The best Independent schools generally take the highest qualified teachers?

[Hamishbear]

It might be obvious to many that the most academic schools insist that their teachers have an outstanding degree from one of the best universities but it wasn't to me.

For example if you want a job in Maths at Guildford High school allegedly you need a first in Maths from a well regarded university. You obviously need to be an outstanding teacher in the fullest sense too.

So do the elite schools usually have the best teachers? I suppose it stands to reason that there is more competition for jobs at schools that have a fantastic reputation?

I think there may be an issue with sampling if you are going to draw conclusions about "class" or manners from this thread...

Oh well, if Xenia's talking class and manners must quickly recall my three months in North London and the few trips to Brent Cross that literally drove me to flee South of the River . Just think what we might have saved had I been able to bear and to send our dc to Haberdashers at a mere £11k a year.

Can't blame Habs for the abomination that is Brent Cross.

Have to disagree that the manners demonstrated on this thread by the private school groupies are exactly exemplary - unless you think continuous crowing that you are 'cleverer' than other parents because you are richer = good manners. Or unless you think that accusing all children at state schools of being dim, unmotivated and slightly feral as Jabed does, is a fair and accurate and entirely unbiased account. I don't think the widespread disrespect for the professional abilities of any teacher who happened to have studied somewhere other than Oxbridge is terribly well-mannered either, actually.

:) @ TFM - I agree

I was interested in the discussion on music. What happens with music in state schools? Do they teach it any more? If it is taught, is it the preserve of what my daughter charmingly calls 'the nerd colony'?

Manners maketh man and all that and definitely private schools are no better. DD's manners are generally awful and snobbish, given to sneering about chavs and such like. This is not behaviour learned from us, but behaviour learned from the designer-label-obsessed girls she mixes with. She has this ridiculous yearning for popularity rather than good results. She does get roundly and soundly told off for any unpleasant comments of that ilk, but it is worrying for me as a parent that she is learning this sort of attitude.

DS on the other hand is rather charming, as are all his friends. This is, I suspect, because they are fully paid-up members of the nerd colony. As we were, in fact, as parents.

What happens with music in state schools? Do they teach it any more?'

WTAF???

In fact I find it incredibly bad manners to make disparaging comments about class.

As for good manners being the preserve of private school kids!!!!

I at least wasn't commenting of the manners of any DC but of the teachers posting on this thread. I have/have had DC in state and in indies at different times. Their manners have varied irrespective of the school they happened to be in at the time. Like most kids - charming with strangers, grumpy at home.

Good manners cost nothing, therefore, IME, they have always been evident in abundance across all sectors of society, whether monied or not. Their lack can sadly also been seen across all sectors - some of the rudest people I have ever met have been very very posh, but then, so have some of the sweetest gentlest and most polite people.

As my children's 'peripatetic' misic teacher in their state primary also teaches at the (internationally known) local private schools there seems likely to be very little difference in the provision - except that DS's 1 to 1 lessons cost less than a fiver a week, which I suspect might be rather higher in her 'other' schools!

And at the risk of repeating myself, Xenia, the Sutton Trust's does not say that private schools have the best teachers.

It says that it has, on average, teachers with more academic qualifications.

As has been discussed to death in this thread, the nature and quality of a teacher's first degree does not correlate with their ability as a teacher, and in particular it does not correlate with their ability to be a good teacher in any school with any cohort.

Yes, but I would say the private schools also get well qualified teachers who are also good at teaching too and if they are not up to much they are out on their ear more easily than in the state sector and including because parents complain which is why I suspect over all in qualifications and teaching skill you get better teachers there.

Obviousyl it's a fairly pointless debate as most children go to staet schools, plenty of those are quite good and most women don't pick careers which enable them to pay fees so there is no choice element at all unless they marry richer men. Or indeed I keep hearing women on second marriages and husband number 2 takes on school fees of step chidlren. Perhaps it's part of the package - marry me and I will pay school fees for your children.

