to ask how do private schools produce such "confident" kids / adults and how I can do it at home?

[dragontwo]

Ok, I have my reservations about private schools, but I recognise that often they produce kids / adults with high self confidence and self assurance.

I want to know how they do this, how they drill this confidence into them, and how I can replicate any beneficial aspects of this at home into my own kid (state schooled)?

What do they say / do / teach that encourages them to be so confident and expect success?

I know there are down sides to everything but I'm just thinking about good ideas I can help my kid. NB I'm no tiger mother and do my best to encourage my kid as it is already but just looking for ideas and general thoughts on how it's done!!

Just curious!

Did anyone watch the grammar school programme last night? They had a Year 7 class being taught by a gap year student!

also, what was a massive confidence giver was being spoken to by teachers in a normal way, not like we were scum. When I moved onto state school, tbh I was shocked at the way teachers spoke to us

I hate to say it but this will resonate with my dd.

I really wanted to love her state school but reading this thread is making me even more keen to move her.

IWillSurviv sorry, crossed wires obvs!! :-)

For the record, private schools do not cheat at exams, nor do most students at private schools also have outside tutors. I'm sure there may well have been isolated incidences of stuff like this, but equally there are in the state system too.

Cheerymom obviously has an axe to grind, but nothing she says rings true at all to my vast experience as a student, teacher and a parent at various private schools over the last 30+ years. What I have seen is high quaility teaching that teaches wider and deeper than the curriculum, high expectations of both behaviour and academic standards, happy engaged children, good communication, a wide range of co-curriculars taught to a high level, less bureaucracy and state interference and good outcomes for the pupils.

Also - all this talk of gappies and unqualified teachers -

dd is in year 7 at a very good state secondary

since she started in September TEN of her teachers have left. She's had a different maths teacher every single term. That is really, really shit.

Honestly it's because they are surrounded by others with high expectations. There is only so much you can do as a parent.

I went to a private school. If everyone you know is going to uni you will too. If everyone expects to get a well paid job the likelihood is you will too. Not everyone in a private school is confident though. That's projection.

I don't recognise cheerymoms description at all.

Back to the OP, since moving to teach in private school what I like now is that (certainly in my school) I have enough time to actually get to know my students. Smaller class sizes mean that there are simply no students who are able to coast along under the radar.

Nobody has said "we need to do this for Ofsted" to me for a whole year - absolute bliss! Pointless form filling and data processing has gone. Data here is collected when required and then actually used to improve teaching and learning. The whole emphasis is on being the best teachers we possibly can, rather than feeling like you have to constantly justify that you are actually doing your job.

That all makes for a much more pleasant atmosphere across the whole school. I haven't noticed a significant difference in how teachers speak to students, but that wasn't really a problem at my previous school. I'm horrified that some teachers fail to model good manners to their students.

I went to private school and I think a lot of it is about looking confident, even if not feeling it. E.g you HAD to say good morning to every teacher you passed by with eye contact etc. Even if you didn't feel like it or were shy. Therefore you learnt to just do it and communicate with people even when not in the mood. That and having manners drilled into you so that you could be confident in the fact that you "knew how to behave" in all environments. Being allowed seconds and sometimes thirds of pudding didn't hurt either

Sorry, I should add that I agree that relationships between teachers and students is (IMO) the big thing which helps them gain confidence in school. So my list of things which make my job easier/better all allow me the head space and time to get to know my students really well. Because I have time for them, they know I care. They (hopefully) feel valued and respected rather than just another kid.

I was kind of listening to Cheerymom for a while there, but then I got to "Students usually have tutors for all subjects etc." I really don't recognise this, and I think it's an extravagant statement that she may find difficult to support, which has kind of undermined everything else she's said.

Cheerymom

There are illegal issues in state schools to though, you know.
I left the teaching profession because as Post compulsory qualified, which then included A level, I was expected to not only teach GCSE subjects of which I hadn't any, but further maths when I scraped a level 2. I went to the union who told me I had to be prepared to teach outside my comfort zone.

I didn't want somebody like me teaching my dc, so I left.
Many of those who trained with me (for post compulsory only) are still teaching in local secondary schools.
Most not their degree subject, my ds2 Maths teacher was a potter, his English teacher qualified in computers.
Yes, the state system is much better

@BlueBiros

What is the standard class size in a UK state school?

We were 25-30 in the private school I went to (all the pupils of the same age/in the same year).

But we were usually split up in at lead two groups. (Particularly for things like languages, arts, science etc... Sports, music, orchestra, classics [basically story time when we were little] and rel. Ed. were some of the few subjects we actually had together / as a class...)

