Independent education: arguments in favour?

[Notnowcato]

I had a good state education in a single sex grammar school. I wasn't tutored in any way for the 11-plus and so there was no pressure about passing it. I loved learning, the company of my peers, my teachers etc. My husband had a similar experience. Before our children reached school age, we had no thoughts of doing anything other than sending our three children to our catchment-area state schools.

Sadly, after six years of state primary schools, and having visited all of the nearest state secondaries, I am depressed by what is ahead of us if we stay in the state system. The main problems seem to me to be: business managers rather than educationalists leading schools, semi-illiterate communications (head teachers' PowerPoint presentations, web sites, printed material) revealing ill-educated staff, terrible lack of maintenance of the buildings and facilities, poorly equipped classrooms and libraries, ridiculously narrow choices at GCSE and A level, absurd rules about wearing blazers at all times because this 'makes [sic] the children respect their school', the compulsion to take GCSEs in years 9 and 10 as well as 11, the sheer size of the schools ... and so on.

So ... my husband and I are starting to explore the idea of independent schools. Well, I am. My husband keeps asking why anyone would want to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds (we have three children) when education is provided by the state at no cost up to the age of 18. If you had the task of convincing a curmudgeonly old man that the cost would be justified what would you say? What are the main arguments in favour of private schools? Or don't you think there are any, in which case, please relight my enthusiasm for the state sector.

If it helps: DD is highly academic (especially literacy), quiet, well-behaved, cheerful, gets on with life; DS1 is arty, sensitive, bright, definitely not sporty; DS2 is 4 so can't say much except that he is old for his year and seems perfectly normal!

Sorry for the long post.

Not as far as I have seen. Some kids might - and these would be the ones who wouldn't be allowed through the doors of private school anyway - but it's by no means universal

Why would such children not darken the doors of independents? Because they are not middle class perhaps? There goes another falacy then - affirmative action for those from disadvantaged backgrounds? Why bother if they are always going to be holding back?

That was also said to me by the way.

But that begs another question - what makes you so sure that someone is "not holding back" or pulling their scores to fir in? I did back pedal a lot in secondary school. Most of the teachers hadnt a clue. They just thought it was my level. Had I really gone for the gas pedal I would have left the class I was in behavind by two or three light years. My test scores would have been off the scale - as it was I got 100% in almost everything ( except for when I had teachers who just refused to give me full marks on principle!) .

The thing is no one could keep up, so I learned to be a more like them so they didnt feel badly done by. Especially those who did try but just couldnt hack it. One thing no kid wants is to be Billy No Mates.

The same happens today but its far more widespread.

Yes, Edith Weston, there is a whole body of well established research going back some 30 years underpinning your assertion.

I correct myself ( forgotten how far into the 21st Centruy we have gotten. The research goes back into the 1970's/ 80's. Just shows how little changes doesnt it?

But I thought jabbed said that in 'state schools' it wasn't clever to be cool. Not Specifically boys at inner state schools? I'm refuting that.

And the door darkening issue: yes, I'm thinking about the fact that you need to pay quite a lot of money to get into private school, or else be very bright and have parents who know and care about scholarships. So those without supportive family backgrounds on either of these levels are the least likely to get in.

It is uncool to be not very bright at private school then? That must be a bit miserable.

Hi OP - my DH thinks along the same lines as yours, whereas I'm of the view that we should look into all the options.

Have only read all the posts but certainly in the comprehensive school I went to being clever was not cool and the girls grew up too quickly (I have 2 DDs). I know girls in private schools will grow up, (obviously!) but even if it is delayed a couple of years that would be a good thing for me.

OTOH friends who have sent their children to private schools have had bad experiences too. One sent their 3 children through the private system and concluded it was not money well spent!!

I think it depends on your finances TBH esp with 3 kids..

"I still state it - the main argument in favour of independent schools
(sweeping generalisation coming) is that you pay for social exclusion. Or to be non PC, you pay to have your child educated in a middle class environment with middle class children by middle class teachers especially if you are middle class yourself. It reinforces all your own social and attitude values in a stroke. Middle classness does not know cultural or ethnic boundaries. Whether from Hong Kong or Bejjing , Moldovia or Middlewhich UK , its the same."
Im paying for a lot of things but I can state quite categorically that Im not paying for social exclusion!! No wonder there is a whole pile of parents who anti independent ed when comments like this are written.

If you have 3 kids that are academically able the maths is frightening if you are planning to inde school out of earned income- with all 3 in fee paying at the same time then you'd really struggle even ona "top flight" combined income.

