Who'd send their sprog to Eton now?

[felulageller]

£46k a year for your DS to watch Neighbours at lunchtime, take all the drugs going, have sex with older adults in fields, leave with a B and D at A level.

Learn zero social skills.

Sounds more like a sink comp to me?

https://www.winchestercollege.org/assets/files/uploads/common-time-2022-prizes-and-awards.pdf

This is a small school of 300 pupils in the sixth form, yet the competitive awards they brought home in a single term:

• Debating: gold+bronze (Nehru Cup)
• French debating: gold (London regional)
• Model UN: highest number of awards in 2022 of any school (9) including 2 Best Delegates
• UK linguistics olympiad first round: 1 gold, 4 silvers, 3 bronze
• UK physics olympiad first round: 8 golds
• UK math olympiad first round: 10 distinctions
• UK chemistry olympiad first round: 15 golds
• UK biology olympiad first round: 12 golds

WinColl may be less of a 'bringing up the rear' exam factory than say Eton or Westminster or Brighton, but they obviously do know how to bring out the best in the brightest. If they are able to do this with a less selective intake as someone suggested earlier (which I seriously doubt) then I definitely want my kid to go there!

Eton had I believe two golds in math and science olympiads, not in the past year but in the past decade. Westminster and Brighton College had around zero if I am not mistaken.

If he'd gone to the local comp I think he would have done BTEC uniformed public service and done well.

@sashh- yes I think that is true but sadly that would not have been an option due to security issues.

Schools like Eton don’t really offer that and the expectations is very much that pretty much everyone goes to university as well, which must be hard for some. Perhaps a few to music college or drama school but hardly any ever on apprenticeships post A level.

@WEEonline - it is great you are happy with Winchester for your DS but you are not selling the school with your comments “bringing up the rear”. That is a very unkind and elitist phrase.
In fact, most state schools at primary level are absolutely focussed on getting the weaker students to minimum levels and that is what education should be. If Winchester doesn’t do that then a lot of the recent threads on mumsnet about Winchester make a lot of sense. Parents who paid 40k plus for their child’s education whose child was already at a high level on entry will of course expect good grades at GCSE and A level. If the school cannot progress those DC that is shocking. There are progress scores for a reason in the state sector and an equivalent should really apply in the private sector too.

Frankly, calling Westminster an exam factory is a bit laughable when most people know it is the most academic independent school with the highest Oxbridge rate.

If Winchester wins so many competitions why is the Oxbridge rate so low these last few years applicant to successful outcome ratio isn’t great?

@Aleaiactaest you seem to assume that Oxbridge is the alpha and the omega of everything. Or that Westminster is somehow a semi-god in education. High Oxbridge rate doesn’t mean great school, it just means bias see Brighton college. I am just showing you another angle

I would not send a child to any boarding school unless in the forces or diplomatic service, and even then would consider alternatives first.

They'd have to pay me a lot more than £46k a year to send my child there.

What recent experience of this particular school prompts you to say that, @spelunky ? Presumably you or a close relative has had a child there in the past ten years who was unhappy or not served well by the school?

Will George and Louis go there? Where will Charlotte go?

I have always maintained that the biggest cause of Harry's issues was not his mother's death or the whole "second son" thing, but the problem of spending his teenage years in a school where everyone was a lot cleverer than him and he couldn't cope with the work.

He should have gone to a sporty school with great outdoor and sport facilities, the kind of place you send your son if you are very rich and he is a lively active type and not terribly academic.

(Eton in the 1990s was less meritocratic than today, but even at that time it was very much about clever, academic boys. Just a stupid choice for Harry)

Your repeated use of your term ‘bringing up the rear ‘is so unpleasant @WEEonline. I do hope you and DS enjoy Winchester when he gets there.

I only mentioned debating because my niece ( who attends one of your so called London exam factories) told me how Eton , St Paul’s and Westminster usually qualify for the Oxford and Cambridge schools competitions. I have never heard of the Nehru cup in debating. It probably contributes to Westminster/ St Paul’s / Eton’s high US university numbers which is where my niece wants to study.

If Westminster , Eton etc want every pupil to do well then it’s no wonder they are so popular with parents. That should be the aim of every school, I believe it is for most.
A good atmosphere is so important in a school especially a boarding school.

“A good atmosphere is so important in a school especially a boarding school“.

Totally agree and what is more children should be supportive of each other and value each other’s differing strengths across the board. A school which promotes and elevates individual pupils too much at the cost of the rest is never going to be wholesome. There is such strength in the collective.

This. 😕

“A good atmosphere is so important in a school especially a boarding school“.

Agree with this 100% which was what drove us to WinColl. In all honesty I didn’t feel that sort of camaraderie at Eton. I don’t know if it is the single rooms or the fact that the individual ranking of pupils are published for everyone to see, or the lack of intimacy that comes with in-house dining at Win, but by and large the boys at Eton seemed a lot less interested in each other, and a lot more stressed (to get to wherever they were going) in general and usually in much smaller groups, with the possible exception of sports teams returning from a match

This thread has jumped the shark properly now. It’s gone from arguing about whether Eton will take girls (zero sign of that happening) to which school has the better debaters… what a load of nonsense.

Schools make very little difference to how kids turn out. Genes and parental behaviour are much more important. In the case of boarding, who your housemaster is does matter a bit (as they are in a parental role). But that is pretty much down to luck.

If you want to spend £££ on a school and you and your child are happy with it, good luck to you. It probably won’t make that much difference but that’s your decision

If you are obsessed by which school is the “best” then you are wasting your time. Go and do Christmas pudding taste tests at Which? instead.

“Schools make very little difference to how kids turn out. Genes and parental behaviour are much more important.”

That is coming from a point of privilege where parents already have social and cultural capital and a high level of education.

For children who do not have that at home, schools/education make a huge difference to outcome!

Yes, education starts in the home and is determinative especially at primary level, but after that, educational establishment is determinative.

Countries like China and Russia have used education to change illiterate farming populations in one generation through education.

You cannot dismiss education in the nurture debate.

Of course middle class mums bitching on Mumsnet Eton vs Winchester is neither here nor there so I take your point on that. A kid who gets into those schools with parents who can pay or who managed to get a bursary will probably be OK in most good schools in the UK.

Joining this thread very late and apologies for not having rtft but the funniest bit (of many) in Spare is Harry whining at the outrage that the French classes at Eton were in French. Like SO unfair, when he wasn't French, how was he expected to handle it? Everyone else seemed to have coped. As many have said he should never have gone there, he's have been much happier at Stowe, and has a massive chip to this day about the inferiority complex that resulted from being in what is quite an academic school.

@Aleaiactaest If you are using Maoist China and Stalinist Russia (why not throw in North Korea too??) as an example of effective and beneficial education then you have even bigger problems than I feared.

We live in a democracy where the State does not have the right to take children away from their parents at a young age and educate them as it sees fit.

One of the consequences of that is that there is much greater responsibility on parents to make good choices for their children. By that I do not mean choosing between Eton or Winchester but things as simple and nil cost as whether or not they talk to their children, take them to the library, read to them, make sure they get enough sleep and don’t stay up all night watching TV, and role model a strong work ethic.

This is not a question of privilege and it is incredibly patronising and insulting to suggest it is. There are many lower income families, including and especially immigrant and refugee families, who do all the right things to support their children at this most basic level and as a result their children do very well at school. There are also many very privileged families who do not do these things - who don’t set effective boundaries, who don’t talk or read to their children, who don’t have books in the house - and their kids unsurprisingly don’t perform anywhere near to their potential regardless of how good their school is.