Query for state school parents

[AeolineReed]

My children go to private schools. I have been repeatedly got at for this by colleagues/acquaintances/random MNers with children at state schools. We live in a town with decent state schools. Everyone I know cites 'principles' as the reason for choosing the state option, even if they could afford otherwise.

This same 'principle' argument seems to crop up on MN a lot - but I'm just wondering how much of this is based on living in a good catchment area? And if you have 'principles', do they extend to sending your children to a truly dire school if you could afford to go private?

Just wondering, as I am rather fed up with being the unprincipled baddy.

DP and I are both state educated and we sent DS1 state then switched to private. At no time whatsoever was our motive to remove DS1 from state educated children I can't believe anybody would think that. He has freinds from lots of different schools private and state and would never see any difference between them. We switched because I like traditional teaching methods and I dislike the constant political interference and tinkering with state education.

interesting thread

Ours went to the local state primary, very middle class. I recall a mother saying dh and I couldn't possibly consider x because of our principles. I shall never forget her face when I said "oh I can sympathise but as I don't have political principles, I don't have an issue with it". Actually I think she meant "we can't afford it, so we have principles instead" and I was thinking "yes love, I know what you mean but it really isn't an issue as far as we are concerned."

I'm somewhat amazed that people have experienced people avoiding them/not talking to them because they use private schools. That's odd.

The people across the road from us send their kids to a private school (I don't actually know which one). DS1 is good friends with their eldest DS. I don't think either of them care which school the other goes to. Half the kids in is scout troop are at private school too. I only found this out because they're all missing camp due to school stuff. I just can't bring myself to care where other people's kids go to school.

FantasticDay, I did answer that earlier in the thread (namely that the state school is fine, but the private one is better). But it's also because, as blinkineck so nicely puts it, "I like traditional teaching methods and I dislike the constant political interference and tinkering with state education."

Like the vast majority of the population it wouldn't matter if I had no principles- I still wouldn't have the cash.

Not sure "only the best will do" is an argument that resonates with me though: I don't think like that in other areas of life. "Only the best food will do for my children", "only the best accommodation", "only the best company"- no, I just don't tend to think along those lines. ("Only the best parents"? ) Perhaps I just have inferior children.

But I do speak to my friend who sends her ds to private school.

Becarooo, I don't know if it would be possible. It probably depends on the particular school.

Fees at our local secondaries are around 5.5K per term, which has to be truly out of reach of normal human beings. Others in a city only 20 miles from us are more like 3K per term. The GDST fees are all (relatively!) reasonable.

I've been reading all the posting and its got me thinking. My DS2 is at boarding school and a famous boarding school to boot and I realise that I don't tell people when I first meet them this particularly applies to people I work with. We also don't have a TV more common now but at one stage unheard of and I have to confess speak in posh very middle class way (the people I work with are fascinated and frequently comment on it), shop in Waitrose and listen to classical music we literally don't know anything about pop music. And of course the final nail in my coffin for many is sending my son to boarding school; I must be a heartless cow.
So I keep all these things to myself; why? I suppose it's primarily because I don't want people to think that I'm a screaming snob or an intellectual snob I'm neither of these, and sadly in my experience people can be quite hostile to those who they think are different and this gets very boring especially in my chosen profession where working effectively as team is important. I also find that if people think you've got lots of money they can get very chippy about it (we don't have lots of money but obviously earn way above the average income).

But once people have got to know me they discover and say to me and others that I'm a harmless eccentric who speaks with a posh accent! They will never understand why I send my son to boarding school but accept that its a decision that I have made and respect it.

