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.

Kirsty,

What do you think the ICT budget of your average school is relative to their modern language, science budget etc? If it were the same, I could not argue with your post.

Apart from ICT, IMO Larry is spot on. If schools just did that then they probably are not underfunded.

"Reading and talking to them, taking them to museums, loving them and playing with them - not enough these days."

I am just starting to realise this. Sadly DS1 is in yr 10

Maples,

Not sure I understand your point? Sure, I went to private school and not all my teachers were excellent, in fact some were very average. The point is that if they really could not get the kids through the exams with the expected grades, they would not have lasted long. The parents would not have tolerated it.

I am not talking about average teachers, it would be unreasonable to expect all teachers to be great. I am talking teachers with neither the ability nor the interest to teach their subjects at a basic level.

orm you are not alone in being lulled into a false sense of security vis a vis education.

You see it all the time here on MN...

Being from a disadvanated background (both financially and educationally) myself, I have always been very wary of it.

Shagmundfreud

I get your points - but with the greatest respect you sound like a total victim to me and you have already written off your Dc life and education.

At what point did you realise all this about schools, you have done what the others have done within your means and that is not supported your local school adn pulled her out. Your removing your - I imagine nice child like the others did from a school full of whatever....and your blaming others for doing exactly the same?

its also total rubbish that the only pupils at a grammer are from prep schools and you can buy old 11+ papers from wh smith and tutor your children youself if you want too.

Your also being way OTT about stopping all tv, and comp games etc....to get them through.

The 11+ has always been around, when did you hear of it! My mum would be in her 80's now and she had it to contend with when she was a girl! Way back in the day?

Also you dont have to be a chuch goer to send children to a church school and not all church schools are that great.

When I was at school I learned nothing until the age of 9, its all so out there and common and has been for years, i dont undertsnad why your acting like you have only just realised all of this?

My DD is 4 and I am fully aware that I will probably be a big boost to her being taught anything? It will probably be down to me to teach her to read, write etc....she is in a good school but I have realistic expectations of that school to teach her very little.

I am not going to sit around, and just wait and see what she learns, until its too late. And when it comes to 11+ I will get test papers and try my best to prep her myself.

Its in all the papers al the time about schools failing, industry saying even degree educated people cant write or spell. And I am one of them myself!

I really hope you can swallow the bitter pill of unfairness and make up for lost time on your childrens education.

larry, the things you listed as 'nice to have' are actually the things I'm paying for. I don't give a stuff about academic pushiness or them getting better results than they would in state. Both my local primary and secondary are graded outstanding with very high results but neither can offer the 'nice to have' stuff.

Maybe there's a lot you can do out of school to give your DCs the education/ encouragement you want to. My DCs have been to some great residential events with our faith community (Quakers), and both play instruments and are in bands, DD loves dancing, including Irish (and ballet), DS has got his black belt in karate before age 10. They do lots of interesting things in the holidays and at weekends and after school, including lots of nature stuff with DH. Had a great family holiday to Red Sea in Egypt where they learnt to snorkel (generously funded by family)

There's a lot you can do with the money (or even a small % of it) as an alternative to private schooling.

Ours are at outstanding schools too, to compliment their home ed

I am more thankful than I sound !

"Your removing your - I imagine nice child like the others did from a school full of whatever....and your blaming others for doing exactly the same?"

No - it's not about blaming individual parents for doing what they can for their children.

It's about despising parents who simply blame it all on teachers and children in state schools, rather than acknowledging that it's social and economic inequality in wider society, and a lack of political will to stop this inequality manifesting itself so powerfully through our education system, that's at the root of our problems with school in the UK.

"its also total rubbish that the only pupils at a grammer are from prep schools and you can buy old 11+ papers from wh smith and tutor your children youself if you want too"

If it's so easy to simply tutor your children through the 11+ then why is there a multi-million pound tutoring industry in the UK? Why are parents spending thousands and thousands of pounds on tutoring if they can easily do it themselves? Why are some tutors and tutorial centres completely overwhelmed with clients, despite their incredibly high fees? Why do parents lie about the tutors they use? Why do parents pull their children out of state schools in year 3 to give them 4 years of private education before sitting the 11+.

