To feel I have utterly let down my children by sending then to a state school?

[hibbledibble]

I went to a private school, and achieved very well academically.

My children go to a state school, as I can't afford private school. I will never be able to afford it sadly. They go to the local community school, which has a reputation for not being academic.

My eldest is extremely bright, and tested many years ahead of her age on entering the local primary. Now, she has failed to even get to the second round of the 11+. She has really just coasted at school, as they have not set any appropriate work for her, despite multiple requests. They say they can't offer 'gifted and talented' provision, due to funding.

Her sibling is very behind on learning, as she missed loads of school due to lockdowns, and the school offered very little remote provision throughout most of the time. I have asked for support for her, but am told that nothing is available, again, due to funding. Meanwhile, she is struggling with even the basics.

I do think that both of my children would have done better, had they gone to a school where their individual abilities and learning stage was catered for, and they were helped to achieve their potential. I feel I have let them down by not providing them with a good education, which they could have had if I had the money.

Now it's looking likely my eldest will have to go to the terrible, and rough, local secondary, and the underachieving will continue.

What I would do in your position is talk to her teachers and find out where they think she can improve. Make sure you’ve got a good relationship with the school
If you’re not going to move her. Get a regular tutor and stick with them. Go and look at the comp and really look at it with an open mind- check where their 6th formers go, how kids do at GCSE. They may not be sending scores of people to Oxford but if they’ve got a good record of decent university entrants then that’s positive. If the school is truly dire (and very few are) research the life out of every other school in the area, speak to the admissions people or move house. At worst try to keep the tutor so she’ll be at the top of the pile and can change for 6th form. But as others have said she may either have been a very early developer or just hasn’t found her niche yet so I don’t think it’s the school’s fault.

Where's the father in all this? He could have been proving support when you are at work.

Also, you can't make work ethics. If your child doesn't push herself then she won't necessarily achieve what she is able to do so

Some children just aren’t academic. Move house then. As it’s a postcode lottery for state senior schools. Just because you’re obviously academic doesn’t mean your children will be. I think you need to let that go maybe. Or maybe put less important on the academic side of things. Surely happy healthy kids is enough. It’s obviously your hang up. You need to, for your children’s sake, let go of this.
I’m went to private school. But only because
Both my parents died when I was young. I can tell you that I wish they hadn’t died and I had gone to a state school. I wasn’t academic at. But have found a lovely career running my own drama club and party kids entertainer business.

My oldest (16) is not academic. And just recently got what she needed to go to college to start a Level 3 Early Years course. Equivalent of 2 a levels. She’s so happy out of the school environment. College suits her. She’s blossoming and it’s wonderful to see

Her younger sister (13) is even less academic than her. And she’s managing fine in the lower sets at our local senior school. She will most likely follow her sister to college or maybe an apprenticeship when she’s 16.

You mention funding. Yes. I too have experienced that. And both my girls fell through the gaps With less and less help from TAs throughout their primary school as other children with more learning/behavioural difficulties came into the school. My girls needs just weren’t severe enough so they pretty much got scooped up by the already stretched teachers. We were lucky though that our primary school really is a great school. However. We moved here to be near the school. Why can’t you move to be near a better school for you children?

My dad went to a fee-paying public school (he had an academic scholarship though, so paid no fees).
My mum went to her local 11+ girls grammar school.

Me? I went to the local comprehensive, in the middle of a particularly rough and deprived council estate. I came out okay. Got a degree from a top 20 university, then a post-grad degree. It's fine.

It’s really manky a choice between private schooling vs tough secondary

You have choices

Move house
Scholarship applications
Private tutors

Personally I’d move rather than send my children to a place as bad as it seems

My children weren’t being given ants eking work either and we moved them into private - we had already discussed moving I’d that hadn’t been an option

Some very harsh comments here.
Suddenly everyone is in love with their own state schools, yet there are endless threads on here complaining about how their state school is failing their child, why do the other threads get sympathy but not this one? I know why, because she dared to bring up private Ed to the discussion.
This thread paints all state schools as outstanding. How refreshing 🙄 .
Carry on- Keep bashing other mums. No sympathy or empathy.

OP you have my sympathy.

No glasses hence typos

@arethereanyleftatall

Rather than blame the school. It's clear your eldest is not academically gifted, otherwise she would have passed the 11plus with the help of the tutors you got her. Which is fine, not everyone is. Look at the child you have, rather than the one you want.

Love this … Look at the child you have rather than the one you want.

