Childhood friend RUDE about my choice to send DC to Private School

[OhTheHokeyKokey]

Silent/observing mumsnetter here..

Childhood friend who I would consider to have been one of my best friends growing up..

Haven't had much interaction over the last 5-6 yrs due to living abroad.

Met up a few weeks ago and discussed our kids education. Said I was sending mine to a single-sex private school..

Reaction was:

• "why would you do that?" and
• "I want my kids to be grounded so I'm more inclined to send them to the local state school".. - I thought this was the most rude comment

"Oh yes I've heard of 'said' school and inquired about it and they offered us a place straight by away which I thought was weird" - undertones of 'school must be desperate to offer places willy nilly'

FYI "said" school is non selective at reception so enquiries would obvs result in places being offered!

As a side note, me AND this friend both went to single-sex private schools.. hence why I thought reaction was odd.. we both had a happy time.

AIBU - don't tell her I found her comments judgy and just let it slide
YANBU - tell her she was a rude, judgy cow and that I didn't appreciate her comments. I would NOT judge her choices

I only know our local area but our catchments are very geographically large and therefore very mixed.

I can see how state comps in wealthy towns may have smaller and therefore more specific catchments but that can't be true across the country.

No situation is perfect but sending your children to private school by definition reduces the variety of backgrounds of DC that they will mlx with. Numbers are smaller so an absolute reduction, plus the financial and social selection processes lead to the exclusion of many many families.

I love the guff about "grounded". DD holds her own admirably as a teacher, specialising in SEN, in a Sarf London school with a deprived catchment. She also grew up with a social conscience and rejected higher paid options. She didn't go into the real world or to uni blinking and gets on really well with colleagues from a variety of backgrounds.

All 3 of my DNs were sexually harassed during primary. I was sexually harrassed in Year 5. My sister was almost raped in Year 3. My dd who at the time was non-verbal and was in nappies had a year 6 boy try to pull off her nappy in the playground. None of the boys were suspended let alone expelled and in my sister’s case my friends and I had to beat up the boy to stop him from following her.

These types of attacks are statistically more likely to occur to girls who aren’t white (we aren’t) and in schools that actually have a ‘broad’ mix of students rather than the Mumsnet ‘all white, lets buy myself into the best catchment’ mix. This type of behaviour just isn’t tolerated at our local private schools - it’s instant expulsion for harrassing behaviour and they involve the police right away.

It's not like you see much of her anyway . I'd just leave it . As pp said your lives are taking different paths .

Private Bs state seems to be one of those topics, like politics, that is very polarising. Maybe her memory of it isn't as rosy as yours, or she has just changed her views. Choice is: Accept that their are differences, avoid the topic, and move on, or say you thought her opinions didn't match your experience of private single sex school and you are happy with your decision and you don't appreciate her blanket condemnation.

My thoughts exactly when I read that. I have a nephew in Y5 and Y6, this concept is entirely alien to me.

But I guess it helps justify her choices in her mind...

In our local area. There has been a history of building schools. Within a 2-4 mile radius of my house we have 12 good / outstanding state schools (primary and secondary) but they have a really broad catchments (2 miles walk for most, but the one in the wealthiest area has a deprived area in it’s catchment from further away and arranges to bus the kids in).

This isn’t the case in the villages. It’s common for most villages to have 1 primary school each (run through mostly donations) and while these kids get their pick of State Schools within 10 miles in practice parents who live in these villages often use Primary as a way to save for private / public schools in Secondary.

Loads of anecdotes on here, but what do the data show? That’s all.

Your mate’s kid, whether we want to admit it or not, is - when taken as part of the whole big picture - the social underdog in this situation, whereas life outcome is positively stacked for your kid. Or at least, it currently is, though maybe this will change. See: university destinations, exam grades; and from there, careers, life options, choices.

But, the big positive, surely, of a state school is that your kid is socially with the full range of people. Not just the rich/privileged 7%. That’s what she means about grounded. I wouldn’t waste any more thoughts over being upset with her: yes she was arguably unkind to crit your choice, when she was the one who asked, but let’s face it, you’re the privileged one here.

Private school is nothing to brag about on MN

I'm sorry to hear of your experiences.

However, a family we know whose dc go to private school have pulled their DC out of a sports team tour and not allowed them to go on their residential due to the culture of brushing off sexual assaults, things like nicking towels, pulling down underwear etc in the changing room and threatening behaviour as "banter" at their private school. They've been utterly shocked at the approach and lack of safeguarding which is diametrically different to how our state comp school deals with parental concerns.

