Not to send my children to private school even though I can afford it

[AdamRyan]

I believe in comprehensive education and think children should all be educated together, to improve social mobility and prevent a "brain drain" where less privileged children go to some schools, and more privileged go to others.
Am I in the minority and being naive?

YANBU - comprehensive schools are the way to go
YABU - I'd send my children private if I could

I went to gladiator school. It was awfull.

As soon as we could afford it, private was the best thing we ever did for our children.

Youngest went back to a comprehensive for 6th form, her choice.

She left her private school abke to speak 10 languages, had some very special things happen, and as the Crown was partly filmed in her school and being in the drama club, got to spend a day on set. Their netball team toured around the world, they had inspirational Alumni speakers, all female, who were changing the world for the better, from positions in the Un, not to mention the odd Olympic athlete, one of whom won gold at the Olympics about 3 months after their visit.

The school had 50% of students from abroad. Hence the languages, but she now has friends from all over the world.

There were parents who were billionaires. There were parents who were upper middle class.

And there were parents where they were just hardworking in average jobs doing their best and forgoing holidays and new cars like us, in order to ensure the best education possible.

You get what you pay for.

It’s not ridiculous.
Its the conversation I could well have been having with my DC along with
“I am sorry you have to walk past that lovely Private school we can well afford where lots of your friends go to that Comprehensive where the Police regularly park outside to cut down on drug dealing and a even teachers who work there warned us to find an alternative- but you know, for the greater good”
Some State schools are great, lucky for people who have access to them. Not all of us do and for those who don’t and moving is an inconvenient and more expensive option not choosing Private is a dis service to your children

I believe in comprehensive education and think children should all be educated together, to improve social mobility and prevent a "brain drain"

I am not even sure what that means Op. To me it means you either believe we live in some sort of "collective", aka a Borg colony, or you wish we did.
The truth is that (in general) kids from private schools will have better life outcomes than kids from state schools. Therefore if you want to hobble your kids that's your choice. But they will be the only losers.

I am sure you are right that a house deposit would have far greater impact on opportunities for many people. It’s clearly a huge privilege to have that and it has a massive impact on society and pricing out people who don’t have that privilege. Is your position that it’s morally wrong for parents to do that? I assume that it is given your op but wasn’t sure that was what you were saying. If not, where is your line between those ways of benefitting your children that are morally acceptable and those that are not?

Possible of course. Also hypocritical.

Weirdly there are posters who post a lot on inequality / voting Labour and used private schools

Seems oddly hypocritical to me

I don’t see it as hypocritical. Not taking up a private school place for your own child (if that is the best thing for them) is not going to make any difference whatsoever to whether private schools continue to exist.

Voting for parties and policies that will improve state education and remove private schools is what matters. But that is going to take some time and while the inequalities continue to exist it is your duty as a parent to do the best for your child.

And fwiw my kids go to state schools.

I'm in London so it's unlikely I'd only have the choice of one state school, but my one red line is private school. You can never absolutely say never, but I'm as sure as I can be that I wouldn't take the private route. I am in the fortunate position of being able to fund a move if I felt I had to, though. I used to be quite judgy about others choosing private schooling; I'm not now. It's a personal decision for every parent to make. But it's not for me.

Oh, and banning private schools wouldn’t act as some sort of magic wand that fixed state schools. A lot of parents would move to the catchment areas of desirable state schools (which would in turn have quite the impact on certain areas, an impact that many would consider distinctly undesirable) turning them into elite little enclaves. In effect you would have schools that were essentially private, yet funded by the state.

Other parents would send their children abroad, home educate or hire tutors, or set up education cooperatives with other parents in the same position.

Both my parents grew up in ostensibly socialist countries. There was still an educational divide between gymnasia and vocational schools, and there were still elite schools parents wanted to get their kids into. They didn’t legally pay to for their kids to gain entry to said elite institutions, obviously, but those able to certainly used both their connections and employed bribery to do so. To such a degree that it was endemic.

DH and i can easily afford private. We are sticking with state, but that decision is "for now", we are very worried about the staffing situation in schools, secondary especially.

