Is it possible as a state school parent to emulate a private school education & how would a motivated one start?

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This thread is triggered from all the recent press about the Cambridges & Lambrook press.. Basically the press are harping on about the time spent outdoors etc, surely parents can do this for free etc.. Out of interest how can a motivated parent who can't afford private school emulate a private school education? Please be kind!

Lol I think I may have done this a bit too much eh uh my dd over the years...turns out she has very expensive taste despite her state comprehensive education!😂

with my dd. No idea where eh uh came from??!!

I have three children.
My 2 DDs went to a very good state secondary school, it was single sex and the overall behaviour was very good, children being disruptive in class was uncommon. It was a positive experience.
My DS went to a mixed state school, it was a very different experience. There was a lot more disruptive behaviour. He then moved to an independent school which is much better for him.

There are some great state schools and I don’t feel my DDs would have benefited much from for example going to the local non selective independent school. My DSs experience was very different despite being in the same area as the girls school so it’s important to choose wisely and see what will suit your children.

PP have mentioned reading, and just to endorse this, if you google eg ‘reading list for age 10’ for example there are tonnes of private school reading lists freely available. I sent dd to private prep and then grammar for secondary, but I always found these lists handy with a wider variety of options. And you can apply that approach to other stuff, not just reading lists - I was always on the look out for extra stuff, interesting ops, a version in another language blah blah.

I have had DC in state, private and grammar schools. As PPs have said, competitive sports/ music lessons/ activities to provide cultural capital are easy wins. However, in my experience the thing private schools are most beneficial for is setting high aspirations, instilling confidence ( along with a bit of entitlement) and networking. The children at DDs private school were filled with the unquestionable belief that they were capable, worthy and the world was their oyster. They were taught to have exquisite manners and social skills.

Grammar can get fairly close and if you want something akin to a private education I would move to a grammar area. Ime they are far superior to state schools in expanding horizons and offering extra curricular enrichment.

Peer group is everything, especially at secondary age. My DS is clear that his academic results were so good because he went to a school where aiming high and working hard was the norm, and most importantly it was ‘cool to be clever’.

You teach your child to take up space and go at their own pace in public.
No apologies and very little compromise but delivered with confidence and charm.

There is an entitled air to all the private school families I know, even the very very lovely ones, so I have spent some time observing them - and that is a difference I have noticed in restaurants, cafes, soft play, when we have gone to their house to play.

I never got the confident entitled memo myself from my private education! Had terrible social anxiety at uni and felt intimidated by the richer posher students. It’s money that buys that.

Excellent thread!

I would start with private tutoring, once a week at least. That's what we done for our children, since year1.

•Acting/dance classes
•Rugby, golf or other sport activities
•creative writing/spelling/reading every day

Private education is about connections. My friend's two are the same age as my DDs. They got lower A level grades and degrees a class lower than mine did. But they breezed into high paying jobs from the off, as the school had connected them with City lawyers, financiers and such years before. So they got summer holiday work experience with Big Firms, and walked straight into graduate posts. Both are earning silly money right now.

They're great 'kids' so I try not to make it personal. But I can't say I don't resent it, because I do. My eldest left uni with a good first when there were no jobs around, and just couldn't get into what she'd always wanted to do. Friend's two came out with a 2:1 and a 2:2 and waltzed straight into to influential firms from which the sky seems to have been the limit. I'm sure those connections still work for them.

That's what you're buying at a good private secondary school

Yes, I totally get what you're saying, but again, there is a lot that you can do to build your own networks if you're minded to do so. My DH was born to illiterate peasant farmers and went to his local village school; he arrived in the UK knowing nobody after meeting and marrying me overseas. However, he is a master networker and is better connected now than most of the people I was at uni with who went to the biggest name private schools.

Not everyone has those skills, of course - I certainly don't possess them naturally, but I have learnt a lot by watching DH in action!!

Exactly. Money buys that. Money also happens to buy a private education, which is why you are assuming that it's the school that gives it.

Yes Dh had absolutely zero social connections his parents manual workers left school at 16 but he was batting off offers from city law firms having been to Cambridge with strong grades. Plus there’s a real effort to move away from nepotism now anonymised cvs etc a pain as we can’t now help Dd 😁. But quite right

My ds moved from state primary to independent secondary for Y7 last September and I’d say the good parts I’ve noticed are:

They tested all kids at the beginning of term to check for any access needs for learning / exams. My ds does have additional needs but got no help right through primary as apparently he wasn’t the ‘worst’. He now gets to type with an extra 25% time in lessons and exams. He’s gone from being an average student who did the bare minimum and wasn’t bothered with learning to really enjoying learning and gaining good grades. He won a local creative writing competition that they entered him for as he has a talent in that area that’s obvious now he’s writing more than a few lines. He’s happier and feels much more supported.

