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.

Poor LondonMan. I believe that the majority of posters are unfairly having a go at you. They cannot have any idea what that area of Tower Hamlets is like, and their posts, to those who ARE familiar with that area, sound very naive.

I have lived in the area LondonMan lives in, and when the time came for my DS to start school, we moved. The area surrounding Canary Wharf is the strangest place I have ever lived. On Narrow Street and some small pockets surrounding, you have million (probably multi now) pound show flats and riverside houses. One block away you witness terrible deprivation and very insular communities where English is not spoken, despite being several generations in this country. I remember being surprised by the fact that I never saw the children in the nearby estates at the local small park, despite it was the only park easily accessible to the estates. Under the Labour government, there were many outreach programmes to try and reach these communities - Sure Start, free safety assessment and equipments for families with toddlers, etc. As these efforts were not means tested, they were open to all children born in the area and enthusiastically advertised at the baby clinics. I frequently went as there was very little infrastructure for families with young children in the area. To my surprise, these efforts and facilities were embraced not by the people it was meant to reach, but of the families living in the posh flats who were employed/parters were employed in Canary Wharf.

When the OP is dismayed by ESL in the schools, the population he is speaking about are not newly arrived immigrants who wish to integrate and learn English, but ones who live in communities where not only English not spoken, but also where integrating is discouraged. I am a person for whom English was a 2nd language and can see the difference between racism and worry about language acquisition in OP's child.

OP, I'd move if I were in your shoes.

I know you are only being silly, really, but in your position, if you are not prepared to move, I would pay for private for junior school, to put the ground work in, then find her a decent state senior school.

I was not actually sarcastic in my below post. SW14 and the western parts of SW15 (east of Roehampton Lane), along with SW13 offers pretty good living! The schools are good, neighbourhoods nice and quiet, near the river, as well as close to Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park, and you can still find pockets where houses are reasonably priced. I have heard people say "I cant believe I managed to find a house in such a nice location, and less than 500k" Finding property for under 600 is not impossible.

I live in an area of London less than an hour from Canary Wharf with four outstanding primaries where you could buy a flat or house for £600k.

You wouldn't like it though because they have 50% + EAL pupils and many pupils from two massive council estates.

Also having worked in very expensive private school I should make you aware that some pupils may be Asian.

I have a friend who lived near Canada Waters, she said coming to my place was like coming home to something safe and familiar. No screaming and fighting, no loud music, much less litter, no broken bottles.

I cannot fathom why you rather live in an area you loathe and rather send your kids to private school, when you can move to somewhere you might like it better?

Sorry I didn't read the whole thread

You are aware of what a total non problem you have though?

OP, you are mad! You can afford a great school for your daughter and you are still considering the local failing schools? This is not just education, it's ten years of daughter's life, I think it is worth all money in the world. And my dad always says that you can take away person's possessions but you can't take away education. By the way I am an immigrant myself, but all my kids are at private schools despite living around excellent state ones.

My children's primary is 80% non-white .

The children are WONDERFUL

Brilliance can be found in all cultures and in all sectors of society. The cleverest child in ds's class isn't ds, (the child of a privately educated teacher and a PHD qualified chemist), but the dd of an
Albanian builder and a SAHM. Just so love all the sparky little girls in hijab.

Seriously - go to visit these schools and see what they are doing. Don't stereotype the children as under achieves. The will be children at that school who will be smarter and harder working than your dd.

You don't really have a problem, OP, just a huge amount of choice.

You have over 14 state schools within walking distance of your home, which you could at least have a look at to see if any are either appealing or confirm your worst fears. If you go for a CofE option, even if you are nominally Christian, you have a better chance of getting a place that many other people who live in your area.

You have a well thought of private school accessible to where you live that you could afford to pay for, that your DD could attend from the age of 7. Although, admittedly, that would prevent you from presenting your DD with £250,000 when she is 18.

You have £600k to spend on a house. You could easily afford to move to a more suburban area with more people like you. There is no way your DW would have to spend an hour travelling to work from such an area. Check out network rail and, with that budget, you could afford the premium prices of a house near the station.

Move to the suburbs you don't sound progressive enough to live in a modern inner city.

Haven't yet caught up on posts since last night, but have an update.

I've gone back to have another more systematic look at my local Ofsted data, and TBH the results are much better than I remember from the last time I looked. Also there is a clear trend of doing better at KS2 than KS1, suggesting whatever problems they start off with are being overcome.

There is one school that has excellent KS2 results. (I think last time I must only have looked at KS1, though even then for my closest school the KS1 results now are better than I saw previously.)

For the nearest five schools the median rankings are

(1=best and 5=worst)

KS1
Reading 4
Writing 4
Mathematics 4

KS2
English 3
Reading 3
Writing 3
Mathematics 3

I doubt that people in those great mansions are even aware of state education. The majority of housing stock is Victorian terraces anyway. But it's true that you need to live very close.

Why don't you invest the money in a small property which you can rent out and hopefully by the time she is an adult it will be mostly paid for and she will have a home. The way things are going very few will be able to have a home in London.

I wouldn't normally advocate BTL as I think they are immoral scum but in this case it would be a future home for your daughter. Rather than paying out thousands for private education (when your taxes are paying for all those state schools nearby) when she is still not any more likely to get a job that will enable her to be able to afford a home of her own. I think private education can be expensive and overrated.

I'm just intrigued as to what kind of job you do that means you can afford posh private schooling at £20,000 per annum or whatever, whilst living surrounded by Bangladeshi kids in council flats.

Among your disparaging misrepresentations, you do have some valid questions.

