Employers hate private schools?

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In the fortunate position of choosing between one of the best private schools in the country, vs one of the best non-selective state schools in the country. Private school is affordable with sacrifices, which we’re happy to make, and it has all the expected advantages of better funding and selective intake, but the state school is also lovely.

To avoid this thread being bogged down by all the nuances of our choice, I’ll keep the question simple:

DH is convinced that employers dislike privately educated applicants. All things being equal, they’ll pick the state educated person. In other words, job applicants are disadvantaged by a private education.

Is this true? If so, how much better does a privately educated applicant have to be, for you to pick them?

Honestly though OP - I'd suggest your DH doesn't want him privately educated and is trying to make excuses.

Also in most jobs your school education will be completely irrelevant. Nobody puts ‘Elm Park primary school’ on their CV.

Your high school is only relevant until sixth form, which is only relevant to get to university. Once you have your degree nobody cares about what you did in school, unless you were incredibly exceptional in some way.

So do tell - lucky windfall? Career change?

Its a lot of money to suddenly find down the back of a sofa.

If you show husband stats for most professions it will show him he’s wrong. Think it’s 7% privately educated then look at stats for barristers, judiciary etc.
Top private school fees are £30,000 plus a year so not just a few sacrifices.
I can understand bog standard private (here fees in £12,000 a year range) v nice leafy comp you might find they are similar but one of best private v comp surely not in any way comparable in terms of ethos, facilities, extras and trips offered etc.

Not all private schools are well-known. The only ones most people know are the Eton and Harrow types. Some state funded schools might be named in a way that might lead people to infer private school status - The Gilberd School in Colchester for example. So no, I don't think being privately educated disadvantages you with employers because some of them won't either know, or care.

@Captainj1

I think work at a place that recruits large numbers of graduates and school leavers. We interview blind - all we know about the applicant before we conduct the interview is their name. They have to have met the application criteria/passed initial screening and psychometric tests to get to that point of course. And if all other things are equal in terms of how well they interview. we do look for diversity characteristics (in their widest sense including, most recently, neurodiversity). The screening does make use of contextualised academic data, so it evaluates academic results in the context of the educational institutions at which the results were gained (eg BBB at a state school in a deprived area would be considered a better achievement than BBB in a private school or selective grammar).

That’s really interesting. I suppose if a kid is destined to get AAA, then a state school is the best option, but if a private school can push BBB up to AAA then it might be worthwhile. Difficult to tell without a retrospectoscope!

@C8H10N4O2

So do tell - lucky windfall? Career change?

Its a lot of money to suddenly find down the back of a sofa.

None of your business, actually!

Will no one think of the disadvantaged white, straight, able-bodied public school-educated Western men? It's not fair. It's almost like everything is stacked against them. It's a miracle any succeed against these almost insurmountable odds.

I look at schools in recruitment choices and would take a state school applicant with good qualifications and experience over a private school applicant with the same. All else being equal I'd say a private school applicant would need a set of grades one grade up on the state applicant at GCSE and A level or equivalent for me to consider them as equal candidates. Also take into account that work experience is generally easier to come by with privately educated applicants due to parents networks.

Hi OP. Once they are entering the job market, school is quite a distant memory and irrelevant. They will just look at the degree and or post- degree qualifications and where these were achieved. Most employers wouldn’t have a clue about which schools are independent and which are state (unless it’s one of the big boarding schools like Eton which everyone has heard of). That’s if your school is even in the CV at all (not sure why it would be). My kids went to some of the top London Day schools snd I doubt anyone’s heard of them outside London. So if it’s one of those you’re thinking if, it’s a non-issue. The grades will count though.

@Zilla1

Will no one think of the disadvantaged white, straight, able-bodied public school-educated Western men? It's not fair. It's almost like everything is stacked against them. It's a miracle any succeed against these almost insurmountable odds.

OP hasn't stated her ethnicity, or the child's gender or sexuality...

@BellesBells

I look at schools in recruitment choices and would take a state school applicant with good qualifications and experience over a private school applicant with the same. All else being equal I'd say a private school applicant would need a set of grades one grade up on the state applicant at GCSE and A level or equivalent for me to consider them as equal candidates. Also take into account that work experience is generally easier to come by with privately educated applicants due to parents networks.

That’s really interesting, thank you.

BTW, IME experience across two sectors, there is no bias against private school educated applicants in the UK. Has he started to say All Lives Matter more frequently than a couple of years ago?

love it when someone has enough time to do this

So do I ( love it when....).

It doesn't incline me to contribute anything that might be useful, for an OP whose starts threads with contradictory points of view.

Private education is a disadvantage
😁😁😁😁

Your husband needs educate himself a bit I think.

Depends on the employer. Unless they are going to one of the big named schools, the vast majority of employers wouldn't know the school is private just from the name alone.

I'm sure there are biases on both sides. But statistically they are more likely to go to university if they go to private school which presumably is far more likely to affect their job chances.

None of your business, actually!

I'll draw my own conclusions from your varied past then.

BTW - we contextualise job applicants. The factors are designed to reduce the ability for the advantaged to game the system.

@girlmom21 that would be whimsy and exaggeration for comedic effect rather than a direct response to the OP's stated circumstances though with the intended effect of alluding to other dimensions against which privilege can rail when their privilege is threatened.

[quote Zilla1]@girlmom21 that would be whimsy and exaggeration for comedic effect rather than a direct response to the OP's stated circumstances though with the intended effect of alluding to other dimensions against which privilege can rail when their privilege is threatened.[/quote]
Considering your follow up came with an All Lives Matter suggestion, I struggle to believe your comment was entirely meant in a 'comedic' way.

I work in investment banking and sit on the recruitment panel for graduates. Like @Captainj1 we also interview blind, we don't see CV's beforehand to avoid any unconscious bias.

I knew this thread would attract some sarcasm, but I’m really grateful for the serious replies, so thank you for those.

Out of the serious replies, there’s some disagreement, so I guess a private school education can be a disadvantage in some situations but not others.

I myself had a very positive experience at private school (bursary), so I need to decide whether the positives outweigh the possible disadvantages for my own kids. It’s a hard decision to make.

About half of all FTSE 350 CEO's were privately educated (see www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Elitist-Britain-2019-Summary-Report.pdf), compared with about 7% of the population, and with about 20-something % of the population of who get Oxbridge standard A level grades (e.g. AAA) (see www.ox.ac.uk/about/facts-and-figures/admissions-statistics/undergraduate-students/current/school-type) and about 30-something % of the people who get into Oxbridge (see previous link).

So, yeah, whilst there probably is potential for discrimination against the privately educated, it hasn't started happening yet.

Isn't is altruistic that so many are willing to pay money to fund institutions to deliver an education that puts their DC at a disadvantage?

I had several acquaintances argue that Oxbridge looking beyond headline grades was unfair discrimination, as was taking so many overseas undergraduate applicants when it means their privately-educated DC might have a reduced chance of getting to College. The odds against their DC just get stacked higher and higher. Soon they'll take the unpaid internships for lucrative or creative sectors.

@Zilla1

BTW, IME experience across two sectors, there is no bias against private school educated applicants in the UK. Has he started to say All Lives Matter more frequently than a couple of years ago?

Actually, yes

Traditionally posh professions are working to discriminate in favour of state schools. However this is a correction that will take a long time. Most employers love private school employees.