I do not agree that degree has no impact on ability to teach. You need to be bright to be a teacher or ought to be so those who ciould not get in anywhere except ex polys are probably not very bright. Secondly people who go to the best universities tend to be overall better at most things, including even sport and music so will be better with extra curricular activities. They probably sang latin in choirs, can join the brass band and lead the cricket. if they were to a comp on a sink estate and then Middlesex poly they may not have the all round skills and hobbies and indeed career knowledge and high expectations of the sort of people you probably want teaching your children in a private school. taht does not mean parents need every single teacher to be in the better institution category but you want a sort of etyhos of that rather than an ethos of cockney, football, dropping haitches - wow someone did really well because they earn £30k a year kind of thing.

This is what Gela.. posted above

As usual The Sutton Trust have looked into this, albeit a while ago (2003).

Their report here has the following findings:

"The main qualification of nearly three-quarters of teachers in independent
schools is a subject degree compared with just over 60 per cent of the teachers
in maintained schools.
Teachers in independent schools are more than twice as likely to have been
awarded a first. Over 60 per cent have at least an upper-second compared with
45 per cent of the teachers in maintained schools.
Teachers in independent schools are five times more likely to hold a PhD as
their highest qualification. Nearly a quarter of independent school teachers
have obtained a higher degree, against 16 per cent of teachers in maintained
schools.
Teachers in independent schools are seven times more likely than those in
maintained schools to have graduated from Oxford or Cambridge - 13.0 per
cent against 1.8 per cent. Nearly 30 per cent (29.4 per cent) come from the
leading universities, as ranked by the major league tables, compared with 10.5
per cent in the maintained sector."

www.suttontrust.com/research/teacher-qualifications/

teacherwith2kids - a fiver a week! Ooh, you are lucky. Would that my kids' music lessons were that cheap - we're talking £10-£16 here/week.

I've been v impressed with the whole class ie timetabled music lessons at dd's school - personally i learned nothing at all in music lessons but they actually seem to learn a lot - about how music works, composition etc as well as being encouraged to play their own instrument/s as well as possible, contribute to school orchestras/bands/choirs etc. No idea how it's taught in private schools so can't compare.

Xenia - "They probably sang latin in choirs, can join the brass band and lead the cricket. "

Wow, you have a weirdly distorted view of what most people get up to at Oxbridge.

Do we all sit around singing in Latin, routinely? I think not. Have we all learnt to play brass instruments? Certainly not. And I'll tell you a secret - some people at Oxbridge play football too, as well as/instead of cricket (or neither), and even - the horror! - drop their aitches (not haitches, surely?).

Plenty of rowing and lots of punting at Oxbridge, admittedly. Neither of which are terribly useful or important in real life. Hardly essential to being a good teacher, methinks.

Enjoy your fantasy Oxbridge teachers, Xenia. Jolly good thing I don't teach in the independent sector, clearly, as my failure to play cricket whilst talking in Latin would clearly demolish their morale and undermine all the achievements their high-earning and hard-working mummies and daddies have been paying through the nose for for years.

Let's see. I didn't got to this mythical 'Oxbridge'. I went to Cambridge. From a comp and a council estate (I don't think it was particularly 'sink' though). And yes I did grow up singing Latin in choirs (in fact, I did Latin O level). It kind of goes with the territory if you are catholic and musical. I sang in lots of languages, actually. As do my DDs. Both at state schools and certainly going to remain there even though I earn more than Xenia's 'cut off' mark for who will pay school fees and who will not. Football? I bloody love that. As did most of my friends at Cambridge. And I now know fellow (former) WHL season ticket holders who went to Oxford so it's not just a Cambridge thing, liking footy. I often drop my aitches. Not when I'm singing though - perfect diction, then.

Sounds like being state-educated is actually a prerequisite for singing Laatin in choirs, by the look of our giant sample!

I have A Level Latin but singing it was never on the curriculum.

