To be in awe of private school's...

[whydontwehaveasharpknife]

I am a nanny, the other day I accompanied the girl that I nanny for in rural Northamptonshire to the schools open day, it was AMAZING- the grounds were like a national trust property, the uniforms all hand made by a famous London fashion designer, there was a lake, climbing wall, beautiful dining room, tree climbing, den building, the children who already attend the school were incredibly polite and sat in the library reading broad-sheet news papers.

I grew up on a council estate with a peado living round the corner that used to terrify me when I walked the dog, my mother is mentally ill and I've never lived with her, in my early teens my step mother left to become a heroin addict.

Needless to say, I have had to fight pretty hard for my A levels/sanity/ health and have applied to university this year but I must admit I couldn't help but feel 'lower than these people, the staff, the parents and even the children they were all so refined and I felt they could see that I am not of the same breed.

It is just luck though isn't it, why do some people who are born into fortunate circumstances get all the opportunities at success whilst others have to work really hard into their late twenties just to get the success these children achieve when they are 18.

I also think that people should realise that not all private schools are as the OP describes. A lot of the experiences described are of all girls boarding schools several decades ago, mainly, I imagine, in the Home Counties. Hardly comparable to a day school in the north of England.

The idea that adversity makes you more determined and likely to succeed is so patronising.
If it were remotely true the boardrooms would be full of kids like me. They're not. They're full of the privately educated. As are the dealing rooms. The banks. The courts. The houses of parliament. The news rooms.

This is the reality and it serves no purpose to pretend otherwise.

Oh and having suffered a fair share of adversity myself let me tell you it's not all it's cracked up to be.
It makes things harder. Not impossible, but way harder.

I wouldn't wish it on anyone, least of all my kids.

DH went to an innner city comp. Our DC go to independent schools for 18k and 14k pa respectively. We do it not for prestige but for the breadth of the curriculum and the fact that such schools are able to deal with things like persistent disruption and bullying very effectively and very permanently. That makes the broad curriculum, ie, three separate sciences, classical languages, things like Mandarin, and music and sports departments that are both professional, differentiated and generally superb.

Neither DH nor I find the atmospheres at either school particularly elite or snotty. One school is cutting edge academically, one caters for the middle tier academically and is sprawling and a bit scruffy but pastorally superb.

Generally private schools ARE stunning - they have to be, they're businesses in competition with each other for your money.

But they're not all hothouses for drug addicted anorexic highfliers with massive superiority complexes - some are actually quite nice normal places that instil self-worth and self-belief, a strong sense of ambition and motivation, as well as making the children realise that they are incredibly privileged and fortunate and the majority of children their age do not have that advantage.

Yep wordfactory. If adversity was a sure sign of future success the girl at my school whose mother was a prostitute would be Chancellor of the Exchequer. The last time I checked she wasn't.

jilnotcif, it was more subtle than that. I think the message was about taking responsibility for things around you. So if you found yourself, say, being the most junior person in a bookshop dusting the stock (as I was to a couple of years later), you also tried to think up ways to sell as many books as possible for your employer at the same time. So in that case I offered to do the window displays and taught myself how to do this for best effect with limited resources, by looking at other shops' displays in my spare time and working out which books we needed to shift most of. I think now it might be called entrepreneurship, but then it was seen as initiative/duty/responsibility. That's quite a different thing from assuming you have a divine right to be Prime Minister or whatever, because everyone's always told you how brilliant you are, for example.

I can actually hear you snorting and braying from here thebestisyettocome.

Does anyone else think there was a bigger social mix when they were at private school than now? I wonder if they have become more exclusive.

I work in universities, and the vast majority of people I work with were either privately educated, or attended direct grant schools that went private later on. Except a lot of people keep that quiet.

Venn diagram. That is all.

Bibbityisaporker.
Wtf is that supposed to mean. It's a bit fucking hard to snort and bray with a pig-shit thick Wigan accent

LeQueen I have worked in a Steiner school myself, but I think that their ethos is less elitist,more accessible and also a far more holistic approach to educating children, they are beautiful schools (not without their own politics I beleive)

But how many Steiner educated people go on to work in the 'high paid' jobs afforded to people who have been to Eaton for instance? Perhaps because they are not interested in pursuing such careers.

To be honest the kind of child I was I would probably have benefited a lot more from Steiner school vs mainstream private.

Someone mentioned jealousy earlier, I am not jealous at all of people who are afforded opportunities, I am happy for anyone who enjoys beautiful surroundings and experiences but I was just exploring how uncomfortable I felt around these people and why that might be.

I volunteered to start with then a position came up to support a child who they suspected had ASD which I took, it was in New Zealand near Wellington Tirohanga Upper Hutt and it was a little Utopia!

typo3.raphaelhouse.school.nz/

I would love to know more about steiner schools - can you pm me some info lequeen?!

Op - I live in northants and would love to know which school you went or see?! Can you pm me the name?! I have a vague idea...

just Pm'd you

Richard Branson is the public-school educated son of a millionaire.

Fuck knows how that constitutes 'coming from nothing.'

When I see that beardy twat Johnny Rotten's maxim of 'never trust an (ex) hippy' springs immediately to mind.

And he inflicted tubular fucking bells on us all: the shitehawk.

Fair play for signing Can though, they really were brilliant.

OP I mentioned jealousy earlier and I realized after I posted it wasn't the right word. Your posts don't sound jealous. Sorry.

Do you think you have a better understanding of why you felt uncomfortable?