Do people expect ROI after paying private school fees?

[Enrew]

By ROI, I mean getting into top unis/ prestigious job/ high performer in a sport etc?

I ask after a family friend spent around 120k on child's education and child dropped out of good uni course to become personal trainer/ influencer. Nothing wrong with that career choice imo but friend seems resentful/ annoyed that after spending so much money child won't be doctor/ lawyer / banker and they could have done this career regardless of where they went to school. It's as if they had expectations all along.

I have no experience of private school system myself and my DC will go to local state school but thinking about it if I was paying out thousands per year for DC to have top education, I'd probably have some extra expectations.

More anecdotally, I went to a large comprehensive on the south coast. Someone upthread said that private school children only mix with other privileged children - this happened in my state secondary too.

Once we were put into sets, the children I was taught with had the same sort of accents, background, music lessons. My friends were floppy haired girls who played a musical instrument. I think I’ve learned more about the lives of others from reading Mumsnet than from going to a comprehensive.

No. We pay for our children's education for many reasons, university is not one of them. They may well choose not to attend and by the time they get there university education may have altered. We are already at the stage where professions which traditionally required a full tine university are now available aa apprenticeships - my own being one of those.

Our children attend private school partly as its what we know and understand, both my husband and I were privately educated, and partly to remove ourselves from the issues which are reported to be within state schools.

ROI is a strange, tactical way to think of parents relationships with their children.

The school parents send their children to is part of a range of choices and decisions that make up the way children are raised. I believe everyone raises children with multiple outcomes in mind. Not just university and career choice. Yes, parents want children to become self sufficient and able to make a living. But they also want them to have good character, good mental health, good relationships, etc.

Don't state school parents think about how to help their kids get to the best university that they can? Or is it just seen as the preserve of private school parents

@CruCru "Once we were put into sets, the children I was taught with had the same sort of accents, background, music lessons. My friends were floppy haired girls who played a musical instrument."

My children too-in the subjects they were set in. What I liked was that in non set subjects, like RE, Art, PHSE among others, they mixed with lots of other sorts of kids outside their ivory tower.

No.

We are paying to help our SEN child's mental health and for school to be a positive experience for her.

A happy child with decent GCSE results is the ROI we are hoping for.

The disparity of music provision between state and private is disgusting in my book. In state it's patchy, of varying quality, often relegated to the parents who can afford extra curricular lessons or are musicians themselves, limited in terms of instruments and quality of those instruments.

Reason in itself to choose a private school if you have a G&T child in music.

I mean not many state schools do professional choir for example. So you're left with the church.

Jesus. Seems my innocuous post in answer to the OPs question has been massively misinterpreted.

The question was do parents of privately educated children expect a ROI. My answer was no, the only thing I want is for them to leave school having not hated it 🤷🏽‍♀️ Nothing more, nothing less. Just a simple answer to a question.

I'm not sure how that can be interpreted as "93% of parents of state educated kids don't give a shit about their kids being happy in school" but yet somehow someone managed it.

I'm absolutely not buying an advantage. I'm buying an environment that my ND kid can survive, never mind thrive in, the same as a confident, academic NT kid might thrive in a 1000+ comprehensive. I shouldn't have to and it's absolutely not fair that I have to go into huge debt to give my kid a safe and accessible education. But I will.
It's absolutely no different though to those buying an "advantage" of a good catchment area. Why one attracts such vitriol and not the other, I don't know.

This is often true however all my DCs music was learnt outside of school other than the odd half hour guitar lesson. The music as my DCs private school was OK, they did weekly group lessons but I thought this was part of curriculum? There definitely wasn't a big music department but the kids were encouraged to learn instruments.

The one thing I did find is that there were opportunities for them to perform more as it was a tiny school. This makes a big difference as it helped them get used to performing.

Unusual.
2 girls were expelled very quickly for bullying my DD and none of it was physical.
2 boys from Ds's year were expelled last year for bad behaviour.
I am on the board of Governors for our local Comp and sit on the Exclusions commitee and we keep kids that would have been expelled instantly from my DC's Private school. 2 of my friends have had to withdraw their DC from another local well regarded Comp when bullying was not addressed and DS's BF transferred to his school after awful bullyimg in State.
I am not saying there is no bullying in Private schools but ours has a zero tolerance on it

Posts like this always sound so patronising.

