Does anyone else feel this way about the education system in the uk?

[Greengreenga]

My DH was privately educated, I was not. We have one dc due to start school next September so the search for a school has begun. I have always been adamant that I do not want my child to go to a private school. I get that they are brilliant in many ways but I feel very politically strongly that our support should be with the state sector. I want my child to know real people and not the top tiny percent of privilege.

Anyway… we have now looked at 5 of the closest state schools. I have been shocked. It’s not what I remember from my experience of school. These classes were chaos. In all of the schools we went to. The buildings were in an absolute state. Just the feel of the places was so awful. In two of the schools we looked at, supply teachers were in nearly all the classes, is this normal now? These were all rated outstanding bar one that was satisfactory. Three of them are meant to be really good options too, so I have no idea where it goes from there.

DH convinced me to look at the local private school. It’s so incredibly different on every level. There was calmness, order, focus. Although DH won’t push me to change my mind about private I know he would be over the moon if I agreed to it. I now feel so conflicted. I will also be hugely embarrassed if we chose to go private after everything negative I have very publicly said about the private sector for many years.

I feel shit about it. Am I jeprodisring our child’s future for my own moral compass to stay in tact? I don’t know anymore.

@elderflowerspritzer

I'm talking about an ideal world, not the world we live in. We do the best with what we have, but I would rather it wasn't this way.

Doesn't sound like my ideal world.

Well we are all different.

@elderflowerspritzer

Well we are all different.

Precisely

My child's school has a mix of immigrants, working class families and people who own big houses so that does not always ring true.

Its not only systematic underfunding in state. There were large classes, shabby buildings etc in my mediocre state secondary 25 years ago. The issue imho is behaviour and it starts at home. Too many parents have taken the fad for "gentle parenting" to mean imposing no real negative consequences on their DC and not giving their DC the security and comfort of knowing mum & dad are in charge and responsible. It goes two ways - feral entitled disobedient kids, and anxious kids lacking self esteem or any resilience or ability to cope with disappointment or adversity. Social media and exposure to porn through lack of controls/phones given too young have worsened it all.

I genuinely think we'll look back on the generation born from around 2000 to 2020 or so in particular as having been completely failed by poor parenting, too much unfettered access to phones, porn & social media, and covid lockdowns. Of course within that generation there are thriving resilient young people but there's a hell of a lot who are not.

Its starting to shift - moves to phone free schools, much tighter internet and social media controls and a growing recognition that gentle parenting isn't being done right, are starting to bear fruit for the kids born now.

To answer the op - private schools escape these issues because:

• parents have paid for discipline and will support the school in imposing it
• they can select out kids who are more challenging to educate
• higher funding means a greater proportion of adults in school to compensate

They did end up amazing but not just from an academic perspective. They had access to music, sport and so much more that we could not have given them because we don’t have the contacts or the inside knowledge. For us, the extra-curricular activities were essential. If a private education hadn’t offered that we may have made different choices.

sorry, I meant to add that we didn’t go down that route expecting their schools to turn them into academic success stories. For us, for example, smaller classes helped them to achieve their potential but it was mainly about the added value of extra curricular for us. If parents expect academic success it may not be the best option. A tutor could be more cost effective?

You would still have massive inequality in education. Some people value education far more than others. That alone creates inequality. Look at the school threads on here. Most are about absence letters, dietary requirements and the fairness of the uniform policy. Only a tiny handful are about the actual education.

Fortunately for you, the UK only has a tiny percentage educated privately compared to many countries, so you nearly have what you want!

See that's where I may be coming from it from a different angle. My son was band leader in his state high school and went on to make a tiny fortune busking and with gigs. He played sport on the weekend with the local soccer and cricket club. These are open to everyone. He's a lawyer now, but still plays footy on Saturdays with his friends. Music and sport are not only available to private school kids!

You’re right, they’re not but without the access to the teaching facilities only the top children (like your son) get a chance. Mine started in state, got ignored and demoralised but flew when we moved them. Would we have done the same if we’d had access to good local state provision, almost certainly not but not everyone is as lucky as your son. Our local state school didn’t offer music GCSE for example or triple science. I think private is the only option that a certain type of parent will consider but for the rest of us it’s about what our children need. My ideology would have preferred state but that wouldn’t have been right for the children.