Paying from savings/inheritence is different clearly (and grandparents often pay fees and I believe "deduct it from your inheritence")

I'd seriously consider moving to a grammar area. Look carefully though - ther are "grammars" and "super selectives" what would suit your kids?

"It is uncool to be not very bright at private school then?"

I've no idea what is cool or otherwise in private schools, and surely it's unrelated to the (well known, thanks Jabed) phenomena of "not cool to be clever".

Underachievement in private schools seems to be a non-issue, at least in so far as it isn't the subject of research (unless another MNetter knows better), nor an area of complaint/comment.

Oh, there seemed to be a lot of posts about 'cool to be clever' in private schools.

To be honest I wouldn't dare try to say what is cool or not anywhere, I would probably embarrass myself.

All I would like to say is that I disagree that clever children all get labelled geeks instate schools and then underachieve. Seems a bit sweeping and not very fair.

My DDs started school at the local village primary and DD1 finished primary there. We always intended to send the girls private for senior and recently made the decision that DD2 would leave the local primary and join the private junior school attached to DD1's senior school.

For me the private school offers more opportunities in sport, music and academic subjects that were simply not available at the state primary school. There is a strong sense of competition and acheivement is highly valued, in the state primary it was all about inclusion and acheivement largely went unrecognised and unrewarded. Class sizewise there was not much difference, 24 in the state primary and 20 in the private school. I went to look around with the intention of moving my DD for Year 6 but was blown away by the school and the head and decided to move her a.s.a.p. She starts after the holiday and my only regret is that we did not move her when DD1 started at the senior school 18 months ago!

Im paying for a lot of things but I can state quite categorically that Im not paying for social exclusion!! No wonder there is a whole pile of parents who anti independent ed when comments like this are written

I would be interested to know what you think you are paying for then, happy gardening. I agree the anti indi brigade dont like it said, but it sums up neatly why they dont like independents.

Its "uncool" in an independent to be lazy! I had it said to me a few weeks ago by a student. I asked if they would help another student who was finding the work hard. They said to me that would have helped if that student would help themslevs but they were not going to help a " lazy" student.

We have a couple or three olympic hopefuls in school and have had a couple or two telly kids. One of the reasons they came to us from state comps was that they had a hard time at their schools for being what they were -so its not just academic kids who get it in the neck for being good.

Its just generally uncool in state school to be anything exept part of the gang I think

One thing I noticed about my school certainly ( and others I have seen) is that being clever/ good at something isnt a reason for being disliked or threatened. That is the issue.

I know its not at all a MN thing but many of the children I teach come to independent school not because of wrap around care etc. but because we have long holidays, we dont mind if they off for a few days/ weeks before the close of term etc. It allows them to fulfil other committments ( like TV appearances or Olympic events) . Sometimes parents just want them home- they dont have to be anything. Its precisely the opposite to what MN often says. Parents choose us because we have long holidays.

Two questions which for me are the killer ones:

• What will you have to give up as a family to be able to afford to send all 3 DCs to private schools?
• Just how secure is the family income? Can you guarantee it until all 3 have finished GCSEs?

If the answer to the first is ?not very much? then that is fine but IMO if the answer is:

• We will just have to get by with the car we have and camping in Wales makes a great family holiday then you really cant afford private education. Not once the private ed inflation begins to bite. This isn?t just school fees but the trips, music lessons, special uniforms, extra tuition etc etc

If the answer to the second is ?the money is already in a trust fund? then that is fine but IMO if the answer is:

• I have been with the company for a number of years, there are no redundancies in my industry then your income isn?t secure enough. I am the living proof that secure companies make people with 20+ year experience redundant at the drop of a hat.
• There was a thread on here a short while ago about a family who were down to their last brass farthing desperately trying to keep their DD in private school for the last few months run up to GCSEs. There is no way I would ever risk putting my family through the stress they were all going through.

I think you have to be very honest about your children. A private school will not make a silk purse out of a sow's ear (though it will probably present it as well as possible). Equally a state school wont make a sow's ear out of a silk purse (though you might need to do some running repairs from time to time).

That a school is large is IMO a good thing not bad. If you are a bit quirky (read weird) then you will find others to be quirky with. A small school can mean that you are isolated. Have seen this within my own family.

Jabed - my DD1 is at a decidedly mediocre state school. DD1 has managed to be a bit cool and also a bit clever (GCSE in year 7, AS in year 9, A level in year 10). She is currently targeted for As across the board for GCSE. Not all state school students feel the need to be part of a gang.

This is turning into a fascinating discourse. Thanks to everyone for your involvement. I have to say that I am finding myself agreeing with a lot that jabed is saying. I was very bright in a non-selective state junior school and I kept a tally on my book so that I remembered to answer every fourth question wrong. I was teased constantly (some might say bullied, but not me!) for being 'posh' anyway, despite the fact that my sister and I were brought up on one salary (my mother was a part-time teacher), we had no car, no washing-machine etc.

