If you could afford to send your kids to a private school, would you?

[juicychops]

or would you choose for them to go to a 'normal' state school?

just curious what your responses will be

The extracurricular activities at our state secondary don't look too bad to me; lots of sports, drama, chess, choir...don't see how my dc are missing out really.

no no no no no no no no.
Especially after reading the proof from the OECD in The Independent last week, that if you strip out the social class element Private Schools add less value than state schools.

lovngthecoast that is absolutely not true. A couple of the private schools close to me, including the one in my own town, is still exactly like that. I know people who send their children there and people who work in them. They are also in the more modestly priced independent school bracket and they are still stuffy and caught up in tradition - they see it as a unique selling point in attracting new punters.

I also hate some of their tactics.

Last year the one in our town held an inter schools "Maths Challenge" for Yr 6 pupils. It was open to all local primary schools to enter and about 30 schools entered, including of course the host school. It was really a ploy to get as many parents herded in to have a coffee and a mince pie and show off the school. Then, just before the results were announced the headteacher gave a talk saying how talented all the children who'd participated in the challenge were and how the entrance exam for Yr 7 was coming up in a month and how nice it would be to give the children the opportunity to give it a try (at a cost of £25 per child).

Photos of the winning team (my DS's team) and the two runners up - all state schools were taken and we were told they would be printed in the local newspaper the following week. It never was. I'm sure it was an oversight and nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that the absolutely marvellous host private school did not feature anywhere in the top 10.

Say no more about these schools.

"I went to a private school and would not inflict the narrow minded, smugness of my peers or their parents on anyone. My school had small classes, a mediocre bunch of teachers and poor teaching."

Sounds like you were unlucky with your school. My own experience at private school was VERY different (excellent teaching, small classes, positive attitude to learning, lots of extracurricular activities, great friends from all over the world) and yes, we are making (big) sacrifices to send our dc's to private school.

I think education is one of the best things money can buy - much better than any material things. But of course you need to choose the school carefully - every child is different and has different needs.

I wonder how many of the 'NO WAY' sayers actually have first hand experience of the private sector and can fairly compare them to the state sector. Some of the descriptions on here sound completely outdated and untrue.

Yes. I would and do. However we are in N.Ireland,so it is not as expensive as in England I think.
I went to private school in Ireland-and loved it!

The pissy little day schools round here are very much as genevieve describes - just needless little things to make it obvious you're 'special' like calling the years by different names, prep, 'squads', all of that. Not really my main beef with them, but a mild irritant all the same!

I honestly, truly, don't think it's true that all the effort is put into the C/D kids. State schools need their As too, apart from anything else! Yes, lots of effort is put into helping a child who could get a C, get that and not a D, but I struggle to see how that could possibly be thought of as a bad thing? Would you rather those kids were left to sink and all the resources ploughed into the cleverest?

IME, school very clearly identify groups ('risks underachieving but ought to do well' 'will struggle to get the 5 A-Cs' 'borderline 5 a-cs' 'capable of very high results and we need to stay on it to make sure they do') and then give those groups very targetted help to make sure they do achieve the best results of which they are capable.

And I wonder how many of the 'in a heartbeat' criers have similarly experience of both sectors, evanmummy?

In the nature of things, someone who is instinctely and ideologically against the idea of private schooling is unlikely to have gone on a tour of one of them, or sent a child there for a bit to get 'first hand experience'. I didn't go to one and wouldn't entertain the idea of sending my child to one - then again, neither did my partner, and he would.

Also, a fair few of the 'no way' posters DID go to private school and hated it!

Holy crap, what happened there . I mean, 'similar' and 'instinctively'!

Evammumy - I also wonder at how many private sector parents have outdated and untrue opinions of the state sector

Genevieve- We did/had all those things at my state school.
Not sure why using the word prep is snobby, it's just an older term for it and in ds1s schools case using the phrase homework would be wrong because they don't actually do it at home.

The assumption that people who go to private/public schools won't mix with other people always makes me laugh as a ex-state schooler married to an ex public school boy

evamummy how does one gain first hand experience of any sector? People will always look back to their own education, their friends' and acquaintances' experiences and current information they pick up from those around them as well as statistics and results.
Anyway there is nothing wrong with having principles and sticking to them!

cheers.

Genevieve, no school can assure anyone that photos will be in a newspaper next week. I have been in PR for donkey's years and have never, ever, assured a client that this will happen. Probably the school sent the release and photos and it was a busy news week, or lots of other school stories with great photos had been sent in. I have sent out some really good, creative photo stories for our local state primary and had them not appear anywhere.

Genevieve, no school can assure anyone that photos will be in a newspaper next week. I have been in PR for donkey's years and have never, ever, assured a client that this will happen. Probably the school sent the release and photos and it was a busy news week, or lots of other school stories with great photos had been sent in. I have sent out some really good, creative photo stories for our local state primary and had them not appear anywhere.

Also, a fair few of the 'no way' posters DID go to private school and hated it!

My DH went to a private school which he is very scathing about. But he recognised that you have to judge each school on its own merits. There are great, good, mediocre and crap schools in the private and the state sector.

