To think there must be tons of private school

[Enuffs]

parents on MN by % given all the threads about how ‘unfair’ it will be if they don’t get to keep the dodgy tax breaks private schools get now?

6% of kids in the U.K. go to private school. But there are SO many threats about the VAT changes to private schools…

YABU - MN is probably 6% private school parents, they’re just bloody noisy

YANBU - seems like at least a quarter of the posters on MN send their kids to private schools!

But then how on earth would anyone be able to discuss the comparative merits of State School A and Independent School B - which is an overwhelmingly common query on the education boards? Countless parents - often including those who never thought they’d face such a dilemma, find themselves having to think about this every year. Generally at a regular transition point, but often when there’s a change in circumstances or dissatisfaction with with their current school.

On the local board, which is where you’d find parents who know the schools you want to discuss?

I am concerned about putting VAT on because ultimately it won't be good for the state system.
It won't raise that much revenue, and certain not enough to compensate for a number of extra pupils coming over to state.

Most of the people locally I know who send their dc to private school are cutting back on most things to do so. Often they've chosen private school because their dc has some form of SEN where smaller classes will help them, and they've struggled in the state system. They're the children who will be losing out by not going to private school, not the super rich. They're children that really benefit from it, and the parents are making sacrifices to send them.

But locally we have 3 state secondaries. Two are full. The third is failing. What's going to happen when they get an influx of ex-private school pupils? Are you thinking they'll all have to go to the failing school? Because disproportionally they won't. It could be your dc who is the one bumped at the year 7 admission into that failing school.
And don't try arguing that will bump up standards. It won't. They can't recruit enough teachers. They're advertising regularly, even in the two full schools and getting no response, or poor candidates. And yes, I do know the latter is true.
The failing school has far more money poured into it, and still isn't improving. All that will happen is they fail more dc.

On the local board, which is where you’d find parents who know the schools you want to discuss?

That would be a laughably inadequate option! Parents based in Aberdeen or Brussels, moving to England, comparing three different boarding schools to two grammar school and the catchment areas in towns they might move to?

Interesting there is a post currently by someone from Hong Kong asking for advice on 4 specific schools - in Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle and Nottingham.
Overwhelmingly the feedback is that no single person can tell her about all 4 schools and she needs to find out about individual schools and areas.

I do think that local boards should be used more. I suspect many people don't know they exist. The one for my area is basically dead.

And as long as the Local boards continue to be underpopulated it would be completely pointless to direct people looking for advice on boarding or even day schools across a wide area to them. Particularly when posters with knowledge and experience of independent schools tend to gravitate to the Education topics.

Just very vocal.
And all the stats show that those who send kids to private schools are in the top % of earnings, in spite of what is claimed on MN.
I prefer to go by actual research and evidence as anyone can post anything anonymously claiming anything about their own situation, that may or may not be true.

Population of the U.K. - about 67million. Population of London/SE plus those who commute in etc - well numbers vary from 8-14 million.

So that’s one huge chunk of the population congregating in one area of the country so of course there will be a bias towards posters (assuming the majority are UK based) from the SE, taking about living and education, plus the posts about people visiting and looking at jobs/morning to the SE etc.

@shepherdsangeldelight netmums local boards are good. I would never use MN local boards.

It's 20% of kids by the time you get to sixth form and some counties like Oxfordshire it's 20% of all student right down to reception. I think Mumsnet is at least 30% private school parents. It's how a lot of us got here.

Probably more people here using private tutors for their children. Imagine there will be squawks if/when VAT is applied here too!

‘It's 20% of kids by the time you get to sixth form and some counties like Oxfordshire it's 20% of all student right down to reception. ‘

its 5.9% of the U.K. population overall and 6.5%!of total children in school in the England according to the Independent Schools Council which actually counts the number of children in private schooling.

So that’s what I’ll go in given that MN is a U.K. wide ( and global) website unless it’s just stuffed with parents from Oxfordshire.

Actually surprised it 5.9% in the U.K., I guess skewed by the England population numbers because in the part of the U.K. I grew up in private schools are almost non-existent.

@Enuffs only 36% of all children go to sixth form. Of these 36%, 17% are at private school. So in summary, there are not more children going to private sixth form, it is simply that the children who go to private school tend to stay on until sixth form.

@asrarpolar no idea what kind of school you went to but if the ISC say it’s 5.9% of U.K. kids in private schools, then it is!

and presumably a VAT charge applies to all fees regardless of the age of the child.

I think there are loads of mums from London and the SE. When we were looking for preps in rural Oxfordshire I got tons of replies about some very small schools. Privately educated kids go on to dominate most well paid career pathways in the uk so which school to choose was always going to be a hot topic. It's also a huge amount of money to invest in your kids. Mumsnet seems quite polarised in its population. It's either very wealthy or poor. There aren't a lot of average earning mums. If you've never had a child in a good private school then most people would have no idea how truly inadequate state provision currently is.

I think MN is more mixed than the perception. I find many more people on here complaining of not being able to afford to spend £20 on something or declare they buy everything second hand out of necessity not ethical reasons. Lots of worrying their dc will be looked down upon as they live in a small house/flat and sneer at snobs shopping in Waitrose.

I don't know why MN I'd thought of as being so middle class. I'd say it's a very broad range of people on here

Even if MN were an even, representative sample of the UK, which it isn't, the vast majority of the UK's population lives in southeast England, and thus there would be way more posters from that area than anywhere else. London alone has a larger population than Scotland and Wales put together. MN is also known to skew more affluent and educated than the population average, which increases the bias towards private schools, and school selection is much more salient if you're paying five figures per year per child for your choice. You aren't choosing in the same way if your DC goes to state school.

Long story short: MN has posters of all income levels and UK locations, but the prevalence of SE private school threads is nonetheless natural given the above.

This observation and the threads themselves are confirmation bias at its best.

At any moment, MN has hundreds of threads. People post on ones that catch their eyes, and complain about the prevalence of other ones that catch their eyes.

This is a current policy which is clearly different between the main parties in an
election year. However MN skews class wise, it certainly has a higher proportion of people with school age children than an average walk down the street. Of course this one attracts attention.

OP, it's not 7% in private schools, By sixth form it's 17-20% nationally. In some areas (eg certain parts of London), it will be much higher than that - maybe 50%? It's very area-specific.

If you doubt this, have a look at the Secondary Ed board on here and the whole annual hoopla on the 'SW London independent school 11 plus' threads. Lots of people find MN when researching certain schools and entry processes as these threads show up on a Google search. Then people may hang around and cross over to AIBU. Same with 7 plus or 8 plus entry to certain schools, or CE. It can be very competitive so people find 'support threads' (and then get even more wound up) 😁

‘Even if MN were an even, representative sample of the UK, which it isn't’

How do you know? Have MN ever released info on this?

‘OP, it's not 7% in private schools,’

No, it’s 5.9% of U.K. school children in private - those are numbers from the ISC and government. Actual numbers, not anecdotal guesses based on all the families with kids that someone living in Richmond knows about…

Advertisers know. MN knows because that's what they sell to advertisers. That's what pays for all of this.

MN is well-known to skew more highly educated than the general population. That's (one of the reasons) politicians come on here and not on Netmums (the other being higher traffic). There are a number of academic papers out there which cite this also, if you Google.

Even if people with children in independent schools are over-represented on MN, does this matter? People will post if they're interested. If not, they won't. Of course threads about independent schools will be more relevant to that particular demographic. People come and go anyway. There are threads on all sorts.