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?

Xenia, do take off your blinkers. I didn't go to uni, was deemed too dim, so I went to finishing school instead to help find me a good husband. Came back, got a job in the City and was on £100k pa within five years. Married a working class lad who went to the local comp and then an Oxbridge. I didn't do it quite right in my mother's eyes but 20 or so years later the working class lad and I remain very happily married and I'm sure in rl you may have heard of him and probably admire him for his success and intellect and now I've rubbed off his rough edges perhaps also his class and his presence.

Intellect is a huge advantage, intellect and treating others well and respecting their differences and valuing what they bring to the table is what makes people successful. It is possible to be extremely well qualified and yet very poorly educated. It is possible to be well educated and poorly qualified. It is not possible to succeed in either circumstance if one has no empathy with the needs of others and how to bring out the best in them for the overall good of any organisation be it a small business, a large conglomerate or family life.

I have no idea what universities my dc's teachers attended and don't recall even thinking about it when selecting schools. We selected the schools where we thought they would thrive as individuals. We made a terrible mistake with dd's first secondary school and were fortunate enough to be able to transfer her at the end of y8 into the independent sector. She is just about top average, she will not go to Oxbridge, she is naturally far harder working than her brilliant brother who probably will go to Oxford or Cambridge. She also has more innate empathy. She may well be more successful even though she now attends a second division but very pastorally lovely Surrey school.

What matters is that both of the children are happy. DH was happy and is a success. I was happy and was a success. That is what matters. However well qualified the staff are, if the children are unhappy they will not maximise their potential - believe me I had an unhappy child at a school with nine children chasing every place. It really wasn't worth it.

I can't sing, gave up Latin (to escape the very strange fetishistic Cambridge Latin master at school who insisted we girls dress up in tiny toga towels to recreate the life of Caecilius at al), have state educated my children, have got them all into 'Oxbridge' so far (ok, may have peaked), am grateful to live on a beach. Etc.

Thank God for life's rich tapestry.

@yellow Caecilius was great though.

Not if you wanted to be Metella though Meta. Sally Randall was always Metella :(

We never dressed up. :( I would have been Grumio given the choice. Or perhaps king cogidubnus.

Your Latin lessons sound a hell of a lot more entertaining than mine. No dressing up at my school. I mainly remember sniggering a lot at words like 'vagina' (scabbard) - one of those terribly useful Latin words which just stick in your mind. Can't think why they felt the need to put that in a book aimed at pre-teens - naughty authors. Tut tut.

dd is starting the Cambridge Latin course in September - it appears they've jazzed it up these days and have exciting online activities now. Am hoping she'll get on better with it than French, as at least she doesn't need to pronounce the thing properly...

The dog dies

Metabilis I did ask if music was taught in state schools for a reason. Again, what I found from the two state secondary schools that I looked at, was that music was peripheral rather than central to the school. By that I mean that there was music teaching, and there were children doing a music GCSE, but perhaps only 30 out of 120. There were some peripatetic teachers visiting, but the music lessons tended to be 20 minutes in rotation taking children out of class and very few children did the lessons. There were no choirs in either school, no orchestras, no jazz groups etc.

Which provided a stark contrast with the DCs independent schools, where music is a central part of school life. DS sings in the school choir, plays piano, and is part of a jazz group, does house music etc. He actually does less school music than most because he is a cathedral chorister and is already singing 8-10 times a week with the cathedral choir. But it is important to me that most children at the school play at least one instrument. It doesn't seem to happen like that in state schools. Is that right? Or am I being unfair to state schools?

You are being unfair to state schools. The school my children attend has an orchestra , jazz band, folk group and various choirs. Fantastic music and arts facilities making music and performing arts at the centre if the school.

DD1 plays 3 instruments and sings to a very high standard. She is part of a regional conservatoire scheme. She has been in NYRO for the last two years. She is in school orchestras, jazz bands and choirs. She also sings at church (regularly singing the psalm) and plays in the church orchestra. She also plays the guitar (but that's more like any early teen). She will be singing at a cultural Olympiad event next week. DD2 is much younger but she also Plays 3 instruments, and sings to a very good level given her age. She too is in choirs and sings the psalm at church. She would like to play in the church orchestra but they don't want her to stop singing in the church choir at the moment, since they have lost some singers and have enough instruments. DS admittedly doesn't do as much - he just plays 2 instruments. And the bass guitar. But he too is in jazz bands. He doesn't sing.

