WARNING this is a state v private education thread

[icarriedawatermelon2]

AIBU to feel that this is so unfair and that my DS should have the chance to experience all this? AIBU to feel really quite crap and that I have failed him?

To cut a long story short he is at nursery in an amazing prep school. He is there because it is on our door step and the nursery package was the best around in terms of flexible hours, extras etc. Anyway thats not the issue.

The issue is I have seen just how much is available to the children there but more importantly the amazing care of all the students, small classes, amazing setting, child centered learning, freedom to climb trees, etc.

We would be killing ourselves to send our children there :(
Our local state school has a lovely head, but is full to bursting, no space outside etc etc lots of heart there but you just can't compare the two schools.

My DC are every bit worth the best IMO! It makes me MAD that we can't afford it :(

Ok rant over....feel better for getting it out.

The comment about the average fees being £2k per term in the 90s and £10k per term now is absolute rubbish. The (senior) school I went to from 1992-1999 started at £1800 a term and was £2200 by the time I left. I have just looked at the website and it is now £3147 a term so not that huge an increase in the last 13 years.

Anyway, I agree with everything LadyRabbit said.

There is already a many-tiered system in comps - it is called streaming.

Vicky2011 I would have guessed the main difference in affordability is in the % of earnings our generation spends on housing costs compared to our parents'?

gorblimey as far as I'm aware, state schools vastly more often set than they stream, and there is mobility between sets - certainly you can't pay for a place in the top set.

Of course your YANBU OP I echo what others have said talk to the bursar about a bursary you never know. Ignore all the anti independent school brigade they wheel out the same boring arguements every time this is brought up on MN.
"The comment about the average fees being £2k per term in the 90s and £10k per term now is absolute rubbish."
I agree with LadyKooKoo there isn't a day school in Engalnd charging this much a term; Eton is only a bit more than this and thats full boarding.

LOL, Tannhauser. We should all just get better paid employment ... ?! Genius. Why didn't we think of that? I'll be doing that this afternoon then.

Maples.
It is all well and good to tell us about the state educated people who get a first from Oxbridge but what about those many schools who never send kids to Oxbridge. I could give you the names of loads of them in places like Liverpool, Manchester and Wigan.

Fed up with parents who choose and or desire to send their kids to private schools being given such a hard time by some of the posters here. It's just reverse snobbery. Or jealousy. What people choose to do is really no one else's business.
Why should I send my child to the crap ofsted failing state primary that we were given a place at when there is a much better private school a couple of miles away?
If your child is at a state school and is flourishing there then fine. But please stop making immature jealous comments to people such as OP.
There is a reason why private schools are so sought after....

OP, YANBU to feel it is unfair but YABU to feel crap about it and to think that you have failed him (although I do understand the need to rant!).

I don't think it is fair that children whose parents can afford it will have more advantages than those whose can't. But life isn't fair. It isn't fair that your child gets to go to a state school with a lovely head and lots of heart while others have to go to real sink holes. Nor is it fair that some children have great parents who invest loads of time and love in them and others don't.

Every child receives different advantages/disadvantages: some of which you can control, some of which you can afford, a lot of which you can't. You just need to focus on everything that you can do for your children and not so much what you can't.

^Did you know that state school educated students get more firsts per head at university?

Did you know that state school educated students get better degrees at Oxbridge than private school educated undergrads?^

That's interesting, maples - I didn't know that. Is there any research as to why that would be? I'm not really sure what we should take away from that.

I assume (but have no idea) that the state-educated graduates who get into university have worked that much harder to get there than their private-educated contemporaries and not because they are better educated - could that be right? Which is fine if you are super-bright and super-disciplined but not so great if you need the extra support.

Which is to say that I will probably send my child to the best school I can afford (which in my neck in the woods is definitely a private school) and not take the chance that if I send them to the local satisfactory state school they are more likely to get a first iyswim.

maple the number of firsts from state schooled pupils is indeed higher, but the numbers of state schooled pupils in the best paid jobs, or areas of influence ahve actually got smaller in the last ten years.

There are actually less judges, politicians, lawyers, doctors, financiers etc from state schools than ten years ago. Shocking but true.

