To think you can’t take the moral high ground on private schools if….

[Loudcloud]

….. you moved to a particular area for good schools, and paid a premium on the property price to do so?

Surely both are using your finances to get your kid a better education?

But that's just it..you don't have to be "super wealthy". My kid's school is 17k. It's not in the SE so housing is cheaper. With two parents working on graduate salaries which is not entirely out of the ordinary, it would be affordable. There are plenty of kids there with ordinary parents in jobs that are not NMW but not hedge fund managers. Ordinary cars, not Teslas and second home owners and barbours. I just wish people would stop equating all PS with Eton.

I couldn't disagree more with this. For me, a good school is one where the focus is on education. When we were applying for secondary schools for our children, I wanted them to go somewhere where the teachers could get on and teach without having to waste time on constant disciplinary problems. I wanted the teachers to be specialists in the subjects they taught and I wanted decent facilities and equipment for each subject. I wanted a broad-based curriculum with a good range of optional subjects at GCSE and A level. I wanted to be confident that all children would make good progress compared with their starting level and that those who needed extra support would get it. I wanted them to have good pastoral care and an interesting range of extra-curricular opportunities. I couldn't have cared less what the income level of the other families was.

We were able to find a state school for our daughter that provided virtually all of that. Our son couldn't go there as it was a girls' school. To get an equivalent for him we had to pay. That's the scandal. The things I wanted are surely what most parents want. Why don't we all get them?

That's such a load of absolute crap. Really, it's lazy, stereotyped, bears no resemblance to reality thinking. I can't even be bothered to give you the list of reasons people choose private because clearly you won't believe me anyway.

Those of us who have kids in both know what goes on in state schools thanks. Let me tell you private school is a different world! A different world! The state school tries to stop the violent kids hospitalising too many of their poor classmates. The teachers hope that they will get enough into
the bright children through the endless behavioural disruptions they have to put up with that the bright kids might pass.

In the private school there is no disruption and no assaults. This leaves the teachers enough time to nurture a joy of learning, enthusiasm for a subject, a depth of education that the state schools can no way cope with. When the kids are at private and aren’t spending all their time either beating others up or trying to lie low so they don’t get beaten up themselves, they gain a respect for other pupils. When they know that their school is good and they are lucky to go there they have a respect for the teachers and a pride in the school. They grow into confident, happy, broad minded individuals, with the very best exam results they’d ever be capable of. The careers service is second to none, arranging work experience, advising time and time and time again on UCAS forms.

Just our experience but private has been so much better than the ‘outstanding’ state option that our other children go to. We are so glad that we send our dyslexic child there who was sinking in state. We’re so guilty that we can’t afford to send our other children there. Being able to afford private and not doing it is totally incomprehensible to me, but maybe there are genuinely good state schools in some places. Until you see it with your own eyes it’s so hard to describe how bad the average state school is. It’s a world away from our experiences. No wonder so many kids have mental health problems.

I am sure this is true for some kids. And equally not true at all for some kids. I really wish people would stop generalising. There are terrible private schools and great private schools. There are miserable kids everywhere. There are bright and motivated children in state school. There is violence and bullying and peer pressure everywhere. There’s no magic solution to raising children.

It is possible my daughter would love private school and the opportunities available. It’s also possible she’d crumble under the pressure and be bullied for not being wealthy and feel judged for not having the right shoes or right holiday destinations. It’s possible she will witness violence at her state school. It’s also possible she will meet amazing teachers who show her resilience and hard work and inspire her to greatness. None of these choices are inherently ‘bad’ or ‘good’ or lazy or anything else that’s been implied here - we are all clearly people who care about our kids or we wouldn’t be here.

