Paying to keep your child away from certain types of other children… I don’t understand?

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I’ve seen so many threads recently bashing people who use private school as a way to remove their child from an environment with other children who may be challenging, disruptive etc.

I am completely against private education for a whole host of reasons… but surely if you send your child to a state school, even then you hope they don’t mix with the ‘wrong’ types? Ie those who are disruptive, rude, aggressive etc? Surely you also want your child as far away as possible from that?

I am absolutely amazed that there is suggestion that kids should be around that environment as it’s ’real life’ and shouldn’t be segregated for example by private education . Are people actually saying they are ok with their children sharing a classroom with kids that really aren’t interested in learning and have no values instilled in them by their parents? I will forever use the state system but if I knew my children were mixing with other children who didn’t give a shit and were disruptive, I would do all I could to keep them away from it. Isn’t that just sensible?!

I tend to agree, I suspect I have far more prejudice against some people due to "mix with everyone state education" than I would have had if I hadn't had to try to study around them - I'd probably have kept a optimistic 'everyone is interesting' 'be kind' attitude (if somewhat sheltered and naïve) rather than counting down until our life paths diverged and we never had to meet again...

@Mosalahiwoukd We quite easily put two in private school on these salaries…

Other children in the class are children of teachers, firefighters, civil servants, surveyors, doctors, soldiers. It’s the pre prep of a public school so not a small independent. My salary covers the fees plus a bit extra, my DH covers living expenses - unless you think a family can’t live off of £60,000?

Really?
Take home after tax and pension for 2 parents each on £55k is about 6.5k per month total.
Our mortgage is 1.5k
Council tax, water, gas, electric, broadband, insurances is 1k a month
Food £500 per month
Petrol maybe £200 per month
That comes to 3.2k per month for basics
Leaving us 3k per month, or 36k a year for school fees.
Currently we spend maybe 1k per month on going out, holidays, clothes, clubs etc and 2k is going into savings for our house extension. But these are luxuries we can cut if we decide that private school is needed at secondary. A fairly average one near us is about 6k per term, a top one including boarding is 34k for the year.

OP I am open about paying to stay away from bad behaviour. I know I am buying a privilege that sadly others can't afford to do. But the private schools near us tend to be more diverse than the state schools. There are far too many instances of EYFS children being subjected to racist taunts from other children and state schools doing nothing about it.
I am under no illusion that privately educated children are overall better behaved but you pick your battles. I try to reinforce how lucky they are, I do feel icky that you're paying for/buying dignity but it's not about me.

If your local catchment are had 40 in a class knife crime and regular assaults on staff and pupils
and think that’s good for your kids go where u will , but don’t judge everyone until u have walked in their shoes

I really don't understand the "it teaches children to mix and socialise with a range of people". The thing is, it doesn't prepare people for the real life. We don't mix with people vastly different from ourselves. The disruptive types at school have a very different life to me. I didn't engage with them at school and I don't in the real world. If I see a knob kicking off in the supermarket, I don't think "oh well he might have had a challenging homelife as a child", I think "what a knob". I think going to state school gave me less patience because their behaviour impacted my education and I don't want that for my child. We are lucky that our catchment school is an outstanding school with better results than the private school, but if things change I would absolutely move her.

well my sons private school has noone like that. Please, check your facts and envy before posting. One of the reasons we chose private schools was to avoid the kind of disruptive chavs present in state schools. Your kid can be a genius but it takes one disruptive brat to bring the whole class down.

that won’t be fixed by this dumb government’s fee increases as teachers are leaving due to discipline not money.

It's not the case that private schools are somehow safer. Lots of drugs available plus bullying rife. Kids are kids wherever they go to school.

There has never been a stabbing at my sons private school, unlike both the closest State secondaries.
I sit on the exclusion panel at our local Comp, some of the things that go on are eye watering and we STILL don't expel very often.
My DD was bullied at Private, the perp was expelled. 2 of my friends withdrew and homeschooled their DC due to bullying not being tackled at their State schools.
So your sweeping statement is ridiculous.
Some Private schools are safer than some State schools, there are drugs and bullying at some Private schools and some State schools.

I would believe that of Eton but your run of mill private school is just a state school without the large class sizes, violent chavs(parents wouldn’t pay to educate their feral children) and teachers who want to be there. As usual you are as clueless as the current government.

being poor doesn't mean they'll be more disruptive or not give a shit. money isn't a measure of moral quality

So you are able to assume that if they are in the private sector they WILL behave?
Surely the thing is here to give your children the tools of self control and emotional intelligence so they themselves can suss out the appropriate company.

People at private schools notoriously get bullied. I think the better education and teacher attention is the main draw.

Always tickles me that people bang on about using private school to avoid certain types of people. Forgetting that of course that some of the people who have the money for private school will have come by it by less than legitimate means…there’s plenty of undesirables in private schools.

Ughh the word "chav" isn't helping your case. I remember being called a pleb by the private school boys at the school opposite when I was little, similar vibes. I am most certainly not envious of anyone. My kid's schools are brilliant. And they have never had any bother at all. Despite having lots of kids that you would so disgustingly label as chavs.

