Asking for advice on private school

[loonnie]

My DD is not school age yet, but soon we will need to start applying and I'm not sure where to start really.

Ideally I would like her to go to a private school.

For state schools, there is ofsted. There is also some kind of body for private schools I think. Basically how can I find out if a private school I am looking for is actually good or not ? Is the independent school body that rates private schools to be trusted ?

There are some outstanding state primaries in my area, so I am not against potentially sending her there. I'm trying to compare these to the private schools in the area.

I went to private secondary school and state primary. I had no issues as I was bright when I was in primary school and as a toddler. Not so much later on, but that's another topic haha.

My DD is average for her age in terms of development at the moment. I want her to have the best chance to have a good start at school with a lot of support and attentive teachers. Would it be safest to send her to a private primary ? Or can an outstanding state primary also provide this ?

I'm not anti state schools in any way. I'm just trying to potentially give my child the best start in whichever way I can. I'm just starting my research, so totally clueless, as you can tell.

Many thanks and really not meaning to offend anyone with this post.

Whilst Anewdayanewdawn is getting stick, it is worth acknowledging that an increasing number of employers do use contextual hiring practices which weight candidates from less privileged (and BAME, often hand in hand) backgrounds higher than those from affluent ones. She isn’t just the sole HR professional in the country making up ways to discriminate against rich kids!

Just because someone went to private school doesn't mean they come from an affluent background.

Bursaries / scholarships exists. The armed forces/ foreign office often pay for kids to go to boarding school who's parents aren't particularly affluent.

That’s absolutely fair enough - but if the employer is doing that, why ask a privately educated candidate to come for an interview?

‘Sounds like the privately educated candidate had a lucky escape - though had you hired him/her you could have enjoyed sneering at him for being ‘posh’.’

wise.up.

Or they just come from a family that scrimped and and saved to send them to a run-of-the-mill independent school. My husband’s parents privately educated 3 kids (only one of whom is a high earner now, as it happens) but his family have zero accumulated wealth. They just turned to us to help bridge fund his grandma’s care home until her house was sold, for example.

My parents (who state educated me and my brother) on the other hand, were very comfortable.

‘That’s absolutely fair enough - but if the employer is doing that, why ask a privately educated candidate to come for an interview?’

we didn’t know they were privately educated until they name dropped their school in the interview. Nor would we discount someone off the cuff for being privately educated if they fulfilled most of the criteria - should at least have a look at them.

To clarify, I mean that my parents could have afforded private school fees for both of us and still been comfortable after taking those out of the equation.

I don’t work in HR and I didn’t invent it, either. Whether you agree it’s correct or not, it happens with increasing frequency (and has been happening in the US for decades, in the form of Affirmative Action) and hiring managers are often instructed to consider it at interview when marking a candidate’s responses, so piling in to one poster who acknowledges their company uses the practice is a bit off.

Extremely biased way of choosing a candidate for a job. This is very poor practice for your organisation.

‘Or they just come from a family that scrimped and and saved to send them to a run-of-the-mill independent school.’

people ALWAYS churn this one out! This wasn’t a run of the mill school - it’s a £35k a year school.
however, WC people generally cannot ‘scrimp’ enough to afford private education - MOST kids in private school are from wealthy families and are paying full fees plus all the extras. A handful of kids may be on some kind of scholarship, but most private schools don’t knocked more than 40% off still putting the education way past the means of MOST families.

I think you're thinking about this in entirely the wrong way.

It isn't about making a choice between state and private, and you'd be foolish to assume that private is always better. Where I live, the only people who bother with private at primary age are the ones who don't manage to get their kids into the really fantastic state primary. Or the ones who don't do any research and just make assumptions.

Go and have a look at the local schools in both sectors. Look beyond the shiny buildings and try to understand the ethos of each school and the kind of environment/opportunities that they could offer your dc. Don't make blind assumptions about which one might be better. Think about your dd and what kind of setting would suit her most. Talk to the staff. Get a feel for what each school is like. Then make an informed decision on what's right for your child.

Might I suggest you review your recruitment process urgently? This kind of discrimination is almost certainly not in line with current law (state v private not a protected characteristic). That’s shocking. And if you have a HR department their eyes must be bleeding if you are as upfront about this in your candidate feedback (which they are entitled to SAR regs etc).

It depends on what you are looking for in terms of secondary schools. The private primaries prepare pupils for the exams needed to gain entry into the private secondaries. State primaries don't do this.
Generally speaking, private school classes are smaller, and they all exist as businesses, with paying parents as their clients. They have a good incentive to ensure that the parents are happy with what they are providing. so matters such as bullying are dealt with.
Visit the schools that interest you, and go with whichever works best for your daughter.

There are outstanding state primaries in my village which I will definitely consider.

if you’d told me you’d made the cut on such a misguided and naïve assumption that “state school candidate worked harder therefore better for the job”, as your line manager we’d be having words about your own suitability for the job!

@Wrongun1999 thats hilarious! You did make me laugh. Do we need to make ‘being privileged’ a protected characteristic?
blame the Tories. Most of them are privately educated and look at the fucking state of the country they’re making.
still, they have oodles of confidence and love making a speech.

The fact that private schools have charity status is a joke.

I was just making a general comment, it wasn’t really about you and your recruitment story any more. It was a simple observation that there is a spectrum of family wealth of privately-educated children so broad-brush assumptions about affluence of family background are not really reflective of the reality.

Of course I was not suggesting that anyone can educate privately if they simply “scrimp and save”.

we didn’t know they were privately educated until they name dropped their school in the interview. Nor would we discount someone off the cuff for being privately educated if they fulfilled most of the criteria - should at least have a look at them

Did they ‘name drop’ their school, or did you ask them they went to school?
Are you sure you wouldn’t discount someone for being privately educated? Your dislike of private education and those who’ve had it is pretty clear from all your posts.

Wow, that must be a big village!

as Is your knowledge of legal, appropriate recruitment practice.

you are allowed to positively discriminate only on the basis of protected characteristics. You do know there are laws around recruitment right, or are you still asking women when they are planning to start a family at interview?

Sorry for the thread hijack.
OP - do what’s best after looking at all tbe school options, and be aware school fees are rising at around 6.5 per cent PA so make sure it’s affordable long term. Good luck!

Returning to the OP's original question, I can certainly confirm that ISI inspections are very thorough. We were inspected last school year with about 24 hours' notice.

This isn’t the case. I’m surprised so many people are unaware of contextualised recruitment. It’s been adopted by all of the Big 4, law firms including Slaughters, ClearyG, Linklaters, Freshfields and A&O, almost half of the Chambers, several major banks, the BBC, and the Bank of England to name just a few (and my employer, which I’m not going to name.)

The point is consideration of current and future potential, not past personal circumstances: if you were state educated, received free school meals, were the first person in your family to receive a university education, and have parents who worked in non-tertiary occupations (and even more so if you are Black), then you’ve had a lot more challenge to overcome and closed doors in front of you than somebody who is the privately educated offspring of a solicitor and an actuary (and white): as such, even if the former has slightly lower academic grades, they’re considered to have a level of talent and drive which exceeds that of the latter. We’re allowed to positively discriminate for the state educate candidate.

@HaveringWavering We do blind recruiting. No interviewers are told anything about what school or university a candidate went to, just their grades. They are re not allowed to ask for specifics about the institutions in the interview.

Rightly so. Nobody should be getting jobs based on where they went to school or university.