@IVFmumoftwo you quoted me and said that does not always ring true. Can you be more specific? I don’t understand how anything that I’ve written relates in any way to whether or not schools (private or public) have a good mix of people from a variety of different backgrounds. I haven’t made any judgments at all about private or public schools in the UK. I’m not from the UK so I wouldn’t even be able to.

No, but if you have two parents working full time, perhaps at the weekends in some jobs or with lengthy commutes, and/or no local family to help out, giving your children access to those activities outside school can be impossible.

Private schools work because they take on responsibility for the care of your children from 8-6pm, with no extra charges for care outside classroom hours (although they do charge for specific ECAs and music lessons). For many, picking up your kids at 330 and spending the next 3 hours ferrying them to clubs is not possible, whereas working to pay for it to be done on-site is.

My kids’ private school educated 4 kids from the Ukraine (2 have just passed their A Levels and are going on to uni) and also has its fair share of ‘immigrants’ - a couple of Russian kids, a few kids from Ghana and other African states, plus a couple of US kids. We also have kids of plasterers and plumbers who arrive in their dad’s work van. But we also have kids whose parents have won Oscars/Emmies or who are tech moguls (the y11 after prom party was a blast - hosted at their mansion, security guards and a famous DJ). Society is diverse and complex.

Private schools are as reflective of global society as state schools. Probably more so given I live in an affluent m/c area where the parents/kids at the state school are all from the same demographic, are not in the least ethnically diverse, and the SEN kids have been managed out for fear of messing up their league table status.

A calm, purposeful atmosphere, motivated students, supportive families and teachers who are actually able to TEACH is why people pay for private education.

My children went to good state schools - we were incredibly lucky. We couldn't have afforded private, but I did a lot of research into the local options.

I worked in an independent school and yes, it was a different world to the schools I'd taught in in deprived areas of cities.

I never cared about the 'facilities', which so many parents seem to value - new buildlngs and fancy sports/drama/science blocks meant nothing to me. I was only interested in 2 things: what were the other students like and what were their families like? If you get well-supported children, you'll get what is ridiculously called a 'good school'. It's a matter of who you are keeping out, I'm afraid. One open evening I went to had parents (not children - parents) physically fighting in the playground before we were admitting. I would have done everything in my power for my children not to go there.

Politicians talk about making 'good schools' available to all. Ha ha! Do they think schools are buildings? Schools are the students, teachers and families - and if they're not right, it doesn't matter that the site has had an expensive makeover. Give me peeling paint and a purposeful atmosphere any day.

Private schools are as reflective of global society

They aren't because many people on the globe don't have money.

As if only state schools have poorly behaved kids and shit parenting.

You really are very shortsighted here. Dh and I were state educated although in another country. It wasn't even an option here for us to go state. Read a few threads here just on the children who are punched and bullied and just have to accept it. Posters will say it's just the area, but start a thread as a teacher who is leaving education and you will hear all the horror stories. Your comparison of the two visits is exactly what is the current state of schooling.
I'm in a very affluent area with a lot of good state schools. However I'm also on our local community Mums FB group and the stories are all very similar.
I don't think private is just all about the education if you're comparing. It's also about the overall experience. I want my dc to look back and love their education journey, every aspect of it.
I attended the parents meeting last week for dc, chalk and cheese when comparing to friends in state schools.

I think I was replying to someone who said you don't get a mix of kids from different walks of life in state as you do in private but my child goes to a school with a catchment straddling poorer areas and areas with massive houses that are wealthy.

I sympathise with you OP as you clearly want the best for your child, however this is predominantly a parenting issue. When you went to state school nobody would dare misbehave & the teacher had total control over the class, unfortunately now there are more children with SEN struggling to cope in mainstream with inadequate support & funding, more children coming in with trauma & seeking asylum & not being able to speak English yet, generally behaviour is awful in schools as the parents refuse to believe their kids are anything but perfect, teachers cannot punish children for bad behaviour anymore. I'm not a teacher but I do work with children & the behaviour that is accepted is off the scale. The difference with private school is that the parents are motivated for their children to do well, bad behaviour is not tolerated & if you're paying a lot of money for something you're not going to let your child ruin it for themselves. State education isn't valued as people see it as 'free' obviously it's a lot more complex but these are a few reasons.

I think it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you live somewhere without a private school, there are often a few really good state options because most parents who could afford private use the state schools, making them more attractive etc.
If you have several private schools (like most big cities), these parents often go private. The state schools suffer, and the pressure increases on the remaining parents to go private too, even if it means stretching themselves.
Basically the opposite of how you would expect competition to work.