It's because the system is HIGHLY competitive. Grammar schools take a HUGELY disproportionate number of children from private schools. Is that because there are fewer bright children in comprehensives?

"Also you dont have to be a chuch goer to send children to a church school and not all church schools are that great."

No I agree. But in my local area the best non-independent schools are. And they are so over subscribed that you have almost NO chance of getting in unless you're a church goer, whatever their selection guidance says.
When I was at school I learned nothing until the age of 9, its all so out there and common and has been for years, i dont undertsnad why your acting like you have only just realised all of this?

"My DD is 4 and I am fully aware that I will probably be a big boost to her being taught anything? It will probably be down to me to teach her to read, write etc....she is in a good school but I have realistic expectations of that school to teach her very little."

My children's school has taught them plenty. The teachers are good. They have learned to read and write very well and are in top sets. But they're still buggered when they get to 11 because the secondaries are so socially polarised. Never mind they're getting good level 5's in their SATS in year 6, enjoy reading, are confident with maths, are creative and articulate. They'll still end up at their local rough secondary along with all the other children that didn't get into grammar, a church school, or whose parents hadn't been able to rustle up the money for a private school.

"And when it comes to 11+ I will get test papers and try my best to prep her myself"

Good luck with that. Should warn you that if you live anywhere like where I am your dd will be competing with children who've done the same but have also been in private prep schools being taught in classes of 15 since the age of 3. Oh, and they'll have had tutoring from hugely experienced teachers with a long track record of getting kids through the 11+ (£35 plus an hour) , have been to 11+ summer schools and booster sessions. Possibly learning 2 instruments for years (£20 - £35 an hour a week for each). But if you are lucky your dd will be in the top 1% for IQ and may triumph without all that input and money spent, and then all your friends and family can go around pointing out that you don't need tutoring to get into grammar.

"I really hope you can swallow the bitter pill of unfairness and make up for lost time on your childrens education."

No, can't swallow it. Too angry. And sad.

@larry.

Budget including or not including teacher's salaries?

Including, I suspect the difference won't be much because the cost of the salaries is the same in both cases and probably dwarfs everything else.

Not including it's a bit of an unfair comparison because you can't teach ICT without at most 2 kids to every computer. You can teach a maths class with a box of chalk and one photocopied sheet per student. I don't think it's reasonable to then say "well maths can be taught on a budget of 3 pounds per hour of classroom time so every other subject must do the same".

If we decide that ICT is important and must be taught then we have to accept that it has a minimal budget - outside of salaries - that is much higher than many more traditional subjects.

Kirsty,

But who has decided ICT is so important, both in terms of time and money? I think if you understand maths and english, you can pick up ICT easily at any time in your life. The reverse is not the case. And if maths is so cheap and easy to teach, why are we (as a nation) so appalling at it?

@larry. I'm sorry, I wasn't clear enough - maths, like any other subject, isn't easy to teach, it requires a teacher who has themselves a strong understanding of the subject and is also a good communicator. Such people are unfortunately in demand in other industries and hence tend to be expensive in terms of the salaries you have to offer to hire them. However, once you have this teacher the overheads of maths are low. This can give the misleading impression that maths is cheap if you look at the budget of a maths class without including salary costs.

If there is a problem with maths teaching in Britain I suspect it's due to the very large financial sector who are offering silly money to people with solid degrees in mathematics. I have degrees in mathematics from both British and French institutions. About half my classmates from the French institution are now teachers - the vast majority of my British classmates are either in the City or on Wall Street, many of them earning ten times a teacher's salary.

I'm not sure if we mean the same thing by ICT : I mean being able to write a basic programme or design a simple algorithm. I absolutely don't agree that it's easier than maths or English.