And if you extrapolate the degrees from Oxbridge, there are a diminishing number of comprhensively educated students gaining those top degrees. They are going to grammar kids.

Vicky2011

Flatpack that is interesting. I had wondered why my parents, on modest teachers salaries were able to send me to private school and yet even though my DH and I earn around 50% more than they ever did (real terms) we stand no hope of DS going private. I have always assumed I was shit with money and I think there's bound to be some of that but it's interesting to hear that it really has become relatively more expensive and of course more exclusive.

I was lucky enough to go to public school in the early 90s, so I know exactly what the fees were. And I know exactly what they charge now. Another school near to me charges £8,000 per term day and £10,500 per term boarding.

echt

flatpackhamster you still haven't provided any evidence for your assertion. Your second paragraph has what to do with the thread?

Nice to see the Thread Police have turned up.

In 1997 30% of politicians were privately educated. Today it is 34%.
Since 1986 senior journos have risen from 49% to 54% today.

70% of all judges are privately educated and 68% of all lawyers.

Alan Milburn: 'There is little evidence at the top of the professions of any change to social exclusivity.'

I thought the increase was due to more people being wealthy enough to afford private?

therefore more people being privately educated in the first place.

it would be £15k a year minimum for our local independent (not a cheap one) though...

i do know people who have got 30% scholarships to that school, but that's still £10k pa ..

I sympathise with the op because i am conscious of the same thing. it's there. it gets great results. we can't afford it. i am not sure we'd get a bursary as we don't do God.

meh. you do your best for your kids, and that's all you can do....

Wordfactory, if private schooling affords the opportunity to buy into a socially exclusive circle that facilitates the conversion of good grades into good jobs, do we have any figures to show whether that privilege extends to the 'poor' kids who muscled their way into that schooling?

Inequality is on the increase. There are many reasons why inequality is on the increase, but a lot of it was to do with the previous Labour Government. Ironic, no?

One of the things they did was abolish the assisted places scheme which allowed the poor but bright a better education.

I really do not understand the envy-based politics which looks facts in the face (it is a fairly unpalatable fact that independent schools do provide a better academic and all-round education) and say, well, instead of enabling people who would benefit from that education to continue accessing it, what we'll do instead is cut off the access route.

They abolished the grammar schools too ...

I agree Hopefully. It makes no sense.

littlems I don't have the answer to that one.

Is it the school, or is it the DC's family and wealth that make the difference? Good question. A slippery mix, I suspect.

maples I got a first at a Russell group university and I am almost certain it had NOTHING to do with going to a comp. In fact, had I stayed at the comp, I might not have thought it was even worth applying as not that many did. About one person every four years got into Oxbridge, and hardly anybody got an A at A level. If my parents, and one teacher who spotted my potential and suggested I get the hell out of that school, hadn't pushed me to apply for a scholarship I may have not bothered with university. When I got to public school, the level was so incredibly high and there was time to push the kids who would ordinarily get a D or E at A level so that they ended up with great grades and places at good universities. This is where state school fails so many. You might have a dream as a kid and the overwhelming attitude is: 'it's unlikely; try something vocational, something within your reach (or what we can feasibly expect given how little funding/time/energy we have to expend on you)'. My experience of public school was 'it's absolutely possible for you to achieve your goal - and we will help you as much as we can.'

TheOriginalSteamingNit What on earth are you implying? That people who go to private school begrudge others the experience and purposely want to keep others down? Are you quite mad? If that is what you're implying, then may I suggest you take a long hard look at that chip on your shoulder and see if you might remove it.

I second those questioning the stats about more graduates from comps with firsts. I do happen to think that as long as you aren't in a truly awful state school and you are very bright you will do well regardless - however, as I stated above, plenty of kids who are academically average or above, do much, much better at private schools than their counterparts in state schooling.

Herein lies the rub, however. We COULD have an amazing state school system - take Germany or Sweden or Norway for example, where most people wouldn't even dream of privately educating their offspring. But how many of you are prepared to sign up for real, functioning socialism? It would be expensive, and I imagine that you'd all be moaning about a version of the Norwegian tax system with a 30% flat rate of income tax (albeit with a very generous starting threshold) regardless of good our schools became.

