To think only the super rich will be able to afford private schools?

[donniedarko89]

I live in a fairly affluent area, full of private schools. We are comfortable, not wealthy, and considered private for secondary eventually (and who knows, with the cost of living crisis), while enriching the state primary's offer with lots of extra clubs and activities. Noticing that more and more families are doing the same, even high-earners who would in the past have gone private by default. Are private schools going to become only for the ultra rich, especially if the fees spike up with a Labour government?

I agree that most people are already priced out. Plus, the top 1% have become much wealthier whilst everyone wise poorer over the last two years (Oxfam).

That said, my children went to state schools and haven't been disadvantaged job-wise. And according to recent research, the advantage for private school kids is lost at uni anyway, where they perform more poorly than state kids.

I can’t find very recent data, but the UK funding of state education is among the highest in the world, in terms of real
funding and percentage of GDP. We fund our education far more than other countries who have better outcomes for children. It does beg the question whether the way in which this funding is spent is the most efficient.

As I have posted before on threads about private schools, you can't stop people from arranging extra education and tutoring for their children. It's virtually impossible.

I worked in a European country where private tutoring was illegal. You could be reported for doing it.

What happened was that parents got around it in other ways. Children would be sent during the holidays to relatives that were teachers for "childcare." They were sent to summer schools in other countries. Local teachers were invited to "dinners" at people's homes that involved "just having a look over little Johnny's school work."

But the one very obvious issue with the concept was that it highlighted the obvious familial occupation caste system. The children of teachers became teachers. The children of mechanics became mechanics. The children of solicitors became solicitors. The children of doctors became doctors. And so on ... because those children were exposed to the specialist knowledge, understanding and thinking of those professions within their families.

And that's the problem with seeing private education of any kind as a lever of privilege. Children are educated outside the school system everyday purely by existing within their own families.

I look at my own daughter. She stays with my dad every weekend; he's a retired engineer.

She's only five, but already the lessons she's learnt from him are obvious: 'most things can be mended', 'if it's broken, find a schema and take it apart', 'if you don't understand something, get a book on it.'

Personally, having been a teacher in other European countries, I think the way forward is not to make private schools more expensive, but to place outreach conditions on charitable status.

What I'd really like to see is private schools hosting very subsidised holiday schools in maths, science, IT, languages, art, English, history, geography in areas where there's an extracurricular educational desert. It should be normalised for ordinary children in C1 to E families to go to summer schools on various subjects, both academic and technical, run locally.

I seem to remember that the expenditure as part of gdp included private education within it.

It doesn't bother me at all if private schools are just for the ultra (which I see as money no object) wealthy. If I was in this scenario (I'm not) I'd send DS.

It's clear people's views are hugely influenced by their peer groups and area, myself included, which will vary greatly.

DS is no Mensa member but bright enough that regardless of what school he goes to he has the ability to get decent A Levels and a degree if that's his preference, which will leave him open to plenty of options in life. If at any point he struggles or is borderline with grades he needs I feel massively privileged to be able to pay for a tutor and if I was lucky enough to get an inheritance this would go on a house deposit for him. I don't see private school fees as value for money at all in my situation but I feel no pressure as I doubt my peers would consider it either.

So you assess everything based on your own group of friends and acquaintances？

My parents sent my dbro and I in the 90s, and they currently pay for ds to attend local independent primary.

They just can't afford it any more and ds will have to move come secondary. Dd going is out of the question (she's a toddler).

@SpongeBob2022 I'm pretty sure that there is research somewhere which shows that even if you want to use private education, there is no educational advantage before 11. I heard that from a school's advisor a few years ago.

Apparently private school graduates earn on average 35% more by age 25 than their state school counterparts. They’re also more likely to start their careers in a processional or managerial position.

That said, it isn’t always about achieving a highflying outcome. A lot of parents will choose private school because they believe it will provide their children will a better school experience overall.

I used to work in a very well to do area in a state school. The catchment area consisted almost entirely of houses that would be 700k plus. Those parents chose to invest in an asset that gave them access to a school with similar outcomes to private but that was just as unreachable for most as fee paying. The school itself wasn't doing anything different to the ones ten miles down the road in a very deprived area but those schools were tanking in terms of results and care because the demographic was so different. There are many thousands of people who do actually earn enough to pay for private but they are a) lucky enough to have kids that don't need small classes etc and b) can afford to buy themselves out of the problematic areas. How is that better? Unless we completely overhauled the catchment system so every school had a demographic mix, let's not pretend the stars system is immune to financial factors.

