To think people have the wrong idea about the reason parents use private schools?

[ewloan]

I have found this from threads and in real life, whenever private school comes up there’s this attitude that it’s about ‘buying results’ or ‘if your child is academic they will do well anywhere.’

Do people not realise that most people who send their kids to private school actually don’t need to be thinking about exam results as the main factor? These are people who often own businesses and have huge family wealth so their child’s exam results are not the be all and end all. The main reason people use private schools is for the entirely different experience for the child, for them to enjoy school and learning in small classes with lots of amenities and focus on their development. Why do people seem to think the main reason is to ‘buy an exam result’?

My parents have always been clear that they sent me to private school for the exam results.

I know lots of parents who send their children to private school and they all do it for exam results.

Only on Mumsnet have I seen people claim to do it for extra curriculars

I've literally NEVER thought that!

I know quite a number of people who use independent education. All for different reasons.

But never to buy a result!

There's been some nuts threads about private schools but this one is chocolate covered peanuts 😂

The reasons are irrelevant.

Pay the VAT.

Connections, and confidence.

Oh and segregation.

HTH.

OP with all respect, I don’t think people care. They see a perceived privilege and want to at a minimum tax it (get money out of those CFs and for some make the entire business model unsustainable.

this is emotional not logical and you as a person is irrelevant.

pointless exercise then ; may as well have sent them on the bus to the local comp ?

@Greally this isn’t a VAT post. Happy to pay whatever where education is concerned so don’t worry yourself!

Can you explain why it’s emotional and not logical? What else should not have VAT that does, that’s based on emotion and logic? Lots of things are small generators of tax revenue, does that mean they shouldn’t be taxed?

I speak as someone who’d like her daughter to go to private school - I couldn’t care less why other parents send their kids there. I know why I want to, and that’s all that matters.

I’m not worried. Maybe don’t make assumptions about posters.

@Greally you mean in the exact way you did with your first post? 🤦🏼‍♀️

Results, connections, extracurricular opportunities, to avoid mixing with the locals... It doesn't really matter what the reason is. If you want the luxury then you need to pay for the luxury. I'd love all kids to have the extracurricular opportunities you get in private school, but that was never the case and has been narrowed more and more by reduced budgets and the focus on "academic" baccalaureate subjects.

Honestly, I just assume you think your kids are more important than mine and deserve something better than mine.

Depends on the school.
No parents send their kids to Eton for the quality of the education - that would hardly be value for money! It’s because if you’ve been to Eton you’ve got a massively-increased chance of ending up as prime minister/a captain of industry/a top-paid journalist.

DD has been at private school since ages 7 and not what we were planning. None of the reasons listed above apply to us. We moved to an area where we didn't realise there were more children than state school places available. DD got squeezed into the infants' school which was meant to be outstanding but she went backwards compared to the school she was at before we moved (moved due to work).

She was swallowed into a class of 34 and really struggled and found English particularly hard especially as she had hearing loss. Upon the move to junior school the school admissions team at the council allocated her a school no where near us and we had to go past several other state schools to get there. Teaching retention there was appalling due to violence from the children. DD had no local friends and was miserable and also doing badly academically so we stretched ourselves to send her to a private junior school with the plan she'd go to state secondary.

The private school closed down by surprise just as DD was settled (after 6 month) so she ended up moving to another private school.

Then we ended up with a similar problem with secondary. No space, allocation to a school in another borough full of bullying. So DD stayed at private school. we have her there to build and sustain her confidence and resilience and to make up for all the turbulence.

So there you go. Not results hunting, not for networking, nit because we're rich and thats just what rich people do. We did it for DD and go without.

The opposite actually. My lovely boy who is average academically, physically very immature for his age (approx 3 years behind according to dental records), moderately dyslexic, shy and quite socially anxious has been given the chance to thrive at his private school. I know that if he went to our local school he would be failed by the education system and would have had a pretty miserable time. It's wrong and it shouldn't be like this but I can make that better for him so I did.

I still think the main reason is to avoid mixing with people from disadvantaged backgrounds, but of course nobody is willing to say that's their reason

Our dc don't go go Private. But we are 'private by stealth' because we moved to the most expensive area in the City which was the catchment for the best-by-far school.

I'll openly admit that limiting their mixing with some of those from 'disadvantaged backgrounds' was one of my reasons.

