Is this the truth about independent schools?

[madonmushrooms]

I am thinking of sending my 7yr old DD to an independent school and am starting to look, as I am not happy with her current school.

I came across this today.

Is it right do you think?

www.parentdish.co.uk/teen/why-private-schools-are-better-than-state/

Actually, jabed, it's not a truth. The best school systems in the world teach mixed ability. The Japanese consider it to be one of the strengths of their education system.

Anyway, back to the topic. In my experience, all the teachers I know who have left to go to private schools have been unable to hack it in the state sector. I'm sure there are great teachers in private schools but teaching in a state school is a very different beast and I suppose some people just aren't cut out for it.

Parents who send their children to private school are, in reality, benefitting from an affluent peer group and not better teaching etc.

I wouldn't teach in the private sector. Well, I might, when I'm old and past it and the government are expecting me to work til I'm 85 or some silly shit like that.

A weed is only a plant in the wrong place. Perhaps it has after all hit on an underlying truth - different children flourish in different places.

I fear freerangeggs that you are speaking out of turn or from little experience.

I have taught Japanese children and know something of their education. Private education is very popular at secondary level in Japan. However, even in the public ( state) system there is a high degree (considerably higher than here) of compliance in behaviour amongst Japanese children. You would not find pupils behaving as they do in our schools and disruption is frowned on and is a shame to the family if a child is not well behaved and well mannered. Discipline is very strong unlike here.

Its not mixed ability teaching that concernes me, its the policy of inclusion.

The truth remains.

By the way sweeping generalisations about state teachers being simply the best doesnt pull any weight with me. My school has just sacked a teacher from the state sector for not being able to hack it. We have had several of these high flying types from the state sector none have stuck it with us. Most have been asked to leave, some have just fled! A couple didnt last a term.

Teaching in an independent is very demanding and requires good teaching ability. Something many teachers who have never done it underestimate.

When you are old and past it, dont come looking for a job in an independent, they wont want you with your attitude I can assure you. I have never been so disgusted by a comment from a teacher in my life. Just shows what the state sector is educating these days - if that makes me a snob then I will proudly own the title.

Nobody who was genuinely good in his or her academic field and had something interesting to say would be happy to spend his or her career saying it to a bunch of over privileged children. You're getting the old duffers who just want to pontificate in front of a captive audience.

Nobody who was genuinely good in his or her academic field and had something interesting to say would be happy to spend his or her career saying it to a bunch of over privileged children. You're getting the old duffers who just want to pontificate in front of a captive audience

You are probably quite right OriginalSteamingNit. In my own case I spent most of my life as an academic in research and teaching in a university
(university teaching was second to the interesting things I researched and had to say). However, as a second career, saying my interesting things to a compliant and receptive audience in an independent school is preferable I can assure you to trying to tell those things to a bunch odf spitting, biting, foul mouthed, obscene pupils in a comprehensive school. I did that for sometime before moving to an independent. Whilst I could " hack it" and didnt have problems, I had more self respect and more ability that to accept that I should have to do that everyday.

Those you need to look closely at are not the old duffers in independent schools who have come from academic backgrounds but ask why it is young teachers in state schools spend their whole lives putting up with that abuse and then try to make a virtue of it here on mumsnet.

I think we are getting close now to answering the original question about what is the truth concerning independent schools. Such schools have teachers who know their subjects, who are experienced, who do not tolerate abuse of themselves or others and that is why the learning environment is improved.

I removed my DS from a state primary school after a couole of incidents. I do not want my child being pushed, smacked , kicked, spat at, or called foul names. Neither do I want him here repeating that behaviour. That is not the fault of the teachers necessarily but that is commonplace in many state school classrooms - and it gets worse as the pupils get older. I do not want my DS subjected to that. That is the truth of state schools.