Rubbish. My children went to a wonderful ofsted outstanding state primary where it sadly had a high level of deprivation for some children. the children were all equal when they walked through the door. I gave no thought to how much money the other families had. I cared that the children wanted to sit and learn and my child was making progress. Being poor should have no relevance as to how motivated a child is to learn. They may have home challenges to make it harder to study but when in school they are all equal.

shudder to think I’d have had to choose between private (life in a gated community) or public (survival of the fittest out in the wild) if I’d stayed in the UK. Luckily I left and moved to a European country less broken. I’m so sorry you all have to make those choices. I’d have hoped the Labour government would be able to slowly turn things around but by the sounds of it not…having to tidy up the Brexit mess guess leaves little time for fixing other areas.

That’s how it should be! But my point is that a school with a high level of deprivation will rarely be seen as good. It may be rated outstanding by Ofsted but I bet most properly wealthy people still go for private education even if they’re in the catchment of an outstanding state school. Because at the end of the day it’s who you know and not what you know.

👏👏👏👏couldn’t have said it better myself. The problem is that at the end of the day parents who can afford it often go for private - not due to the quality of the education but the network and clout the kids get from attending these schools. And it just perpetuates inequality. I’d find it so hard to be stuck making those choices and that’s one of the main reasons I left the UK.

Again rubbish. You are making massive generations. The Micheala school is known for being in a relatively deprived area but has people queueing to go there as they know their child will be the best results. That is what parents care about, not who their child goes to school with.

this ‘who you know’… what does that mean? I went private and all my friends were the children of teachers and accountants and middle managers. The same for my children’s friends. I keep telling them off that they have yet to bring home anyone of any use to us! There is a child of some Z list celebrity I think in one of their years but they aren’t close friends with them so that avenue of socialising with the rich and famous has been a total let down

I went private for my children’s schools because of sport. No other reason. I couldn’t find a state school that would provide at least 2 hours a day and Saturday sport from year 7 to 13. My children will get the same academic results whether we went state or private. We really couldn’t care less who they socialise with as long as they are good friends to them

I’ve visited the Micheala school. Found it cold and intimidating, it seems the kids were like trained monkeys there to impress the visitors. (Visited w an official delegation as the school is always touted as an example of a successful state school). I get they are trying to do something different w a strict approach and they’re getting good grades but there didn’t seem to be a lot of empathy or joy in that school. The socioeconomic reference for the school is also still low. May be more sought after than other state schools in the area but everybody knows it’s not where your kids will make friends which will provide them w useful networks later on. People who can afford it still choose private over even a school like Micheala.

also you seem unaware of your privilege. When I say who you know I don’t necessarily mean nobility or the child of a cabinet minister (though this is the case for some schools). To many deprived families and kids, being friends w teachers and accountants and middle managers is a huge step up and indeed a useful network. A middle manager can also help you get an internship. Someone unemployed or working at the till at Tesco, not so much.

I'm so weary of people saying 'but if all state schools were great then private schools wouldn't be necessary'.

The highest concentration of pupils at private schools is in areas with the most outstanding state schools.

If all state schools were 'outstanding' and got great GCSE and A level results private schools would still exist - because well off parents want to privilege their children educationally, to give them the edge over other children, in the competition for the best jobs and university places. In other words, the privilege is the point.

As for all the guff about 'good state schools' vs 'bad state schools' - ALL state schools have much less money per head to educate their pupils than private schools, and so have far fewer teachers per head of pupil. And ALL non-selective state schools (ie the vast majority) are unable to select out difficult to teach children and disruptive pupils, as ALL private schools are able to do.

https://ifs.org.uk/inequality/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Private-schools-and-inequality.pdf#:~:text=Three%2D%20quarters%20of%20the%20children%20at%20private,most%20of%20these%20from%20the%20richest%20decile.&text=One%20estimate%20puts%20the%20price%20elasticity%20of,for%20private%20schooling%20by%20around%2030%2C000%20pupils.

@Carclubcomplainer
"They grow into confident, happy, broad minded individuals"
I went to a private school. Racism was a huge problem - not just from pupils but from staff. Lots of girls with eating disorders. Suicide attempts. Lots of drug taking and drinking. I don't recognise the picture you paint. You sound like you're reading directly from your children's school's marketing materials.