I grew up in a deprived area and went to a comp full of kids from disadvantaged backgrounds. Yes there were nice kids and normal families in the mix. But there were also many, many kids who joined their dad's business at 14 (local scumbag dealers). A really high proportion of girls in Y11 who got pregnant (often on purpose). Lots of awfully sad stories, kids that turned up starving or stinking of their parents fags or weed. In short, if you left school and got a job...any job...you were considered to have done well. Uni was almost unheard of, A Levels were rare and maybe 20% of kids did them.

I didn't want my dc's schooling to take place in an environment where expectations were through the floor, like I did. I wanted them to go to a school where the accepted-by-everyone expectation was education for several years post-16. Where the schools aim is A's and sporting achievements, not meeting 60% attendance and not getting pregnant. I would have given my right arm to go to my dc's comp rather than have to struggle and ignore the laughs and bullying I experienced for wanting to try.

If that makes me a snob, I don't care tbh.

Further to the above - I also went to private schools + I send my DC to them - and I find all of this reductive and boring

The only reason that we sent DD to a private prep school was so that she could benefit from the smaller class sizes and more individualised teaching. She was awfully shy when she was younger and in a class of 30 kids would’ve easily gotten lost in the crowd.

Neither I nor DH were privately educated, or anyone else in our families for that matter. We were very lucky that I had help from DM with school fees or else it never would have been possible for us.

Our plan certainly worked and she absolutely flourished there, coming out as a well rounded and confident 11 year old. She was nurtured so well both pastorally and academically, ultimately achieving a place at a top grammar.

@Harrumphhhh why would it have anything to do with any thoughts about your kids? Surely we all want the best and do the best we can for our kids, that doesn’t mean we think our kids are better?

I would be happy to have (and see) a logical discussion around the benefits of this particular policy.

this would need to be broken down into

1. revenue (assessment based on thorough analysis on areas with private schools on the brink to assess potential flows + ideological signalling) vs

2. cost (again looking at flows of pupils, SEN provisions and impact on children who miss out on high ranked state schools due to ex private school parents move / manipulate the system).

3. In addition to that I would like to look at the alternative of “forcing” private schools to do more outreach activities and use their resources to help state school pupils through partnerships, use of facilities, Saturday schools etc. Some private schools do a lot , other do nothing.

4. I would also like to see an analysis of to which extent some parents already have children in a high performing state school due to buying a property/ tutoring/playing the system whereas the lower socio economic groups misses out. there could be room for some reallocation of resources.

based on these three sets of data / analysis, I would like to see a good way forward.

however, the discussion is usually either

a) “it is a luxury and should be taxed” to pay for state schools (have anyone seen the budget deficit? Do we think this will help? How do we know without the analysis above) or

b) it is wrong for some people to be able to “buy privilege” disregarding point 4 above.

I have seen some desperate parents with bullied children/ children with SEN and posters who have gloated about those children “being last in the queue” - awful on a parenting web page.

I have also seen some completely clueless private school parents talk about what they consider to be sacrifices - bonkers to normal people.

There is no cost-benefit analysis and people are too emotional.

Exactly what I was going to say!

I’ve never thought of it as buying exam results. But it is buying privilege.

You see I hear this blurted out continuously on here and its a nonsense, do people really think more contacts are the main reason. Its bizarre, we same as people in state schools already have contacts and dont rely on a school to do anything more than teach our children.

Our connections are built from our lifestyle, our own successes, those of our family before us, friends of friends, the places we live, the places we go on holiday,, the events we attend, the clubs we went to as teens, the gap years we take, the clubs we are members of, the sports we play and watch, it goes on and on. I suspect in the same way a family that have lived in the same street in the same town would have connections.

My children will absolutely benefit hugely from the exposure they have to success in all forms, but school connections will be a tiny proportion of what they had from birth.

If all children were thrown into one single school ours would still have useful connections.

Reasons I send my child to private school having experienced both private and state secondary:

They efficiently and effectively clamp down on classroom disruption.
They efficiently and effectively clamp down on bullying.

Both of the above was outwith the means of the state school my child attended.

Minor factors:

The wrap around care
The number of sports teams
Instrument lessons on site thag I don’t have to arrange.
The way that you are not guilt tripped into going on school trips / drive the kids to sports fixtures wtc
The way that the school just asks parents to provide textbooks in a way that state schools aren’t allowed to incase so m e parents cant afford it. It’s nice that my child has textbooks instead of endless bits of photocopied paper.

Connections??? couldn’t give a damn! Exam results are going to be better due to point 1 above, the fact it’s selective and the textbooks point so I didn’t even look at the results as you cannot really compare. If you can afford it it is 100% worth it.