Oh, and we went hiking twice a month. (Always a full day. Whether it was snowing, hailing, during a heatwave...)

There were also various facultative one-on-one things. Like "speaking improvement classes".

My cousin took those because he wanted to be a better public speaker.

My parents sent me to the psychomotoric specialist... I was extremely clumsy

Haha. Haven't RTFT but have so many sarky responses on the tip of my tongue which I'm sure have already been said (I went to a private school and hated it by the way).

Instil in them a sense of entitlement and superiority by encouraging them to look down their noses at the working classes who can't afford the school fees. If you're very lucky you'll raise a future Tory MP.

Good luck!

*I'm not from the UK/Anglo btw.

I'm just curious about the British school system. (DH is British...)

High expectations, better education, probably more intelligent than average. Access to resources, facilities and opportunities that other children don't have. Awareness of privilege (in most cases financial); sense of superiority.

Agree it is a lot about how the students are expected to behave, both in and out of school.

Etiquette and manners and experience...

Also, the children are given all manner of experiences at a much younger age and make mistakes when they are young and don’t care, not when they are older and more self conscious.

If a private school is top of the league tables, this isn't necessarily because of good teaching.
Everybody I know who goes to our local private, has extra external tutoring too, kumon, and great parental support.
They also have to take an exam each year, and if they fail, it is suggested 'they're not suitable for the school.'
So, it's absolutely bleeding obvious the alevel results are going to be top notch, and I'm frankly staggered that anyone attributes these results to the superior quality teaching. I think they saw you coming.

I Will because they feel they can play outside the rules by using money and cheating. Simple.

@Cheerymom
I’m afraid this still doesn’t answer why private schools employing under qualified teachers is a privilege. For it to be a privilege the students have to be benefiting from it. However if what you are saying is they employ under qualified teachers so they can then cheat etc, this makes even less sense.

I don't know about standard class sizes, but here my biggest class is top set year 10 (23 students) and I see them three times each week. At state my biggest class was year 8 (34 students) who I saw 3 times each fortnight. In form (so children I see every day and am the first point of contact for), my current school has around 20, previous school was minimum 30.

I did develop good relationships in my previous school too, but it took a lot longer. I know the evidence on class size and exam results doesn't support the additional cost of extra teachers, but I really do think it has a big impact on increasing their confidence.

OP asked how to get that confidence for her own DC without attending private school.

I'd go for true self-confidence, not surface polish.

Listen to them. Find out what interests them and foster those interests as widely as possible.

Encourage them to try out clubs that encourage public speaking, from drama to debating, school council etc.

Encourage them to aim for the top of whatever fields interest them - Grade 8 music, NYT summer schools in drama, county or national level sport etc.

Get them to be in charge of small stuff - ordering in restaurants, booking ubers, hailing black cabs, hair appointments etc - it's a life skill that improves with practise.

Travel. If you stay in airbnbs and fly budget airlines you can go to really lovely places for the same price as a high season cottage in Wales.

Familiarise them with places that may otherwise seem 'not for them' Do day trips to Oxford and Cambridge, for example, so that if they are interested in applying there, they don't feel out of place.

For clarity - 23 would be considered a small GCSE class at my previous (state) school, and a year 8 class of 34 would be split in to two at my current (private) school.

Behaviour and manners are, of course, important. But I find these things come from home and are reinforced at school rather than the other way round. And the kids at my previous school were (generally) really well mannered so I don't necessarily have the breadth of experience to say how they impact students' confidence.

I haven't read all the thread but my experience of both is that state school children are mostly taught to be team players unless they have the very highest predicted grades where as in private the expectation is much higher. They are taught to be leaders, taught to debate and the expectation is that you will go to uni. All pupils even the lower scoring ones had higher expectations placed on them.

I'm not that old and got decent grades but no one ever mentioned university to me, not once and yet I got the grades to go.

My child was in private for a while and uni was frequently mentioned.

My 5.5 year old is extremely confident, holds his own in conversations with adults whilst still being age appropriate, recites Scots poetry/had lead in Christmas play in front of the whole school without batting an eyelid etc. He's also the youngest, having done the two above things when he was still 4 (were in Scotland so late January born and youngest boy)

He goes to a state school in a deprived area.

Of course he's young and it could all change but I think some of it is just personality. Perhaps some mirroring from his dad and myself as well as we are both confident, self assured and relatively successful having also gone to "deprived" state schools

Everybody I know who goes to our local private, has extra external tutoring too, kumon, and great parental support.
They also have to take an exam each year, and if they fail, it is suggested 'they're not suitable for the school

I live in an area absolutely chock full of private schools. None of them are like this :-/