I was talking to my daughter yesterday and I asked her what would be the nicest place to learn and she said: "somewhere the teacher doesn't ask me to help my friends with their spelling". And that sort of settles it, for me.

The other clincher is jabed's comment: Further in most independents there is an ethos for doing well, for being academic ( or sporty, or arty etc) but there is an ethos of appreciation. No one will find themselves being targetted or cold shouldered for being different or being good at something. You cannot under estimate the power of social conformity and peer group conformity in this regard. I have found it to be a major basic difference between state schools ( antoher generalisation there) and independent ones. In state schools kids conform by being the same. I also very much appreciated bunnybing's comment about growing up. Yes, that's something we're handling already with my nine-year-old daughter's contemporaries some of whom tease her because she hasn't got a 'boyfriend' yet.

GnomeDePlume (great name!) we are in the highly, highly fortunate position of my husband having a tenured post so I think his salary is secure, insofar as anything is secure. But my earning power is less predictable and your broader point is a good one. I also appreciate the point about size giving scope for quirkiness.

Grammar schools (thank you Theas) are an area we definitely need to explore.

Lots of food for thought. Could anyone suggest how much per child over and above fees and uniform costs it would be sensible to 'allow' when doing our calculations?

What am I paying for jabed? ten years ago we like many left London for a more rural life. Everyone in the London borough we lived in paid for education if they could. We didn't want to pay despite the fact that my DS was privately educated. My DS's attended a sweet village primary you walked through an orchard to get there and birds sung and the fete was opened by the local squire etc. DS2 who was in reception had already shown himself to be an able mathematician and it quickly became clear to the staff that he was extraordinarily able the solution: I was expected to provide him with extra maths out of school from a text book provided by the school but in lessons he carried on doing the same as the others. At the time I didn't work and swayed by the idillic surrounding gave it a go and I had the money to pay for extra private maths lessons lets face it cheaper than school fees I thought! But by yr two he was better than the class teacher at maths I don't exaggerate. Exasperated we looked for another school two villages up the road was another roses round the door bunnies hopping primary. This one was so successful people virtually murdered their neighbours to get into it. Weirdly when I rang outlining my situation a vacancy had just cropped up and I was invited to have a look. A frankly fawning head proudly showed me round. I asked what he was going to do to assist my DS? When you peeled back the bull shit he was not going to do any more than the previous school. When challenged on this he finally and most honestly advised me to find an independent prep and named one suggesting he would be better off there!
So we started on the indie road we've have financially crippled ourselves to do it. My DS (whose maths IQ score by the way puts him in only 1 of 500) is now at a super selective boys boarding school. Im not paying for beautiful playing fields, rackets courts, swimming pools, observatories, medieval buildings, fantastic pastoral care, committed teachers and a lack of jargon that I don't understand although all these things are great and am certainly not paying for social exclusion or even academic results but the level of intellectual stimulation which I know can only be found in his school.

Ah I hear you say how do you know this is not available in the state sector? I have one DS in a top performing comp and DS2 was offered a place at a top performing grammar I've looked and I know what goes on in the state sector.

Back to my post yesterday! In answer..I went to state school and then grammar. I am absolutely fine with my DS doing 'ok' at his current state school..I am not fine with him being ignored as a consequence of good behaviour. Of course we have discussed this with the school and they have acknowledged the problem and carried on as before! Rather than allowing him to sink slowly into apathy, we are giving him a chance to enjoy school which hopefully he will grasp so he can fulfill his ambition to be an ice cream man.

oops..by moving him to an independent school that we have seen, experienced and loved!!

As with happygardening, an ed psych advised us to move ds to the most highly selective indie we could find (ds's IQ 150+ with problems assessing as he wanted to explore all tasks in greater detail). I found that quite a depressing indictment of the state eduction system tbh.

Ds's old school described him as "inspirational" and "exceptional" but did nothing to inspire him. Nor were they able to protect him from the children who find him "odd" and treated him accordingly.

I am not sure that financially we satisfy gnome's criteria for sending children to private schools and that scares the living daylights out of me, but if we don't try what might the cost for ds be? What might he have been motivated to try that he would not try in a state school because he was too busy running away from the bullies who find him wierd?

And I forgot to add yes we do own two fairly old cars and we go on camping holidays although not Wales but there is more to live than Mercs and holidays in the Seychelles. We're lucky we live in an idyllic cottage surrounded by beautiful scenery and a river we get enormous pleasure from a family dinner or just walking the dogs en famille. I remain positive that our many sacrifices are worth it.