Most young people at the three schools my DCs attend don't learn instruments, true, but anyone can learn and there are certainly a lot of people learning at both secondary schools (maybe 40-45 % in the lower years).

I do know young people who are very very musical who attend private school. I know young people who are very very musical who attend state school. So long as the parents can pay for the tuition (and that is an issue) state school children are not disadvantaged at all compared to private school children. Most of the peris are the same, the regional and national things are not restricted, the lessons cost the same in private or state school (although I think state schools are more open to shared lessons and shorter lessons if that is what people can afford). The one non rich person I know at private school on a bursary had to give up his music lessons when he went there, since his parents could no longer afford them in addition to their contribution to the fees. Had he gone to the same school as DS he would still be learning, with the same teacher he can't learn with at this private school.

Music isn't that important to many parents so we are probably off track a bit by those of us for whom it is very important. At Christmas ours did something with local state schools. It was just so embarrassing how different they all were (but we may just around here have am uch bigger gulf between state and private). I went there hoping the local teeangers woudl outclass our lot with part choirs and complex singing. Intead it proved every prejudice in my book - a group of 3 girls who looked as if they had never practised singing some kind of Christmas pop song etc and on it went. The only school in the event which sang even normal carols was ours, the private one. What a shame.

Well - married - it worked - you did get the rich husband so your parents choosing a posh school had a plan which succeeded surely? Does that not suggest private schools work? I don't think anyone would disagree on this thread that happiness matters but you can be happy and taught badly and learn nothing and end up in dead end careers and you can be happy and fulfil your full potential so most parents aim for both - happy child who fulfils their potential. I agree with most of what you say but I have known very bilrliant people without empathy, almost aspergers like, they tend if they expand their business (they usually write software) to have to hire people who can deal with others and you certainly need quite a range of skills to succeed in most things from brains to hard work ethic to luck. The one factor that really does seem to give chidlren a good leg up though is a good private education in this country. It confers such huge advantage and obviously one seeks to provide other ways to help them too such as a full time working mother which is the best way to ensure girls are successful rather than just marriage fodder and all the other thigns we do at home like love them and encourage them.

Well repeating something enough times on MN still doesn't make it so Xenia. Bit rich criticising others for having no empathy when you can't seem to see any blueprint for other than your own, which any fool can see is unachievable for most.

A very clever and accomplished SAHM with three state educated DC (further educated at Cambridge, Cambridge and Princeton) has just collected DS to take him off to the house of another very clever and accomplished SAHM who has four state educated DC (the eldest due to start at Oxford this year) so that our DC can go on a post A Level jaunt to France (my DS is also state educated and about to start at Oxford). Our DC all seem to have turned out absolutely as your ideal, how does that work?

blueprint for success

Just as a matter of interest, I have looked at the results of our local competitive performing arts festival - in which local private and state schools compete in music and drama and are judged by external judges.

Of the classes competed for in school groups, 12 were won by state schools, 5 by private schools.

The schools of individuals are not shown, so I can't judge whether there is a preponderance of winning solosts or duets from private schools. However, certainly for school groups, where the two types of school compete against one another it is the state schools who win more often than not.

That said, as I keep saying on these threads, I live somewhere where the non-selective state schools, even though their supposedly 'top' children are creamed off by a superselective grammas, outperform the nationally-known private schools academically. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that local primaries outperform the prep schools of these establishments in music and drama and that music groups from the comprehensives outperform those from the selective private secondaries. Private does not necessarily mean good.

sovery, my objection was nothing to do with the standard. It was about the choice of piece. The state music was totally dumbed down. We have a wealth of gorgeous Christmas music and they chose none of that and I was saddened by that.

teacher, it depends where you are in the country etc but in general private schools tend to have more children with higher music grades. You'd have to look at how many entered and who enters what. There is a huge outcry in the country about the state of the teaching of classical music in the state system.

Sport too - most athelete at the Olympics are from private schools than is reflected in the number of children proportionally at state and private schools.

To repeat - there is NO general gulf in standards between state and private schools in music. There might be specific gulfs in North London. But as a general thing - no. There will always be schools that are good at music and schools that are not - this applies to the private sector as much as it applies to the state sector.

There is indeed currently a bit of an outcry about music education (actually, arts Ed generally). This outcry however is not about the standards which are generally very high and just as good, for the musical kids, as those in private schools, but about the prominence and value that arts Ed subjects are being given in the curriculum.

