If you or your child had private education, was it worth the money?

[edithfg]

Just that really. We can afford it with relative ease but would mean one less holiday a year and we’d always be in the home we are in now. It’s nice and lots of room but essentially means we could go further up the ladder. Small sacrifices really and I want to do best for dc. Was it worth the money?

Touché! ☺️🙄 x

Yes if state options are dire. No if not - among relatives who went some did well. One case of anxiety which was met with pressure and became anorexia, two with ASD that was not met with appropriate support.

The ASD was obvious, but never flagged by the schools. Both sets of parents/grandparents seemed happy not to have a diagnosis to deal with. One child now an adult and difficult, but doing okay. One still a child and struggling with mainstream education. I wonder how much this was a factor: https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2014/aug/02/secret-teacher-autism-fees-private-school-teaching

Ours went through state schools. Both high achievers now at RG uni's with almost top results behind them.
From early on we chose to spend our spare monies on family holidays instead of education, and have travelled fairly extensively which has been of benefit to us all individually and as a family unit.
Lucky though, that our state schools are very good and they've had access to great extracurricular stuff in our area.

@edithfg Private usually means much better "stuff" in terms of extra curricular activities and cultural capital- because there is much more money to pay for it. As a person who is politically and philosophically opposed to private schools the only thing that might have made me crack was the frantic scurrying around after school to drama and cricket and saxophone and whatever with mine, then going to collect a friend's child who had done all the stuff at school without any need for parental involvement at all!

I went to a private school from age 9-13 in a different country. It was good for me in some ways, and not in others. For example I was struggling in maths and the school just organised extra tuition and informed my parents that this was happening. When I moved back to the state sector at 13 I was left to fall behind in maths and the school wasn’t remotely bothered. I asked teachers and the HoD for extra help and was told that there was none. Things like this make a difference to educational outcomes.

My parents pulled me out of the school as the teachers were relentlessly critical of me academically and so I eventually disengaged and started making little effort. They thought why are we paying ££££ when I had stopped achieving so they moved me to a popular state sector school, which while it was popular it was not academic at all looking back and was the wrong state school for me for a few reasons (they didn’t bother to visit a few schools to compare etc).

We have DS in a state primary which is Outstanding, and it is one of the schools that absolutely deserves its Ofsted grading. We are very happy with the school and the extra help it is providing with a few things for DS. DNiece has just been moved from state primary to Private school and all we ever hear from SIL is how amazing it is and how she can’t understand why anyone would send their child to state as it’s so inferior 🙄

Christmasfairygodmother - you doubt how well my kids are doing in life? What a strange assumption!

I've only experienced private, my husband also and our 5 daughters are privately educated at 3 different schools.

Personally I would never consider state. All of our girls are so happy st school. We had the opportunity to match the child to the school, which is near impossible in state education. Behaviour, confidence, happiness and rounded education in our girls and their school friends far outstrips their peers in state school.

I would worry about the drug-taking. It's absolutely rife in private schools.

The one you're looking at must be quite cheap, if it only costs one holiday and a few grand on the mortgage. Just how good are the results?

If your kid is smart, send them to a decent state school. They'll still get 8s and 9s.

I would worry about the drug-taking. It's absolutely rife in private schools.

It's absolutely rife in state schools too.

Lol to private schools being the only ones with drugs problems.
Also lol about sending DC to a good local state school, some of us don't have that option.
Private schoos aren't just about GCSE results, they are about the whole school experience.

OP please do be careful with which Independent School you choose. There can be real advantages to state schools, and I say this as a mother who went to a state school themselves, but sent her son for seven years to a well known Independent School in Cambridgeshire.

State schools will have a much better and experienced safeguarding team and will be more likely to follow their own anti-bullying policies and procedures. I found very quickly at Kimbolton School that when my child was being bullied and I raised concerns, I was treated as the problem, rather than the bully. The bullying included physical violence and mimicking my child's disability. The bullying even involved the perpetrator attempting to drown my child on two separate occasions in the school swimming pool. Another occasion involved the bully demanding my son's phone and money, and when my son would not give this to him, the bully assaulted my son. The school would only tell the bully to "stop it", and not only did the bully not stop it, but he got his friends to do some bullying towards my son themselves. It got to the point that my son could no longer go to school as he felt too sick at facing the bully. Before we withdrew my child after he had been unable to face going to school for over a week, not one single member of staff checked in with us to see if my son was ok. I believe in the state sector they would follow their own policies and procedures and a member of staff would check in to see if your child was ok. I also believe that there would be consequences to the bully in exhibiting this sort of behaviour in the state sector.

So in answer to your question, check out your state school options before committing to spending on fees. If your child is being bullied, they won't be able to learn, no matter how good the facilities are. We spent £100,000 over the course of 7 years at Kimbolton School, and as soon as we asked for the school to help us with the bully, the response was less than sympathetic, namely if we could not cope with the bullying, we had best leave the school. The new Headmaster at the School sent some less than sympathetic letters after we left the school chasing school fees, despite the school being in breach of contract, negligent and acting contrary to the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

Please do consider your school carefully, whether it is state or private.

Also lol about sending DC to a good local state school, some of us don't have that option.

Quite. Most state schools are struggling to get or keep teachers, particularly in certain subjects. My dc's secondary was 'good' when we sent them there. In the last few years there have been 4 different Headteachers, multiple classes without qualified teachers for months, awful behaviour problems and it's now been (rightly) downgraded to Requires Improvement in all areas.

My brother went to private school in Germany and it was the making of him. He has an amazing career and degrees from both Cambridge/Harvard. He has been on 100K+ straight out of uni. However, most importantly the friends he made at school he is still friends with today and they all have amazing careers. A lot depends on the individual private school though because not all are the same.

