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!

User, your school hardly sounds like a failure, but it also sounds as if you have several schools in your town or city. There is just one here, in a huge, rural and poor catchment.

My argument is not with the students; it's with the ethos of low aspiration and blinkered horizons.

Any selection test in the state education system needs to be based on skills that are explicitly taught in schools.

The Kent 11+ predates the national curriculum. Before there was a NC schools could teach pretty much what they felt like and it was therefore appropriate for the 11+ to attempt to sift children according to ability, as there was nothing much else to base the test on. That has not been true for a generation and it is high time that the 11+ be based on rigorous maths, reading comprehension and writing assessments based on the skills of the highest performing pupils in the NC system.

The vast majority of state schools offer the opportunities stated.

Especially those in the areas where most children who go to private school live.

Its not the opportunities, its the confidence that comes from knowing you are right to be in this position, that this is what you deserve. That comes from home.

As does the culture of narrow horizons and low aspiration. The overwhelming body of evidence shows that if your parents take education seriously, you will.

Yes, I think it depends on how we define confidence. I was shy but always believed I had a chance (not a right but a chance) to pursue a career course of action or go into a particular place or building or place. I am not sure it's what you "deserve". We only get what we work hard to achieve. Feeling you deserve things tends to stop ambition and confidence. No one is owed anything. you just have to get on with very hard work to achieve it.

I agree that the only way to get ahead is hard work. But when we are children, the hard work of the adults around us to create an environment in which opportunities are maximized goes a long way to getting us to a place where we will be able to work hard at something interesting.

"I agree that the only way to get ahead is hard work. "

Not true, there is such a thing as the glass floor as well as the glass ceiling and private schools play a part in perpetuating this. The country also has a great deal of nepotism going on in certain industries and professions.

The narrative spouted by Xenia is neo liberal dogma, that one only gets to where they are by hard work.

Not true, never has been.

Not true

You may be right Topcat, but then no one gets very far lazing around.
Also, riches can disappear. It only needs one gambler or someone who thinks they are good at business and aren't for many years of careful husbandry to be undone.

No but people get much further from having advantages.

As I said there is such a thing as the glass floor!

Lots of people haven't had to work very hard to benefit from things that weren't earned by themselves.

@topcat1980 I am not completely sure what you are referring to in relation to nepotism, but before having dc i worked in a large international top law firm in London for more than a decade, and i can tell you that the trainees coming through were truly excellent in their own right - they were incredibly clever, competent, emotionally intelligent, very easy to train up. The summer students who came in during the summer were all selected on merit. Nepotism was unheard of, it would have caused outrage, it just would not have happened.

But it does occur, just because it didn't happen in your spehere.

I know of young people who have jobs at law firms, banks they are able yes, but they got their start because they knew someone. Or their parents knew someone.

It isn't even just the first start, its things like much sought after internships being auctioned off at Westminster School fundraisers etc etc.

Confidence and academic success can be quite mutually exclusive. I come from a long line of shy and awkward clever clogs. Can polish off the Times crossword in record time but we’ll always be found bumbling along at the back and pushed out of the way.

Confidence is self-belief, even when it’s unwarranted. In fact it is particularly of benefit in the case of the latter. Empty vessels make the most sound and all that...

OCSock
Our school, is a semi rural catchment school, 10 primaries plus 3 border villages, 4 miles from city which is regularly in bottom 3 in England/Wales. It has only ever been Satisfactory/RI and went Inadequate in October 2018, though was inspected May 2017. It has a progress 8 of minus 2.7. Yeah it's bloody great, but where else to go, two nearest schools 3-5 miles have no better results/Ofstsd ratings, and we can't afford to bus them 15 miles to better ones.

My son's A Level grade depends on a section of coursework on Martin Luther King, hardly unknown historical figure, school have no books, literature on him. So he had to search the internet, trawl our local library, pay neighbouring council to loan a book. Use books mum and dad had from their childhood and a 1971 copy of his famous speech.
Friends daughter, from neighbouring council estate goes to a private school, for Rosa Parks, she got to speak via school to a couple of Uk based USA history professors, and video/Skype the directors of the Rosa Parks Foundation and Museum. Which do you think will get the A/A*. Both will be marked together this year.
In History he has had 5 teachers this year, and 35% of his Geography classes have been cancelled.
Which child is more privileged?
Because according to most it's not my son, and many on the other thread claimed similar happens at private schools, and it would be good lesson for him. Problem is that's not true about private schools, and he has to and will be competing against those private school kids for life, and no we don't even get on Bristol's shit school list.

