I have not read all this thread but before I dash to tend to the twins who are waking from their nap, I thought I would share this, FWIW.
My colleague at work told me about a recent experience of a friend of hers who works in a highly sort after private school. She is a reception teacher so I suppose the children are 4 & 5 years old. At the start of this term she had 4 & 5 year old siblings enrolled into her class. Their parents work in international business and they have just arrived back into this country from Hong Kong. From day 1 it was clear that their would be problems with these children because of their challenging behaviour which involves, screaming & shouting, pushing others and just not doing as they are told. It appears that the parents have no time for them and it has been left to a succession of nannies to "raise them". Anyway, the crunch came when they decided to start stabbing the other children in their year group with knives whilst they were eating their lunch. The teacher (who has been at the school for over 20 years) told the head that either they were removed from her class or she would be resigning. The children have now been moved to another school.
One of the things that occurred to me was had this been a state school, then people would have used it to justify their prejudices of the state school system. Badly behaved children come from all sorts of families and usually, it can be down to the family circumstances as in this case (I believe the children were crying out for attention from their absent parents).
The other thing that occurred to me was how readily the school got rid of the problem and no doubt that is how private schools on the whole maintain the veneer of not having to contend with unmotivated and undisciplined pupils. The state system on the other hand tries to do something to help problem pupils as much as it can until exclusion becomes the only option left. Which is the better system, I wonder?
I think people tend to rubbish state schools unnecessarily without acknowledging that private schools too have their problems. My husband and I went to a below average state schools, both have completed degrees and PhDs in chemistry and both are working in well paid jobs with more responsibility than some of our private educated contempories. Too be honest, in my year group, the private educated students did less well than the rest of us because they had trouble motivating themselvees. I guess that they were use to being coached to pass exams and at university, its down to your own desire whether you work or not. My sister in law is about to start post-doctoral research at a top US university and again, she has exceeded the privately educated students from her year.
From my personal experience, if a child has the ability and the motivation, they will succeed wherever you send them. My husband is categorically against sending our twin sons to private school because his cousins (parents extremely rich)were privately educated, and left school with no GCSE. One is now working on the railways repairing track and the other is still deciding what to do (age 28 years old).
Last point, some posters have stated that they prefer to spend their money on private education rather than holidays, designer clothes etc. Most people who send their kids to state schools don't do so in order to go on holiday, buy designer clothes, they do so because they hope that their chosen school will give their child a decent education. Similarly, for those sending their children to private school. However, I can guarantee that there are more designer clad pupils at private school than the state ones!. My husbands cousins only ever wore and still wear designer clothes!