To ask if you regret educating your kids privately?

[ifeelsoextraordinary]

Having the state v private debate at the moment for our D.C....it would be a huge stretch but do-able. If you sent your kids to private education, do you think it was worth it? Would you do it again?

Don’t regret it yet. DD is in Y8 and has been going to private school since Y7. She has SN and a couple of years back her primary school SENDCo and Head Teacher called me in to say she wouldn’t cope with the local comprehensive (very good academically but not brilliant with SN and massive) so she’s at a tiny private school which specializes in being nurturing. Loads of the kids there have SN. She’s in a class of 9 with the world’s cuddliest teachers, When things go wrong they are great at spotting it, letting me know and helping sort it. DD is gaining in confidence (even got a big part in the school play last summer!), making friends and becoming calmer. It’s a big stretch financially - I’m a single parent, got a good job but public sector - and I do panic about money occasionally but well worth it. Will DD get 10 grade 9s at GCSE - would be lovely but I really doubt it - but I hope she will be calmer, happier and more able to cope with life as a result.

They usually dress it up as their child needing small class sizes and to be among like-minded studious pupils without SEN or other disadvantages not wanting your kid to be battered by a feral chav, how unreasonable.

My dd has the choice of private or state. She is choosing state as none of her friends are going private. I actually don’t of know anyone from her year not going to state. This reflects on the good quality of the schools around here and the children are very lucky.

I grilled the two state schools dd can get into and visited the other two, which would have necessitated moving a short distance because I went to state and should have gone private. My parents decided against it without any input from me and that was when children went to secondary from yr8. The school I went to was awful. Bullying, violence, poor teaching, disengaged teachers etc.

I had a dumbed down education and many many gaps in my knowledge. I suffered hugely at A level at a far superior secondary being sneered at by some teachers for being stupid rather than poorly educated. My mental health was very poor - big back story.

I think you have to treat each child and situation as individual. Some children will benefit. Others not.

I have read how very important for children to be with friends, they do better in exams. My dd definitely needs the security blanket of going to the same school as her friends from primary. I know she won’t be offered everything she would in a private school. We only visited one and weren’t more impressive than the state schools. Instead we have told dd we will get tuition as a family for a second language (third actually) as the school she chose only does French and not terribly well, which is the only downside I see. Dh is French.

Don't regret it but was surprised how fast costs increase. Started private had no worries on affording it, now we pay ALOT more and there is a great deal of pressure to not change your mind later once you've started.

Thanks all for your comments. You want to do the best for your kids but how can you ever know what’s best....spending the equivalent of a house on education or using that money to provide other opportunities for your kids? Still lots of thinking to do....thanks for your thoughts. Very helpful

We have an excellent local school so kids go there - we are saving the money we would have spent on private to pay for uni / house deposit.

Parents can't know if it was worth it, because they can't know how well their kids would have done in a different school, at best they can tell you if it was a good experience or not, but that doesn't mean it was worth it

Of course you can say it was worth it. Surely “worth” simply means whether it gave something in return for the money spent.

I can say with absolute certainty that private prep was worth every penny for us.

Mine went to private school from nursery, they then had to leave for financial reasons. The state primary they went to was amazing, now both at state senior school and doing amazing.
I don't regret paying for their education as it's given them solid foundations, life happens tho!!

I don't regret it at all. Even though our prep is selective the reason we chose it was the caring culture of the school which I definitely didn't see at our local state. Having a positive attitude to learning is really something we felt we couldn't compromise on.

Our local state imo really relies on highly educated parents to help children with the massive amounts of homework set every week. It appeared to me children were picking up very little in class and parents were doing a lot in the evenings.

If we lived somewhere else we may very well have made a different decision but I'm really happy with our choice.

I have colleagues who regretted it. My 2 have done state primary then grammar. KS1 was absolutely fine, yrs 4-6 less so. Now both happy and challenged at grammar school with tons of extra-curricular stuff going on. So for us it wouldn't have been worth it.

What is the 'polish' and 'holistic' aspect people talk about? Can you list out what you mean? DD in Y2 state and we could afford private but I know very little about private schools. The state schools here are not great but there doesn't appear to be many private either.

"Polish" eg: arrogance and a cut glass accent can close as many doors as it opens IMO. I do not believe private school (small class sizes, spoon feeding for exams) builds resilience - in fact the opposite.

I went to a highly respected academic selective independent school, my siblings went state. One grammar, one comprehensive.

We all have exactly the same level of higher education and roughly ‘equal’ jobs.

I think the education my Dc are getting in comprehensives is as good as mine was. My misgivings are about the NC , not the teaching.

What I did see at my private school (and we recognised it at the time) was that it propped up the ‘second tier’ and more average ability girls to do well, and gave the ones who were not self starters s bit of a helping hand and boost.

My 2 eldest are cleverer than I was and zooming through top grades in top sets at comps, alongside very high achieving peers.

I wish my parents had saved their money for their pensions.

I am always surprised that people think it is ‘not worth it’ for middle ability kids. IMO they might be the ones to benefit most, with more of the propping up.

And there are lots of local and specific factors of course.

But shock horror: the comps my kids go to have police at the gate at going home time. It isn’t always the badge of doom that MN posters seem to think it is. Both schools are S London comps with outstanding status.

