To find people say X public School is OK because

[NoComet]

It gets DCs into Oxbridge and RG universities, a daft justification for choosing a school that costs £15,000 plus a year.

We have a local secondary (not even a true comp as there is some creaming off of bright DC by Grammar schools) that is in Special Measures that has just got two pupils in to Oxbridge.

And this is hardly news, bog standard state secondaries and sixform collages all over the country send DCs to Oxbridge and RG Universities every year.

My very ordinary Welsh Comp sent someone in the year above me to study medicine at Oxford, there were others at prestigious med schools and, now, RG uni's me included.

Yes, private schools are very nice, yes DC avoid some DCs with a bad attitude to education, Yes DC get good sports facilities and yes DC may study a wider range of subjects, esp. MFL.

But in the end your DC will, quite likely end up at exactly the same uni, doing the same course, just with poorer parents!

even if your child was going to receive a poor education?

why not?

Because I disagree with them and wouldn't want my child to go to one - did I not say that already?

i would rather home educate than send ds to some of the school i have seen

thankfully in this area school are being turned round, but at a price, house prices are going up, area is changing (i only moved here a few years ago because of the schools was one of the reasons)

Daft argument anyway - why would I suddenly have the money to send them to private school if I was in a position of having to send them to an unmitigatedly awful school?

that is all you have said

are you children at good schools?

When I was applying to get my kids into secondary I was quite open with them that I would rather home educate than send them to the catchment school.

To picture the scale of the failure ....
One dire school of 700 pupils is merged with a poor but tolerable school with 800 pupils and converted into a sponsored academy.
Within a term the combined school is down to 750 pupils.
They get a groovy new building for 900 pupils built (so accepting that 600 pupils have vanished)
but only have 400 on roll as of today
so 1100 pupils have found schooling elsewhere ....

Luckily we have enough good state options round here that most parents have found non fee paying places.
But if we hadn't I suspect my kids would now be at the fee paying school and I'd have extended my mortgage by ten years.

Well yes, it is all I have said, because I assume people are no more interested in individual cases than I am, but rather in the issue more broadly!

There are some things I like a lot about their school, some less so.

It doesn't matter what their school is like or what I think of it, though - I'm telling you, since you asked, that there are no circumstances in which I would consider private school! That's it!

Nit super news about your DD.

All very grown up, now in sixth .

Thanks Word (not flowers - I always think they look a bit sarcastic).

ok

i think you are in the minority though

and really i struggle to understand why any parent if they had the choice would cling onto their political beliefs if their childrens education would be far better at a fee paying school

maybe in your area you do not have schools that are so underachieving it is shocking, but a few minutes up the road an outstanding school with excellent results and an area changing rapidly

TheOriginalSteamingNit you'd mentioned not having the large price difference in house prices according to school areas where you live. If you want a good example, look at Linlithgow. It's one of the top 5 ( or 10 maybe?) state schools in Scotland whilst most of the rest of West Lothian languishes around the bottom of the tables. People actively move there for their high school and you'll pay a pretty premium- for the equivalent of our house it's around £150k more which is roughly what we're looking at paying in school fees over the next decade or so. I know lots of people who have done the "move to Linlithgow or go private" decision- we were one! At the end of the day, whether you go private here or move to Linlithgow you are using your purchasing power to get access to a broader education for your kids.

That's pretty stark Taz - can you get more than one lot of school fees for ten years out of that?

it is the same in london

the areas of clapham, dulwich, balham, battersea and very good examples of how london is changing and the differences a good school makes to an area

Nit We have two children and each will get 1 year of Junior school and 6 years of Senior school- they'll be three years apart. I know the fees will go up, but I figure it's really rather more than a £150k premium for the house if you need a mortgage to cover the difference (I.e. what you'll pay in interest) so it's roughly the same premium to move to Linlithgow vs private. I actually think the private schools here are pretty good value for money- we weren't paying much less than that when the kids were in full time nursery in Edinburgh!!