Becaroo, I didn't switch to a private school for Gcses but I did for A level mainly because DD1 realised she had chosen the wrong subject mix. No problems at all work wise or social.

hmm -
principles - I think I do have principles - to an extent about schooling
I think that private schools and also the other ways that people make sure their kids get into a "good" school - eg moving house, finding God, tutoring help reinforce inequality - that means that bright kids from poorer backgrouds do loose out

I think in some areas it becomes a vicious circle - no one sends their kids to the local schools so only people who don't have the money/and or savvy to get into a different school -
and I think people often make the decesions without visiting the (state) schools in question -and using rumour, and judging the type of children that go to the schools as well and also not looking into what really makes a difference to education -for instance parental imput, and looking at the difference the teachers make - eg value added - not the children starting

also it is important to me to be part of the community and its harder to do that when your kids don't go to the local school

but that said I wouldn't blank someone who sent their kids to private school -in an area such as mine where state schools are very good I wouldn't understand why really and I might think we might not have so much in common -especially at primary -

however would I sent my kids to a school I didn't think I would work for them no -and if anyone asked me why I wouldn't send my kids private it would a no need -at the moment, and b- no money!

Isn't it just about how much you want something, against how much you worry about what other people think about you having it? In both, weighing up circumstances and values etc. If something's important and it doesn't offend your values, do you really care what others think?

School choice isn't usually top of the list for psycopathic practices, wonder if it happens outside this country in the same way? I've heard, for e.g., that in Japan, children only go private if they have something 'wrong' with them that the state cannot cope with. Wonder if they have different behavioural problems culturally from the UK?

OP. Sorry. I missed your earlier response. Just to engage with your original post. I do think it is genuinely better for society if everyone goes to the same schools, but I don't consider that we are in any way putting our principles before our kids by sending them to a state school, as I think it is better for them to mix with a wide variety of people. When I was a kid I was shy/embarrassed talking to people with learning difficulties, or from other cultures - mine just accept this as perfectly normal (which of course it is), and I think their lives are correspondingly enriched. Having said that, we eventually decided not to put as our first choice on the form the school attached to my dd's Surestart nursery, and where she attended preschool. The school in question had excellent teachers. However it also had one of the highest levels of social deprivation in the country and dd constantly complained that the other kids were 'naughty' (quite a lot of EBD). (However, if that was the option we were allocated, we would have gone with it) On the other hand, we rejected a place we got at a renowned state faith school in our area, which had absolutely excellent results when we found they 'expected' a voluntary donation of £100 per term and had different assemblies for kids who were and were not part of the faith in question. We currently have a place in an Ofsted 'outstanding' school, with a good ethnic mix, but (unfortunately) hardly any kids at all from more deprived backgrounds. I'd be happy with all but one of the local secondaries (though if dd got a place in the city's one grammar school and wanted to take it up, we wouldn't turn it down!)

My son is happy at his state school and working two years ahead of his age academically. He has a good range of after school activites which I never had the private school I went to. The teaching is imaginative and there is a good social mix. The SAT results are not great, but my son is doing well and to me that is what matters.

In our area the private options are very old fashioned and don't really meet the needs of the twenty first century. My son could have gone to the Steiner school (too weird for me) or a very old fashioned prep school 3 miles away.

The other private school was totally out of the question because they will not take children with a history of developmental delay. My son had orthopedic problems which delayed him learning to walk. It goes to show how narrow minded some of the most academically selective private primaries are.

I don't care what schools other people choose as I am confident with my choice. It does annoy me when people say that their child is too delicate/ too bright for my son's school. It almost suggests that they think that my son is somehow beneath their children.

Like Fantasticday, I also think it's better for us all as if everyone goes to the same schools, in terms of a more equal, integrated society (the sort of thing that the Spirit Level book is talking about). But I also believe quite strongly that children from homes where parents are engaged with education will not be disadvantaged by going to their local comp (and there's various research on this which I find quite encouraging). Our local state secondary is one that many on mumsnet (and where we live) would consider as too dire to consider, many people go to great lengths to avoid sending their children there, but my dc are going there (one just started, one going next year). We are in the sorts of jobs where many people do send their children to private schools and that would have been an option for us (instead though we've chosen to work less and earn less but that was already knowing that we wouldn't be paying private school fees).

Also we have green leanings and for us the idea of localism and reducing car use and not commuting to school or work where possible is very important.

If my children were miserable in school I'd rethink, and if the school really did seem to be failing to educate them I'd reconsider. But the tipping point for us would come far far later than it would for many, it would be a total last resort to send them to a private school, and I think we'd work very hard to make it work in the local comp instead.

