If you went to an independent school or were a parent who used an independent school, please tell me if you felt this?

[grrrroar]

Did you feel isolated from the immediate community around you as you weren’t at the local school with everyone else?

If you were a parent who paid fees did you feel isolated from neighbours etc?

I ask this as I recently moved overseas and have heard there is a huge divide between state and independent sector. DH is hellbent on using fee paying schools for DD but I had a very isolated childhood (in US) as we moved around so much and I really don’t want my child to experience any similar isolation! I also want to make friends in the area and not feel the odd ones out!

There will be all kinds of different experiences so no one can tell you how you and your child will get on but it might help to at least know which country you're in as there may be some specific cultural norms

I went to a private school and all my friends were from that school but you can't extrapolate that in any way

I went to private school on the other side of the city to where I lived.
I had no local friends and qa soften left out from spontaneous plans with friends who lived closer to each other as I often had no way of getting there. It was shit.

I went to an independent school, I didn't really feel that isolation (although with hindsight yes, I obviously did lose contact with a lot of people my age in my village).

I think what probably helped was:

1. Not making the school the sole focus of my social life. I still attended the local Brownie pack, Guides etc in my village, had swimming lessons locally. Some of my closest friends now are people I knew through Guides etc rather than school;
2. There were about 10 of us in total in the village who all went to independent schools and caught the same bus, so we remained friendly;
3. My parents making an effort at the weekends to take me on meet-ups with friends, even if we lived 20 miles apart

My mum was still heavily involved in village life so I can't say she ever felt disconnected due to the choice they had made for our schooling.

No, not at all. I had a good experience at private school, and I’m glad my parents chose it.

I went to private school and was isolated from my local community. I attended local groups such as Brownies, Guides and swimming but other children in those groups tended to stick to those who they knew through school.

I was also isolated from school friends due to none of them living close by!

I went to private school (on a scholarship) in London, which I guess is quite different from living in a village where most of the kids attend the same local state school. My friends were all from my school, I didn't feel isolated at all.

Not at all. Both my schools were a good half hour drive away but had plenty of friends both locally and further afield. a lot of my friends went to private schools too though so may have had different experiences to others

This was my exoerience too. My best friend lived almost 10 miles away so we couldn’t hang out without planning lifts or catching 2 buses each way. I was othered by the local kids because I went to an independent school.
It’s one of the reasons that I insisted on my DC going to the locak secondary school. That and making sure that they son’t grow up in a blind bubble of privilege.

Not at all
I went to a private school in a medium sized city and had friends there but I also had friends on my street, at Brownies, at choir and tennis club.

I went to private school in London. At primary age the school had a lot of local kids, and I had plenty of friends within walking distance. I also had lots of after school hobbies and made friends through those. My childhood wasn't focused around just the local area as well, my parents would always take us all over London to visit places so having friends who were a bus or tube ride away want an issue.

At secondary school, the school took kids from all over, but I travelled there independently on the tube and was able to visit friends independently from age 11.

I went to a private school and whilst I enjoyed it and I think I probably did better academically than I would have done at a state school I didn't want my children to go to private school because of the friendship practicalities. I wanted them to be able to do things with friends after school and go into the city at the weekends. Everything I did had to be organised.

In my small town about half the kids go the local independent school and half the state school, there are enough of both for them all to have friends but they mix less and less as they get older which does affect the teenagers social life. It's a rare child who mixes with both.
It definitely depends on where you live, people move to my town because of the private school and the local kids are bussed to the next town to go to the state school, the kids at the private school who love in town generally have a better social life.

I think it depends very much on where you live. I went to an independent school for secondary in London, and all my friends were roughly in the same bit of London and we could do stuff outside school. If I’d been in a close-knit village and gone to an independent school miles away in the countryside, it would have felt very different. It was more about public transport and infrastructure than school type.

I went to an independent school - about the only person in my village to do so. I had no friends in the village any more and I was dependent on lifts to see my friends at the independent school who were a distance away.
Fortunately I was an introverted child, quite happy in my own company most of the time but looking back it would have been good to have friends in secondary school the way I did when I went to the village primary.

I'm in an area with some of the best private schools (NW London) and almost people I know around here use it so I don't feel any isolation.
We also have very good state schools too, so I don't notice the difference. I would say our neighbours have a mix and no one really discusses schools? My dc private school is directly next door to a state private too.