To answer the actual question, in your shoes I'd educate at private, unless you can move closer to a better state option.

I'll try this to be short and on topic.
I am from the Continent, I've been living in the UK for nearly 15 years.
2 kids in state primary schools. DD1 one is taking his 11+ next year. The amount of study/tutoring that we have to do with him is shocking. Minimum 2-3 hours a day. It's because at school they do nothing. Like, every day is Harvest festival, mental health week, anty-bullying week, etc. but what about the actual curriculum and study? I think especially the math level is very low. And it's not like we've just recently woken up because of the exams. He's been doing the age-appropriate practice since Year 3. What I mean is, we bought the math books and did them with him every year. But at school they did maybe 1/4 of the content that is there in the books, so barely minimum that they could escape with, I guess. It should not be like this, because this means that if you don't have money for tutoring or you are not educated to a degree level to tutor yourself, your child has barely any chance of going to a good secondary school, even if they are academically gifted. Nothing is fair about this.

Now, about the infrastructure and the buildings. Most of the primary schools in Herts, where we live, look like some temporary garden sheds. Where I grew up, schools were proper brick buildings and the schools were quite big, with many floors, many classes, etc. How come these school buildings here pass any kind of EHS regulations is a mistery to me. However, the equipment and accessories at schools here are top-notch and that is great, cause I remember in my childhood years we didn't even have any toilet paper and teachers prepared their lessons using their own equipment and materials at home (and as kids we studied and did homework from books that we had to purchase and that was obligatory from the age of 7). And I won't even start about the poor pupil behaviour and lax parents' attitude, as last year the kids stood up during the class and started strangling their horrified friends in front of the teacher following some kind of Tit-Tok challenge. How on earth 9-year old kids are even allowed access to this kind of content is beyond me.

To sum this up, DD2 just started Reception in the local CoE school and I'm saving the money for the local private prep from Year 3. Not because we want to, but because we have no other choice, really.

I've had a chat with other non-UK born parents and we all share the feeling that here the state school is just like a social club for kids and primary purpose of the school, which once was to study, is now secondary (if not gone altogether). My son said once to me, "I just go there to play football...".

Finally, I know that this is biased and I'm sorry, it's probably because we come from high-pressure education environments where it was normal for us to study 3 hours a day, every day, and we had tests/exams every week. But still we managed to have a social life, so it's not like one excludes the other. And everybody, rich or poor, had a chance to study like this and succeed because every state school provided that chance and knowledge (private schools were extremely rare and only in big cities). Here I chat to a supposedly educated teacher who tells me that the capital of India is Mumbai and doesn't know the formula for the circle circumference. UK seems to have gone in the other direction - poor quality education for the masses and high quality for the rich/most determined (parents) - maybe it's the reflection of the old class division here? I'm not sure.

Honestly, none of this bears the slightest resemblance to my own experience either as a pupil or parent, and a lot of it is breathtakingly insulting to teachers, parents and kids in the state system. 93% of the population attend state schools - they are not holding pens for the ineducable masses.

For what it's worth, I attended an average state comprehensive, got 3 As at A Level and went to a Russell Group university. My husband went to probably the most academic public school in the country, got 3 As at A Level and went to a Russell Group university.

marmadukedoggo · Today 06:44
Did they end up amazing? Not trying to be rude but the amount of privately educated kids I know ( all 25-30) have done nothing more than their publicly educated friends. Often worse. I just wonder what parents think they are buying? A smart child? Your child is going to be smart if you put them in public or private. The end.

It's not just about the end product, though. When thinking about schools for my children i didn't actually waste much head-space on their future careers but I did want them to have a great experience of school. I remembered how much I'd enjoyed my own school days (state educated, but a grammar for secondary). To adults, the 7 or so years at primary and 7 at secondary go in a flash, but to children these years are very long and hugely formative. They loom incredibly large in most people's memories, for better or worse.

Both mine were state educated but luckily they got into very nice schools where lessons were calm and the teachers could actually teach. There was good music provision - and lots of take-up - and teachers stayed for decades because the schools were pleasant places to work. Relationships between staff and students were excellent, and a great model for the future - that scary moment when you have to engage with the adult world!

We were very lucky, but there's practically nothing I wouldn't have done to ensure my children had as good an educational experience as possible, whatever their future would hold.