Does anyone REALLY send their children to private school?

[Mosschops30]

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actually I could get really quite worked up about this one tonight
privilege begets privilege
7% of children benefit because of the relative privilege of their parents
and the rest take their chances
(give or take the tiny minority with bursaries)
and they call this a meritocratic society

Well quite, buffy. C'est mucho bollocks, n'est pas?

4.30 am sounds very excellent. get out the nirvana

bien sur

Oo! Very impressed with my (state education influenced) European language skills. That's kind of "Spanglais", isn't it?

Nirvana will be out and playing. Oh yes.

I have been trying really hard to avoid this thread as it is such an emotive subject for me. In my naive days I was always against private education, so much so I refused to complete my entrance exam twice for the private secondary schoool my Mum wanted to send me to, ( I was a precocious self righteous teenager - but they are the best kind!!) when threatened with a beating I sat the exam and tried to fail! THis attitude prevailed when i went to University and my Oxford interview became a socialist rant.

I started teaching in the state sector, I turned down the offer of a placement in a a private school and was somewhat disheartened to be placed in the state school I think MartianBishop may have referred to earlier that is funded by the Haberdashers corporation. (This school is selctive by the way - or at least it was when I had my placement there - they interviewed every pupil and only took on pupils who had a desire to learn. Not that I want to take anything away from an excellent school in a community that needs it) However while at this school - which I think is probably a model of what tony Blair and Ruth Kelly have in mind when they talk about state independent schools - I was able to teach without any problems and my pupils were able to fulfill their potential and I would have been happy to send my child there.

My teaching job in Greater London however has changed my mind about state education - particularly as it is a well known beacon catholic secondary school. I witnessed children being failed on a daily basis, the school was completely out of control and it was heart breaking as I could also see good caring passionate teachers dropping out of the career one by one or leaving the state sector. The memories of this school haunt me - and this remember is a beacon school. I can remember coming home from one OPen Evening racked with guilt and in floods of tears that i had been encouraging parents to send their children to this school and that they hoped and prayed they would get in.

AS soon as I found out I was pregnant my first thought was "Oh my God one day she will have to go to a secondary school and it may be like this" I left a city I loved out of fear that she may end up in a school like the one I taught at or possibly worse. I can feel myself getting emotional now thinking about it.

I am lucky that the state primary dd will go to is good, as others have said we tried to choose a school that will suit her, we visited every private school in the area and the local state ones before we made a choice. I hope and pray that either whoever is in No10 will have sorted out the secondary education system or I will probably be stacking shelves and remortaging my house to pay for a private system or we will have fallen back on our second plan to emigrate.

This subject makes me so angry, like all of you I want the best for my daughter and I became a teacher so I could help other children achieve their best. I passionately believe in education, my education opened so many doors for me and this is just not happening for so many children today in the present system.

I am in a very similar position to you Koo, Netter and Twinset in that I am not rich and the majority of my earnings will go towards paying for my kids' education. Up north it's about £6.5k a year at secondary level. Interestingly nobody has mentioned nursery fees here though I know it came up on another thread. At the moment I earn about £1000 a month as a teacher part-time and £700 of this goes before it even registers with my bank account on pt nursery fees for 2 children. This leaves me with £100 a week and after bills, children's clothes etc that's not a lot. I worked out that if their dad looked after the kids so I didn't have to pay the nursery I could earn as much doing say one day and an evening stacking shelves at ASDA. However I love my job as a teacher and want to keep it.

When both children are in school I'll go back to full-time work and do some freelance work as well to pay for the school fees. I wonder how many of you people who think private schools are wrong paid sent your kids to a private nursery or did you wait around for 3 years for a state place?

I'm sure there are very rich parents with children at private school but not on this thread. I don't think any of our children are called Tarquin or wear designer clothing.

avoided this thread, but just looked now as I am bored! Isnt it up to the individual?
I pay for pre school and toddlers but not a private nursery and yes I will wait till the year before he starts school before I send him to nursery

I agree.
Do all Privately educated children do better than state educated? Do they learn life skills too.
I had a friend that went to boarding school. she is lovely but her social skills are not so brill.

My point, before I got wound up by the "hard work" thing was going to be that actually, the most important thing in a child's education is the input they get at home. they may get slightly higher GCSE grades in a private school, but that isn't everything is it?

So, here are parents who make huge lifestyle changes, work super hard, put their all into their chidren's education. Then what happens with the little darlings rebel and get excluded from their private school? How does that affect family relationships?

Take my dh. He was apparently a very gifted, bright child, bought up in New Zealand. His parents decided to up roots, come back to England when he was 12, in order to give him the best English private education they could afford. The were not rich and made huge sacrifices to do this. Dh went to a top public school in Oxford but hated it, hated losing his friends and outdoor life. He rebelled big time and got excluded from that school and the next private school he was sent to. End of parents dreams for his private education.

