Aibu to wonder why private schools produce more "well rounded" children? Is it the school or the parents?

[Kenthighst]

I know all state schools produce well rounded children eg those kids that are academic, musical, sporty, confident, excel at drama & can try their hand at anything.

But private schools churn out well rounded kids so aibu to wonder if it is the actual school who produce these kids or is it parental input?

I mean this is literally just the class divide.

It’s like saying why do people from wealthy families end up with better paid jobs?

Or why do rich people end up more successful than poor people?

The answer is because that’s the design of our society. There can’t be rich people without poor people working, making stuff, cleaning, buying over priced stuff sold by rich people etc.

If everyone was reared by every school to be successful academically, speak 5 languages, play the piano and compete at fencing or whatever, who do people think would do the things mentioned above?

IME private schools can churn out a lot of over-confident, arrogant, unempathetic knobheads. Just look at the houses of parliament - although granted, that's more of a problem with public than private schools. If you ever wondered if Dunning and Kruger were right, just visit a private school.

They absolutely can. And as someone new to private schools there’s definitely a few absolute twits that doubtlessly will end up as politicians.

but there’s also some really nice kids, really opened minded kids who don’t realise how rich they are because they’ve not been brought up in the competitive environment of state schools where your brand of shoe matters.

Maybe a strange little social experiment but I’m one of 5 children. 3 of us went to private day school, 2 of us went to the local catholic comprehensive. All same parents, all quite close in age.

my parents deemed that three of us were quite lazy and needed to be in an academically challenging environment to succeed - and two were so self motivated that they’d push themselves wherever they went. All 5 of us were party to these decisions and I genuinely don’t think there’s any resentment between us.

All 5 have at least an under grad degree + have had professional jobs outside of time off for children. Of the two maddest of us one went to private + one went to state.

hugely unhelpful anecdata…

but I think that fetishing / demonising private school as the answer / problem is very narrow minded.

successful happy people are often built by successful happy families. Generations of ‘enough’ and the associated psychological stability that brings are so hard to quantify and replicate.

if (mid forties now) look around at my friends who are largely quite happily married, stable friendship groups, decent support networks etc - then the overwhelming common denominator is happy family of origin.

a lot of them did attend private school - probably 50/50 - but again, that parental ability to pay for that comes from a place of historical stability. Expectation of future stability. Parental presence + interest not over compensating with money for their workaholism. Or at least not two parents doing that.

a lot of them had at least one parent who worked part time during their teenage years and was present.

I am absolutely not saying that private school isn’t a huge leg up. But it’s not the catch all panacea for dysfunction that some people think. Send a wildly dysfunctional kid to Eton and you get an egotistical and well spoken dysfunctional adult out the other side…

The private school in the town I live (now a state school) was famous for producing either anorexics or nymphomaniacs so…

Define well rounded.

It’s both. Also - Mumsnet is incredibly anti private so really im not sure you’ll get an unbiased response.

It's certainly not my experience - as a university lecturer and admissions tutor - that private schools produce more well-rounded students. On the whole, they produce more articulate and confident students, which is likely to be related to class sizes as well as parental inputs, but they are just as likely as any others to be narrow-minded, lacking in general knowledge and never to have read a book.

Hard agree.

It's clearly not just the academic side - I went to a rare animal that is a London grammar school where results, behaviour and teaching standards were exceptionally high. Yet it did not produce the life achievement or confidence that you see in public school pupils on the whole - it produced very clever but rather self-conscious people. We were all told how we were the top performers in the country but everyone felt a bit embarrassed and awkward about it whereas I wonder if there is less of that at private schools. It was generally a very middle class school but there were less privileged kids there as well.

If you have bright parents, who value education, good behaviour and have the means for lots of extra curricular activities, I do think all children will do well..

However, if you put that child in a failing comp, they are unlikely to achieve their full potential.

If you put them in a fantastic comp in an affluent area, they have far greater odds to do well.

