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!

@MsSquiz I'm sorry, but if paying a fortune to private education resulted in my DC getting a 2:2 in a marketing degree I would not have been a particularly proud mum.

They say if you just turn up you get a 2:2!

Haven't rtft, but I work in a private school. The students have more chance to compete and to speak in public. To get some of those same opportunities, I would recommend you sign your child up for things like cadets, Duke of Edinburgh or the National Citizen Service. Kids in private schools are also quick off the mark in getting work experience. This isn't all through family connections - one of my students got to meet a very famous scientist just by writing to him at his hospital and he invited her in. Most of them also do voluntary work. From my time teaching in private and state schools, I would say the private school kids fill their time more with structured activities as well as doing a lot of studying - there is less time just loafing about.

Wow... guess I should have reread before I posted, it should have been a 2:1. But just to clarify, DH did excel at those subjects at school.

You wouldn't be proud of your child for getting a 2:2 (still a pass)...
You get a 2:2 for turning up...

I'd be proud of my child for going to uni and sticking it out, whatever the outcome. But maybe that's because I didn't go to uni, didn't have the confidence to go for certain positions, to push myself harder for roles I could have got. I am now 32 and reconsidering my life choices, whereas DH with the encouragement of teachers and family has always known his talents were good enough to get him ahead in what he chooses to do

A 2:2 used to be an average grade. 2:1 was a good grade, and a 1st was exceptional. It used to be most people got a 2:2 degree.

Suspiciously aplogies I misnterpreted what teacher meant and assumed that it meant Family money equated intelligence.

And if you really do get a 2:2 these days for turning up, then degrees need to be reformed. A 2:2 used to be equivalent of a B grade in exams.

@MsSquiz that's still so young - you easily have time to retrain or just go in a different direction!

I went to a (top) university as a mature student in my mid-20s and, until then, believed that only the super bright could attend. I loved it there and soon realised I was as bright if not brighter than many on my course.

The privately educated students were interesting. They were all intimidatingly confident in class and had very well formed arguments and opinions. Come the final year though and a large majority were struggling as they just hadn't put the work in. I concluded that maybe they were so confident that they thought a bad mark at uni wouldn't hold them back!

Inspiration, aspiration and perspiration!

I would say the private school kids fill their time more with structured activities as well as doing a lot of studying - there is less time just loafing about.

To go back to the OP's original question, I think this is at the heart of it. Learning comes from all sorts of places, but my experience of students at private schools is that they are busy kids and they benefit from all their different experiences and gain the sort of confidence the OP talks about.
I went to a very average comprehensive which drew from a broad catchment. Not many people went to uni. However most of my social life was outside of school - a lot through the local church (Guides, youth clubs etc even though our family weren't religious) and also through the city schools music programme which ran weekly rehearsals and concert tours in Europe. My peers in these social places were disproportionately from private schools and children from families where education was highly valued (e.g. parents were teachers). As a result I adopted their values, rather than those of my school peers.

It makes me so angry that the 'school's not cool' brigade dominate the agenda in many schools and inhibit students who want to do well.

In answer to this and other comments like it:-

"Teacher22 Inheritance a main factor in intelligence???? Then how come my dh who was raised on a council estate achieved a PHD from Cambridge???"

Er, since when did the word 'main' mean 'all? I read a couple of weeks back in several newspapers that recent studies have found that intelligence is linked very strongly to heritable factors and I am also writing from the experience of teaching in state schools and sending my children to prep and grammar schools that private schools are full of very bright children whose successful parents are paying the fees because they were bright enough themselves to earn above average salaries.

So, no, I am not in any way, shape or form, saying that children from poor families or from council estates cannot be bright. I am actually a working class poor girl made good myself. My mother was in a council flat for years.

If you choose to ignore evidence because the findings do not fit into a rigid PC ideology that is your problem not mine.

What is more, a private school, whether staffed with good, bad or indifferent teachers is likely to produce students who can distinguish between fact and opinion.

Teacher22 by heritable factors do you mean genetics or whether you inherited money?

I can assure you I have no pc ideology, like yourself we are working class made good. I was disappointed with private schools for both of mine and while not perfect I feel my ds is getting a fabulous all round education in state .

My daughter goes to a private school, she didn't start there but we had to change her after she was bullied and lost all her confidence at a state school. I think its about how they are treated at the school, the teachers treat them like individuals with views of their own and there is a lot of mutual respect. Its not a sense of "entitlement" as someone else said, my daughter and her friends all know how lucky they are! Essentially they are all treated like individuals and not constantly shouted at and told they are stupid which happens to my friends daughter all the time who has dyslexia and attends a mainstream school, and thats by some of the teachers!! Smaller class sizes and extra support help obviously though and I have gone from being really opposed to private schooling to a firm believer due to my daughters experience.

@teacher22 the studies I have read indicate that the the greatest factor in relation to intellect (and character, and emotional stability) is thought to be the stimulation and the child gets and the experiences the child has in the first 3 years of its life at the time the brain is being substantially wired up - this doesn't mean Baby Mozart but instead nurturing, exploring, sense stimulation, emotional stability and security, enjoyment of appropriate activities.

It is thought that we inherit to some extent how our brains are wired up from our parents and grandparents, and this has a large emotional impact on how we deal with emotions and stress too, apparently, which itself impacts on the ability concentrate, but our brains are only 20 pc wired up at birth and around 80 pc wired up at 3 years so there is a lot of potential for change in those 3 years plus without the right stimulation even someone starting out with advantages will not do well unless they get the right stimulation.

Can you link the articles you read?

user I explained to you two pages back that we’re obviously talking about genes, not cash.

Sorry, garbled word order! That should have read that the greatest factor in relation to intellect (and character, and emotional stability) is thought to be the stimulation the child gets and the experiences the child has..

I’m just amazed that so many people think that teaching good table manners and how to greet people politely is the school’s job. Surely they should know that stuff before they start? Certainly the kids from the sort of families who tend to use private schools will........

As I’ve said before, the sort of children who would benefit most from what a good private school has to offer are the children who are least likely to go to one.

Thanks suspicious but wanted to hear from Teachers perspective.

@bertrandrussell it is more to do with learning to fit in with a certain social group, though that is just one aspect of most private schools obviously.

I wish the learning and extra curricular opportunities you would get in a good private school could be available to all children...

Sorry, haven't read the thread, but my daughters go to a public school - both my daughters are relatively shy and lacking in confidence, and I don't think the public school has particularly helped them in this respect. Many of my friends' children go to state schools and many are far more confident than some of the kids at public school.
So don't fool yourself that only public schools produce confident children/teenagers!

@suspiciouslyminded please can you link these studies?! As I have said, genes are only a small factor I thought.

nevermindthebongos - there just aren’t enough really great teachers to go round. Highly skilled and rounded teachers congregate in schools that give them freedom to use all their skills to develop children fully, and those schools are, disproportionately, private schools.

Just to add my 2 pence worth, ive found in my local special school that they place a huge emphasis on manners, how to speak to adults, shaking hands, polite chit chat, teachers eat with the pupils. And you can see the effect on the kids, they are like private school kids, confident to approach people if they need to.

I went to private school, my husband went to boarding school, neither of us are that confident.

Also I think some might be confusing a sense of entitlement with confidence/expecting success.

“bertrandrussell it is more to do with learning to fit in with a certain social group, though that is just one aspect of most private schools obviously”

But they are already in that social group. So they have been fitting in to it since birth.....

Just like my state educated children.

I think resilience is more important than confidence.