to ask if you can afford a 'private' school in the UK but have chosen to send your child/children to a state school why?

[Foreverexhausted]

My three year old DD has just started a nursery attached to a fee paying school. I chose the nursery because it is by far the best nursery in the area but unfortunately we can't afford to send her to the school itself as fees are £15k per year per child and we have two children.

We have friends who could afford private schooling but their children are in state schools and then others who can't afford it but are just scraping by because they like the status of children attending a private school.

Oh, I think I would definitely let private special schools and vocational schools off the VAT hook. It doesn’t have to be a blanket charge. But there would be an extra tax for anyone using the word “sacrifice” in connection with paying school fees........

Tinkobell the thing is that's what people said about private healthcare. "You should be grateful those who can afford it are clearing the waiting lists for you poor people!" But we've seen the insidious effects of the two tier system, and how in the wrong Tory hands the existence of a private option can be used as an escape valve for the wealthy from essential services which are then systematically starved of funds, performing worse and worse as not adequately expanded or resourced to meet growing need, and are then (the circle of privatisation completes) held up as an example of how the state system is failing and needs more privatisation/"choice" introduced.

You bet your life if the children of the seriously monied (or even the bulk of the affluent middle classes) had to rely on state schools and state health services, they wouldn't keep electing governments and supporting policies that systematically starved those services of funds.

I know I'm a great big idealistic old Hector......

Oh, I think I would definitely let private special schools and vocational schools off the VAT hook. It doesn’t have to be a blanket charge

My DD’s school isnt a special school. It does however have a very highly regarded special needs department and is regularly taking new students that have been failed by the state system.

@Ennirem .....I don't disagree with anything you've said about funding. I am willing and indeed have voted for a government in which I would pay more taxes for health and education; but they didn't get voted in. Honestly, my view is that state education is constantly at the mercy of the ego-project of whatever the government of the day is! And THATS what's fundamentally fucking it up over and over again. Wasting money on stuff, demoralising staff who have goals changed every bloody parliament term. That's the prblem here.....it needs an overall governance or policy maker that is in some way more distanced from the ruling party. Often it is the ability to self govern to appeals to private school parents.

Private schools actually don't make much difference:

www.nature.com/articles/s41539-018-0019-8

“There isn’t any competition for most private schools- only for the real high flyers”

Bertrand - you have no idea! Do you know anyone in London? Children being tutored for years to get into ANY private independent schools, not just the top Day schools - any of them. 10 year olds sitting 5 different 3-4 hour or maybe full day assessments or sets of exams for maybe 5 different schools every January. It’s as stressful a process as any adult would go through to get a highly sought after job. It’s utterly ridiculous.

By the way, there is absolutely no point whatsoever in generalising about independent schools v state. They differ so widely it’s a waste of time. Here’s my experience.

I have one DC at a so-called “top London day school”. Well, I’ll tell you which one, it’s Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith. I think around 20% are in bursaries there, otherwise the fees are £7-8 K a term. He has friends of all nationalities and they really are drawn from all walks of life in London. If I think of his friendship group, there DC of the uber- rich oligarch types, as well as kids who live on council estates and just about everything in between. Asian, Russian, European, Nigerian - in fact, very few are what you would class full white British, including my DC, Once they are in the school, nobody gives a hoot where you come from - in fact, if anything, the super- rich try to hide the fact they come by chauffeur, etc because it’s enbarrassing for them. If you are there on a bursary there is a fund that pays for all your trips if your family can’t afgord it, but nobody would be any the wiser unless you choose to tell everyine. So, this half-term, there is a trio to China which cost £5 k and many pupils will be going free. What they do all have in common is that they worked very hard to get into the school in the first place. About 1,300 sit the exam. They interview 450 of these for about 120 places. This is fairly standard in London. In this area we have St Paul’s Boys, St Paul’s Girls, Godolphin and Latymer, etc - the odds of a place are just as difficult at all of them. It’s by no means laid back - socially or academically in these schools. I can say that much. Its really tough and expectations are high. If the kids can survive there, they can pretty much survive anywhere.

I also have a DC who is academically “average” (if you use national guidelines) with the added issue of dyslexia. What this meant was that no independent school in our area would have accepted him. So he has to travel out from where we are in zone 2 to Middlesex everyday. It’s a small school, only 14 or so in a class which I thought would be ideal. But no, as it turns out, the SENCO support there is virtually non-existsnt, even though we’re paying about 6k a term! If I want extra support Im told I will have to buy it in extra as a bolt in. I sometimes wonder if a state school would have been better?