So much depends on the area.

Where I live (in a very large semi rural county) the state provision at secondary is one school in each town. Currently all the local schools are rated as 'Good', none are outstanding.

There is one private school. It's main USP is that it is private. It's results are better than the state schools but not by much. All that keeping the riff raff out doesn't seem to benefit that much compared to the fees (£16k+ per year, minimal bursaries available).

To my mind a school such as this is a luxury and should be taxed as such. If that would push fees above what the market would bear it would be no loss.

I'm not super rich, I'm a lone parent and send DD14 to private school because she is ASD and ADHD. The SEN provision in the local secondary is shit, and she can't cope with the large classes and noise.

She is thriving in her "affordable" private school because class sizes are 12 and only two classes a year.

If they make private schools less affordable then the state will get inundated with SEN kids who are academically ok but can't cope with mainstream school.

Honestly this private school bashing is really stupid. Treating all kids the same in terms of the state school provision is sometimes the most unfair thing to do.

What a way to live. I actually knew someone who did similar. Hell bent on sending her dc private but could barely afford basics and had a lot of debt. It seemed neglectful and far too much sacrifice. I felt sorry for the dc.

@zipps but again it depends what the alternative is. Mine know that going to private school means going without certain things but they equally know how they were struggling and suffering in the state school that failed them. This desire by some posters to insist that there is no benefit other than snobbery and connections for going private are extremely blinkered.

My friend's sister had a similar experience - won a scholarship to a private school at a time where her family had been hit financially and couldn't pay even for the most basic extras (she mentioned an advanced calculator being an issue, as well as the most expensive educational trips and ski holidays etc). I wonder if this was worse in terms of developing her self confidence than going to a state school.

This. I'm so tired of the assumption that private school parents are selfish, ultra rich, conservative idiots.
When my DD was at the local state school I didn't think anything about private school parents because I've got bigger things to worry about.

Contextual offers are designed to help state school pupils who are disadvantaged compared to most other state school pupils. They are not designed to help average state school pupils gain an equal footing with private school pupils.

It's not true that it's easier to get into university from a state school than a private school. Those pupils who get contextual offers are at a big disadvantage in other ways that are unlikely to apply to anyone in a position to be considering private school.

@whumpthereitis in that case I suppose it's about confidence building, which private schools are good at. That is replicable, though.

And my point is that the criteria for contextual offers is indiscriminate and many who aren’t actually disadvantaged fit the criteria. Indeed people deliberately ensure they fit the criteria to get a contextual offer. Likewise I’m sure there are loads of students who are disadvantaged but don’t meet the criteria. It’s all just to appease the ‘hard done by’s’ rather than to actually improve access. We considered playing the system, it would have been very easy to do

That’s just not true. Only one state school in our city of 5 state schools gets contextual offers and it’s very unlikely you would send your child there just for that. My dds state doesn’t get them but very bright children from genuinely challenged families (no one ever been to university/FSM etc) are fast tracked and supported to get into the best universities and rightly so.

So you think a sample of 5 schools is representative?! It’s absolutely possible to play the system and not that difficult

But do you really want to send your child to a school that has a very poor track record of getting pupils to pass gcses, a levels and onto university and live in a polar 4 quintile whatever postcode just in the hope your child gets a contextual offer for a course when some universities dont do them and they arent for every course or they have different criteria like being an asylum seeker, or a carer or its now only one specific local crap school that is different than the one you picked put aged 11

I dont understand how its easy to game the system.

@Spendonsend
theyre not all ‘crap schools’. And you only need to fulfil one criteria. You really need to dig further in the criteria a few points;
FSM; this is generally at any point during schooling. So if it’s a brief period age 5 is it that relevant? If it’s because your usually average well off family had a brief dip in income due to job loss/ covid furlough is that relevant? Is someone whose parent earned 16k yet owns an home or lives with well off family and then got child tax credit plus maintenance payments on top actually badly off? You can stay on FSM until the end of that phase of education despite not qualifying anymore. What about if your well educated and diligent parent chose to stay at home rather than work?

there are loads of exceptions for the other criteria too. I’ve already stated why a sixth form college may be ‘underperforming’ but not actually underperforming at all. Perhaps in your city you see it working but across the country the criteria are so blunt so can be totally ineffective

Considering only 7% of children attend private schools in England and 4% in Scotland, it does not really affect that many people.

The top boarding schools will increasingly become status symbols for internationals. As USP top grades, this will turn up pressure for all.