If you have ideological objections to a school in either sector, that may override (our 'no way' was faith schools) but judging schools en masse is pretty pointless.

Can I ask, would all of you who want to avoid the social segregation you see as part of private education also refuse to send your children to grammar schools and some top comprehensives which are more socially segregated that the community in which they are found.

See this Sutton Trust report
www.suttontrust.com/research/rates-of-eligibility-for-fsm-at-the-top-state-schools/

· The findings also suggest that the top schools do not reflect the social make up of their
immediate areas: the average rate of FSM eligibility in the postcode sectors of the top
200 schools is 12.3% - almost 10 percentage points and more than four times higher
than the schools? average rate. In only 11 of the top 200 schools does the FSM
eligibility rate reflect that of their local area.
· Eighty-percent of the top schools are grammar schools, and although these were found
to be more socially exclusive - with an overall proportion of pupils eligible for FSM of
2.1%, compared to 6.0% at the comprehensives - much of the difference can be
explained by the fact that grammar schools are sited in more affluent areas, with
average FSM rates of 11.7%, compared to 15.7% for comprehensives. The overall gap
between school and area rates is similar for both school types ? at just under 10
percentage points ? indicating that the intakes of both are similarly unrepresentative of
their local areas.

So some state parents want their kids to mix with all types of people (except some of the poor ones living in the local area)

My children don't really mix with many state school kids because they don't have the time and don't do much out of school. I don't see it as a problem because I don't see state school kids as intrinsically different from any private school kid. They don't have green hair and three eyes as far as I am aware.

Interestingly dds best mate goes to the local comprehensive (ofsted outstanding). She went to private prep along with dd. She misses the sport - very few opportunities for high level competitive sport - so she does her sport out of school. Her parents are far richer than us, they have a bigger house, the dd has better clothes and a pony. Not sure what that proves other than our local comp has plenty of very middle class children who all stick together.

Chaz - if you live in a grammar area then you don't have a 'normal' choice of state schools.

I went to a grammar myself and wouldn't want that for my dc's tbh. I don't live in a grammar area but live near the borders of one and didn't put my dc's through the exam for it. DD may have got in; I doubt if ds would. Totally divisive I agree.

Grammar schools are tricky - I would like to see them abolished really. If we had the 11+ in our area I'm not sure what I'd do. On the one hand you could argue that that's what the state has offered where you are, and you have to work with that. On the other, perhaps if you're opposed to them you shouldn't use them. Difficult.

If the school around the corner was a 'top comp' by those measures, then yes I'd expect to send my children there, as that's how the catchment system works! However in terms of FSM and so on, it never will be!

If it were up to me I would introduce a lottery system anyway!

grammars always sound terrifying. I am relieved on a personal level that we dont have that system (the testing! the pressure!) here.

A lottery system is completely unfair and a last resort when government are too blinkered to think of a better idea.

I did not receive better teaching at my highly academic selective private school than I have seen in my local state school. The teachers had 'good material', and they got good results. Some teachers were actually rather poor, boring and / or lazy - they got by because all the children were motivated to learn whetever happened. Sometimes teachers turn to private schools because they can't cope in the state sector. We had one who had been sacked from a state school for throwing a chair at a student (though I don't think she would be employed in today's more scrupulous market).
The best teacher we had - she was truly inspirational - wrote an article in a newspaper about a (teaching) relationship with a former pupil who is now famous and said how depressed she had felt durng her employment at the school because the views of the students were so predicatable, safe and complacent, and lacked the originality and unexpected delights of her former state school students. Looking back, I think she reflected our general outlook rather well.

I wasn't 'unlucky' with this school, it is a school I still see discussed in glowing terms on MN now. I also have no doubt that my DCs are taught by some teachers who are less than brilliant. But I feel confident that they are not being spoon-fed into the adult world as I think I was.

I think private school provide a haven from anxiety in todays uncertain times. Reading the press, and MN, it is easy to see state schools as a 'risk'. It is easy to see the mixed demography of state schools as a threat. It is easy to feel that you might not be doing the best by your kids, and feel the need to compete in some way that you can't even pin point for yourself.

If I had the money I might look at some private schools, but as it is I enjoy sending the DCs to the nearest, walkable school, and I see them and thier friends doing very well.

I have 3 sons, the eldest went to a middle of the road private school (it didn't have any competition in the area so didn't have to try too hard) but he's in his last year of university studying accountancy;middle son is at a top performing boys boarding school (at his request) where he is a rugby scholar.Son number 3 has been seriously ill and we realised that the longer day in the private system would be too much stress and pressure for him so he's at the local village school.
Each of these schools have their merits but my middle son's school is amazing -like Hogwarts meets Enid Blyton and he loves it there.
Youngest son likes school, great,small classes but isn't very stimulated academically.It suits us and him (and his doctors) for now but in the longterm i'm not sure what we will do as to deny him a private education would be very unfair....we did look at a Steiner school but decided against it as the day we visited, it looked as though most of the kids hadn't seen a bath for a while (sheep dip would have been needed) and they all seemed to be wearing clothes that someone had knitted for them.....and not just jumpers either!