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.

I blame the teacher. Not many leave to go to another job 6 months into an A level course. She wasn't ill.

My DCs went to state schools and all went on to RG universities. We deliberately moved into the catchment area of an excellent non-selective, mixed school. Moving was a lot cheaper than paying school fees and most importantly, my DCs were all very happy not having to do entrance exams or going to a school known to have drug problems. Moving away from London was the best choice I ever made and I know I was very lucky to be able to relocate.

I know there’s quite a few teachers on Mumsnet and whether you work in a state or private school, you do an amazing job!

dapple Home Ed is on my hit list too - I think it is too unregulated and gives parents the opportunity to silo their children away from mainstream society and important core knowledge. At the very least it would have to be subject to considerably more regulation. In my glorious caliphate

Fair enough ennirem.
What about sending children to school abroad? I mentioned on this thread - or maybe another, there are so many threads - that a number of public schools have set up shop all over the world.
Would you allow that?

I DID blame the teacher who left part way through dds a level to go to a private school. I thought it was a shitty thing to do. I blamed her, not the private school.

It's a shame, but teachers change jobs frequently, just like every other profession. Most secondary teachers are always part way through a two year exam course when they leave - whenever they go they are going to be in the middle of an Alevel or a GCSE course so they have to go when an opportunity arises that suits their career aspirations, just like all other professionals do.
She would have given adequate notice - as teachers all have to - so it is the schools responsibility to find a replacement, not the teachers responsibility never to change jobs because children are attached to her/him.

No. Only the ones near posters who use state education. The ones near posters who use private education are full of drugs, knives and knuckle dragging Neanderthals. And that’s just the teachers

Oh what a shame. I thought you were hoping for a sensible discussion.

I’ve very clearly and repeatedly said our local schools both primary and secondary are very good to outstanding. But the agenda, right?

Can't very well stop people sending their children away. I think the proportion of parents with means to do this, or the willingness to not see their children for months at a time, would be so vanishingly small as to cause me no sleepless nights. And that would still leave state schools the good teachers who didn't want to upsticks and move abroad (I assume most), so wouldn't undermine the improvements to state I foresee from the abolition of private.

And if the whole family moves - this is always the threat when people propose curtailing some of the excesses of the rich, "They'll all leave the country!!" - well, I think if there is a minority who do not want to participate in any of the pillars of that society, then it is only right they should leave it. We'd just have to cope somehow.

Ennirem

I mentioned earlier my DD’s school has a very good SEN department and has a ever increasing intake of pupils with varying SEN that have been let down by the state system.

It would be exceedingly hard to lose that facility for children for whom the state system really doesn’t work.

DD School is private. It does not have especially small classes in someone subjects but it's one of the best in the country for results. So there's so much more to it than class size : pre-selection absolutely, very very good teachers, decent but not amazing facilities.
I know people on thread on saying no contextual uni offers for schools; but DD's school is seeing it....and that's fair enough.

Oh, Jaques that was a joke. You must be aware of the "you only support state education because you live near a leafy comp" and the "I would send my child to state school if only the nearest comp wasn't awash with drugs and patrolled by the SAS" stereotypes? They've made their appearance-particularly the first one-regularly on this thread alone. They are as bad as the "private school children are ridiculously pressured/all too posh to go to Tesco/only get into university because of string pulling" stereotypes.

Ennirem - private school is an international business, like it or not. They are expanding in many cases to meet that market - bigger sites, bigger boarding - not for uk kids but for overseas market. A lot of brits after looking around some don't want to send their kids there anyway ; shifting group of friends, bit impersonal not that friendly. Where we live boarding fees start at around £10k per term. Sticking vat on will make no difference to those parents; they are foreign mega wealthy.

In not after sticking VAT on, I'm after abolition Tinkobell. I think all education should be free at point of need and paid for by taxation. I think the same should be true of healthcare.