I used to be solidly against private education due to the two tier system that it creates.
Then I became a parent and my child's happiness and education became a bigger priority than my principles.
Home ed was the first consideration but not a realistic possibility for a number of reasons, so after a dreadful few years at a supposedly good (according to ofsted) school I had to swallow my principles and do what was best for my child's well being.
Do I really care if my neighbour thinks I'm a snob for moving my child to a private school or do I actually care that my child is happy to go to school, not coming home crying everyday? Do I really care if my neighbour thinks that I have misguided ideas of superiority or do I actually care that my child is learning and having the chance to reach his potential when he goes to school?

Steaming nit when you talk about the private school environment or ethos for their children my only comment would be- there isn't just one. There are many private schools that I would be deeply uncomfortable with. I am really only happy around the former direct grant grammar schools. I think their ethos is indistinguishable from that of the surviving grammar schools, and if we had one locally, that's what I would have used.

I live in a moderately revolting bit of London and my daughter's comprehensive is pretty damn good, actually.

Probably no more than I care whether anyone thinks I don't care about 'my child's happiness and education', just because private schooling isn't an option I'd ever consider, Running!

TBH I don't think I would send dd1 to private school even if I suddenly had enough money. The hot housing high pressure atmosphere that seems to prevail in the private schools commutable from where we are would, IMHO destroy her. She's already very hard on herself and spent 2.5hrs on one piece of homework last week because she was worried it wouldn't be good enough. It would have been longer but I took it off her because I could see how stressed she was.

Before I'm flamed, you will see that I'm not against people sending their dc to private school, other children would thrive in that environment. I was just challenging the assumption that people who can afford to but don't send their dc to private school don't because they don't care about their dc's education.

I'd also like to highlight that I was referring to private schools in our area (nearest about 20miles away). I have no idea about the educational culture in other private schools.

Well no, the ethos is 'you can come here if you pay for it', though beast, and that holds true for all of them (yes bursaries yadda yadda, but basically a private school charges for education and I find that fundamental ethos unpalatable).

I'm not talking about stripey socks or ski-ing holidays or Russian oligarchs - of course I know that there are all sorts of private schools with different atmospheres at that level.

But all of them charge, and none of them bestow their apparently superior teaching methods on anyone who can't pay for them, and that is the bit I don't like.

Ah, I've got no educational standards and don't give a damn about my children's happiness and/or welfare. Obviously.

steaming, I can understand and respect that, and I didnt expect to find myself doing it either. Expensive tutoring and catchment areas raise similar issues, in my view, but I agree that actually charging for entrance is one step further.

TOSN
A good friend has her DD at the non selective private near here. The cost of six years of school fees (year 5 to 11) was less than the price differential in mortgage payments of moving out of their area to where they would get her into one of the decent school
NOTE : not all the comps in Hampshire are great, but most of them do well by most of their kids.

If I were to buy my size of house over the catchment boundary towards my DCs school it would cost me £200,000 more
which in terms of mortgage payments each month for 25 years ....

There seems to be a real myth surrounding parents that choose to send their children to private school that automatically we are (a) snobs and (b) suggesting that all state schools are abysmal and (c) suggesting that all private schools are wonderful.

None of which is the case for us. We spent a lot of time visiting schools before choosing one for our DD. We visited both state and private and chose the one that was the best fit. That happened to be a private school. It wasn't chose simply because it was private, but because of what it offered. If that had been a state school we would have gone with that.

I am secure in the knowledge that we are doing the best for our DD. She adores school, is flying academically and is happy. What more could we ask for?

I really find this tired old cliché of 'leafy middle class comps' a little...unrealistic. I know it's a convenient one to fall back on, this allegation that we have all purchased privilege by virtue of our naice postcodes - but for many of us, it simply isn't the case. It just makes you feel more comfortable.