I didn't know dh then but from what I can gather, the family went through a very rocky time, culminating in dh being given an ultimatum - find a job or join the navy. He joined on his 16th birthday and spent most of the next 7 years living away from home.

But that is one case tigermoth. How many children get excluded from state schools every year and eventually end up having home tuition or in a school for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties (where my partner teaches). And more worryingly how many don't because getting a child exluded from a state school is notoriously difficult and then they are usually shifted around at least 2 or 3 others before they eventually end up in the above. OK private education didn't work for your dh. Is there any guarantee state education would have worked either?? And isn't it possible to see the other side of the coin - that the other children in his class were spared his disruptive behaviour?

Obviously I don't know your dh's circumstances and maybe he was hard done by but I do know what it's like to teach students who are very disruptive. In my NQT year I taught a yr 7 pupil who came one day a week because he was in special education for the other 4. He came with a chart where I had to tick boxes if he had hit his targets every 10 minutes (the targets included sitting in his seat!). So if that's what I was doing for him every 10 minutes obviously I was unable to teach the other 29 kids in the class. This was in a school that was deemed 'good' by OFSTED which got almost dead on average A-C grades at GCSE and this kind of incident was not rare. I had a similar student in a Yr 11 class who turned up once a week, wound up my class for a bit and then was removed by a member of senior management and sent to play on the computers on his own. And what about the others who come to secondary school with literacy and numeracy so limited that they couldn't access the curriculum. It's hard to teach Shakespeare to a student who can't manage Ladybird books together with 29 others of varying ability and I don't want my children to have to 'learn' in this environment.

Completely agree parental input is vital but the best parent in the world can't alter the damage that being in some state schools can do for some well-motivated students. I don't want to send my kids to private school so they'll go to Oxbridge etc (in fact I'd hate this) I just want them to be happy and supported and challenged so they can develop their potential fully. Sadly I know this can't happen in my local state schools although I know there are some wonderful state schools elsewhere in the country where it could.

I went to a rough state school (now in special measures) because of my parents' principles and 'succeeded'. I got good GCSE grades and after accumulating various other qualifications became a teacher. I think that I did well almost entirely because of my parents (both teachers also) and not because of the school though I don't blame my teachers who mostly did a fantastic job in difficult circumstances or even the school. However, like many others some on this thread, my 'success' masks the emotional damage my school did. The 'lifeskills' I learned included how to be made to feel awful for wanting to learn, how to be bullied because you have an unusual name, how to cope with the tedium of being forced to read '101 dalmations' around the class when I was reading Jane Austen at home, how to be ignored because you're generally quiet and get on with it, how to be abusive to teachers and how to be spat on when you got off the school bus (this wasn't a treat just for me, this was just the way lots of kids had their fun and went unpunished). Since I left this school is worse, police are regularly called and teachers lock themselves in the staffroom at lunchtime. I think my daughter can afford to pass on those 'lifeskills' thanks.

Rhiann - why would you hate your children to go to Oxbridge? that's a very strong statement to make

What I mean is that I don't define success as getting lots of A*s, going to Oxbridge and then making lots of money. I don't want my children to consider this to be the meaning of success either and that's not why I want them to go to private school. I want them to be happy, work hard and (I know it sounds trite) give something back to society.

blimey Rhiann that really is stereotyping...
not everyone who goes to Oxbridge is only interested in making lots on money
lots of them are interested in giving something back
some of them are even happy

hmm reverse snobbery?

I went to Oxford (from a state school) (as did dh- although from a private school). We're up to our eyeballs in debt having spent lots we don't have on our disabled child. I like to think we even have some sort of social conciensce.

What a pile of twaddle.

My friend from a council estate wanted to apply to Oxford and her teachers messed up her application (refused to fill in the bit they had to fill in within the time limi) and told her "people don't go to Oxford from schools like ours" well no, obviously not with that sort of encouragement. As it is she's done very well for helself elsewhere, but no thanks to her teachers and their reverse snobbery.

no guarantees with children however they are educated they may very well give something back to society

or they may choose to be thoroughly selfish all their lives

No, no, no. Read my post again. I haven't got a problem with Oxbridge just with defining success as getting A*s, going to Oxbridge and making lots of money. If this is success I'd guess most of us are pretty unsuccessful and if this is what we want for our children most will be pretty disappointed.

Obviously not expressing myself very clearly. I'm not saying the 3 things (A*s, Oxbridge, making money) are necessarily connected just that this is what some people see as 'success' and may be why some people think that other people send their children to private schools. Phew..