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"

The only time that I considered private education it was because of SN-I didn't in the end because the comprehensive got their act together.

Me too exotic I was getting desperate but when I say 'consider' I mean dreamt because the fees are higher than our income. I even considered home schooling and I am so not cut out for home schooling.

I had never considered a special school but he is now doing very well and is very happy.

The problem is that state and private provision vary massively throughout the country. So the decisions depend totally on the particular situation in your area and your financial situation.

The geography of our fairly remote area means that almost no children in our town go private, except for the occasional overseas family on secondment who are having fees paid by their company. The children have to travel an hour by bus to get there, and the best thing about the school is the golf course. They have little social life in town as they are not back until late in the evening and leave early in the morning.

There is no grammar system, so all the children of all abilities go to the comp. They send around 4 or 5 to Oxbridge each year and a high proportion to Russell group, and other good Universities.I think this is mainly due to the able children from richer families not being in private schools.

I went to University with someone from Eton, who couldn't believe I'd been to a comp. He had never met anyone from a comp before....

1. Selective education for bright children from age 4 works tremedously well. If you happen to have a bright child (and mine are reasonably bright) I think it can do them a lot of good. We aimed to get our 5 into day schools in the top 10 - 20 by A level results as young as we could manage it and it worked fairly well.

1. However if your child isn't very clever the added value in less selective private day schools with small classes can be tremendous. In some ways those schools are even more important for the less bright child because all their other talents such as sport, music never mind confidence, accent and other stuff that does matter can be developed too.

1. If you have a child with special needs there are indeed fee paying schools which are good for that. There are all kinds of private schools for children with special needs although you obviously need to pick one that specialises in that just as you wouldn't send your non music child to a specialist music private school like Chetham's.

1. Most state school parents (94% of parents are in the state system) choose their school by house price really. Move to a posh rich area and get their child educated with other posh rich state school pupils. That is morally worse than paying fees.

My experience of SN and private schools is very positive. (DS has SN). They don't 'have' to provide for SN (I believe they don't even 'have' to recognise SN at all), but they do it fantastically well. The think I like best about it is that they do so without marking the child out as having SN. (Though maybe that's the same in state schools - I wouldn't know).

Beyond this, though, my experience of private schools thus far is that they treat all children as if they had SN. Our experience is that our individual children (not just our SN child) are treated as individuals all the time, and are given tailored support/extension/homework/whatever to suit them and the particular level that they personally are at. It's the same right across the board - sport, music, academic and so on.

I can't speak for all private schools, and nor can I say that this doesn't happen in state schools too (I have no experience of state schools either as a pupil or as a parent). That's just our experience.

PS Iggi999, there is a relatively high proportion of pupils with SN at my DS's private school. They seem to think it's all part of the rich tapestry and so on... but of course there's no money in SN for private schools, so they actively choose to give tailored help rather than being paid per statement (as I believe happens in state schools - though I may be wrong).

I understand Mrs de Vere, but I meant SEN, not necessarily SN (there is overlap I guess).

Although, my friend with a SN child has moved him to private as she reckoned that a 15 people class, and 2 hrs a week one on one would still be better than a 25 hr statement in State school (!). That threw me a bit, but she seems to have been right. The State school in question used 20 hrs of HIS one-on-one on non statemented disruptive children , so he only got 5 hrs in reaL life anyway...

Xenia

I'm curious, which accent is the most desirable in your view? In public life nowadays, there are a wide range of accents spoken by successful educated people.

Regarding confidence, can this not be fostered by a caring, supportive family environment together with a good state school experience? Or is this a type of confidence particular to private school, in your opinion.

Many state schools excel in both sport and music. Martin Johnson, for example went to state school along with many Leicester Tigers. Many pupils from state schools gain entry to top music schools.

Iggi, the Private school my DC are going to is inclusive, they have SN children (aspergers, Autism and some physically SN children, eg in wheelchair) as well as SEn children (dyslexia, auditory processing difficulties etc.) however, if the child needs more than 2 hrs a week one on one, or is violent and needs 24/7 adult supervision they charge extra.

A boy in my DC class is bright but can be violent and is the removed to get one-on-one. his parents pay quite a bit extra.

They also take children who are "simply" 1 or 2 years behind due to immigration, sickness etc.

Yet their y6 score says ALL children get level 4 b (minimum) or above.

I find that quite impressive.

Similar dilemma here. We are sending her to a private school nursery now and will have a look at the local school and a couple private ones a decide from there based on which one will give DD the best education. I've always heard that you should send them to a good state school for primary and reserve your money for private secondary, but I suppose it depends on how good the primary is...

mirabile children with SEN can get a statement that names a private school.

I have a son with SEN ,he was in a Fantastc independent school who supported him really well until the end of year 5,when by mutual agreement (and I mean this)he moved to an independent specialist school.The most difficult thing in some ways was that he had been supported so well and was so well integrated that he really didn't realise that there was a problem .
Our two other sons are at a different independent closer ,slightly more selective but still with a broad intake ,they try to look at the whole child not just the academics,the value added is the thing

chandon I reckon the reason my son has done so well since he started in a special school is that the class sizes are so small. His statement is almost redundant in this environment so I can see how your friend is thinking.

His MS school put off applying for a statement for two years until I did it myself. He was on school action + and was registered as SEN so the school receieved money for the SEN pot and I firmly beleive they were reluctant to have to divert that common money towards my son. Once statemented this would have happened.

So I moved him. Even with a statement the ethos of the school was appalling and I didnt want him there.

I live in a very unfashionable part of London. We have several very good, sought after independant schools but we also have lots of new ones popping up in church halls etc.

