If you send your child to private school…

[Quej]

Do you genuinely think it’s worth it or do you regret it… and why?

Not nothing, but many achieve substantially less than they could and/or their mental health takes a nose dive. I don’t think that is ok.

I’ve looked back over the thread and can’t see anyone who has said that children in state schools don’t achieve anything? Many children in our local state secondary achieve perfectly well, and I’m sure my children would have done too if they’d gone there, as they’re both very bright. Academic achievement wasn’t even a factor in why we decided to send them to an independent school.

Like Kier Starmer who goes on about how his children went to state school, without mentioning that the average house price in the particular school’s catchment is £1.2m.
Mine are at independent school, but we paid £295k for our house!

Definitely worth it. My previously lazy 14 year old decided to study for 5 hours a day at half term whilst on holiday, for internal school exams.
Why ? Because of peer pressure and school culture . He has a great bunch of friends who are good kids and work hard. They have exceptional inspiring teachers.

Similar! Our house was 400k (southeast, it is tiny!), houses in the overlap of the excellent state primary and secondary are well above the 1.5 million mark, most well above 2 million with the running costs to match ….. completely out of reach.

Some children’s needs can’t be met in state schools.

True.

’achievement is bad’ was a thing when I was at school. Still can’t quite get my head around why people would think this way!

I had thought that the cohort of people paying for private school may have changed a bit since VAT. The only people I know choosing to privately educate are those whose kids are not achieving very well in state.

Our DS is just about to finish private school after 13 years. We think it was worth every penny. The local state school is not good at all, and hasn’t improved, but got worse in the last few years. If we have had more than one we wouldn’t have been able to afford the fees.

DS started at a private pre prep but they only wanted cookie cutter children and his AuDHD means he is not like that. They told us he’d be expelled if he stayed there, so he is at a state primary. I am sad that the sport/art/music we’d hoped for him is totally absent from the school, but it is much more empathetic and he is making good progress.
DD will go to a different private pre prep. Her brother is a big personality and if they’re at the same small school she won’t have space to be herself.
There are a lot of options in our city.

That doesn’t seem to be the case at the school mine go to (not yet anyway). It’s academically selective, so they have to be achieving well to be offered a place. The cohort seems to be mainly children who have gone to the prep, who are wealthy enough that the VAT increase doesn’t really matter, children who have parents working at one of the schools in the foundation and therefore have cheaper fees, children who are especially gifted in certain areas and therefore have scholarships (mine are on scholarships), and also girls (it’s a girl’s school) who are ‘high functioning’ ND and were perhaps struggling socially at their state schools.

Can you define ‘not good’. Roughly percentage get English and maths GCSE?

We would do it all again in a heartbeat. Both our boys briefly attended our village state school and it was a complete disaster. Continuing in the state system wasn’t an option for my elder son (this is fact not opinion). My younger one would have managed but probably not thrived, and I don’t mean this from a grades perspective. We are not remotely well off; he has two scholarships and DH works there. I must add though that it’s that particular school that works well for DS2. I certainly don’t believe that any private school would meet his needs and any state school wouldn’t.

again, a builder and a hairdresser having been to a private school isn’t any kind of gotcha of failure - both productive members of society.

i went to an excellent state school, i couldn’t believe the huge variation by the time my children went in a different area. From one child per class having issues to almost 1/3 of the class clearly being in a setting where they’re being taught to cope with daily stress.

In what way was it a disaster and in what way is the private school ‘better’. Not being difficult just trying to understand.

Exactly this. I’m not trying to ‘buy’ a particular career for my kids. Builders and hairdressers are perfectly respectable careers, and AI proof!

Job snobbery is officially dead. Most parents now would be thrilled if their kids had a decent income if it’s hair dressing great. Tbh none of it matters when these poor kids hit the job market 😢. Having gone to a private school won’t solve the problem I have met too many mums tearing their hair out at the graduate recruitment market - state and private. The middle class entry jobs are being hacked away.

Unless you have so much money you don't care about the cost, I don't think the question is really "is it worthwhile to send my children to private school" but "is it worthwhile to send my children to private school compared to the alternative?"

Lots of posters on here saying their state alternative didn't meet their child's needs, for example, so private was worth it for them. Their neighbour's child probably had different needs, and private school might not have been worth it.