If you put them in a good private school with 12 in a class and the incredible facilities on offer, it really is harder for them to fail.

(Prince Harry 😏)

If the OP is correct, i think its down primarily to the parents, they instill self belief in their kids and have the money and opportunities for their children to have more and better life experiences, possibly teach them the value of education too.
The PS then tops this up with Sporting & Cultural activities that the state sector no longer provides.

The public of course voted for the underfunding of state schools in favour of tax cuts.

Kids from poor families where the parents have no interest in their children, have a massive disadvantage.

🙄

Here we go....

I absolutely disagree with it being an "artificial leg" - it is the absolute bare minimum that school is SUPPOSED to achieve. The fact that many (not all) children can only access it by going to fee-paying schools in the UK is a scandal, and one that we are being distracted from by this line we're fed that private schools are in some way unfair, instead of being the norm for many wealthy countries.

I find it shocking when we see photographs of low income a-level students heading off to Oxbridge or to study medicine in the papers like it's some kind of miracle (the Michaela school is a good example of this) when we should be incredibly depressed that this isn't completely normal. "Reasonably bright teen does well." should not be a headline.

We have been trained to expect so little in this country. I would love to see fee-paying schools put out of business by a properly funded state system, but I very much doubt I will see it any time soon.

I went to a state primary school and we moved area just before secondary school. The options were a very poorly rated comp or a private school. I was lucky my mum could afford private.

Very shortly after starting I was assessed for dyslexia and given extra support for it. I had done well in exams at primary but in a class of 30+ so it was never spotted.

I then went back to state school for A Levels. I got a 2.1 in my uni degree and went on to a professional qualification. If that would have happened otherwise I can't know.

Class sizes were smaller and we did things like speech and drama. I have always been called confident and can certainly put on an amazing show which does help in my professional life.

My mum was not very involved. She worked long hours, took work home and sank at least 1 bottle of wine per night and usually a few other stronger drinks that she thought I didn't notice her having in the kitchen.

But if she hadn't sent me to private school I wouldn't have had support at home or at school.

Friends who are teachers say you can tell the parents who read to their children etc.

My thoughts exactly! Incompetent and self serving , with massively inflated egos, who look down on the plebs who didn't go to private school, along with anyone in the north.

Is that you Boris?

poor families where the parents have no interest in their children

Most spectacularly offensive comment on Mumsnet for a good 20 seconds, there.

I don’t share your perception. In my workplace privately educated colleagues are not doing any better than the rest. They often have difficult personalities though and quite narrow world-view which makes them less likeable.

ps. I’m privately educated, albeit abroad. The school was good but overall I’d say it’s a waste of money.

I think the biggest thing will be the other kids and what they are around (at school).

I think it's a combination. Children with engaged and ambitious parents are always going to do better and have more rounded experiences than children without, whether they are very very poor or very very rich.

State schools are going to be a fairly organic mix but a tiny percentage of parents from the "engaged and ambitious" group are going to find a way to go to an independent school (if they happen to live near one that is better than the state offering).

Fee paying schools are all different and have different USP's - some are highly selective and weed out underperforming students ruthlessly along the way, some are non-selective and it's just a case of having the money. They probably mostly lean towards engaged and ambitious, though, especially the selective ones, which will have a high percentage of very ambitious middle-income parents with family help, and more ethnic diversity than the non-selective. There will be few unengaged parents who expect the school to do everything.

I think that's what mostly makes the difference.

(Disagree with the statement above that private school kids are the ones who didn't get into grammar school - not all cities have grammar schools! If they were reintroduced at scale - so as many grammar places as comprehensive - private schools would evaporate overnight except for the super-posh ones that people go to for the "name".)

Yes this is very true I think. I went from a private school to a huge, London comprehensive, it was akin to or marginally worse than Grange Hill and my niavety vanished over night!

I'm interested to know what you mean about the bitchiness and social media stopping your DD using facilities?

Are you joking op?

Some of the most messed up, dysfunctional people I've ever met went to private school!