Behaviour, confidence, happiness and rounded education in our girls and their school friends far outstrips their peers in state school. Yet the author of this post states they only have experience of private schooling....?!!

Some people will choose to privately educate, some will choose to put their children in state (even if private were an option), and some parents don't get a choice....making pronouncements such as the one above, are why these discussions about 'state v private' always descend into bunfights. There are happy, rounded, well educated children thriving at state and private schools, there are unhappy children at state and private schools, there are outstandingly good state schools, and achingly awful ones - and the same in the private sector....! No two schools are the same and no two children are either. What does make a difference (IMO) is parenting..the values, habits, life lessons, and cultural capital that you give your children, the time and effort spent broadening their minds and opportunities - whether they are on site or you have to drive them all over the place to find them - are what makes a child the whole person they become.

From people I know whose kids are at state schools - I would say grammar schools give you the same value as a private school, but the private schools I know are all much better than the local comps, even those rated “outstanding”.

The one you're looking at must be quite cheap, if it only costs one holiday

how much do you think a family holiday is?

Some important thing to remember when making comparisons. First, most private schools are overtly or covertly selective. And the parents are more affluent than average. And a significant indicator of achievement is parental income. So most private school kids are the kind who would probably be top se in a state school, and the published results are whole school. So look at the high achievers results. Even in grammar school areas where there are no comprehensive schools, the top set in the high schools tend to do as well as the grammars.

The thing that worries me is lack of teachers. Affecting state more but also private. .

Despite being quite pro state as our family have succeeded and thrived using state education the way public services are being degraded would not make me blame anyone for going private. The primary ours left 4 years ago is really struggling now with lack of resources and pupil behaviour. Thuu I s is according to teachers there so not idle gossip.

@PegasusReturns i haven’t quoted the right poster sorry, but the fees are 20k a year, not sure where that sits in terms of cheap or not.

Yes i do, in rhe same vein as many on the post also have experience only of state. The nature of life is that all of our experiences are limited thus all are throwing in the hat their lived experiences.

Whatever our experience we all will have encountered children who are either state educated or private and will im sure draw comparisons.

Employees children, neighbours children, children we come across at parties, my husbands colleagues children all include both state and privately educated children - my comments are based on a comparable of those.

I agree with a lot of your post, engaged parents of course make a massive difference to a child's behaviour, success, happiness, surely that is a given. However peers also influence children, private schools can control who those peers are, state can not.

Funding in state schools also appears to be a major issue, if the local fundraising is to be believed some state schools do not include stocked libraries, are missing teachers assistants, are boomeranging the same disruptive children around all of the local schools, some schools have metal detectors installed. These things can not be spun into positives and are not things I recognise in any private school.

I went private, my parents were teachers so saved every penny to send myself and my sibling. I was always academic, so I think I'd have done well anywhere but I was incredibly shy and nervous at 11. My school built up my confidence and helped me to feel seen in a way my primary (90 kids per year vs 40 at private secondary) hadn't. I was surrounded by families who got on in life, not mega flash but no one was failing. It sort of set this expectation that anyone could do if you set your mind to it, because none of those parents were mega geniuses that I can tell. I went on to found my company, have more than 20 employees, I genuinely think if I'd gone to the state school I'd have gotten a decent job, but the idea that I could do more than that would never have really entered my mind. Likewise my brother was very quiet at 11, he still is as an adult, but he's also the most self-assured person I know. Kind, quiet but he's very secure in himself. We weren't at the same private school, he picked a much sportier one and mine was single sex and more academic, but for both of us I'd say it helped our grades, but not hugely, but more over it's set both of us up very well for the rest of life. Personally my one regret was going to a single sex school, but at the time there wasn't a co-ed private within 50 miles, by brother was the first year at his school that took both.

Two of my friends are secondary teachers and both very strongly advised private if we could at all afford it. What struck me more than anything was one of them saying 'I see each child an hour a week, that's more than 700 a week, unless your child is genuinely gifted (in my subject) or a real troublemaker, I won't even know their name until GCSE'. In comparison we get phone calls or emails a couple of times a week from our daughter's school to update us on anything we need to know specific to her (she has some issues which require extra support) as well as obviuosly all the extra-curricular etc that state just can't match. I do also like that they don't have to follow the national curriculum, which in parts is antiquated and irrelevant, so the education can be more relevant.

Our daughter has a strong interest in IT, which is the area my husband also works in. We went around 3 privates and 2 state secondaries. He spent a long time talking to the IT departments in each, 2 of the private schools taught to a standard that he could have any of their pupils at 16 walking into a 45k trainee role, the other private much more followed the standard state curriculum which he felt was not close enough to what was needed in the workplace now without requring a degree to get there. It's not the fault of the school, but the curriculum that is set for them and not adaptive enough to changes in tech. This in part made our decision because what we spend on fees in 7 years could be easily the difference in earning capacity in the following 5 years.

With all that said I don't think all private is created equal, some isn't going to be worth the money, and some state ed is worth going to (but our town secondary is supposedly in the top 200 in the country and yet no one has a good word to say about it). Speak to the parents in your area about what they think of your schools in particular, league tables are much, much less important than the outlook they each have to nurturing your child.

I have as much idea as those saying giving up a holiday doesn’t allow for private schooling. It could. Easily.

Way better at the specialised sport?

Have I massively misread this, or are you suggesting an ideal education is one where you have friends who are abused by their parents?

Also, what did the Covid enquiry highlight was incomplete about private educations? I’ve googled it but can’t find anything to suggest an ‘incomplete experience’