Teachers just aren't paid enough in the UK. Why would a decent stem graduate want to become a classroom teacher scraping to earn 40k (and with that pay level not protected if they move job), when they can easily earn double & more in other sectors? Plus have perks like more flexible hours, some time wfh. Dsis is a secondary teacher and the long holidays are not really a perk as the salary isn't enough for her to afford to do anything with her DC during them. Holidays, days out, petrol & food etc are all so expensive now relative to teaching pay that the holidays are now a burden, 12 weeks trying to entertain bored DC at home with no spare cash.

@whumpthereitis and @FridaRose I’m not suggesting it’s not possible to find good and decent men who have been privately educated. Equally, it is possible to find plenty of the same amongst the other 93%

Would I want to be married to a penniless dimwit who leached off me? No. Would I want to be married to a wealthy man who behaved in the ways I’ve described? Also no. But it’s a roll of the dice, either way, and my original point was really that, if we’re using Pippa and Kate Middleton’s husbands as reasons to choose a private education, then it is more nuanced than just to say they have husbands who are “good”. Rich, yes. Good - who really knows? We live in a society where the two have become conflated.

We teach our children to know who they are, to try and make good choices and to not be terrified of people who have less than them (“feral” comprehensives were mentioned earlier). A normal education means that they learn about the lives of all sorts of people, and are friends with a wide variety of them. They are good judges of character and both have nice groups of friends.

My schooling, meanwhile, gave me a skewed view of the world that took me years to unlearn. So, I choose not to do the same for my kids, even though could easily afford it.

Hoppinggreen, you do know kids take drugs in private school too?

Curiously different, what i can't wrap my head around is why ones kid has 'to have the best education possible'. I just want my kids to be happy and become fully functioning independent adults, that does not require 'the best education possible'.

I do know.
I am comparing 2 specific schools though and one has a massive problem, with dealers openly hanging around outside and the other doesn’t.
I am in no way pro Private and anti State, our DC went to State Primary but while Private was affordable for us there was no way my DC were going to the Comprehensive we are in catchment for.
The other nearby Comprehensive would have been fine and we were in catchment when we moved here but due to extensive house building we aren’t and moving would have been disruptive and more expensive than Private fees

If i could afford it, i would send my kids to a private school in a hearbeat.

I went to a free junior school and a private secondary school. At my junior school, they had staffing problems because the kids were so badly behaved. I had boys regularly trying to beat me up, sometimes using things as weapons. I was also given alcohol aged 9 by other kids who had shandy in their lunchboxes.

None of this at my private school. No violence, no staffing problems.

Totally off topic, but re Labour’s Ideaof removing private schools vat exemption, surely a lot of the vat payable will be offset by vat they can claim back (ie gardening services, computers, cleaning services (i coukd see them making redundancies of in-house cleaning staff and employing vat charging maintenance companies)? Stationary etc etc)?

@Sigmama - we make lots of choices in life and obvious people make different ones all the time. I want my DC to have the best education possible because that's what I had and I thoroughly enjoyed it. My DD1 is at a private secondary that really suits her. She thrives on the excellent teaching, having the right academic peer group for her and the amazing extra curricular provision. Sad though it is, she wouldn't be getting that experience at our local state school and just wouldn't be as engaged and happy.

It's very much about getting the right school for our DD. DH went to a private school, but it wasn't really academic enough for him and he didn't enjoy secondary school nearly as much as I did as a result.

DD1 doesn't get the best of everything in life, we have to make other choices, like cheaper clothes and holidays and she won't be getting as much financial support as I'd like with house deposits etc. But education is the thing we've chosen to prioritise.

I think it may also be a cultural thing. I'm from a mixed culture background, but both sides of my family hugely valued education through the generations. DH's family background is again different, but very education focused.

I don't see education as a means to an ends. It isn't about the job you get at as an adult or becoming a "fully functioning independent adult". It's about the journey and the joy of learning.

That doesn't make any sense. At the moment if they employ a cleaner they pay £x per hour. If they employ a cleaning company then the cleaning company will chage them at least the employment cost of £x per hour plus vat. They could claim that vat back, but then they are in exactly the same position of having the £x per hour cost. The school wouldn't be any better off.

I mean who would want excellent wrap around care, flexibility of being able to pick their kids up earlier of later depending on circumstances knowing they will be fed and taken care of?

Who wants excellent music and drama facilities, excellent sports facilities and dedicated teachers? No kids throwing chairs across classrooms? No drug problems? No tattooed knuckle dragging, XL bully owning parents throwing their weight around?