The other comparison of "alternative" is what you would be doing with the money if you weren't spending it on private education. In our case, we looked long and hard at private schools and decided it was better for me to work part time when the children were younger so I could be about after school (I would have had to work full time if we'd gone private) and they could benefit from that; and to put money aside for house deposits (we couldn't have simultaneously paid private school fees and done that).

And our local school is in the category of what I would call "good enough" - it's not amazing (GCSE results just below average) but we supplemented with tutoring, extracurricular activities and parental involvement. Would the DC have had a nicer all round experience if they'd gone to private school? Possibly, if we just looked at the actual "being in school day to day" bit, but as a long term broader picture including benefits as young adults, state school looked better.

(I went to a private school, was bullied and left with my mental health on the floor. These problems are not absent from private schools).

Our son has thrived in his fantastic state school but we sent his sister to a private girls school in the January of Year 7. She had started at one of the most successful state schools in the country and would likely have come out with very good grades, but it was such a strict, joyless environment and it seemed like sending her to a workhouse every day. For a well behaved child, it wasn’t ideal for her to be pushed to be even more compliant and get behaviour marks for her pen running out or worried that she wouldn’t be allowed to use the loo etc. She’s loved her much more relaxed private school since day one and the curriculum has been far better suited to her (the state one was very STEM focused and only gave one arts option for GCSE). The cost has been hideous, especially since addition of VAT. Being at a lovely school has enabled her to have a very happy adolescence but we still have 20 years left on the mortgage and I wish we had had a suitable state option for her nearby.

I will never vote Labour again. I know this thread isn’t about VAT, but what an ill thought out, damaging policy which has done nothing to help the state schools I work in anyway.

Another interesting thing is the number of private school parents who seem to live in the catchment of terrible failing state schools full of disruptive low achieving kids. When such schools are usually in areas of poverty and social deprivation. Unusual for people who can afford school fees to live in areas like that…..

Are you suggesting they’re lying?
Our one state secondary option isn’t ‘failing’, but it has a reputation for bullying and low level violence which they are really struggling to get a handle on. Having been there myself (and hating every minute), and having multiple friends with children there, and indeed friends who teach there, that hasn’t changed. My kids wouldn’t have ‘failed’ there I’m sure, but my eldest in particular is the type of child who would have been an immediate target for the bullies (my friends who teach there agreed she would be likely to struggle). We don’t all have socially confident kids who fit in, sadly, and we don’t all have the option to choose the state secondary school that would suit our child best (there is literally one state secondary nearby that we would get a place at).
Oh and we do live in a low income area with high levels of social deprivation. This is where I grew up, and I moved away after uni (to London). I then spent 10 years working and living in various European cities, before settling back in the SE. However my brother was murdered so we moved back to support my family. We then finally got our disabled child into a suitable SEN school after a 3 year battle, so moving isn’t really an option for us for the time being.

If I choose to spend £18k on fees instead of Ikos or horse riding lessons or a more expensive home is it anyone’s business other than my own? I pay my tax (and my VAT) and not one person is losing out with me doing that. Whether my dc become astronauts or brickies is not within my control but I can choose to spend my money on something now which I feel brings us a benefit.

If you genuinely had spare money what would you do with it? Saving it up for university or a house deposit for your dc isn’t fair to all either, as most dc won’t get those advantages. Neither is paying for tutoring or extra curriculars or anything else most of us do for our dc. We are all trying to make a failing system work the best we can with what we have got, that there is so much disparity in state education is a massive failure on all those who have governed us for the last 20 years.

I’m suggesting that SOME of them are-not lying exactly, but using generic anti state school stereotypes as if they are their own lived experience.

Failing isn’t about how many kids will pass GCSE (although our local one is below national average), it is also about the wellbeing of children. We have another school not too far away that is actually just above national average, but:

• the building is literally about to fall down, so science, technology and food tech have been cut to the absolute minimum
• the ambition is a 6 at gcse. No support for anything more.
• drama, music: pretty much non existing
• PE: bare bones that won’t inspire anyone to a healthy lifestyle
• Food offer: disastrous (kitchen also in the condemned building ), but several fast food outlets within 15 min walk, which is obvious if you look at the kids’s sizes :(
• Sendco: 1 person….

Will kids pass their gcses, and make it a “successful” school? Yes, but this definition of successful is disgraceful

I wouldn't engage if I were you. That poster weirdly always pops up on Private school threads to tell us we're morally bankrupt for sending our children to private school. I think they're a little obsessed.

Always very goady and minimising negative experiences of state schools. Pay no mind, they have a political axe to grind.