Does anyone REALLY send their children to private school?

[Mosschops30]

Message withdrawn

Well, that's not fair either, angeliz. But we have to have confidence in the decisions we make on behalf of our children and not let others undermine us.

All I want to know is, if you are a low-income family and your child(ren) is not particularly talented, yet you wanted to enrol them for a private school, is there an organisation out there to help with the funding?

i doubt it. I think private schools tend to want pupils that can give something back, either in skills that raise the schools profile, or money for that new golf course.

Or even just presenting themselves nicely and not looking like Oliver Twist types from the local crap School!
sigh, i'm off baby awake!

Rhubarb, sorry i must've misread yor comment as sarcastic!

there was, rhubarb. it was called the assisted places scheme. it did exactly that.

labour abolished it.

I went to private senior school. My dad was a builder/labourer & my mum worked part-time in a petshop. I went on the shool ski trips for 3 years, but we never had a family holiday in the 5 years I was there.

DD won;t be starting school until 2007, but I am already planning a move to the catchment area for an excellent local school for ages 4-11. If she gets in there, I don't believe I will need to consider private school. We will have a nice house & will afford family holidays & I will be able to continue to work part-time. If, when she is coming up to 10-11 & the secondary school hasn't improved (it's terrble at the mo but there are plans to revamp the secondary schools in my area) & if she doesn't get into the grammer school, private school will be seriously considered. I think I'd be looking at full-time working then.

Private school is around £10k + a year....

my stepdaughter goes to a private school. She's lovely and lots of the parents are very nice too.
Likewise lots of the parents whose children go to the state primary down the street are lovely.
I think the parents at Eton or Harrow might be a little different to my neighbours, however.

Hmmm, so unless you can raise their profile, or help pay for a new golf course, children from low-income families are excluded from private schools and have to take their chances with the state schools, no matter how rough and shite that state school might be, like my old school.

I thought there was a reason I didn't like private schools.....

Rhubarb, many of the London independent senior schools have bursary schemes. Our local schools seem t indicate that up to 60% of parents have some form of subsidy (either scholarship/bursary).

Of course they have to pass the entrance test...

I agree with prevoiuos posters that the end aim is to find the best school for your child.

I went to state school and my parents are both teachers as am I, I don't think me and dh are rich but I'd rather prioritise our income for littleun.

I'd love to find a good state school - but I refuse to make my child suffer because of my political principles.

They are businesses Rhubarb! They charge fees because they have to pay for their premises, teachers etc etc and make a profit.
If they gave it away free, they wouldn't/couldn't exist at all. Which I know many people would think is a good thing.

actually they are very good ones beety but businesses as aloha says. You are very lucky that you have four kids with a talent.

rhubarb that isn't true. lots of them aren't strictly businesses, but charitable foundations. you need to phone up those near you and ask them what schemes they have in place for widening entry to lower-income families. the older and posher the school, the more likely they are to have good schemes in place as the more likely they are to have funds in place to finance it. also there is a lot of government discussion about the charitable status of independant schools, and to maintain their status they are increasinglyhaving to show that their charitable activities involve more than educating children of the well-off, so these schemes are increasing in number.

a privately owned independent school run as a business will probably tell you to bog off, but they are almost always not the sort of place you want your kids to go to anyway.

It will be interesting, now that there is a good deal of over-capacity in the nursery market, to see whether the nursery providers will now move into setting up fee-paying schools.

Yeah, I kinda do think that way. Good education shouldn't be awarded just for those who can afford it. Private schools are just making the state schools worse and worse because the only people in state schools are going to be the poor and the couldn't give a shits. (Don't all bombard me with your accounts of nice state schools now - I know there are exceptions! But if the majority of state schools were good, we wouldn't be having this discussion.)

I'll put my kids into a state school because I don't want to protect them from life. If they have brains, then they'll do just as well as in a private school, with a little help from home.

I'm not calling you all snobs, nor do I blame you for wanting the best education for your kids, don't we all? It's just sad that it seems to be reserved for those who can afford it. 10k used to be my annual salary, right now we are living on 15k, it seems shocking to me that this figure is the average for a private school per year!

They used to do what pph says at our local public school: "The King Edward VI Trust was set up in 1982 with the object of advancing and extending education at the School. In 2003 the Trustees decided to wind up the Trust, as it had achieved its objectives, and transfer its net assets to the Sherborne School Prize and Scholarship Fund. Please contact the Bursar regarding legacies or gifts to the King Edward VI Trust."

scholarships now.

My ds's nursery has expanded to include a pre-prep as well - to seven.
Yes, I know they have charitable status PPH, and even Eton offers free places for state educated children (of high intelligence) but the core of their business will always be charging fees which will, of course, exclude children. Just - to be frivolous - as Hermes' pricing policy has excluded me from owning a Kelly or Birkin bag.
They will not and cannot open their doors to whoever wants to come, regardless of ability to pay.
Anyway, discrimination is rife in state education too. Eton, say, discriminates by income, St Anthony's round the corner discriminates by creed. I don't think one is morally superior to the other tbh.

Rhuby I am with you but not going to be drawn into a big argument - this is so a parp for me.

boollocks to charity

Rhubarb, but it's not just the quality of the education that is the problem, but the monolithic one-size-fits-all style of state education that worries some of us, with our slightly square peg children.
I do wish all the sure start money had been poured into reducing class sizes in state education though.

monolithic one-size-fits-all approach - you are absolutely right there Aloha. That is a huge concern for some of us.

The research on whether small classes make that much of a difference seems a bit contradictory, aloha.

here

Thanks for that link Dino. do you happen to know if there was any reason why the study did not look at class size and learning outcomes in younger primary school children...or if there are any equivalent studies looking at 4-7s and class size?

I suspect the benefits go beyond mere academic attainment though, Dino.