Both my children have a large mix of friends. My youngest is in primary school still and the oldest at secondary

In primary my youngest makes friends with everyone. He is not easily drawn into things or distracted so I'm more than happy for him to be good friends with the quietest, most well behaved or equally the loudest, most disruptive children in the class l. He usually gets seated next to the disruptive ones each term and it all works out fine, generally!

My oldest was always easily led at primary school and I hated him being seated next to a disruptive child because he would end up getting involved etc..

Luckily, at secondary school my oldest has found his groove and gravitates towards kids with similar interests to himself and similar personality and he is no longer easily led or impacted by other people's disruptive behaviour. His school is very inclusive and they don't set for subjects really so there are children with significant behavioural needs in his class. He talks about it at home and we discuss how we are all different, some of the possible causes for poor behaviour etc.. and he is very caring, empathic and patient with all the young people.in his class,.as are most of the others it seems. I think it's good to get used to being with a variety of people and developing empathy and tolerance.

My youngest has no prejudice at all. He loves all his class buddies and I'm happy that his school also encourages inclusivity and compassion for each other.

If there was (gun or knife or serious) violence at either of my children's schools, or significant problems with bullying, I'd look to move them. But I'd likely look at other state options first before private. Luckily however, both children attend good schools in an area where gun and knife violence among teens is pretty much non existent, and bullying at their schools is.v v minimal.

If there seemed to be no good state option, I would consider private. A friend in London will be sending their child private for secondary because the comps in her area of London are pretty scary sounding ...

Does anyone remember I think last year a school girl was attacked, in the Shepperton area.

She was not only attacked by several girls at once but their mums and whoever else were telling them how to kick her calling her names and telling their children to punch her and keep her down.
I'd happily keep my child away from people like that

In the uk, with the good state system there is, there is no benefit to private school other than points 1,2 and 3 above.

😂😂😂

You get the same problems in private school

Learning to deal with and work around dickheads is part of their education.

Dickheads will always be among us.

They are rich, they are poor, they are every fucking where.

You can't buy yourself away from the dickhead factor. If you think you can, you probably are the dickhead that most people wish would fuck right off.

I used to do a lot of work in schools and the myriad of issues we used to have to deal with with private/ well renowned schools was always worse than the state schools who at least recognised the value of pastoral care. Not saying this is every single private school but it's been all that I've been involved with and I had to fight to even get over the door. The number of times i heard "oh we don't have those types of problems here" when I was already working with their students and couldn't break that confidentiality.

Obviously, I wouldn't have wanted my dd around kids that I perceived to be dangerous in any way, but personally, I was very happy that she was exposed to a wide mix of people, including some that were from very different backgrounds to her own, and some that were being brought up with very different value systems. Through getting to know these kids, she learned to be more self aware, more socially aware, more empathetic, less judgmental etc. All qualities that are very important to me.

I had similar experiences at school. There were a couple of kids in my secondary school, in particular, who probably taught me as much about the world as any of my teachers did.

There was one lad who was constantly in trouble, always getting told off for causing disruption etc. He got blamed for everything even when it wasn't his fault! I am pretty sure that, these days, he would be diagnosed with adhd, but back then, he was just considered to be naughty. I went through the first year or so of school thinking that he was "bad" and steering clear of him as much as possible. In my second year, though, thanks to my timetable and groups for subjects like art and cookery, I ended up getting to know him quite well. He certainly was disruptive, but I also learned that he didn't have an unkind bone in his body - he was actually one of the kindest and most thoughtful person I've ever met, but he just didn't know how to keep himself out of trouble.

The other kid used to sit next to me in maths. I was a bit scared of him for the first few months. He seemed quite "rough" and even the teachers seemed a bit way of him - he could be quite rude to them sometimes and I saw that they barely batted an eyelid. I was bemused by the fact that he sometimes seemed very quick to learn and picked things up without any trouble, whereas at other times, he was completely and utterly disengaged. I was scared to even speak to him at first, but we were sat next to each other in every maths lesson for 2 years, so I gradually got to know him. And I learned that he had spent a while living in a refuge when he, his mum and his sister had escaped from his abusive father, that they had then managed to get a house which his father had tried to burn down with all of them in it. And I realised that he cultivated his scary exterior primarily because he felt that this would give him a better chance of protecting himself, s mum and his little sister from anyone who might want to do them harm.

Those insights into lives that were very different from my own undoubtedly helped to shape the way I see the world now - my values, my politics and even my career in many ways. I am grateful for having had genuine opportunities to step out of my own bubble, and to realise how incredibly easy it is to judge from a position of ignorance.

Out of interest, all these posters saying private schools are full of drugs, bullies, are worse than state schools etc. Is this from first-hand experience?
I've got a child in each, state and private, so my first-hand, real-life experience is that this is all of this is rubbish as is every other stereotype on this post about private schools. We're not a wealthy family and wouldn't be paying the fees if we didn't think it was worth it.

In my experience working across multiple schools with varying status it wasn't that those issues didn't exist in state schools- it was that the schools were equipped to deal with them much better and they were less concerned with ignoring it/sweeping it under the rug to the detriment of pupils to retain reputation. Obviously that very much depends on the leadership within the school, how educated they are in social issues and how much they value pastoral care. But there were disproportionate issues in some of the private schools such as eating disorders and domestic abuse that wasn't being dealt with at all.