My eldest has just started school and pretty much straight away I knew we had made the right decision. We were choosing between three schools (all private) but the one we chose seemed by far the best. And our experience has been nothing just positive. The school is small and has a really great sense of community despite the majority of parents working full time. The staff are amazing and passionate. And the change in our son since he started there has been remarkable. He has become so confident and congenial. He loves it so much he often refuses to come home. But I would definitely echo what previous posters have said. If you are putting children into the private sector in the hopes of top a levels forget it. Stupid children can’t miracu be turned into academic high flyers by better resources and smaller staff to student ratios. However, the benefit that I have seen for academically incapable graduates is that most of them do still go to university because it’s assumed and then most go on to have fairly successful careers in business and finance etc. Essentially you are paying for confidence, social graces and, an active and influential alumni network. Schools can only support children to do as well as they can, nothing more.

I do not believe private school (small class sizes, spoon feeding for exams) builds resilience

You know not all private schools spoon feed for exams

@Icenski they mean British upper class culture. So things like how you speak, how you dress, how to use cutlery, exposure to high culture (opera/fine art etc), playing ‘posh’ sports with confidence, etiquette etc. A lot of it comes from other families tbh but there are a lot of forgein families who really do need to pay for this, things like good taste are fairly universal but the little things aren’t. The word loo is a good example. Where I come from it is twee and marks you out as being descended from a certain (lower) class of people. Instead people say toilet. In Britain it is the standard and saying toilet makes a lot of people cringe. Table manners again can be quite different. And so on. That’s what people mean when they say polish. So you can turn up to dinner appropriately dressed, use your cutlery properly and hold a conversation about opera.

"Who knew how she would have turned out if she went state"

I sometimes wonder how DD would have done if she had gone private. She went to the local comprehensive, achieved mostly A* and A at GCSE and AAA at A level. I'm not sure she would have done any better at private school.

I have a friend whose son went to the same private school foundation from 3 to 18 (nursery, prep, high school). When he was still at school she said that private education gave him loads of confidence and pooh poohed the iea of state school.

When he went to university he really struggled because it was the first time he had changed his place of education. He had had his hand held at the same private school for 15 years and had been with the same cohort the whole time, and had no idea how to live independently or how to get used to being with new people, new teachers, new systems etc. He ended up sitting one of his years twice and suffered from depression and lack of motivation.

My friend admitted that she though she was doing the right thing about schooling at the time, but regretted it afterwards.

In my (limited) experience young people who were state educated were more self motivated and self starting than those who had been to fee paying schools (listen to Rob Newman on this) . It all tends to equal out by post grad level anyway. State educated young people do better at university with the same entry grades IYSWIM

Private school is NOT a way of buying good exam results, or even good pastoral care. DS would have been better homeschooled, DD would have done fine in any school, but they both were probably a bit better off in their very minor private schools than in the state options we had round us at the time.

My DS went to a private school until he was old enough to move into the grammar school. I wish I had kept him in the private school - he became very lazy in the grammar school, just doing the bare minimum. he passed all his GCSEs apart from English literature as he would not read any of the books. But not with particularly good grades. He was tested on entering the grammar and was A for all subjects. All the others in his year that were tested A got their A* grades. I simply could NOT get him motivated to do any work. He did not bother staying on for A Levels and has gone to college to do business studies because he thought it would be less work. It is really disappointing, and a waste of a brain to be honest. If he had stayed in the private school I think it would have been a very different outcome.

I can’t add a lot that hasn’t already been said to whether it’s worth it or not, but what I would say that I have found is that there is a lot more to costs than just fees. This is particularly key if the fees are a stretch already.
My DS went to an independent school from Y7 and academically, musically, pastorally and for sport I totally rate it. However. The uniform requirements are beyond a joke (to me who went to a v normal comprehensive). They are effectively dressed in business suits (which I find anachronistic in a world where even big corporates seem to largely be fairly comfortably dressed on a day-to-day basis) which cost an arm and a leg - every item needs to come from the contracted supplier. Sports kit is vast and all expensive brands and must all be logoed. I bought loads of stuff second hand, but still have spent several hundred quid on stuff that will most likely be outgrown in a year. Perhaps I’m just tight, but I don’t see that the fancy uniform adds any value at all.
Stuff like trips - our school is very good at keeping these sensible. Nothing that feels too obligatory, lots with relatively basic accommodation etc. Eg skiing trip is a third of the cost of the local comprehensive school skiing trip and more youth hostelly and focused on skiing than fancy hotel and focused on holiday.
But every school is different.

Interestingly, the same foundation loses most of its students for 6th form. They tend to go to the outstanding (state) 6th form college in the next town. As a result their A level results aren't stellar.

All these threads ever show is that it does literally come down to the schools in question than a wider state vs private debate.

I agree Jacques

These threads always come down to the same thing - some parents like private schools and some like state. If we are all happy there is no problem. My 5 have (always fee paying schools from age 3) have had no problems at university as I am sure state school children don't either. we chose academically selective day schools, single sex as I am not a boarding school fan particularly.

Just do what feels right for you (assuming you can afford to pay fees). Plenty of children do well in either sector. Also it depends what you mean by well. i want mine to have free thought, exposure to lots of different ideas and be mentally and physically healthy with a balanced life that makes them happy.