Jacques, but surely you don't think it is right that that provision is only available for children like your daughter if their parents are willing and able to pay for it (or enter for and win one of the limited scholarships)? That provision should be made via state education, and if that became a government priority because votes depended on it then it would be (or at very least would be on the agenda and being worked towards).

I am not trying to condemn anyone's child to a substandard education; but I don't see how it can be countenanced that of two children with the exact same absolutely fundamental problem of being unable to obtain an education, one should be saved and one not simply because of what their parents have and/or prioritise. Any more than I think it is alright for one child to be treated for cancer and one not purely on the basis of if their parents can pay.

This is absolutely categorically not the same as one child being able to have the posh trainers and one not,as Cherry seeks to suggest. It is fundamental.

bertrand I respect you a lot as a poster but I am one of 'those' MNers who live in a mixed area where there are big problems with gangs, knife and gun crime and the local school has had problems with this. It's also part of an academy chain who seem to do a bit of selection through the back door (I'm not against selection but I do like a school to be upfront about it, and a comprehensive is not meant to be selective). You obviously won't believe this but DH was walking to work last week and walked past a group of teenaged boys, one of whom didn't have a knife, he had a fucking machete, showing off to his mates. Well, excuse me if I don't want DD to be a part of that, and excuse me if I'll do whatever I need to to minimize DD's contact with machete-wielding kids. Which, in our case, is either move or go private.

.....even if there were a possibility of quashing private schooling, it's too late now to turn back the clock within uk universities which are utterly international businesses running a balance sheet and only too happy to wave in big fees from foreign students. So my point is whilst you might go some way to redress a perceived inequality down the chain, this will just come back later on......unless you fund like nuts and legistlate like nuts, desperately trying to plug every conceivable loop hole.
Having been round a load of unis this year, it is very obvious and visible from the facilities and clear investment which of those unis is operating very internationally and accepting private funding and which of them is not.

It's not just the money either. My sister would like to move, but is stuck where she is as it so happens the local council and local primary school makes excellent provision for SEN, which is essential for her two children with autism (she was living there long before she had kids before anyone jumps on me about how privileged she is to be able to move for it - believe me, there's no privilege in having to worry every day about how and if your child will ever learn to live independently). It shouldn't be the case that where you live dictates the quality and level of support you receive.

We need to stop accepting these class systems within education, be it wealth or postcode (obviously huge overlap between the two). We need to work towards a situation where all children wherever they are can access an adequate education for their needs. Not just keep accepting what is shit and finding workarounds for the better off.

Of course there are awful
state schools -the one you describe is obviously one of those. Just as there are achingly posh private ones. It's just that they are the extreme ends of the bell curve. And some people from both sectors seem to make all their judgements based on those extremes.......

I'd also restore university grants and set minimum quotas for home students Tinkobell. Money shouldn't come into education at any point. It's a social good.

Im not after sticking VAT on, I'm after abolition Tinkobell. I think all education should be free at point of need and paid for by taxation. I think the same should be true of healthcare
Well, yes with a £1.8Trillion deficit it would have to come from massive steep tax rises right across the board. You'd have to also rip up the low wage gig economy at the same time. Do we increase food banks whilst people find the taxes on flat wages? I'm not saying what we've got at the moment is great, but what you're proposing would cause riot or needs about 50 years to implement. It's all a bit little Britain isn't it?

How do you mean by Little Britain?

“The "quality" of schooling is a lottery by postcode. We have selection regardless of the state/private debate. In almost every case, the most over subscribed/popular school in the area will be the one with the best academic results regardless of whether it's fee-paying or not.

5% of state secondary schools in England are grammars (163/3000) and they are concentrated in a few pockets of the country so are not an option for those of us who live nowhere near.”

Totally agree with this.

It was never our plan to send our DC private. I wasn’t even educated in this country (that’s a whole other kettle of fish) and I expected the British school system to live up to the reputation it has overseas. Which it does generally - there is a national curriculum and all children are guaranteed a school place. This does not happen worldwide! I would like to ask the anti-independent schools brigade how they square up the fact that they live in private housing, when so many will never own their home? Housing is a basic human right too, no? Why should some be able to get in the housing ladder while others can’t?