@larry. I didn't answer your question about why ICT is so important. Well... can you think of any area of modern life that isn't based on a computer programme somewhere ?

There's no computer science in ICT! That is a laughable suggestion. It basically pushes teaching in microsoft products. Utter waste of time.

@gorblimey. Ahh... that's possible - I'm not in the UK and don't know exactly what ICT in British schools contains. My comments above should be taken as a defense of the principle of teaching computers in school, not the specific curriculum currently being taught, about which I know more or less nothing.

Kirsty,

Must admit I was flabbergasted when you spoke about programmes and algorithms. It would be much more about internet, basic (and when I say basic, I mean really basic) spreadsheets and word processing.

Having said that, although all life revolves around semiconductors, you really don't need to know how they work to use them. Otherwise quantum mechanics would be a required subject in reception.

Also, those of us with good education in the days when schools really did not have computers have not struggled to learn how to use them and, in fact, are more competent than plenty who have been on many ICT courses. If you are logical, you can program a computer.

@larry. Fair enough, but if you're logical you can teach yourself mathematics as well - get a good textbook and away you go. And there are many people with a genuine love of literature that they didn't pick up in school.

The latest high school programs in mathematics over here (France) include a biggish chapter on algorithms and programming taught in year 11, it was mostly that I had in mind in our conversation. Obviously we've been talking at cross purposes.

(I did learn about quantum mechanics in school if I remember rightly. Isn't it on the Physics A-level syllabus?)

The weird thing is that the people claiming to be socialist here are actually proposing more Marxist-Leninist views.

I'll keep earning and buying the education I chose and don't worry I'll keep subsidising your child's healthcare and education too. Yes we have a wonderful equal society.

stillstanding Mon 28-May-12 13:40:36

"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. "

I feel torn on this one. When I am thinking as an individual, as a parent, about my own individual children- yes, I am totally ok with this. Life isn't fair, it isn't about what you get given but about what you do with it corydd and coryds, and you are responsible!

But then again, when I step out of my box and think as a citizen about the kind of society I want, then I think I would prefer something less unequal, less dog-eat-dog. Not because I am jealous or because I would ever encourage dcs to blame circumstances for their own shortcomings, but just because I think it would be a pleasanter world for everybody. Because it seems a right thing to want.

Agree cory - also tend to think that I'd rather my children had reasonably educated and capable people to share a society with when they grow up.

ICT is a basic teaching resource. I certainly wouldn't be happy teaching in a room without at least a computer and projector.

Ormiriathomimus Tue 29-May-12 14:05:07

"also tend to think that I'd rather my children had reasonably educated and capable people to share a society with when they grow up."

That is spot on. I was lucky enough to grow up in Sweden while its school system was still top quality, and when you say it, I realise that was one of the massive advantages: nearly all adults around were educated to a certain standard, they were pretty well all of them literate, they pretty well all believed education was a good thing, pretty well everybody of the post war generation had at least some acquaintaince with a foreign language, they knew what constituted a good diet, what good childcare looked like, there was never that sense that people expected working class families to somehow be less knowledgeable.

Cory: "I was lucky enough to grow up in Sweden while its school system was still top quality, and when you say it, I realise that was one of the massive advantages: nearly all adults around were educated to a certain standard, they were pretty well all of them literate, they pretty well all believed education was a good thing, pretty well everybody of the post war generation had at least some acquaintaince with a foreign language, they knew what constituted a good diet, what good childcare looked like, there was never that sense that people expected working class families to somehow be less knowledgeable."

I agree. One of the things I hate about this debate is people always focus on themselves: what I want for my children, and sod everyone else. I would much prefer to live in a society where all children had a good education - and access to good healthcare, affordable homes and so on. I don't want to live in a society where people sleep in the streets or turn to a life of crime or live miserable wretched lives consisting of junk food and junk telly. A good education system really does benefit all of us.