Would you send your child to private school if you could afford to?

[Diadora30]

A bit of a dilemma, my DS is due to start school next year, we live in a small village in the south west and the local primary is a 5 minute walk. It is rated as a ‘good’ school by Ofsted (I know ofsted reports are not the be all and end all).

In the next town there is an independent school with a pre prep, prep and senior school. It has amazing facilities and I’ve heard really good things about the teaching, there’s smaller class sizes and the pastoral care is meant to be excellent. It would be a 15-20 min drive to get there.

It would cost about 8% of our income for the next 3 years, and then slightly more as he progressed to higher years.

I don’t know why, but I feel torn. Has anyone else been in a similar situation?

Does it make a difference in the long term? Is it worth sending him to our village primary and then paying for some extra curricular activities instead?

He’s very energetic and loves all sports and the independent school is very sports based.

I'd prefer not to other things being equal, I'm not a huge fan of the behaviours & values that private schools tend to impart.

But I probably would do at a stretch, e.g. if the local state options were particularly dire and/or I had a child that I particularly doubted would thrive there.