I have another DC preparing for 11 plus for 5 different schools in January. The prep school are currently giving them practise interviews in preparation - how to shake hands, not fidget, look people in the eye, give full and interesting answers, etc. They’re given at least two practise maths papers a week. Timed story writing and timed comprehensions several times a week. Don’t even get me started on the VR, NVR after-school clubs. Plus making sure you are ready to talk about the “added value” you will bring to a school - eg. grade 8 on your musical instrument, etc etc.

These schools are super-selective because they can be. It’s as simple as that. When the GCSE grades at the nearest “outstanding” comps are around 30% A-A, compared to 95% A-A at the top independents around here, it’s easy to see why so many families families get swept into the hype and jump through such loopholes to try to get their kids in if they think they have a cat in hell’s chance and can scrape the fees. What you can’t buy is happiness or an “easier”, less stressful path through the school years for your child. I don’t think kids in independent schools have it easier at all, just slightly different pressures perhaps, but stress nonetheless.

Mandarine-I corrected myself to many, rather than most.

You bet your life if the children of the seriously monied (or even the bulk of the affluent middle classes) had to rely on state schools and state health services, they wouldn't keep electing governments and supporting policies that systematically starved those services of funds
Seriously monied would look overseas....... Re affluent middles: if they hypothetically have no choice, they'd be saving on fees and probably happy to vote in whoever invests most heavily in state. If Corbyn scraps university tuition fees, he'll definitely get my vote, though I would have concerns about where all the money to pay for universities would actually come from?

@Chickenkatsu fascinating link. Thank you.

I have another DC preparing for 11 plus for 5 different schools in January. The prep school are currently giving them practise interviews in preparation - how to shake hands, not fidget, look people in the eye, give full and interesting answers, etc. They’re given at least two practise maths papers a week. Timed story writing and timed comprehensions several times a week. Don’t even get me started on the VR, NVR after-school clubs. Plus making sure you are ready to talk about the “added value” you will bring to a school - eg. grade 8 on your musical instrument, etc etc.

Christ almighty. And that, right there, is confirmation (for now, for me, for my DC) that private school is simply not for me. And I'm sure there'll be others who'll tell me they just waved their DC in and gave them a futon to lie down on for 6 years because all independent schools are so different... but this is what I think of when I think of private school. Just horrible, inordinate amounts of pressure on little kids to be miniature adults with a huge portfolio of quantifiable 'achievements'. And yes I'm sure some kids thrive off the challenge but that list of training for a child of 11 gives me hives tbh.

Also Bertrand, there are many, many people who struggle to pay school fees. Imagine if you have 3 children in independent schools and then get another 20% tax whacked on each. It’s would basically be like having a fourth school fee to pay. Many simply will not have budgeted or saved for that, but if they’re forced to take their kids out of the independents, how will that actually help anyone if it means more pressure on the state schools? Round here there aren’t enough places as it is. People already move into the “right” school catchment areas and this has always been the case. It’s robbing Peter to pay Paul because what a family might save in school fees, they pay up in one hit on stamp duty or inflated house prices.

Or the churches will suddenly experience an influx as people suddenly seem determined to become Catholic. The faith school system is an even more ridiculous racket than the independent school selection process. I have friends who tell me that their DC’s chances of a secondary school place are wholly dependent on how soon the child was baptised after birth! So a baby baptised at 3 days old, will automatically be given preference over one who waited until 3 weeks. As if it had anything to do with the child!

Unfortunately, the school system in the UK is not fair on many levels, but I doubt it ever will be tbh. If private schools were banned tomorrow, the “privilege” system would simply shift to become a postcode lottery. Those who can afford more choice will continue to exercise that, as with anything else in life.

Mandarine- the school my son recently left has 38% of children who attract Pupil Premium-and I meet many parents at the food bank. You'll forgive me if I have little sympathy with people struggling to pay 3 lots of school fees.

Well faith schools are, pardon the expression, abominations. I'd give them the heave ho before I would the private schools tbh.

And that, right there, is confirmation (for now, for me, for my DC) that private school is simply not for me

That’s nothing but confirmation that that specific school is simply not for you.

As much as all state schools are not the same, nor are all private schools.

Just to be clear- faith schools will go too under My Glorious Reign.......