Exactly!

rememeber this? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2990103/amp/Prince-Charles-s-14-000-year-prep-school-threatened-closure-damning-Ofsted-report-says-pupils-unsafe-bad-maths-writing.html

Ofsted literally said Hill House was inadequate and unsafe. The parents reaction? They all rose up to defend the school and no one took their kids out. Why? Because they all knew it didn’t matter whether the quality of the education was good or if little Arabella scraped her knee in the unsafe playground. It was all worth it for their kids to be able to say “I went to Hill House” at every job interview and dinner party in the future. Dinner parties and job interviews they’d be invited to in the first place because..drum roll..they went to Hill House.

While little Jamie with straight A’s from Michaela is still sitting there sending off CV’s that don’t even get read.

no one disputes that there are certain posh schools such as the etons and harrows which attract a certain clientele where I sure there are a lot of influential parents who do hob nob together and the name opens doors.

it just doesn’t apply to 99% of other private schools, many of which no one has ever heard of.

It still means you buy your child the privilege of only being surrounded by other well-off children. Children who will invite your child into nice homes and later on make appropriate partners and friends. Just stop the presence. Why are you pretending the class society doesn’t exist? Private schools on average don’t provide that much better quality of education to explain the vast disparities in life long earnings and influence/powerful positions in society awarded to pupils from private compared to state education.
Sure, some private schools have good quality education. As do plenty of state schools! But good state schools don’t offer guaranteed access to the middle/upper class. Private schools do. And everybody knows that.

Same the other way round

ahem you do realize being able to afford 17k per child a year for education is privileged, don’t you? Most people in the UK can’t afford that.

Because it isn’t my experience. My family is mixed state (comps and grammar) and private. All are equally as successful. In fact the most successful objectively of anyone in my family is state educated. We all got similar exam results.

what matters most is everyone was academic and knuckled down to work and were self motivated to get good grades. We all started off demographically middle class and we all have so remained. The school that we all went to made no discernible difference to our educational and career outcomes.

why do you think we all want to hang around with upper class people? That seems like an incredibly weird thing to aspire to. I just wanted my kids to go to school where they could play tonnes of sport. It just doesn’t exist in the state sector.

@CantStopMoving

"this ‘who you know’… what does that mean? I went private and all my friends were the children of teachers and accountants and middle managers. The same for my children’s friends."

You may feel relatively 'average', but you're not. You're well off. Your children are being educated in a privileged ghetto, where all contact with serious disadvantage - by which I mean children coming from genuinely poor and chaotic homes with unsupportive parents - is entirely absent. 3/4ths of children at private school are drawn from families in the top 3 income deciles. The fact that you're not aware of the degree of your privilege is a sign of your privilege.

According to the IFS "only about 4% of fee paying school's financial turnover has been devoted to bursaries, while just 1% of private school pupils have been educated for free. Bursaries, therefore, are too small to account for much of the participation by low- and middle-income families, or to be reducing substantially the concentration of access in high-income households. Rather, the participation of households below the top income deciles is enabled through their family wealth, typically including grandparent contributions."

"My children will get the same academic results whether we went state or private."

Research by the Sutton Trust points to children at private schools getting better GCSE and A level results than similar children in state schools, which is why they're over represented at top universities, in senior jobs and in elite professions. Privately educated children also earn more over their lifetimes than their peers from similar backgrounds who attend state schools.

Hence this suggestion from the IFS report:
"What may sometimes be important for subsequent success may in part be, not so much the sum total of the skills acquired through education, as where a person stands in the educational achievement ranks. With private schooling sorting access to scarce university places and to scarce entry-level vacancies in jobs with good career prospects, the advantages from a private schooling are disadvantages for those with state schooling. To the extent that this is true, private schooling has a private benefit but no social benefit, and underpins a sub-optimal allocation of talent to jobs in society." ]

In other words - in the long term your children's gain is a loss to a similarly bright child with fewer resources allocated to them in the state sector.