Carols always sound better in Latin. Personant Hodie is my favourite. Sadly I haven't sung it 'in anger' for many years, we don't even sing the English version down here. :(

bb, obviously I know 50% of Oxbridge is from the state sector etc but if you gave me a room of privately educated clever children just graduating from the better universities and a group from an ex poly there would be more in the better univesrity group who had the skills, hobbies and accent/class and background stuff that might make them fit in better with private school parents. That does not mean there are not some exceedingly common, as it were, people at Oxbridge whose hobbies are bingo or whatever and could not lead the school ski trip or sight sing treble in the school choir but if you fish from the right pools you get the right people.

However like most parents in private schools we want first of all someone able to control the class, secondly someone able to teach the subject, thirdly someone who knows the subject and then your ideal is someone who can get on well with that child and give it a love of the subject for life. Those priorities will be common to all parents in all schools I expect.

Amazingly 5 years prefer most of all a pretty young female teacher. Mind you some parents might have that on their list of preference too so perhaps I haven't even got into all the things one seeks.

I am clearly what Xenia regards as exceedingly common. And yet, I'm a fabulous singer and musician. I guess that will blow her logic circuits.

Xenia - you are my mother and I claim my 5 pounds. I have never heard the word 'common' used to describe others by anyone under the age of 80. Congratulations!

You do give me a terribly strong urge to swear outrageously just to shock you my dear - it's like punk never happened!

I love the concept that state-school educated pupils are all playing bingo, too!

You know you need to get out more, Xenia. If you left your private island/school, you might be astonished to discover that neither pupils nor teachers at private schools are terribly different. The private school ones are just richer.

@bread oh there is a difference, certainly. It's just a question of whether the difference actually matters.

Of course you are right, Metabilis, as always. There is a difference and for me it is about values - the private school ethos is that you can and should succeed because that's what your parents have paid for and therefore expect. It is that that puts me off private education as surely as it draws people like Xenia to it.

But to be fair, I don't think the pupils are inately very different to start with - yes, the intelligence level is probably slightly higher in the private sector initially, on average, as more private schools select than state; but to compare like with like, selective to selective and non-selective to non-selective, there is not much in it.

But 5 years or more of being told you're 'entitled' to do well because of your parents' money has an effect on arrogance confidence. Plus smaller class sizes help with results.

I don't anyone is told they are entitled to do well because of parents' money. It's just high expectations. You could have those anywhere. There is a state comp in very difficult area of London which got something like 7 children into Oxbridge last year - they just have the right high expectations.

I get out. I was abroad this week on business in a country in Europe where few use private schools. In fact people from 10 countries were on my table ove rlunch and no one came from a country where children move automatically to the next class each year. It was interesting. They said I couldn't be right in describing English schools and surely I just meant primary level. It seemed so strange to them as in their countries you do not move up a class until you are at the right level. I am not sure if that would help in schools or not but it shows one difference between ours and other systems.

Another Cambridge-educated Latin singer here - college choir, and all that stuff. Shame for Xenia's theory (still not certain whether she's a person or a random 'from a sentence bank' generator) that I learned to sing in Latin in my parish church choir in a rural West Midlands backwater while I was at a state primary... and perhaps further shame for the theory that I teach it to my very, very mixed state primary class too...

However, as she and I have wholly different phulosophies about what a 'good education', and therefore what a 'good teacher', is, we are never going to agree.

Xenia - and perhaps others on this thread - focus on the 'output' - good final results = good teaching.

I would say that what matters is 'progress'. For the type of children selected by selected private schools, good final results are a given. From their starting points, NOT achieving fantastic final results across the board would be abject failure. So for example, in a selective school, most children will start at 11 already way ahead of the expected levels - say level 5 at least across the board. To achieve A* at GCSE 5 lyears later is simply what should happen by making expected progress from that starting point. Expected progress doesn't indicate good teaching - it indicates satisfactory or below teaching (Ofsted current criteria would suggest satisfactory at best, because it is expected progress for a single ability group, raher than above expected progress for all ability groups).

Good teaching would take a group of BELOW expected levels at 11 to A* - or, in a primary school, see a child who enters with no spoken language (due to never having had anyone speak to them) reaching expected levels at the end of Year 6.