Private schools actually don't make much difference

Chicken - if this is the case then why do so many people want them abolished?
Quite a few public schools have opened branches abroad so if they were abolished here then parents would have an overseas option.

I think only a far left government led by someone like Jeremy Corbyn would actually take steps to abolish private schools, but should such a government get into power then loads of well off, private education using people will leave these shores.

Bertrand- Yes of course I take your point, but it’s not about sympathy or lack of it. It’s about reality because if school fee tax drives children out of independents, do the state schools even have the capacity? Maybe in some rural areas, but in our case, the “local state school” we were offered would have meant bypassing about 20 other schools on the school run. I think it was our in Surrey if I remember. So how would a private school tax help the state sector and children accessing reasonable places, especially in urban areas?

@Mandarine.....tax on fees would not drive govt revenues, what it would drive is rapid sector exodus to the state. Re: funding, assuming most parents of private school kids are uk residents, they are already paying into system but not using it, so funding per state-child head would have to drop / be spread thinner. The 'vision' in Bertrands world would also need to increase taxation to cover the additional state kids - presumably just for those annoying middle class people......plenty of whom are on this thread and whose kids already attend a state school.

Private schools, particularly the big public schools, won't be abolished. They'll change and adapt, as they always have done.

British parents being priced out simply means they'll take on more international pupils, making them truly elite and inaccessible to all except the very richest. Is that really what people want?

Ours go to the state primary which is 50 yards from our house. Lovely little school with a great bunch of supportive involved parents. Socially diverse but ethnically less-so.
The local state secondary is massive and that worries me. We could probably afford private from year 7 but my husband won't be persuaded.
I was privately educated at high school but not primary. TBH my main motivation for wanting to avoid the local state high school is not academic but more to do with a worry about my kids falling in with a bad crowd when they're older.
Having said that, my best friend is privately educating her DD and her tales of the mums' cliques and one-upmanship make me wince.

British parents being priced out simply means they’ll take on more international pupils, making them truly elite and inaccessible to all except the very richest. Is that really what people want?

Tanith I think it’s what some people want - on mumsnet, anyway. I remember having a conversation on here about this very subject with one of the regular anti private school posters, maybe minifingerz or noblegiraffe.
I asked her if she/he would object if these schools with their fabulous facilities and excellent teachers had only rich pupils from overseas.
She didn’t give a direct answer but repeated the usual mantra of wanting a decent education for all children in UK.

I have read the full post and honestly fail to comprehend the ethical/ moral reasonings of people who can afford private schooling but chose state ! I'm assuming that these parents do not pay for extra curricular activities, additional tutoring, private healthcare etc for their kids ?? Where do you draw the line of not wanting to give your kids an unfair advantage??

I attended a catholic state school and managed to do reasonably well career wise i have a Ds who is 2 and we had no intention of sending him to private school until we stumbled upon an advert for an open day to a certain prep school in our borough . I did some research into the school and instantly fell in love with its values . We attended the open day and loved it even more ! We have been offered a conditional place for our son next year and whilst I am still toying with the idea a bit I think we most probably will send him to the private school for the following reasons:

1. it's values sit well with ours - they place a lot of emphasis on manners , etiquette and God ( I am religious btw)

2. the extra curricular actives are great. We thought this might be beneficial incase our son isn't academic but will have access to a wide range of sports and musical activities to try out

3. the state schools in my catchment are very poor performing. When we bought our house we didn't look into schools as we didn't have any plans on having kids . We have now been very disappointed in the choices of state that we have . There's a state school on my street which has an ousted rating of requires improvement.

4. the school is surprisingly of a mixed socio demography. We have attended two open days and not once did we see a fleet of luxurious cars or parents dressed in lavish clothing. There is an noticeable mix of kids from different backgrounds.

The school performs well academically but nothing to shout about !Had we been within the catchemnet of a good state school we would without a doubt send our ds state. We would then use the extra disposable income to fund extra activities , house improvements and nice holidays!

We haven't started so I can't say that it's the best decision as yet but just staying why we are choosing private over state.

Also, it's really unfair that people are making sweeping generalisations on private or state schools . None is generally better than the other! There are some state schools which are actually better than others all depending on the child.

Also, didn't it occur to those people who "happen" to live near to outstanding state schools, that they perhaps might've paid a hefty premium to reside in those catchment areas ? Isn't this equivalent to paying for a good education for your kids ?

You do realise that many of us use state schools that aren't "outstanding"?