To think instead of paying for DD's schooling we could give her 250K cash for her 18th birthday?

[LondonMan]

DD is about to turn 3. I have looked at on-line info for local state schools and don't like what I see. For three of the nearest primary schools where I've managed to locate statistics, two have over 90% of children with English as an additional language, and one over 80%. The schools all have bottom or (rarely) second-from-bottom quintile performance in all subjects, in Ofsted reports. All local state schools are likely to be similar, because they are teaching the same demographic, children of local social-housing tenants, mostly Bangladeshi. (From long experience living in the area, virtually all non-social-housing parents leave the area once they have children.)

We don't want to move because we are near DW's job.

DW is hoping to get DD into the 14th nearest state school (which is only 0.7miles away) using their religious criteria. That school has excellent Ofsted results, "only" two-thirds of pupils have English as an additional language, though apparently one third arrive speaking no English at all.

There is also a just-opened foundation secondary which might be an OK option later.

I suspect we won't get into the good state primary school and will end up private all the way, which we can afford. There is a top girl's school nearby, and the fees are actually slightly less than the 15K a year we spend on nursery care at the moment.

I've calculated that if we don't send DD to private schools for 13 years, and invest the money instead, with average luck (5% return) we'd be able to give her about £250K cash instead.

The title question is mostly rhetorical. I expect that DD will not end up in the sub-par schools, whatever we decide. I'm just a bit bemused by the situation and thought I'd give you all something to comment on.

Has anyone mentioned Greggs or Fruit Shoots yet?

I bet the OP's neighbours eat them for breakfast.

So where exactly do you originate from? Do you work? Could you homeschool?

Oh to ponder such things would be but bliss. Here's a thought, why not employ a private tutor? This ensures your PFB will never need to clap eyes on those scruffy social housing dwellers. Meh!

Oh, do send her to private school please. I wouldn't want your precious offspring passing on your snobbishness to my adorable 'social housing' DC or any others.

StealthOfficialCrispTester Fri 17-May-13 14:19:37
So shed be rich and uneducated (by your standards anyway). But as a bonus she might be reallh good at languages!

Good one!

Hackney is a tricky one - the schools aren't much good generally. I can't see race needs to be brought into it. Poverty, on the other hand...

Most people I know, whether renters or owners, fled when they bred. Try Essex.

I'd just buy her a goat and have done with it.

Are schools much better than they used to be?
I don't like the coded race stuff in the OP either and I do find the whole OP very distasteful; but on the other hand, it is odd whenever someone expresses concern about a bright child having nothing to do while others cover the basics, that half the board gasps in horror and throws up their hands at the unspeakable snobbery of this person.

Did you lot not go to school? Do you not remember it? Did you all go to radically different sorts of schools from me?
When I went to school you sat there in rows bored out of your skull while the teacher repeated herself again and again and again. You did everything in fits and starts - occasionally being issued little tasks, thrilled to be able to get on with something, finishing almost instantly, and then waiting again while the teacher walked around helping the others to do it. Then the whole thing was reviewed painfully slowly and repetitively. Most of the people in the class were bored some of the time, and some of the people were bored nearly all the time. For me "education" was a process of learning to manage boredom, and managing to stay out of trouble while being completely unengaged. I want better for my children.

Yet whenever someone expresses concern about this, they are treated as outrageous snobs. I don't think people from other countries are thick, I don't think poor people are thick, I do think the OP thinks this and I think that is wrong and nasty. But what do you do about the posse-travels-only-as-fast-as-the-slowest-member problem? Has education solved this now?

that is a serious question. I know nothing about schools now.

If you can afford 250K to go to private school, you can afford to move (even if it's a bit further from DW's work). If you dislike the local state schools so much why not just go?

I would quite like to move to somewhere with higher quality of life/better climate, probably a different country, but DW intends to try stay in her job until she kicks the bucket, so from the point of view that it could be for 30 years, paying 5K a year for train fares and spending a couple of hours a day on a train are not an attractive option. Currently she could in theory walk to work in less time than she'd be on a train if commuting from outside London.

Not sure if there is anywhere else in London that would make sense. Actually quite like our flat and doubt we could afford a better home elsewhere in London. Don't want to take out a mortgage at this stage to buy something more expensive. (Flat paid for and I'm probably retiring this year.)

Pay privately and don't even hesitate.