Topcat if anything the law is ripe for nepotism. My dh has worked in the City for all if his career and never found it apart from a little on private banking day visions.

User I agree we do have a lot of choice and our school has had money thrown at it and totally get where you are coming from.

Meant private banking divisions!

Nepotism in the law exists, but especially with the getting of those valuable internships.

The nepotism thing is very interesting. The very obvious “Old School Tie” thing in much less of a “thing” of course. But I can think of loads of examples of ways in which kids get on because of people their parents know. One of my dd’s friends spent a summer working in a well regarded architect’s practice because one of the directors is a very good friend of mine and I asked him. My ds got one of his first biggish gigs because a friend of his mates dad was running a corporate do and wanted local “talent” as entertainment. Another friend of ds’s has a dad who does contract work doing track repair for London Underground, and he can recruit the labourers he wants. His son’s friends often get the jobs. Think about opportunities for work experience. It is foolish to say it doesn’t happen. There is also a big element of “you can’t be what you can’t see”. If the people who come to supper in your house are professional people, or creatives, for example, you grow up knowing that those jobs exist.

Oh, and don’t forget unpaid internships. Anyone who can afford to take one of those is at a huge advantage.

I gave a talk the other day to a group of parents about the systems, practises, preparation and planning required to get into a good university course. The parents were in no way forced to attend the talk. Many of them were very resentful of the idea that they were going to need to do any work at all to make their child’s educational future happen. They wanted someone else to do that for them...

;)

Which is why many children are at private school of course....

I have no issue with people who are able to pay for full outsourcing of parenting doing so.

I have a huge issue with people unable or unwilling to pay for full outsourcing of parenting expecting other people/teachers/the public purse to do so.

@topcat1980 it doesn't happen in the top, large firms. I was involved in both training and recruitment and my firm was typical of the other firms. It doesn't happen at the top level in any career. It may happen at smaller law firms, though, if the senior partner wants to help someone they probably could. But at the top level, not in recruitment and not in internships. No direct nepotism.

Though yes indirectly certain people will be advantaged as @bertrandrussell said, and one such advantages would be having gone to a private school I would imagine.. which takes us back to the beginning of the discussion.

*one such advantage..

Maybe not direct nepotism, but many may have benefited from it further down the line.

It certainly happens in legal chambers

There are quite a lot of different points on the thread and I have made quite a few. I don't agree my comment that the only thing that helps you get on is hard work. I just meant to write in the context of my sentence that if you think you are entitled to things and have a right to them it never does you much good and it's better to have the attitude that you need to pull your finger out and get on with some hard work otherwise you won't even get the grades necessary to get through the first hurdle computer system initial application process for some jobs.

Confidence is something many men have more than women. In fact I would even say the divide between men and women over it is bigger than the class divide over confidence actually but that is thread deflection as the thread is not about girls thinking they are lucky to be in a job and boys thinking they are so good at the job they deserve much higher pay.

On the interesting issues of what helps people I think all we were saying early on the thread is correct - speaking well, having good written English, being able to fit in with that particular work place, watching how people speak and dress and their hobbies and copying them, being loved, feeling secure in yourself.

SO the thread was what can I do to give my child confidence even though it doesn't go to a fee paying school and the answer is more one of psychology than anything else - get lots of experience at the things concerned eg I put the twins in for a music theory exam every term for a while so they learned at a young age how to go into an exam hall, allocate your time, sit still , not talk etc and you can do the same with all kinds of activities.

The procedures to apply to work for the larger law firms are not nepotistic but you need high exam grades (which most people don't get) and to get through the assessments and apply in time - plenty of people don't spend 3 minutes on line to read the time scales (years ahead). I agree that in some careers however it is different. Journalism and fashion seem to be one careers where unpaid internships (are those still allowed?) happen.