A friend of mine left teaching because the conditions in the state sector were untenable for her and went into university lecturing instead. The stories she told me were dreadful. A family friend who was a teacher was not allowed to walk around one state school without an escort due to safety concerns.

What do you want? The closure of private schools? If they are absorbed into state schools, their standards will drop. You cannot genuinely believe that once their funding model and selection processes are fundamentally altered that they will stay the same? Why shouldn't people be able to choose? Why shouldn't people spend their hard earned cash on a bit of peace of mind? Nobody stops people spending their money on designer handbags, expensive cars and big houses. At least these people are spending it on their kids future.

Some parents want the best for their kids and are willing to sacrifice all sorts to give their kids that. But yeah, you aren't one of them. Your kids education is less important than your political view.

This is very rude. I'm not maintaining a "political image" - I just have a different set of values and beliefs. It isn't even really in the minority according to the voting.
It's not rude at all.

If people are genuinely claiming that state is chosen on principle (not because their local state school is good and they're happy that it will provide their children with a good education) and they have a moral objection to anything that offers children a better quality of education than others then the logic follows that they:

• shouldn't be buying houses in the right catchment
• shouldn't be willing to use tutors to top up any gaps
• shouldn't be offering their children a broad range of experiences
• shouldn't be paying for music tuition
• shouldn't pay for sports coaching
• shouldn't be using any form of paid enrichment opportunities

How many parents ACTUALLY would look at their children and say "I could offer you opportunities for..., But I'm not. You can do without because although I could offer you... I decided to limit your opportunities because I don't believe it's right you have them".

Most won't.

If it really is a question of principles then they're happy (on principle remember because anything that gives different education experiences is deeply problematic) to send their children to failing schools because what apparently they genuinely and deeply believe that their children getting worse educational outcomes is an acceptable price to pay.

Curiously different, what i can't wrap my head around is why ones kid has 'to have the best education possible'. I just want my kids to be happy and become fully functioning independent adults, that does not require 'the best education possible'.
What's best will look different to different people though and I suspect that's what gets lost in the sweeping generalisations.

Everyone knows their own children.

For some the best education might be the highest set of GCSE results, for others they'd run a mile from a school that hot-houses because best for their child is a more nurturing environment with less pressure, for another it might be where the subjects offered are broad, for another they might consider the best education to be a school that offers creative arts properly (instead of having them on rotation for an hour a fortnight).

If I look at the state schools in my area, some I think would suit my DC, some wouldn't and others I'd sooner quit my job and home school than let them step foot in the door. I'm sure other parents locally would have a different view about each of them. What's best for my child isn't necessarily what's best for another child.

I wanted my child to

• have a choice of languages to learn, and to be able to do more than one if wanted/appropriate
• be able to do triple science if wanted/appropriate
• be taught by subject specialists
• be able to cover adequately the full curriculum in school for whichever public examinations she might take
• have a peaceful and supportive environment in which to learn
• not have provision of the absolute basics (including actual teachers) significantly impacted by budget constraints
• be given work appropriate to her level and ability
• be able to choose from a wide range of subjects at GCSE and at A Level including creative subjects/arts if wanted/appropriate

Should these things be available in all schools? Yes, of course. This is surely the basic minimum floor standard for good secondary education.

Are they available in all schools? No.

You only need to look at some of the threads on here to see that they are not available to a lot of children, or just talk to people who have children in secondary schools. Until those things are available in all schools, people will continue to choose private schools if they are able to.

Very strange logic.
I think children who go to comprehensive schools mix with a wider variety of backgrounds and also have more incentive to learn to be self motivated to do well, which benefits them at university.
And I think comprehensive schools benefit society as it means people aren't divided as children based on the socioeconomic status of their parents. That enables social mobility and better opportunities for those children too.

None of things you list as "shouldn'ts" are incompatible with my views. Of course I can choose tutoring/sports clubs etc .

I think the advantages private schools bring are often less about education and more about networks and a general entitlement. I believe in meritocracy so that approach is not for me.

Because education, inherently valuable in itself, can open many doors in life? It can inspire a love of learning, of purpose, of innovation? And yes, it can provide someone with future financial stability, as well as the ability to live the life they want to. The ‘best education’ can indeed result in kids growing up to be happy, fully functional and independent adults.

I would imagine that providing the best possible foundation they are able to is something most parents would want to provide their children. It’s hardly an unusual desire, anyway.