Quite apart from anything else, don't give an 18 yr old that kind of money. 30 would be better.

Criteria for a location to move to would be:-

1. No more than an hour dour-to-door from Canary Wharf
2. Good state schools
3. Budget 600K for flat/house.
4. I need to like it as much as current flat, which is 3 bedroom 2 bathroom ground and first floor with integral garage, north entry, south facing, with small private garden beyond which lie landscaped communal gardens. When I look out of any of my windows I see trees rather than buildings or roads. (Well there are buildings behind the trees but they don't detract from the view.)

This is Mumsnet. It might be said that Mumsnet's readership leans to the left politically so you won't find that criticism of state education is particularly well received. But I suspect you knew that when you posted, didn't you?

Personally I also suspect that a lot of the biscuit throwers have never had to consider putting their child into a fifth rate state school in the back streets of Lambeth or Southwark, for example. I suspect you knew that was a possibility when you posted too, didn't you?

Enjoy the argument but please do bear in mind that the chances are that you're going to be roundly flamed and significantly outnumbered.

I meant to say, open to suggestions for locations that meet my criteria.

PS - location move - Kent. But I still wouldn't recommend state schooling.

I think the OP could invest the money saved from school fees in a buy to let. It would ensure that her daughter has somewhere to live when she is 18. A buy to let definately gives at least a 5% return.

That is exactly what OP's DW would like to do!

EAL is a fact of life in a diverse city like London but the vast majority of children will speak fluent English.

TBH I would have thought most of Bangladeshi children would have good English, before I read that so many had no English when they arrived at one particular school. I'm projecting from an experience with a different ethnicity, but I wonder if lots of children are sent to Bangladesh to be raised by relatives until school age. Or maybe they are raised by grannies here who have never learned English.

There was a school swop years ago on tv.
I think it was Millfield private school in Somerset and a state comp in Hounslow.

It was very interesting.
Yes, the private school students were, on the whole, arrogant and were quite shocked that the comp kids were way ahead of them in maths and science.

Boarding school
Then you don't have to move anywhere, since your home criteria are so important

The way that university education's going in this country, I think state school may be a distinct advantage in applying

I don't think you can put a price on a good education tbh.
What is there to debate?

People on MN often trot out the line 'oh I went to a rubbish school, I still got into a redbrick and got a good degree, job etc' yadda yadda. Well, times have drastically changed. Schooling is very different to 20, 30, or more years ago. At least it is in the maintained sector.

I think parents will have a shock over the next 10 years, as GCSE is changed back to a linear exam, and A level too. Schools are going to struggle to get children through with high enough results to meet the criteria for their next stage. 2014 is going to be a horrible, tense year for all concerned.

Then of course, there is the non existant job market. People no longer are retiring, positions are not being freed up for those entering the market at the bottom end. If you think the youth unemployment figures are worrying now, give it a few more years when things will be completely terrifying. It will become dog-eat-dog as Y13s don't make the grades for university (or decide 'fuck that, I'm not paying what is effectively a graduate tax for the next 30 years' and don't even apply), and start to take the jobs that would previously have gone to those that aren't 'academic'.

I really, really worry for those children inY7, 8, 9 currently.

EAL pupils get specialist support certainly (well they do if the school is good) but this is not to the detriment of the others in the class. Total immersion is often the best ways for children to learn a new language, especially in play-based learning such as Reception.

How does immersion work if 90% don't have good English? Although I may be wrong in assuming that"not having good English"' is what EAL means.

EAL simply means that English is not your mother tongue.

Which I would have thought would be sensible to find out for yourself before you started throwing ignorant opinions round......

I can see why you wouldn't want to send your kids to a school where over 90% of the kids attending have English as a second language. Ew, your precious kids could be in the same class as my kids are, who somehow have managed to be top of their class despite not being native speakers.

And heavens forbid they may learn about other cultures and traditions. Gosh, couldn't have that! I wonder how my poor kids manage to have friends across the school and across the cultures. Maybe you ought to look at results and how well the school is doing instead just looking at the % of non-native English speakers.

Idiot.

EAL doesn't mean not having good English.

It means when they were babies and learned to talk, they spoke a different language. They may have only spoke that language for a year or they may even have been bilingual from birth.

I work with loads of EAL children. Some have picked up English through immersion within a year.