If you can afford to send your kids privately SHOULD you?

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Just that really

Maybe we should just stop rich people having children or just taking their children off them - so they cant send them to private school.

Communists have tried that approach too.

Obviously I am being sarcastic but really, how far do you go allowing the state to control people's lives and how they spend their money?

I don't have a car and only take one flight a year but dont want to ban other people having cars or flying. Oh but hang on.... thats what those other communists the 'global warmists want to do!

chippingin He has decided to postpone it because he doesn't want to lose the money from Friday night and Saturday morning from his part time job.
Also there are a lot of home games with the hockey team that we support and he doesn't want to miss them. (He's a bit of a hockey fanatic!!)

Last time I checked, it was a free country.

If you can afford private school, well done for being prudent with your own education, career and finances. It is wonderful to pass this onto your own children.

Having more money means you have more choices. You should pick the best school you are able to for your child.

If you can afford it and don't is more of a moral dilemma, in my book.

But I have, without doubt, chosen the best school for my children. And, right now, that's a small village primary in a lovely village.

You should send your child to the school which best meets their needs.

None of the independent schools I could have sent my DC to could provided for them in the same way the state schools they attend do.

And who is to say I can afford to send them to private schools (I actually can't afford to send all three. So should I just send one?) If paid for the education for two DC, I would then not be able to afford nice ham.

Many "prudent" people could never dream of being able to afford private education Mindthegappp that is such a value-laden comment!

Read whatever value you like into it.

For us, we have sent 5 children to private schools and it takes a lot of prudence, now and in the past. Believe me! It is no accident of education and career to be able to afford this many school fees. We do not get family help or have an inheritance, btw. It is all off earned income.

We have steered our older children into university courses where they will have the kind of earning potential to be able to provide for private education for their families. DS1 - check! DS2 - jury still out.

MindtheGapp - is that the purpose of education? - to get the 'earning potential' to subsequently provide private education for the next generation?

Is that what your DC's want out of life?

I agree with seimum that it made me dad to think your motivating factor in helping children choose careers was money for future private education. What about what might make them happy?

MindtheGapp has a bit of a point. There is nothing wrong with encouraging your child to do well so that they can have a good job and support themselves later.

I was born in an area of high unemployment and went to a crap state school. I watched my father have countless breakdowns when he though he couldn't afford to pay our mortgage. My mother took a cleaning job to send me money at University. I am where I am despite my state education, not because of it. I've been penniless and I've been on benefits in the past. It's not much fun believe me. With prudent money management, buying a modest house and living within my means I can just about afford to send my 2 kids to private school. I don't tell other people how to run their lives and what to do with their money (and most people I know blow it on designer clothes, holidays, houses they cannot afford and booze) and they can save their breath if they have an opinion about what I do with mine.

I think it is perfectly appropriate to steer children into thinking about what a particular career can offer them. I am not one of those parents who thinks it is OK for their children to aspire to living on benefits. They will make their own way in the world.

There are several purposes of education, incidently. One of them is teaching you not to take such a narrow and simplistic view of the world.

I find the MN much peddled line that we should only want our DC to be happy rather smug and entitled tbh.

I was brought up in a very disadvantaged background. The type that would now be called underclass and my Mother strove and strove for me to get far more for myself than simply being happy. Her view was, quite rightly, that without financial independence no one is trully happy. That financial independence is the only true way to be free. And those who are not free, will never be happy.

She taught me to to be very shrewd in terms of my choices and how I approached my education.

I think she was completely correct to do so.

I also think the idea that one cannot be both rich and happy a bit daft.

I have taught lots of children pushed into "appropriate" degrees by parents and know the heartache and unhappiness it causes. You can support yourself and live perfectly well without having the money to send your own children to private school. Just as well or we would have no firemen, nurses, teachers etc.

I am with wordfactory.

You cannot be truly happy if you are living in poverty and worrying about every bill stuck on a sink estate and frightened for your safety.

My eldest will be going to a private girls school next year s it is teh right school for her. We have high expectations for all our children as we are both highly educated ourselves and DH is a high flyer, high earner and they have been raised in that environment.
We say to ours that if they want the lifetsyle they have now they will need to work their socks off for it like we have. They seem happy to accept that is how it works!

