rates etc) surely show private schools do much better. Plenty of them cater for not such clever children and then add a lot of value. It's just about the best thing you can spend you money on unless you are not interested in children having good exam results and satisfying reasonably well paid careers.

As for PF: " Xenia. I have read your biog and you are truly inspirational. I want my dd to look to people like you to see what is possible in life, but surely your life is only possible for a small number, no matter how clever, no matter how hard they work at school?"

Yes, but there is a paucity of ambition amongst some women who just want an expensive wedding and a man to keep them and if everyone in your class at school is getting bad GCSEs and leaving school at 16 to work in a call centre if they work at all you are likely to do that. If most people in your school go on to good universities you are likely to as well. Most children get por GCSEs. The average IQ if 100. Man y children could do better but aren't encouraged at home or school. Most of us don't want our children to be in that category. Ther emay be people out there thinking my daughter could be the UK's leading surgeon but I know the country n eeds care assistants so I will do all in my power to ensure she get that minimum wage job in a care home but I would suggest that isn't the best for that child. Obviously if she has a very low IQ and getting a job at all is a huge achievement then the part time job pushing shopping trolleys would be something we'd all be proud that she'd got . However most parents whose children do "well" tend to be the ones with the higher expectations.

Those women who made career choices which mean they cannot afford £10k school fees dont' need to panic. Either set up a business and earn a fortune or get a job on £30k a year or if that;'s impossible just pick a good state schools and be prepared to move to areas where they exist if that will benefit the children.

So what would be your answer, Xenia, for those children who are less academic to start with, whose parents aren't especially encouraging or inspirational, and who can't afford school fees? What do you think should happen to them?

So the parents aren't encouraging and the child isn't very motivated itself (some children are and can over come that) so not likely to move near a good school and the child is not very bright?

The individual child could do a lot of work itself. I did masses of my own initiative as a teenager in libraries, working, looking into careers.

If they are not very clever and don't work hard and the school isn't much good and the parents are useless then that' snot a great start for them but even so they are lucky they are here and not in some countries without proper education. They then have to manage as best they can and plenty of people I know and work with left school at 16 and then built up very very successful businesses.

I would suggest that the reason that so many of the posts for such as judges, captains of industry etc are filled by the products of private schools is that these institutions are notorious for being conservative in their selection processes. They select 'people like us'. It isnt that a former student of Eton or Harrow makes a better judge/top business executive. It is just that sending ones children to a top private school is part of the signage that a particular person is 'one of us'.

Sending children to private school to achieve their full potential implies the children arent capable of achieving this simply by parents being actively interested and concerned in their childrens education. The parents are buying extra grades the children werent capable of achieving on their own. That doesnt sound particularly honourable to me.

I am quite confidant that my children are achieving their full potential without me buying extra grades for them. This despite them going to our local, somewhat mediocre, state school. When my children get their grades it is their own achivement not something I have bought for them.

GnomeDePlume - I wish I agreed with you...
But I think that one reason that e.g. judges tend to be privately educated (and barristers, those at commercial law firms, etc.) is that private schools are likely to develop better formal English language skills for pupils than state schools can. Sadly, it doesn't look as if this is going to change any time soon.
So if parents speak or write 'Queen's English', then yes, children might be fine at any school, but if children aren't getting this at home, then at many if not most state schools, they're unlikely to develop the sort of language - and therefore rhetorical - skills that are needed in law.
I really don't think it has to do with 'jobs for the boys' or old school networking. It's more of a fundamental problem with the English education system, and less to do with the foibles of individuals.
I think this also explains why e.g. the University of Oxford shrug and say schools must improve when its suggested that it should accept state school pupils with lower grades than private school pupils.

What I can't understand is this. Private schools generally get great results, so why hasn't any government modeled the state system on the practice of private schools? Instead repeated government initiatives have stifled the state sector (curriculum constraint, scrutiny etc...)

It can't just be that kids of parents who are wealthy are somehow more intelligent/academic.

I can't imagine (for example) a classics master at Eton being asked by Ofsted to produce onerous lesson plans, or keep his talking time down to less than 10 minutes a lesson.

For the state sector to improve schools/teachers need to have the handcuffs taken off them, the curriculum needs to be stripped down and teachers should be able to actually teach and not worry about bloody league tables and data.

Good grief, I hope the selection critera for judges is more than 'they talk nicely'!

(I am joshing you slightly as I know that wasnt what you meant)

I dont think it is jobs for the boys but an inate insecurity. The talking nicely, having been to the 'right' schools, having sent ones own children to the 'right' schools are taken as a kind of shorthand for 'will fit right in', 'shares the same values', 'wont rock the boat'.

For the last 20 years I have worked for a large corporation. For that time the board of directors has been the same: male, middle aged, almost exclusively privately educated and white. Every now and then a woman has been allowed in to undertake some technical role the rest of them werent capable of. God forbid though that they would ever allow in someone who had attended the local comp.

It is interesting that the privately educated percentage for medicine was significantly lower than for judges. When you are being treated for an illness do you want the best that Eton or Harrow had to offer or would you prefer your doctor to simply be the best possible?

The Netherlands and Belgium dont have much of a private system yet are still capable of producing doctors, judges et etc. Therefore a private system isnt a prerequisite for these roles.

a private system isnt a prerequisite for these roles.

Of course it shouldn't be... and I find it very, very sad that the education system in the UK is such that the OP even felt the need to ask her question, and very anger-provoking that there have been some posters who seem to think that the best course of action is simply to amass as much money possible, buy their children's way into yet more wealth and bark at everyone else that they should be doing the same.

But it certainly is true that the use of language that comes from private or (now, still, for the lucky few) grammar school education, does account for the remaining imbalance between privately and state educated professionals in e.g. law (and I know you know this, Gnome - glad to hear this is now less true in medicine, though).

I think you make a good point, alistron. Could it be that SATs, etc. are a cheap way of recent governments trying to support the claim that they're 'doing something' (whilst still failing properly to fund state education)?

alistron1 I think the answer to that at least to an extent is that many private schools are able to specialise. They are able to exclude people who dont fit their ethos or match their standards essentially at will. State schools dont have this luxury.

The Dutch system didnt appear to me to be burdened with a national curriculum. It also seemed to me to be far more child centred in a pragmatic way. Education and child are fitted together. I wasnt aware of there being stigma attached to being held back a year or attending a vocational rather than academic school.

To me the English system seems to be burdened with concepts of success and failure which arent necessarily meaningful. It is also burdened with a huge bureaucracy which has nothing to do with improving the educational experience but IMO is simply self-serving.