I don’t feel isolated as a parent. Children from our village go to a variety of schools, only a quarter go to the ‘local’ school.

In the holidays they all play together, and we socialise with parents from different schools.

I see it as gaining a community. We have our village community and our school community.

So this thread really highlights how area dependent it is. If you're in a village then that's a whole other story. But if you're in an area where there's a good amount of private and state schools then there shouldn't be a reason to feel the difference.

I went private at secondary school - was in the village state primary. Yes I was definitely outside my village peer group and have no local friends there now: as I was a teenager there were fewer social things outside school that would have kept me in the ‘gang’. My younger siblings who went to local state schools at secondary still have local friends in the village. However, my parents maintained friendships outside of school parent friendships, so I think still felt part of village life.

There was no time for extra curriculars like brownies as we were always in the car or going to bed.

A lot of the families at the school were extremely rich and although my parents purported not to care, I certainly noticed the difference at events when some parents turned up in Bentleys and we rocked up in my dad's vauxhall nova that had been in pieces on ground earlier in the day!

They definitely didn't have any parent friends from school.

Even if it was financially accessible to us, I don't think I could bear putting myself through that again.

I went to state primaries miles away from where we lived (first we lived very rurally, and second was where my mum taught, over 10 miles from home). My secondary school had a massive catchment area so again, friends were scattered 45 mins drive from the school in all directions. My DC are now in private in the local city, but 6 miles from our house. Again we are rural and outside our local large village (which in itself has 3 primaries and takes kids from local villages), so a car is a necessity regardless. Growing up I always did extracurriculars so had a selection of friendship groups and never felt hard done by, and my DC have the same.

I went to private school my whole life. I can’t really say I felt isolated, no. But I did live in an area where it wasn’t unusual to go to private school or to go to an out of catchment school, so it wasn’t like everyone around me went to the same school and I went somewhere different.

I had lots of school friends and I saw them on weekends etc for birthday parties or just to hang out. My mum certainly had lots of neighbour friends and none of their children went to my school (and I also had neighbourhood friends, some of whom I’m still in touch with now and I’m mid 40s).

I suspect it’s a bit what you make of it. You can involve yourself in your local community or not. Not everything revolves around school. I can’t say my mum friends are necessarily ones I’ve met at the school gate. They are neighbours and parents of dc’s friends.

I went to a C of E primary and an independent school. The school was 25 minutes away by coach and some of my friends lived the other side of the school, so an hour away from me. It made socialising more difficult (although you make it work) and I'd like my DD's secondary school to be closer to home for that reason ideally. We have an outstanding state secondary on the other side of our suburb so that would be ideal. Then she can walk to see her mates and they can head into town together etc.

I didn't understand the division between private and state schools until after I had left. I knew that people paid to send children to private school, but I didn't know quite how much it was. 😳All I had to go on was the Monopoly card "Pay school fees of £150". As a teenager, I was actually rather clueless about class and privilege in general - I didn't understand the humour in the Fawlty Towers episode "A Touch of Class", where Basil is fawning over Lord Melbury, and sneering at the riff-raff. My family was not especially wealthy, and my parents massively downplayed the cost and privilege of independent school, and I didn't realise until many years later what a small percentage of pupils (less than 10%) go to independent schools. I heard my fellow pupils talk about expensive things such as skiing holidays, without actually knowing how expensive they were. I was guilty of what I often accuse Etonian politicians of being: knowing nothing about how other people live, in their bubble of wealth.

There were still assisted places when I went to independent school, so there were kids from rougher backgrounds in the school, but these were abolished soon afterwards. Legend has it that after those pupils had passed through the school, some teachers would say "now that we've got rid of the riff-raff..."

Yes, very isolated. I went to private school 20 miles away from my house. Was on a school bus at 7.30am and not home again till 6.30pm, including Saturdays. There was just never time for extra curricular activities more locally where I could've met kids who lived nearby. No public transport near us and both my parents worked full time to afford the fees, as a result they couldn't drive me about during school holidays to see friends, so I rarely socialised outside school until I passed my driving test. Long private school holidays dragged and often were bloody boring.

When DH and I were house hunting I was adamant we would only live somewhere connected where our DC could walk to stuff, and they go to a state school very close by so they are near their friends.

Yes - I hated not having friends in my local area.