But for all my posh education that 'pulls up the ladder' (!) I would happily pay a lot of tax if it meant all our children could get the standard of education available in good independent schools but for free.

TheOriginalSteamingNit What on earth are you implying? That people who go to private school begrudge others the experience and purposely want to keep others down? Are you quite mad? If that is what you're implying, then may I suggest you take a long hard look at that chip on your shoulder and see if you might remove it.

No, that's not what I'm implying at all: I was responding to the fact that you suggested that those of us who didn't go to private school lose validity in our arguments by suggesting that it would be equally possibly to say to a parent who had herself been privately educated but didn't want that for her children had negated her argument, because having benefitted from the system she was denying it to her children.

For example, I was once asked whether I was 'white, middle class, RG university and privately educated myself' as a response to the fact that I wouldn't want private education for my children and don't approve of it.

No, I am not 'quite mad'.

I don't know where the old standby of the 'chip on my shoulder' line came from, or where I've sounded as though I have one, but it's so tired as a trope in these threads that I'm happy to just discount it for you without you having to provide evidence.

Think nothing of it .

LadyRabbit

Herein lies the rub, however. We COULD have an amazing state school system - take Germany or Sweden or Norway for example, where most people wouldn't even dream of privately educating their offspring. But how many of you are prepared to sign up for real, functioning socialism? It would be expensive, and I imagine that you'd all be moaning about a version of the Norwegian tax system with a 30% flat rate of income tax (albeit with a very generous starting threshold) regardless of good our schools became.

We don't spend that much less. Some global comparison figures here. Those are for primary age students. Secondary figures are here.

It's not the amount that's spent that's the problem. It's how it's spent. Much of the blame lies with over-centralisation, top-down control and a refusal to let local councils both fund and manage their own schools - or, as I like to call it, "real, functioning socialism".

flatpack: "Much of the blame lies with over-centralisation, top-down control and a refusal to let local councils both fund and manage their own schools - or, as I like to call it, "real, functioning socialism"."

I agree over-centralisation is a problem. Let's see: who introduced a cetnralised national curriculum? Who introduced centralised tests for 11 year olds? Who introduced a centralised system of inspection?

Who is now taking control away from local authorities, and making schools directly accountable to central government

I think you'll find the answer isn't "real, functioning socialism."

My experience is that the "state vs private" divide is a bit of a red herring - you can have excellent or abyssmal education in the state sector and there are some poor schools in the private sector. FWIW, I'm another one who did very well at a comprehensive, but it was a very posh comprehensive because of the catchment area.

I believe the "more state school first at Oxbridge" but I believe it's probably less to do with theexcellence of the state system than with the excellence of private school cramming for Oxbridge. When I was at Oxbridge it was noticeable that all the state-educated students were really pretty bright, whereas a largeish minority of the private-educated students were a bit less bright but had got into Oxbridge by dint of private sector coaching. In other words, the private sector were good at getting students who wouldn't quite have made the grade had they been state educated into Oxbridge - obviously, these students then all got lower seconds or thirds once they no longer had the advantage of luch better support.

flatpackhamster I am no maths genius (not by any stretch of the imagination) but it looks to me from those tables that Norway spends roughly 30% MORE per student than the UK? That's quite a bit more, IMO.
Thanks for that info though - what I find truly shocking is how much America spends on each student (for a country so rabidly suspicious of socialism). When I lived in the US, although I was child-free in those days so had no direct experience of the school system, friends and family would regularly lament the state of the schools their kids were in. Maybe it's a universal gripe, who knows. But I was surprised by that stat.

I beg to differ re. functioning socialism. I'm not about to celebrate New Labour, but I have lived in an inner city area for many years that saw one of the first Labour academies, and it's been a fantastic achievement for the local community and council. So I can see a positive if only on anecdotal evidence. And maybe I missed it, but I'm not aware of any great new school building initiatives under the current coalition government...

TheOriginalSteamingNit OK, ISWYM now, although it wasn't that clear. I have noticed on previous threads of this nature people levelling some really extreme accusations at those pro-independent schooling, and jumped the gun. Apologies. You raise an interesting point though. Of all my friends who are the most anti-private education, it's always the rich, upper middle class folks who, from where I am standing, didn't realise how lucky they were to have that level of privilege.