My job is quite unexceptional, high-earning by Mumsnet standards, but less than 100K. I bought my home in late nineties for a third of current value, and I've saved maybe two thirds of income since then, hence healthy finances. DW in last few years has caught up with me in earnings and saves to a similar extent.

The area I live in is very odd. Maybe half social and half private. To put it in context a 3 bedroom flat like mine, or a small 3-bedroom modern terraced house, is about 600K. A few years ago I saw a report that classified different areas by demographic and the category for places like mine had a tiny membership, i.e. it is unusual.

By the sound of your OP you are the lone white family with a small child who owns their own home. And are surrounded by horrid, common foreigners. I, too, am wondering why you don't just move if you are so rich and hate the area so much.

I am white, DW isn't, DD is mixed. DW and I are/were foreign. I now only have British citizenship, but DW has no intention of becoming a British citizen.

I wouldn't call myself rich and don't hate the area. Just have reservations about the schools. (Well I say I don't hate the area, but I would love to live in English countryside, which I find very beautiful on the rare occasions I venture outside London, but DW won't hear of it. She doesn't drive, values being central, and claims that because she isn't white, people stare and point at her when she travels to smaller towns with less cosmopolitan populations. I'm a little sceptical of her claim.)

Actually OP I understand your dilemma.
I also think that the schools you are talking about are NOT diverse. They have 80 odd% of one nationality. I embrace living in a truly diverse area where every single family on our street comes from a different country. That's successful diversity.

Thanks to many people who gave location suggestions. It gives me a starting point for research so at least I know what the alternatives are.

Thanks also to others that gave constructive advice or support re. my location. There was very helpful posting from people who know the area.

I've often read and been present at discussions about education where the head will say, "Of course, it's easy for XYZ school to get good results - they have a homogeneous white middle-class intake whereas our school has to take lots of children from deprived backgrounds or who have English as an additional language." Because they know it is harder to teach a class of children for whom English isn't a first language, however intrinsically bright they are. Children from social housing are more likely to have difficult home lives than kids in private housing - that's not to say they all do, just that it's more likely. Because it's harder to teach in these schools, they often find it difficult to recruit good teachers. The whole reason Teach First was set up was as a way of addressing that particular problem.

It's not being snobbish or racist to point out that these schools are not necessarily the best environments for children to flourish in, it's simply stating a fact that most teachers and policy makers will acknowledge. If that wasn't the case, then there would be absolutely no reason for children in Hackney schools not to be doing as well as children in the best state schools in Surrey.

There are loads of leafy places from which your DW could reach Canary Wharf in far less than an hour by train. In villages and very small towns with a station, just about everyone lives near the station, so it makes no odds whether you can drive or not. I think your DW is worrying unecessarily about people staring. I live about as far away from London as could be in an area which has very few ethnic minorities and people don't stare here, so doubt they would in anywhere accessible to London.

I've always been more of a saver than a spender, so the cost of private education looked at first glance like a ridiculous level of expenditure to me. I've always felt that I can live a happy life on cost-of-housing plus 15K, if not working. Working adds car and childcare costs to that. I'm someone whose current car increases in value by 10% each time I refuel. I can now afford to spend several times as much as I've ever spent on a used car, to treat myself to a new one, but I can't justify the spending to myself. That's the context that makes this level of spending on education well outside my comfort zone.

It was that sense of "can it really be worth that" the partly prompted me to post, though I also hoped for information to help my clarify my thinking, and have received some.

The following paragraph sums up my conclusion last night when thinking about this. It is going to cause Mumsnetters who don't like to read about people being better off than average to have an apoplexy-induced stroke. You know who you are, so look away now.

Thinking about this thread last night, I realised that though the cost of private education is ridiculous, and it's very uncertain what benefit it will buy, in the context of our finances it does make sense. The fact is that spending it will not make any material difference to what else we will choose to spend money on, and if DD inherits our spending habits, a 250K reduction in her inheritance will make no practical difference to her either. So if we think there's any chance at all that private will be better than state, it makes sense to spend the money.

Apologies to those who failed to take my advice to look away who should have, but this has been a genuine post by a real person contemplating his actual options. His rationale may be of help to someone.

blimey OP, i have just read your post. it reads like a neurotic controlling mother, just chill out will you. i live in east london, my dd goes to a state school where it is a growing mix of kids (cultures). so what. she has never had a 'white british bf'. people are people, it doesn't matter as long as they (kids) get on nicely. all this neurosis about schools tutors blah blah ofsted bollocks. my cousins went to posh schools and both ended up with terrible jobs. i can't stand all this tiger mother fussing. you think it is tough now, just wait until it is time for SECONDARY schooling which is where i am at now. actually, i think that where i live the children from another country tend to be harder workers at school and less likely to be so absorbed with boyfriends/dieting & sex. i actually prefer for my dd to go to a school where she is the only white british kid, doesn't bother me a bit. you shouldn't think about such things :)

This is ridiculous...
Also what do all the pictures of biscuits mean???

(i think that's my first one!)

OP, I would at least visit the local state schools first before you make a decision. You may be pleasantly surprised. If they turn out to be as bad as you fear, then at least you'll know you're spending all that money for a reason.

You should do whatever is best for you and your family and most importantly your daughter. It really isn't anybody on MN business how you spend your hard earned cash. You sound like a good and concerned parent and I think that a lot of posters are using their political opinions to push you in a direction which may not be right for you.

But OP, you are not really facing a tough dilemma are you?
You think the schools near you are shit, you have the money to pay for private ...so I am not seeing where the struggle is?

I don't have any hang ups about earnings, but I do feel that this thread has the air of me complaining that my Jimmy Choos are a bit tight