Guess a lot of it is school rather than sector specific.

'Loads of anecdotes on here, but what do the data show? That’s all.'

Yup, the data shows it's the wealthiest people sending their kids private and only 1% of children or on scholarship where the parents aren't paying extortionate fees.
And that most state schools are safe and good - do private school parents really think that 96% of us would send our kids to awful schools????

The Private School kids from working class families who come for advantage tend to move to State for GCSEs / A Levels so it doesn’t really impact the people whose parents use it to buy them advantage. The kids whose (rich) parents send them to Private to shelter them from State don’t really care about UK university intake rules. I know a lot of private school kids who view Oxbridge alongside Ivy Leagues / IIT. Most UK Universities foreign campuses are often full of private school kids.

Everyone's Invited kicked off after the girls from JAGS (private, single sex) revealed the scale of alleged sexual abuse and assault they had endured from boys at Dulwich College. Highgate School (private) was in the headlines, too. Then everyone was.

Sadly, sexual assault against girls is not solved or even lessened by choosing private or single sex. It's a huge problem, and it's everywhere.

Do they, really? 'Everyone'?
Despite the frothing on MN the majority of people IRL don't 'hate' private school.
It's not on their radar, simple becsuse its existence or otherwise makes no difference to them.
They are more concerned about state options being given more money. Especially in deprived areas where parents can't afford to top up.
Closing all the private schools aren't going to solve this. Like I said people in nice leafy comp areas are already not mixing with the sink school children. If there was no private school It would be more of the same.

This with spades on.

“Tend” to move. Really? Anecdote: Don’t know of a single child from any private who has moved to a chimp for GCSEs. Am sure they exist, but this is not a trend I’m aware of. A few do move at a level, but most stay on acc to the schools I’ve explored….

Comp, not chimp.:-)

I don't think her reaction is rude but that's probably because I agree with her (not because of the "grounding" thing which is a load of nonsense - middle class aspirational parents do not want thier kids to mix with the "proles" or indeed anyone who drives a less expensive car than they do) but because it is very often a complete waste of money. My son went through the state school system and made it to the same courses and universities as the kids in the private schools.

Yes things like sport are better but you can do it outside school. If you aren't paying £000s a year for school fees you can spend the money on other extra curricular things. And you have the money saved for university costs.

But it's an individual decision and a lot depends on the choice of schools nearby. Also - choices may change now due to the funding crisis in state schools but equally the cost of living crisis will mean some people just can't afford private schools anymore.

I found a single sex girls' school really bitchy. However, we were encouraged to think we could do everything and didn't think sexism was a thing. Did I get a shock in the workplace - no, actually I didn't - not sexism, it was the wealth of some other colleagues which was the shock to me!

There was a post on here recently written from the friends point of view.

@Fuchs1a link??

If she’s so against the school why would she have enquired?

I've found parents who need to put other people down for the way they choose to educate their children are either insecure in their own choices or have a weird need to occupy some some sort of moral high ground.

The way I see it, my friends are making what they consider the best decisions they can for their children in their circumstances. I'm happy with the choices I've made for my children in our circumstances, so why would I need to have a dig at my friends?

Closing all private schools would have the effect of making the rich care about state schools. That would be the main advantage. Currently state education is good enough for everyone else but not for most MP's children for example.

I don't hate private schools and would send my children there if we had the money and if I thought they needed it. But the overall effect of their existence is to reduce the quality of state education.

Secondly where are these leafy areas where an entire comprehensive school intake is middle class children? I can see that might happen at primary schools but even then there's often a council estate in a village. And many of those who own homes are working class too. Maybe it's different in the south. In this area there is a variety of backgrounds in all the local schools, even though the proportions may be different to more deprived areas.

There's been lots of posts, from me and others on this.

A) I didn't judge. I don't have a strong feeling on this.

B) the vast majority of people go to mixed sex schools and are fine. Single sex schools are not an option in many areas, whether you're paying or not.

C) paying fees does not prevent sexual assault, as Everyone Invited showed and as discussed above. It may even mean that the school does not acknowledge or deal with concerns head on due to concerns about reputation or long standing culture of "banter" etc.

D) as I've said, the story that several boys made this remark independently of each other in a primary school is so difficult to recognise and so far from my experience of any of the (double digit) state primaries I've worked across, makes me doubt the veracity of this. If it did happen it is so extreme and unusual that I would expect there to have been a multi agency approach and huge alarm, particularly in terms of safeguarding the children who said it as it is so out of step with the norm.

This. And start by taking away the charitable status of private schools.