Like finds like at all schools, even state, so if you are a cosy middle class family, your dcs friends are likely to be cosy middle class kids also.

@CruCru

i think you make a really valid point. I went to a really good comprehensive - but had a totally different experience of it than other kids there. One example: a full range of excellent music ensembles on offer (often winning national competitions) - but the rehearsals were before school. So I could go to Orchestra/ Wind band / choir, because I lived a ten minute walk away. The kids who lived on the other side of the city and were reliant on the school bus, couldn’t participate because they were never there on time. The difference being I lived in the leafy catchment around the school where houses cost an arm and a leg - they lived in the slice of catchment that included a large social housing estate (my parents were wealthy, theirs were not). Apparently all these kids getting equality of opportunity- but bollocks we were. I was vastly more privileged, in the same school, with ostensibly the same opportunities on offer. People who make out that private school is the only marker of privilege are being disingenuous in the extreme.

@Withless "Posts like this always sound so patronising"

I certainly didn't intend to be patronising. I was trying to explain what I think is one of the main benefit of state schools-that all kids have a more diverse range of companions.

My DC goes to boarding school (her choice...Due to being military and moving)
She owes me nothing.
Not grades.
Not a "top" career.

I simply want her to get through school and be proud of herself. And for her to know I'm proud of her too.

But I really don't think that's true. Either a catchment is very small and homogenous or it's bigger and as others have observed, like clings to like. Just being in a classroom of 32 with other kids who have a different background to you does not mean you're actually going to really take on board or be aware of their circumstances and so on. If it is a mixed catchment there's no reason to be suppose there's any less one-upmanship about phones and labels and cars and holidays etc than there might be in a private school. This idea that it's somehow worthy and character building to mix with the less fortunate always makes me think of "Common People" by Pulp.
I teach in a private and as I stated upthread, the kids there are from a range of financial backgrounds and are from all over the world. My kids now mix with a fat wider range of backgrounds than they did in their previous urban comp.

So like doesn't cling to like in your kids school? Whats the difference?

I'm pointing out that the oft repeated argument that state school offers a more diverse social group and that this is beneficial (even if some of the diverse groups are disruptive and uninterested in education) is fallacious. That actually many private schools offer a greater diversity and they do tend to mix because the one or two from Albania or Ukraine or Estonia are not a big enough group by themselves so they mix with the UK kids, to everyone's benefit. The UK kids are usually really interested in the international students' background and learn a lot about what it's like to grow up in a repressive regime / war zone / strict Islamic state.

Sounds very similar to my kids state school

It might sound similar, but it won't be.

Not one bit. I expected them to do their best and that is all anyone can do. There are no guarantees in life. All my kids really enjoyed school and were exposed to far more opportunities than they otherwise would have been. I totally avoided passing any comments on the fees I paid, as that was clearly my choice, not theirs but absolutely no regrets here. I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

My parents were very disappointed. I became a bin man.
I dropped out of uni. Had a major breakdown with no support. I joined a well known environmental charity as a volunteer recycling collector and that was the making of me. They gave me a purpose and they and my boyfriend now husband gave me a reason to be here. I'm well respected in my field and love my job.

When I say bin man I became a volunteer recycling loader when recycling was a niche activity that very few people did. Most people only had a collection of rubbish but we pioneered the collection of recycling at the kerbside.
My dad actually said they were very disappointed in me. That was 30 years ago. Still hurts.

No, I think that response added nothing.

Im spending a lot of money on tutors for my son as he is desperate to be a doctor and needs really high grades.
If he changes his mind and decides to be a bin man to be honest I think I would be relieved as I wouldn't have the stress of trying to help pay for 5 years of medical school. Plus I know 3 separate people who are Drs and hate it and his happiness is the most important thing to me.
I would feel 🙄 that he didn't realise he didn't want to go until I had finished paying out for the tutors though. I would never tell him that and he knows he can change his mind at any time.

(I know you said private school not tutors but I couldn't afford that ever so this is the nearest comparison I could think of.)