@VaccineSticker

Some very harsh comments here. Suddenly everyone is in love with their own state schools, yet there are endless threads on here complaining about how their state school is failing their child, why do the other threads get sympathy but not this one? I know why, because she dared to bring up private Ed to the discussion. This thread paints all state schools as outstanding. How refreshing 🙄 . Carry on- Keep bashing other mums. No sympathy or empathy.

OP you have my sympathy.

Not all are outstanding and I agree that secondary can be more difficult

But primary for a bright child? Is it really that much if an inhibitor if the dc is so ahead

Your DC will go to the comp and be the cream of the crop there, a high achiever.

I live in a grammar area and don't agree with the system so my DD hasn't taken the 11+, I know she'll do well at the local comp- I went to a comp and went to 2 RG unis, have a Master's etc.

The cream rises wherever! If the local choice is truly Shithole Academy, compared to Perfectly Acceptable High School, I would consider moving though.

I didn’t say that it was solely about intake, only intake was the biggest factor. There will be very few kids, if any who go to private schools who a) are going in hungry every day or coming from poverty b) don’t value education or come from a home culture where education isn’t valued or talked about positively or c) will statistically be in the lower 50% of population intelligence than the higher 50%.

Small class sizes, better discipline and a culture of higher expectations I agree with you will make a difference but that’s not going to turn a person who would get an E into a state school into an A* student. The home culture around education, not having anti-intellectualism sentiments around your children and bringing up your kids to be independent learners is the biggest factor.

If small class sizes and better resources was the only way someone can do well then:

1. There would be no children at state schools who get straight A’s. Most bright kids would do well anywhere, even at below-average state schools. Thousands and thousands of students every year get straight A’s and come from state schools. They’re not even “outliers”. They’re not the norm but they’re not a small enough percentage to be outliers. Myself and my three best friends went to a state school and we ended up at York, Warwick, Cambridge and Durham studying either STEM or law. None of us had tutoring or private school education, we just had parents who fostered a culture of learning at home and created us to be driven and take responsibility for our own learning.

1. As I said in my original post, the statistics have shown for the last few decades that Chinese and I Indian students at state schools out-perform every race (but their own) at private schools. Coming from a culture or ethnicity where education is valued and children are instilled with drive and motivation and a hunger to learn will compensate for not going to the best school in the land.

Btw not against private, have used both. Also have used state and had good results when it wasn’t top pick in area.

Parents are responsible for education. All of mine went to the local primary we had a choice of 4 - 2 outstanding and one good and one in RI.

Eldest extremely bright and thrived there but I supplemented everything. Massively. Stone Age - books on the Stone Age, visits to stone henge etc

School said reading books x3 a week we did 30 minutes a day. Sats preparation was good through school but we did x10 that amount at home. 11 plus we starting preparing a year before timings and questions, she passed with flying colours local secondary schools were crap so we arranged for a school out of county and she thrived. Youngest did not thrive at the same school. Had medical problems and speech problems nhs were rubbish as was local speech and language - so I fought and fought. During lockdown I worked full time and I still did x4 hours of 1-2-1 with him he had no speech and language therapy for 12 months so I bought the books the therapists used and I taught myself to do it. We do an hour of extra English a day 7 days a week. I scrap by and sacrifice everything for my children - ex contributes fuck all either with his time or his money. We relocated. Eldest was ready to sit done GCSEs early and did.

The school is where they go for basic education, learning social skills etc but the fine tuning - I do it all. I brought the eldest all the cgp revision guides and workbooks for gcse when she was in year 8. Every single book is completely, we used lock form as productively as we could. Reading Shakespeare and looking for dvd versions of the plays, talking about literature, learning about musics for one month we did the 1960s then the 1970s I’m not wealthy and I had to work full time. But they came first, I really don’t get parents who think their child is there for 6 hours tops (including break and lunch) and think that it is the schools responsibility - 3 months of the year the child is not even in school. It’s my job to educate them.

Seriously - I can’t imagine it going down well for a lot of parents if I said to them “hey, sorry, I can’t differentiate for your child because of funding”.

OP needs to clarify what she’s asked of the school (because I imagine she didn’t just ask for differentiation - but if that was the case then it’s a crap school).