Maybe you don’t understand logic? These two things are not the same, and you are mistaken in what is taxed.

Education is not taxable in most countries globally, and isn’t taxed across the EU. (A) private schools pay all sorts of taxes: this new VAT is not on the schools, but on the education, eg. the child’s parents pay it, not the school. (B) many private schools are educational charities, so nonprofits: eg. they do not make a profit overall and are subject to charity governance which, whatever many posters like to say, is very different from a “business”. What should be taxed if there is no profit?

Plus the majority of their costs are salaries, eg. teachers, admin staff, caretakers, cleaners, dinner ladies, etc. Not the super wealthy, in other words. Schools are employers of lots of normal averagely or lower paid people.

Compare this with buy to lets (which are businesses, and which are under-taxed); or the massive unearned wealth generated by property and property flipping over the last 25 years, which has gone massively undertaxed compared to income.

Why do you think people who are sitting on massive unearned property wealth shouldn’t be taxed, but we should be the only main developed country to tax education? And why then, is the government only taxing education services in private schools, and not in universities, nurseries, preschools, dance schools, performing arts charities, riding schools, music education charities and so on? Why is a charity that delivers dance education still exempt, while a private school offering dance training isn’t?

This thread is exactly what I’ve thought for many years.

I know so many people who are vehemently anti private school on moral grounds. They feel that private schools contribute to inequality in society and should all be scrapped.

However I think they generally fall into two camps.

Some send their kids to the local state school wherever they’ve ended up. Funnily enough, those people, despite their strong opinions, aren’t especially judgemental of people sending their kids to private schools.

The other group are much more vocal about how people sending their kids to private schools should be ashamed. How they are Tory scum etc. I’ve found they are the ones who have the funds to move to the best catchment areas. Or who rent to get their kids in and then move outside the catchment area to buy a house etc. Gaming the system and contributing to inequality themselves, but oblivious to the facts when they apply to them!

No, i meant some people equate all state schools with low achievement

Everything you have cited has nothing to do with the schools themselves but the demographics of the parents. If a person is rich with lots of connections, their children will have those connections regardless of the school they go to. If the children are academic naturally they will get good grades regardless and their parents will tutor them anyway regardless of the school they go to.

yes you’re already middle class so to you likely makes less of a difference. To disadvantaged kids, being around middle class kids can make a huge difference. It’s v challenging for kids from disadvantaged families to lift themselves out of poverty if they attend a school where most are from similar circumstances, regardless of academic results. If your family is already middle class you get the connections and “right” manners from home and can do well even if you attend a state school w more disadvantaged classmates. Just because anecdotally the most successful person in your family is state educated that doesn’t change the fact that privately educated earn more, have better jobs and do better on such a wide range of parameters that you’d be too naive if you be like this is all purely reflective of the quality of the education itself.

there are so many different stats you can Google yourself but here is one https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/08/04/private-school-pupils-earn-10000-state-school-counterparts-age/

I believe that you individually may have only chosen private for the sake of sports - also a privilege you are lucky to be able to provide for your child - and it may be that parents tell themselves all kinds of reasons for choosing private, but the social exclusivity of this is still the main defining factor of private education. I’m not taking the moral high ground, had I stayed in the UK and could I afford private I’d have done so, being clear eyed about the intrinsic class society it is. Why wouldn’t I do all I could to help my kids get a leg up? But I found the whole set up so stressful, and knew we’d never be able to afford private, just the chats about catchment areas and house prices drove me nuts. So we left. The race for “good schools” and the whole ofsted system is so unhealthy. Not your fault. People, vote got better leaders.

Youngest dd went to the local comp. But we relocated when she was 9 and I spent days trawling through ofsted reports and historic catchment data to make damn sure we bought a house with the right catchment.
I think if people judged others choices less we would all be in a better place.