I walk past one every day and marvel that parents would spend thousands sending their children to a school with no playground and freezing cold toilets (I know this hall very well).

It is also known for treating children as individuals so I cant work out why they have to wear such prescriptive uniforms.

But I have absolutly no personal experience of private schooling so its all a mystery to me

stella1w if you would have to make huge sacrifices just to make the fees now do you really think you can afford private education into the future? It isnt just for now it is for the whole of your children's education.

You also have to look at the whole cost not just fees. Many of my friends with privately educated children have spoken feelingly of the begging letters from the school to fund this or that project. These werent for just a £5 donation but in a number of cases the expected donation was in the hundreds of pounds.

Schools know which parents struggle to make the fees and some of those schools are quite merciless in exploiting those parents. These are the parents who are always finding themselves expected to help out at the school fairs and fetes. Wealthy parents who have no difficulty making the fees are easily able to buy their way out of these obligations with generous donations.

If you already find yourself baulking at the fees now then keep in mind the thought that no privately educating parent ever looks at the cost and thinks 'well that wasnt as much as I thought it was going to be'.

I was asked abotu accents. I had said we picked schools in the top 20 in the country for A level results and with selective education for our children from age 4 so that clearly was my main priority - that they were with other children who work at a similar level. I did not pick posh schools. They weren't at country boarding schools but at schools with a massive ethnic religious and cultural mix and huge differences in income between parents so I am not the right person to bring in the class debate. However I was saying if a child is not very bright then he might need to major on his other skills, hobbies, contacts, accent to get on and a private school with lots of that kind of value added really can help.

As for what accent is most helpful it depends on what work you might end up doing. It is not against the law to discriminate on grounds of looks, class, clothes etc and on the whole the better paid the job the less likely people will drop an aitch or say you was, you know etc etc Perhaps if you can't afford school fees elocution lessons might be worth investing in for people's children.

Confidence - yes of course you can get that in any caring home and 94% of chidlren go to state schools although 50% of children at good universities are from the 6% at private schools. More than third of MPs elected last year went to private schools.

... "more than half of leading news journalists, medics and chief executives and 70 per cent of barristers and judges were educated at private schools. In politics, 13 schools (12 of them fee-paying) produced a tenth of all MPs in the new Parliament."
Perhaps the best thing after loving your childlren etc as a mother is to have a good enough job such that you can fund school fees for them. Nothing will do them as much good. Make good career choices so you can fund school fees and you benefit your children hugely.

You might say many state schools do well at music and sport but a massive percentage of all our Olympic people are from private schools and there are very very few state schools which have as good orchestras and choirs as the private sector with as many children passing grade 8s.

I think it's dreadfu. There is no reason primary school children aged 10 cannot practise for hours and learn complex latin church music in parts as private school chidlren do. Why don't they? It just requires effort. It doesn't require anything else. It doesn't need any money.

I am not the right person to bring in the class debate.

Oh, but you are, Xenia, you really are!

Xenia
Accent is not the same as correct enunciation and grammar. It is perfectly possible to have an accent without losing clarity of speech. I would describe my accent as Radio Scotland and as a product of a comp it did not hold me back in anyway in my medical career.

Although we have the earning power to afford private school, we have chosen not to go down this route, as our state school is excellent and the local private day school is poor academically. Many other professionals locally have made identical choices. I think our children benefit from making friends with children of all abilities and from all backgrounds. If they did choose to go into politics, medicine, or law I feel this experience would benefit them in their dealings with the general public.

When I was at school, our neighboring private school asked our orchestra to play The Mikado for their production because their music department wasn't capable. They even paid us. So I think you are over generalising. We also had a choir which sang all sorts of music in the Cathedral, including French and Latin.

There are good comps around.

Funnily enough I don't agree with selection at four, it's far too young and in my opinion it's impossible to accurately cognitively assess at this tender age (indeed, if it's ever possible). I know of a few who were rejected at this age to go on to achieve strings of A stars. One child was rejected because she stood behind her mother's skirt and they said she was clearly hugely under-confident.

The same stands at 11yrs Cortina.

I do believe that the majority of private schools offer a better quality of education for lots of reasons. If you've spent as much time in both sectors as I have there's simply no argument, I think most people have no idea. Most people never experience the private sector so go on hearsay and say 'well there are good and bad schools in both sectors' this may make them feel better but the stark truth IMO is that there are few truly poor private schools.

Most people can't afford private education for their children so criticise it and focus on perceived negatives. We are in a good state school but if possible I'd find a better prep school in an instant, there's one on our doorstep.

I think it's ridiculous to suggest private schools are some sort of class melting pot.

Our choice is private school/ mortgage +food - what kind of 'choice' is that?

I started in a truly poor all girls private school and was taken out by my parents after a few years of primary as the school was not achieving in science subjects. Hardly anyone was getting As at Higher Grade. My three brothers continued at their all boys private school. We all got identical results-straight As, and all went on to medical school.

Their school was academically better than mine as it was selective. But I have kept many life long friends from my school and have no regrets about going there. We were streamed so there was no problem with teachers trying to cope with differing abilities in the same class.

If politicians and other people in positions of power, and their families had to actually use the NHS and school system as ordinary people, they would sort out this post code lottery as a matter of priority.

I think many people would not go private if the state schools were excellent throughout the country.

It would seem that some of the "stars" of the TV series The Only Way is Essex were privately educated. This blows the argument about accents out of the water.

It is a fantasy that every school can ever be excellent, if that means producing identical results etc (they could all be excellent in terms of adding value).
Until there is social equality in the country, or at least a lessening of the gap between rich and poor, then schools will just reflect the different life chances of the wider society.