I live in Outer London and know many, many doctors. Most have sent their children to state primary and used tutors to access the grammar schools. There are more normal grammar schools in Bexley we can access due to proximity and superselective grammars in Kent and Bromley. Those who sent their children to the more average state schools used tutors from an early age. Those who lived within the best state school catchments tutored mainly in year 5. In the best state schools there is a massive massive culture of tutoring and then the children achieve better Sats and the state school extends the brighter children from an early age anyway by providing differentiated work. But because they have 33 children usually by ks2 in a class, merely providing differentiated work is not enough because often the more academic ones are given the harder work but with not much time to explain it- so they work it out themselves and the tutor supplements any gaps. The issue with grammars is also that for maths there is a whole year of year 6 maths that hasn’t been covered by the time grammar tests come round.
Even in the local independent schools it appears many parents tutor for grammar as well.
Fundamentally, it therefore appears where we live being very bright is not enough to get into grammar school. You need the child to practise the specific tests to get into the grammars, the parents exchange info with each other and use the same tutor and the kids accept the situation because so many of their friends are doing the same!

YABU I’m afraid. I went to a middle ranking red brick uni - and lots of the kids there were from private schools. They didn’t get in to Russell Group unis, despite all the money.

Meanwhile, DH went to Oxford from a pretty average comp in a deprived part of Wales.

You can’t blame it all on the school; you need to read with them and encourage them at home.

Is it too late to try and get fully funded scholarships or bursaries for local private schools? Or could you move them to different state schools, or even explore moving house?

I think YABU I’m afraid. You have no way of knowing yet how your children will do in the end. The majority of my friends are incredibly successful and well paid: they all went to state schools.

You could of course afford private. You're hardly on min wage.
Plenty of teachers afford private and teachers earn roughly half what doctors earn.

This will sound really rude, but what has your amazing private education afforded you in life? It's not money, as you say you can't afford to send your children to private school! I appreciate that there's more to education then a high paying job at the end of it, but there's also more ways of learning than just in the school classroom and more to be learned at school then just the syllabus.

And every school I've ever been anywhere near talks about differential work all the time. It's literally the cornerstone of how schools work these days.

What exactly did you ask for?

And what do you want to happen now?

If the school is really that bad then why didn't you move schools or move house

@VaccineSticker

Some very harsh comments here. Suddenly everyone is in love with their own state schools, yet there are endless threads on here complaining about how their state school is failing their child, why do the other threads get sympathy but not this one? I know why, because she dared to bring up private Ed to the discussion. This thread paints all state schools as outstanding. How refreshing 🙄 . Carry on- Keep bashing other mums. No sympathy or empathy.

OP you have my sympathy.

Not at all. I described my kids' school as lacking aspiration (which is a pretty important element in schooling). I could go on - no Oxbridge prep, no meaningful gifted and talented. So it was made harder for high achievers who had to pull up their own bootstraps and be supported from home, which is what I described. I also described by lazy DS who if I'd been diplomatic could have been described as a coaster. But no, he was last. And I think the OP needs to consider that rather than blaming school. My children's school was not amazing. It was thoroughly average at best. And yet they didn't 'fail'. So maybe OP can wring some optimism from that.

If you are a doctor you can one hundred per cent afford private schooling. I have friends in lower paid jobs whose kids go to private schools. Unless of course there are other essential expenses that you haven't mentioned.

Saying that, the education system hasn't let your children down. There are thousands of kids in similar schooling and they have all done exceedingly well.

Maybe they need to be doing more at home or they just aren't as academic as you think.

@user1471517900

You've just put a lot of blame on the school, but if it was too easy then do some harder things at home surely to help stimulate their minds.

Blaming the lack of private school feels like the wrong argument

I suspect you’ve never tried to do what you are proposing tbh

Well OP, I once had a discussion with my very own DD about secondary schools as DD wasn't going to "fancy school" like her best friend (all girls school in next town so not private but with a bus fare of £800.- p/a and excellent ofsted report).
I told her there and then, that a school is only as good as the pupil attending.

So if she works hard she can achieve anything. she is now in 6th form

But I have to agree, state primary school provisions in this country are unadequate.
Both my DC basically "failed" primary and seem to "shine" in secondary.

@hibbledibble

If I wanted to educate them myself, I would have home schooled. I had naively thought that they would receive an education at school.

They do but children are only at school for 18% of the year. Obviously this is a rough calculation and doesn’t include when kids are sleeping or school breaks. Assuming kids sleep for 12 hours a day then they are in school for 36% of their awake time.

Seriously - I can’t imagine it going down well for a lot of parents if I said to them “hey, sorry, I can’t differentiate for your child because of funding”

I’m wondering about this too