No sign of the OP, so no definition of should.

If we're allocated our catchment primary school DD will be going private. If not, jury's out. It's the difference between her being ok and being in an environment (at the particular independent I'm considering) where she could excel (could not necessarily will) I don't believe any of the state schools we're likely to be allocated will do that. This is based on my DD's character as much as the school environments.

I also agree with WordFactory. I was probably one of the poorest pupils at the state schools I attended. The only way I was ever getting out of my environment was to gain financial independence. I have done that and I hope my DD will do even better... Not relying on anyone else for your financial well-being is very liberating.

"We say to ours that if they want the lifetsyle they have now they will need to work their socks off for it like we have. They seem happy to accept that is how it works!"

I agree very strongly with this, and when we need, as a family, to arbitrate in our budget between an additional educational cost for a/the child/ren and a holiday, we are very open with the children about that decision and the impact it has on all of us.

I have heard...but doubtless it is only a myth... that state school is not a guaranteed path to unemployment.

Apparently...but don't take my word for this...there are state educated people out there with...no, I'm sure this can't be right...jobs...and even...no, there must be some misunderstanding...careers.

fwiw the only friend I've had who spent his life bumming around from one low paid unqualified job to another (or no job at all) was educated at Marlborough. Dh went to Latymer's and failed his A-levels. Not because he wasn't bright but because he didn't work hard enough. Dd is at a state school and doing very well in her GCSEs despite severe health problems.

It's about individual effort and aspirations as much as anything else.

But a moment's reflection should show that a system that educates 93% o the population can hardly be a one way ticket to unemployment and a life in poverty. Not unless the unemployment figures are rather higher than we have been led to believe...

Cory - did you read this report that I linked to a few weeks ago on Shadow Education? And I have plenty of other documentary and anecdotal evidence about this phenomenon. I wouldn't be complacent about the quality of state education and outcomes for pupils.

Yes, I did. And I don't see how it proves that a state education condemns you to a life of unemployment.

The employment figures in the uk are currently very high, at about 8 %. The percentage of state educated people is, however, rather higher: 93%. It follows that the vast majority of state educated people are not on the dole. A fair few of them are actually in well paid and perfectly pleasant jobs. And it is also possible for privately educated people to end up unemployed.

I take education very seriously. But I hate generalisation. Naturally someone from a sink estate, with low parental expectations, and a school with poor teaching and who lacks the kind of attitude that performs individual miracles is far more likely to end up on the dole.

But this hardly affects the fate of somebody who has access to good teaching, high parental expectations, friends with ambitions - just because they also happen to be in the state system.

mnistooaddictive of course we are all very glad indeed for teachers, nurses and firemen but the truth is that if one lives in the south east, especially London, these jobs will simply not afford you financial independence and scecurity.

The price of houses are simply too high. The pensions attached to those jobs will most certainly be eroded...so would I want a child of mine entering into the world of work knowing they won't be able to afford their own home or retire comfortably at a reasonable age? Of course I don't want that.

Now if they make the choice to pursue those options then that is their business, but they will at least make the choice knowing full well what the repercussions will be because I will tell them.

It is also possible for somebody with a strong personal will to rise above the expectations around them with basically no support: my granddad did this, through sheer bloody mindedness. And on the other side of the family my dad did it; he did his A-levels by correspondance course during his national service, studying at the night when the other recruits crashed out.

Dh otoh was surrounded by expectations and support and excellent teaching and achieved very little during his years at school (he has matured since).

Cory - it is dangerous to use examples from the past without a frank comparison between circumstances then and circumstances today. In the words of a headmaster I very much admire "Do not even think about advising your child on education on the basis of your own outdated experience; it would be like sending him off to travel round France with a map from the 18th century."

Cory it is possible of course, but extraordinarily difficult to rise out of certain circumstances.

I'm pretty much the only one of all my peers who left the sink etsate...bar those who left in body bags and police vans.
It's just not fair to pretend that all those yoing people could have done anything differently if only they'd had a stronger personality or just worked a bit harder. Bloody patronising actually.