I don't call that ?having principles? though, I have lots of friends who do send their children to private schools, and lots more who would if they could afford it, I realise they have different priorities and principles, I don't stop being friends with them. But for me the collective good of society is as important as my own children's best interest so it would take something really major to make me backtrack on that.

Just wanted to add that I don't think that my friends who choose private don't have principles! Just that they are different to ours. (Which I'm sure are shockingly lax to my vegan/vegetarian/teetotal friends!)

In an ideal world, all schools would be as good as one another.
But sadly they're not.

And whilst they're not I will do what I can to find my DC a place in one of the better ones. At the moment that means paying privately. But if I couldn't do that I am sure I would move, tutor for garmmar or whatever it took.

chrchrch, that's an interesting point about Japan. The same is true in (eg) Germany - private schools tend to be for children with behavioural problems/seriously dysfunctional family backgrounds.

reallytired, the private school I went to was the same as yours: no after-school activities at all. The only after-school activity in the senior part was detention. My own children's schools have endless after-school activities - but I think the state ones do too. That's definitely a cultural shift, along with 'wraparound care'. Nobody needed it when I started school in the last 70s; very few mothers in my orbit worked (I can't recall any working mothers in my class, even in the seniors. If they did work, it tended to be things like odd afternoons in their husband's dental practice or such like).

Uniform :
I went to the primary school that had jelly bag hats and capes
but hey! we did not have boaters like Glendower
and I refused to sit the scholarship exam for one secondary school cos its uniform was SO stupid!
And the old Wetherby uniform when they were in Wetherby Gardens, actually the Hill House knee length corduroy breeches were a treat!

Then again at that time State schools did not tend to have uniform at all

I want some knee length corduroy breeches.

Conversely round here I think it's the private school parents who look down on the state school ones. It's a bit bizarre as the local comprehensive has better results than the "selective" private school. I simply can't understand why people would send their dcs there - it's not posh, or traditional, doesn't have a nice ivy-clad building... And also I get the "move aside, pleb" look when I walk dd to school and pass the prep school parents walking the other way. They may have the 4X4s, designer clothes and can fork for boaters and kilts for their dcs, but they sure as hell could do with some work on their accents...

We don't all have 4x4s and designer clothes, you know. Unless the British Heart Foundation shop has gone 'designer' behind my back.

BHF shops do have a designer rack - well they do where I live - large private school area

(bec, the 3 years to GCSE woudl be bet ter than 2 as lots of private school start at 13+ which is the year before the 2 year GCSE courses. It would be rare for a place to come available a year later; on costs schools like Haberdashers charge about £11949 a year for the seniors and tend to get in the top 10 or 20 in the country for A level; their last formal entry is 11+ not 13+ however. It's certainly worth your calling round some local private schools and some have bursaries to help with fees)

xenia Thanks for that. My dc1 would be a day boy not a boarder so I guess thats cheaper?
In my case there are 2 really good private schools near here, one of which is Repton.

Think GPs would help out with fees too which makes a difference.
So, to clarify, the year before GCSEs is year 10?

Most day places cost £10,000 a year. Haberdashers is a day selective school which has a very mixed intake but all children who were able to pass a fairly hard exam. I just mentioned it as one of my children went there. A state school pupil costs the state I think about £5000 a year. Most boarding schools are £10k - £30k a year as they provide food, accommodation etc.

Day places at boarding schools surprisingly often cost more than day places at schools which are entirely day pupils.Repoton is £21,000 a year for a non boarding place, ab out double schools which are just day and which get better exam results. It is about 330 in the country in terms of A levels which is not too bad.

I can never remember school years as a lot of private schools do not use the state system of years 1 - 13 or whatever. I think year 8 is age 12 / 13. 13+ entry year before GCSE courses will be year 9 age 13. Year 10 would then be age 14 first GCSE year and year 11 age 15/16 final GCSE year.

I think it would be hard to go in at year 10 as most of the schools have an entry at year 9 or year 7 and you would only get a place in year 10 if someone had happened to leave.