I don't doubt that lots of private schools do a significant job in encouraging competition and rewarding success, and lots of the things people feel are missing in some state schools.

Still think it's unfair to say 'state schools don't do x' or 'kids in state schools think y', though.

My state school was everything negative that's been said above - academia not really encouraged, working less so. To be fair though, that was 15 years ago, and although there may very well be some schools which could improve a lot, I've found the picture generally very different now.

That's not to say there's never anything which annoys or furstrates me about my children's schools - and I do what I can to question and query when there is - which I'm happy with. I'm not going to come on and say 'everything you have in your private schools, we have will bells on at the comp round the corner' - we don't. But we might have more than is sometimes suggested, or one might think from reading threads like this.

Re the 'not cool to be clever' - well, to be fair, that attitude comes from the home as well as the school, so it's not quite fair to blame the state schools for engendering it. It's unlikely any child will be in a private school whose parents don't value education a great deal - either they've invested financially, or they've found out about and gone for scholarships. So it's already largely a given that if these children display 'not cool to be clever' vibes, the home will be as upset as the school. So because private schools are very unlikely to have disaffected children coming through the doors in the first place, I think there's some more complex cause and effect there than has been suggested.

Re the 'how do you know if they're working flat out' - fair enough, I don't. I don't suppose anyone can really know if any child is absolutely working to potential. I know plenty of kids who work hard and care a lot, is all I'm really claiming.

Re the children who were reluctant to help the one who was struggling - well, that could be spun in a different way, if one felt inclined, couldn't it?

I agree jabed my 7 year old can have a duvet day when she is tired and nobody minds, they know she'll catch up any work she's missed and there's none of this the world ends if we aren't dancing to ofsteds tune to hell with the children attitude. I like it.

The flexibility that jabed describes going home a few days/weeks or even a few hours before the end of term definitely does not exist in my DS's school so I don't think the OP should assume this is the norm in all schools.

Re 'not cool to be clever' - I have to disagree with steamingnit that that would come from home as well.

Once dc become teenagers, peer pressure is very strong, and if the 'cool' set are not clever, that is likely to be the way your dc will want to be...you have to fight hard as a parent to counteract it, and it's exhausting at times.

Our eldest was in with an academic bunch of girls in the same state school as dd2 attends. Dd1 consequently had a positive, academic influence around her, and they pushed each other hard. However, we discovered too late (from an inspection report) that clever girls were being underserved by gcse science teaching, and she consequently emerged with Cs in triple science. She had a*s i'n subjects with better teachers, did those subjects for A'level and came out with excellent grades..now doing well in a RG uni in a good humanities subject.

I do feel the school limited her options, and we have taken care to find a science tutor for dd2...but have also had to contend with some strong influences from a group of shallow, non-academic friends she took up with. Fortunately, I think the home influence has won out and she will be ok, but we are seriously considering an independent school for sixth form where she will be stretched and where science teaching is better.

I think it depends on what you want from a school and I suppose what you can afford to pay. We moved from Essex to Surrey to get into the Prep we are in as it was less than 1/2 the price of the ones where we were (we had been in a State school before)

We basically got tired of getting lied to by the State teachers... apparently their expectations are very very low because my dd was 'in line with them..' that was a worry for us, not only for our dyslexic dd (they did not know she was dyslexic) but for our son who would not have managed in a school where just getting by was acceptable. He is lazy and needs to be pushed.

OH managed 10 minutes of an 'Everyone's a winner baby' Sports Day (which involved Bean Bags and Hula Hoops and NOT ONE race) before refusing to ever go back to the State school. So sports was important to us as well - real sport with real competition which actually teaches kids about real life... where we are not all winners.

My dd (7) has just told me that it is Cool to be Clever at his school but not everyone is clever. X is the best artist and Y is the best at running and K is the very best at Football. He is apparently the best of Science, Technology and Maths... or so I'm told .

Our little prep (not £15k a year) has 140 odd pupils. They are so talented and every child is expected to do well at something - because they will - because every child is good at something. We have a few incredible athletes (ISA Cross Country Top 30), it's swimming team is fantastic (again a couple of ISA champs there as well.). However we do not fair as well in team sports and lose a lot - when you only have 7 girls in the class a Netball is a bit of a push. But they get used to losing - they never win at team sports. They lost their last match 24-0 but they tried and that is what it's about!

It is probably one of the best music prep's around - they are good! Really.

It is absolutely and without doubt the best thing we ever did! And as I said to the Head when we were battling to pay the fees. They will remain at that school even if I have to sell my body (although God knows nobody would buy it!!). I would probably have to sell it off as spare parts...