Jabed, as usual, tells it like it is. I have a young friend who left university with an excellent degree and PGCE, fired with enthusiasm and determined to teach in a school where the kids, she felt, were underprivileged. She is small and very attractive. The amount of sexual abuse she got was unbelievable - and not only verbal. After two years she left and now works at various short-term jobs. When money is tight she does supply teaching but there are some schools where she won't go at any price. Her political views won't allow her to teach in the independent sector.

The worst behaviour I have ever experienced in a classroom was at the very expensive public boarding school I went to in my sixth form. If my parents had had a clue about it they would have been incredibly unhappy and I suspect very angry.

Some of the teachers were utterly clueless about what to do when their classes essentially ignored them in favour of throwing stuff about and attempting to make small explosions. I can remember one teacher standing at the front of the classroom and saying that he had given up on us. He was a ex-CERN researcher and a really lovely clever man but hadn't a clue how to manage a bunch of over privileged arrogant teenagers.

Children from all backgrounds can behave very badly.

Oh and I have just spent several days weeding my garden. I have gone to great lengths to make sure that all the weeds are permanently dead. It was a very very poor analogy to use when talking about children.

nooka, I have a large garden. I enjoy it as a pastime. I know a little about it. Weeds are "relentless little blighters" (to quote that TV advert for weedkiller).

I often weed my garden, eremoving those plants which are large overgrown bullies and which I often call weeds. I sometimes have to remove large overgrown bullies who not usually referred to as weeds, but still they are in the wrong place. I do not see this so much as " ,aking them permanently dead" but , as I compost many of them, I see it as putting them in an appropriate place to allow them to become useful - as compost. Compost is very useful in the garden as I am sure you know. It just isnt useful growing around other smaller plants that I want to cultivate.

Sometimes with bigger bully weeds I have to put them on the heap to burn. Again this is good. The ashes do serve a purpose also in my garden. They are ground cover for paths etc.

So everything has a place. Its not about killing things dead. Its about putting things in the place they will work best. I think to that extent the garden weed analogy works. But like all analogies , it does break down at some point and should never be taken too literally.

You are pompous and rather peculiar.

"I have a young friend who left university with an excellent degree and PGCE, fired with enthusiasm and determined to teach in a school where the kids, she felt, were underprivileged.... After two years she left and now works at various short-term jobs...... Her political views won't allow her to teach in the independent sector."

I know your friend is not the topic but she sounds like a flake :o

She tried teaching underpriviledged children and when they weren't suitably receptive she jacked in full time teaching because teaching in your average non-inner city state school was not an option.

Methinks she is an idealistic Sidney Poitier type (movie 'Please, Sir') who thinks under privileged children underperform because they don't have a caring, nuturing, tree hugging teacher to inspire them :-)

Yes, I know that I am coming across as a not very nice person.

Possibly a little flakey but heart in the right place, surely. Is idealism out of place in schools, then? Imagine you are a 5'2" curvy young woman, surrounded by two or three 6" plus 'boys' saying "show us yer tits miss", and suiting their actions to their words. Why should anyone put up with stuff like this? And feel sorry too the the middle-class children of MNers, sitting at the back and wanted to get on with the lesson..

"I do not want my child being pushed, smacked , kicked, spat at, or called foul names. Neither do I want him here repeating that behaviour. That is not the fault of the teachers necessarily but that is commonplace in many state school classrooms"

Jabed, it is not 'commonplace'. I am sorry that you experienced it, and I am sure that it does happen in some schools, but that does not make it commonplace.

It does not happen in the school I teach in (which serves an EXTREMELY mixed catchment), nor others I have had experience in. It does not happen in my children's current school, nor even in the not-very-good school that my son first attended. I have seen the pushing and kicking and swearing and knocking off the pavement as a member of the public - but that is from the pupils of the very, very expensive nationally known private school round the corner from where I live...

It is difficult, isn't it, on Mumsnet - we all necssarily speak only from our own, limited, experiences. You can say that from your experience of a couple of schools, you perceive it as commonplace. I can say that from my experience of 8-10 schools, it is rare in the state schools and (in my experience - I can only describe what I see) universal in the private sector. We perhaps need an HMI or Ofsted inspector of many years' standing, who has visited 100s of schools in many parts of the country, to make a proioperly valid comment on the matter.