They have excellent communication between the teachers and students, good discussion if he’s struggling with something, all subjects run focus groups and student led support at lunchtimes if you need extra help. If ds misses a day due to illness he can contact his teacher directly on his school tablet to catch up with what was covered in class and any homework. When he had covid and had to self isolate for 2 weeks the home schooling was excellent, face to face, he was included in all the classes as the teachers had tablets set up on the desks for each isolating student so he was still part of discussions and could see his friends.

Small class sizes help him concentrate, he’s very easily distracted.

The sports/drama/music is great although music lessons are an extra fee as are Lamda classes. They have hundreds of lunch and after school clubs, a couple (golf/climbing/build a guitar) cost extra but most don’t. All students have to commit to at least two a week. Ds tends to choose 3 and has enjoyed them all so far, they’re well funded, so science club for example they get to do lots of fun experiments even though they use up the chemicals and materials.

He’s been skiing with the whole school and a year trip to France, which we paid extra for. Local secondary hasn’t started trips abroad yet since covid.

We opted for independent as he gets more focused support which he needs due to his additional needs. His is a small school that’s focused on the pastoral rather than academic. I did try to advocate for him in state primary but as he was meeting the expected levels he wasn’t a priority. It didn’t seem to matter to his primary teachers that he could have done so much better with targeted support. His primary was rated good by ofsted.

He’s extremely bright but easily bored and quite lazy so a state school didn’t help him achieve anywhere near his best. I don’t know if the things above that I like about the independent do exist in state secondary, I went to a grammar which was excellent but only focused on exam success. Where we live we only have one massive local secondary (180 kids per year) that is now good after 10 years of special measures and changing to an academy and back again.

If you advocate for your kids, have a good local school and can spend the money saved on lots of extracurricular activities and tutors so they’re working to their abilities it’s probably the same. I wasn’t able to get my ds motivated, he’s a really unusual character! His younger brother is very self motivated so I think he’d do well wherever he goes!

It’s more nuanced though. . Some people are super confident despite their background some of the shyest most socially challenged teens I know are at private schools. You don’t put your money in the slot and automatically get a confident smooth talker!

We always ate breakfast and dinner together with R4 on in the background and discussed the news of the day. Tennis lessons, theatre trips, lots of museums & art galleries as well. Discuss things with your DC and ask them what they think. Don't over protect them from bad news. Talk about money, careers, books etc. Encourage them to grab opportunities and stretch themselves, even if they might not succeed.

What are you hoping to achieve by emulating public school?

DD has never been tutored. We're not in a grammar school area and under 40% get 5 GCSEs inc maths and English from our 2 local schools. DD is about to start her final year of PPE at Oxford now.

My DCs both have good friends who attend highly selective, very expensive, independent schools and no matter how engaged or determined DH and I may be to provide the best possible education for our DC, we cannot give them the utter self-confidence, connections or access to resources their friends have.

Their independently educated friends are people they've got to know through attending the junior department of a music conservatoire and/or through a sport rarely encountered in state schools. They are good friends but our lives are worlds apart. It doesn't help that DH and I are both teachers so can't take time off - or work from elsewhere - e.g. for a random week in order to take DC to compete in a sports event in the south of Europe that starts 24 hours after state schools break up. We can't often get DC to the UK-based events because by the time we're home from our own schools at 6pm on a Friday, an 8 hour drive isn't really feasible if DC is going to be in a state to compete at 8am (DC can't take themselves by train because they need to take a boat with them!). The friends' parents employ someone to drive the boat separately and will fly out with their DC later or, because of the long school holiday and option to work from home, can amble their way through Europe over a more leisurely timescale. We do the best we can to support DC with their hobbies but whereas friends get to sail at least once a week at school or have a week-long Y7 sailing residential on the Isle of Wight, our DC only get to sail at the small sailing club they attend. Whilst friends get to try out lots of different boats and receive high quality coaching thanks to the competitive nature of their school's PE department, there's no way for me to replicate that for my DC. The closest we can get is for DC to join a youth sailing week at other clubs but as they get older, it becomes harder to slot in to established groups for an odd week.