In our case, DH and were quite naive. We paid hundreds of thousands in stamp to move to what we thought was a good primary school. Yes, we’re bound to get in, we thought. Only to find that you literally have to live within 200 metres of the school to stand a chance! The housing round there is a grid of terraced cottages which people buy and sometimes pretend to live in (though actually renting them out) just to get into the school. Or they live there and then move to a bigger family house once the first DC is in - because once one child is in the others will get sibling priority regardless of your address. So basically the whole thing is a racket and some people know how to play the game better than others. Our other local school was Catholic and they laughed when I called them. We had failed to go throughthe obligatory Church attendance since our DC was born, have them baptised ASAP etc.

The school we were offered was in special measures. In fact the whole thing was in prefab huts. When I went on the tour, the head was apologising for obscene graffiti (yes this was a primary) and she was honest about why she let us out of an alternative gate because, at that time, there was a problem with a certain contingent of parents who were bringing vicious dogs to the school gates.

In our case, we were in a position to afford private school fees so we did. At that time (this would have been about 2007), it was “only” 3k a term and we didn’t know we would have a third child. Once your child is in a particular school, is settled and thriving, that becomes your norm. You know all the other parents and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like anyone else, you would need a very good reason to disrupt your child’s “normal.” So here we are, ten years later, with 3 DC in independents and the fees have risen year by year to average at around £7 k a term each these days.

The truth is I have no idea how our DC would have fared in state schools because I have no experience of it. If we lived outside London, where there is less pressure on places, it might have been a different story.

Ultimately, I think there has been more pressure all round, financially and academically. However, some definite advantages too that I would not have anticipated. Some of these are hard to put into words, but there are little things, eg. I liked the way the head would always meet the children in the door and shake hands with them in the mornings and at home time. You were always treated with respect by the school because you are, after all, a paying consumer. I appreciate the small things like the way my DC automatically stand up if someone enters the room - even though these things get dismissed as old-fashioned or mocked in general society these days, it’s still noticeable when they exist. Of course anyone can teach children manners and the soft-skills, this is obvious - I’m just saying that, in our case, I do credit the prep school with a lot of this. Plus the children have a lot more confidence than I did at that age (although that could just be them). My eldest got into a super-selective London Day school and I can see the advantages in the way they go well beyond the national curriculum, but obviously it’s not for everyone. It’s horses for courses and so much depends on the specific circumstances of where you live.

Jacques, but surely you don't think it is right that that provision is only available for children like your daughter if their parents are willing and able to pay for it (or enter for and win one of the limited scholarships)? That provision should be made via state education, and if that became a government priority because votes depended on it then it would be (or at very least would be on the agenda and being worked towards)

Of course it should. But where are these kids going until we hit the utopia of an equal education system? The ones that have SEN but aren’t catered for in the state system.

But you don't seem to want to accept a correlation between local state being problematic and choosing to go private. Obviously, problematic is subjective (the school I'm talking about is actually highly rated by Ofsted) but we would probably not contemplate private for DD (unless she shows particular strengths in something one of the local privates could support better) if we lived firmly within the catchment (a moveable feast in our borough as it's furthest distance) of what we considered a good school for her, but we don't, and that goes for everyone in our neck of the woods. That's a lot of families who will either move, go private or go pot luck and desperately hope for the best (which may be miles away, or may be this local school, in which case they'll be on waiting lists for something better).

And that's all without considering that we might prefer her to go girls' only, in which case we would absolutely either move or go private, as the local is co-ed. I've seen a fantastic state girls' school which I would send DD to in a heartbeat - if we lived close enough. But we don't (we live in an area where furthest distance will regularly be under a kilometre and sometimes closer to 500 metres, depending on the number of siblings).

I asked this earlier but will again and address to you Ennirem, how are you going to overhaul the allocation system to ensure people get their local school?