Excuse spelling. It's been one of those weeks...

teacher
I cheat somewhat - DH works in upwards of 100 schools a year - from boarding to prep to comp to SecMod to grammar to 14 child infant
so my education posts are based on his experience (and he's been doing what he does for 14 years.

Jabed
Even in the WORST schools DH has been to he's never seen pupil on pupil violence that did not have a fair bit of provocation involved.
Bullying : many times
Racism : yup
Cannabis growing outside the school door : yup
Incompetence and disorganisation : yup
BUT
your experiences are either conflated or extraordinarily unlucky

AND I'll not specify which schools had which of the above (he writes up notes about every day so WE know)

TalkinPeace,

Fabulous! A source of genuinely wide experience.... will revise my above post to "we mostly speak from our own,limited, experiences" and will read your posts with very great interest!

I would not ask you to specify at the individual school level, but do you, in general, tend to agree with jabed that "being pushed, smacked , kicked, spat at, or called foul names" is commonplace in state schools?

Or alternatively that it CAN be find in SOME schools but the split between where it is found and where it is not found does not respect a state / private divide?

Or that it can be found amongst a small miniroty of children in a lot of schools in both sectors, but that this does not in general involve the 'innocent bystander' who does not provoke it?

Genuinely interested, btw. Having found an expert, I want INFORMATION! :)

TEE HEE

• I have to be cagey to not out him (there are enough teachers on here already who've worked out who he is!)

"commonplace" = bollocks it happens. But it happened in my GDST school ffs and yes, he (and I) have been in schools where we have felt uneasy the worst school for nicking his kit was an Ofsted Outstanding the most scarily disorganised was ditto and the school that was the happiest that he loves to go back to has been in and out of special measures like a yoyo because of its catchment

I genuinely believe that Jabed has seen what he says h'es seen
but hes talking out of his arse to call it commonplace

dildo - 'Idealistic' is when you rather do something else instead of teaching in a private school. 'Flaky' is when you turn your back on a career you trained years for because the rough inner city pupils don't live up to your rose tinted expectations and teaching in a state school in the burbs is not something she is open to

Oops. I meant 'dido'

I was taught by some good teachers at my state school and some absolutely fucking useless one. When I sent ds1 to (state) primary his reception teacher was awful. She liked the girls but not the boys apparently
Don't pretend that all state school teachers are brilliant because experience tells me they're not.

Poosh tun - yes, 'idealistic' IS when you won't teach in private schools because you disapprove of what you see as elitism. (This is not me, by the way. I use private schools). And why do you think the harassment only happened in the inner city? Some of the posh suburbs where she does supply are no better. And why the hell should anyone put up with such aggro anywhere?

2 of my children used to attend a very mixed, large state primary and then when we moved to the countryside a small largely MC village school and I must say that largely behaviour is much better at the latter. I have seen very well behaved children at both but at the first school I had instances where I was spat at, heard reception children f*ing and blinding in the playground and my youngest child was tortured in the classroom by an extremely disturbed child who was under the care of SS and sadly my DD was also punched to the ground by a child with similar background who was extremely violent towards girls. We had not had similar insta

In the latter school there are still incidents of bullying and bad behaviour but generally is a more pleaseant environment. I suspect that most independent schools are similar to this, I did visit a few and had a similar vibe.

• was going to say we had not similar instances at the current school although there is bad behaviour, not quite comparable to what I have experienced before.

*another PS: they were both Ofsted Oustanding schools

I take it TOSN when you come out with statement like this: "Nobody who was genuinely good in his or her academic field and had something interesting to say would be happy to spend his or her career saying it to a bunch of over privileged children." your speaking from direct personal experience of all independent schools?!
And I think you've read to many John Le Carre to come out with this sort of guff: "You're getting the old duffers who just want to pontificate in front of a captive audience."

What ? No OP?!