I spent most of today at the Orchestra in a Field festival, performing and watching. We had to come home early because the Kids have school tomorrow (well, two of them do) and I have a very early train. There were loads of school groups there, from both private and state schools. There can always be more done. But it is wholly wrong (and displays, essentially, ignorance) to make blanket claims about how 'poor' and 'low grade' music is in state schools.

Last week I was involved in a celebration of talent in schools across the city I teach near. The amount of talent was phenominal - we held a joint concert, with each school contributing one item - we had everything from classical soloists to musical theatre to folk to pop. We finished up with over 300 children singing together. It was a fabulous evening. All were state schools.

Xenia - it is no surprise to hear that you only value what you consider to be classical music, as you are, in most things, a terrible snob. However, you have to consider that for children to put their time and effort into anything, they have to have some level of ownership, and I would rather allow children to sing an arrangement of an Adele song in Glee Club than force them to learn something classical which they detest. It does not mean that music is being dumbed down - it is accepting that there are a large number of genres within music, all of which are valid in their own way.

In my own state school, the main problem we have with music is the lack of support from parents - it's such a shame. This year we have had hardly any peri teaching, as the vast majority of our parents simply can't afford it. At the concert last week, only about 1/3 of the children from my school had parental support in the audience. I had to go and collect 4 of them otherwise they wouldn't have been able to attend. We are in an area of particular deprivation. So the lack of music is certainy not for want of quality teaching or effort within school.

phenomenal

Ofsted's recent report on music in schools showed wide variation from inadequate to truly world class as in attached. Xenia won't like the fact that state schools can achieve at such levels in music and other disciplines, but then by her tone it seems Xenia is more of a snob than an aesthete
www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/music-schools-wider-still-and-wider-good-practice-case-study

ET, ah there is the rub. If we dumb down and only give them what they want they will never be exposed to anything else and they will be deprived. Is it not all about high expectations? There is nothing special about my sons. There is no reason children at the local primary schools in the state schools cannot sing music like this . There is no difference in voices and ability to sit still shut up and sing between private and state school pupils.

However I accept that plenty of parents are not interested and many cannot afford to pay for lessons and also obviously music is just a tiny bit of education. We just seemed to have quite a few parents on the thread for whom it is important.

Particularly singing which doesn't cost a penny surely could be improved in state schools eg insist every state primary has the top class sing particular really important well known classica pieces and perhaps provide trebles for the local comphrehensive for works which need all 4 parts assuming state school parents cannot sing in a parents' choir as they often do in private schools to provide some of the other parts.

By coincidence I just turned to yesterday's Telegraph magazine which has an article about music in schools.
8.4% of chidlren in state schools receive weekly tutition and 50% in private schools. Wow. That's an incredible difference.

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/primaryeducation/9362387/New-music-scholarships-for-Londons-talented-children.html

But Xenia, that is not a point about quality of provision, simply one about affordability.

'50% of private school parents can afford individual instrument tuition, whereas only 8.4% of state parents can' simply reflects the fact that, on average, parents in private schools are better off....

(Also, it would be interesting to know whether the 8.4% is ALL children learning an instrument, even if it is out of school, or just those who learn within school?)

Xenia - did you not read the part of my post where I referred to the fabulous performances in the concert I was part of last week? All by state schools, and showcasing a wide breadth of musical genres?

Of course not - you selectively read, don't you? Because to do otherwise would be to consider that there is a point of view different to your own.

Classical music is not the be-all and end-all. I for one would feel very much a failure as a Performing Arts teacher if I did not introduce children to the joys of musical theatre, the genius of Sondheim and the enjoyment to be gained from learning fun arrangements of contemporary songs.

As a child, I was in a choir at a Public School (it was the 80s, teachers were working to rule, and so our school choir was disbanded. As a very keen singer, my singing teacher suggested I become involved in that choir, as they were always keen to recruit keen girls, it being a boys' school) and we sang everything from Oratorio to madrigals to Andrew Lloyd Webber. The range was something I particularly enjoyed.

You say there is no gulf in provision between state and private, but that doesn't chime with my experience. I'm a veteran of choral competitions, I have lost count of the number of times I've sat and listened to the judges award the prizes to the independent schools. Every single time in the local choral competitions the prizes go to the local independents. And singing is free. Absolutely free. There is no reason why the local state schools couldn't compete. Yet time after time, they get whacked. And it is embarrassing and horrible and unfair.