For the music-focused DC, junior conservatoire has been amazing in terms of the teaching but there's been very little in the way of contact-building or broader opportunities. Their school has a single orchestra vs the friends' multiple ensembles of all sorts of genres and with workshops hosted by the likes of Alison Balsom or Sheku Kanneh-Mason. Both my DC are more advanced players than their independently-educated friends but there's less high level stuff they can participate in just for fun, at school. They could audition for NCO (and one has gone down this route) and the like but the more they encounter mainly independently-educated children at these courses, the more they feel it's not really aimed at children like them.

I would suggest you get your children into rowing and sailing, ensure they can ski brilliantly (and ride), holiday overseas in the chateaus of friends, make sure you can work from home so you are available for events, find a way to get invited to occasions such as expensive charity auctions, encourage your children to learn an orchestral instrument, teach them Latin, train them in the art of small talk but also how to talk about their own achievements, sign them up to a swimming squad that trains before 8am each day...

There is no evidence that private schools improve educational outcomes in comparison to children from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. There is evidence that privately educated students do less well at University than equivalently qualified state educated students.

If you want to emulate a private school education then pick a school that serves a very middle class area where it has to compete with the local private schools and has aspirations for itself and the children and provides a rounded education (e.g. lots of afterschool clubs, lots of school trips). Grammars or ex-grammars are good. Make sure your DC are top set so they don't mix with hoi polloi. Get them doing lots of activities in and out of school, sport, music, drama, scouting, DoE, art etc. Sign them up for every possible opportunity available. Don't just do holidays at the beach, travel with your children both in the UK and abroad and take them to museums, art galleries, restaurants, theatres, concert halls, cinemas, sporting event, just immerse them in culture. Talk about going to University as a given from a young age (and make sure they know not all universities are created equal), watch BBC4 documentaries with them, read lots of books, watch different styles of films, and most of all be educated yourself.

As a balance to all that if your kids are bright then it's OK to neglect their formal education a bit. We were always been a bit shit about chasing up homework but the DC are very good at doing it themselves. I always feel like I don't want to plan my weekends around their school projects (our primary school would send home suggestions for what you could do to support their education), we do what we want to do but that may or may not be what the kid's school project is about. A bit of randomness is good. So while DS is learning about the Tudors at school I'll be dragging them to the Oriental or Science museum.

And if you are asking the question OP you are halfway there.

Whole of ni kids have access to state run grammars IF they can pass transfer test (11 plus)

During term time Lambrook students, particularly year 5s and above, spend so much time at school (including Saturdays) that they don't have much time for anything out of school.

My children do lots of outside school activities with a wider variety of children and get a better extra curricular experience as a result.

I wish they could have the smaller classes and better facilities at school but, on balance, I'd still chose giving them a more rounded lifestyle over Lambrook.

I'd be a supportive parent for their education with tutoring if necessary and allow them to follow their interests.

i think the first question has to be what you’re trying to achieve by emulating private school. The real-world benefit of private schooling is having the confidence to walk out into the world, feeling that you have every right to a good opportunity within it, and being able to spot and take up those opportunities when they come up. Plus some connections to place options in your path

If that’s what you’re after, these things are a by-product of all the facilities, trips and so on, but at the core is building kids’ self confidence. There are lots of ways to do that, everything from debate and discussion on a wide range of topics at home to giving broad access to cultural activities (to give subjects to talk about), to activities outside school. Things like tennis, skiing or sailing are more useful in later life vs brownies, for example, in terms of fitting in to private school circles

Er - why is it "hugely harmful" to society?!? It sounds like you're jealous and think it's unfair that other people can afford private education and therefore access the benefits.

...and think it's unfair that other people can afford private education and therefore access the benefits.

Well it is. How can you possibly think otherwise?

Get them to do musical instruments, ballet and horse riding, go on long country walks as a family, play Radio 4 and Radio 3, read a decent broadsheet newspaper, get them skiing lessons on a dry slope and sailing if you can afford it, and for sports make sure it’s tennis, rugby or cricket.

Get them reading old fashioned children’s classics for their childhood reading, go out for a long walk in the country or the beach most weekends. Teach good social skills and table manners, and if you can, move to an area with superb state schools. Make sure they have a wide vocabulary.

Teach them how to politely converse with peers and adults on a range of subjects so they can join in with chat at uni, work and dinner parties. Even if you’re not especially religious take them to church at Christmas and Easter so they have a basic appreciation of the historically dominant UK religion. Join the National Trust and go on lots of days out to historical places. Make sure they go to a Russell Group University, and get them to aim for the professions.

That’ll get you quite a long way.