.. to think we should scrap private schools?

[katnyps]

How can we ever have an equal opportunities society when people with more money can pay for their children to have a better education?

I know that there are exceptions to the rule, and great teachers in publicly funded schools, but I get the impression that influential roles in society are disproportionately represented by people paid for education... or am I wrong about this too?

I believe that Finland has one of the best (internationally recognised) education system in the world and (apologies if I'm not quite right here, but broadly speaking) that it is actually illegal there to charge for education?

@FfsDoE

Having gone from primary state to private secondary, the independent school is a breath of fresh air. Nothing to do with opportunity and everything to do with unlimited expectations, a blatant can-do attitude, content not limited to the curriculum and teachers not running to unions every 5 minutes. I would never go back to state. The only positive from state is that my daughter has notably more resilience than some of her all-life privately educated peers. But also less confidence initially.

How do they instill the confidence?

I have been happy with our state primary and secondary and my dc’s have always done well in their exams and are predicted good grades.

They have had a good breadth of extra curricular activities (pre covid) although I think there would have been more choice at our local private school.

It’s the confidence thing that I pick up a lot with friends who have dcs at private school and which I think one of my dcs in particular would benefit from- more a self assurance.

While I don’t think they would have got any better grades at a private school, I am interested in the confidence aspect.

As much as connections from private schools may have helped in some careers, they can be a negative as firms look to diversify their employee pool.

When I had interviews to go into corporate finance/investment banking, pretty much all of the companies were very keen to offer me a job. I had very good exam results and had qualified with one of the large accountancy firms, but I was also a woman and from a state/grammar school. Both of which were in the minority in client-facing corporate finance roles at that time, so I'm certain my state school background had a positive bearing on my job offers.

My sons' private school does a lot of work in the careers department and alumni coming in to talk about their careers. But I can see that a private school education will also count against them at some points, including university and job applications.

@Watermelon999 the main reason I've seen regarding opportunities to build confidence is due to the smaller classes. When there's 30 in the class there's not always time for everyone to do a presentation to the class (for example), and the quieter pupils can 'hide' a bit. There's usually more drama, sports matches and music ensembles/choirs going on too, all of which require 'performing' in way or another. Some optional as they get older but some not, in order to push them out of their comfort zone and develop further. Just my thoughts!