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?

T2K- that's my point too. Jabed seems incapable of understanding that.

I may be cynical, but even the most naive person would see that Tom Daly would be a catch for any school

Precisely ET. So why was there no other state school available? I agree independents would be more than happy.

Xenia herself has admitted that bullying goes on in private schools as well as in state ones and that the fact that her own children have not encountered it is as much a matter of luck and their own personalities as it is anything to do with the sector they were educated in.

Anyone _ how many state schools are there in Plymouth? Anyone live there who can tell me?

Jabed, were there no other state schools available? How do you know that?

jabed. You DO NOT know that no other state school was available. PLEASE stop pretending to be an authority on something you know absolutely nothing about.

Jabed - Tom Daly's parents chose to send him to a private school, possibly because those schools made it very attractive to him to attend them (for their own marketing purposes as much as any benefit to him). That does not mean that state schools wouldn't have been very happy to have him, nor that he would not have thrived there.

In the same way, many posts on MN are about parents unhappy with a school deciding to send their child to a private school because the first state school did not meet their child's needs in some way. As someone who has moved their child within the state sector, I know that a change of state school can completely change a child's educational experience and attainment, and at least as dramatically as a change from state to private - but many people decide to change sectors instead of looking for a different school within the sector.

ET and TW2K - I am not making the case for how good state schools are. You are doing that.

My own experience (based only on about 7 counties - albeit two ends of the country) state schools are highly suspect at best and not up to any job at worst. I am willing to accept there may be pockets of good provision, but they have never been where I have lived. That said, at least one area I lived in also had no independent schools available as an alternative. It certainly did not improve the state provision to have all those middle class children in them though, anymore than it seemed to benefit from having a monopoly on teachers (going back to the OP here).

I am sure a town as large as Plymouth must have other schools but it seems they were either no available or were no better. As far as I am aware there is only one public school in Plymouth (it?s a HMC and therefore probably as good a school as any).

I still think you are in denial here. If a young person has threats made on his person just because he happens to be good at sport, it?s a poor show for the school. It?s an even poorer show if there was no other state school to which he could go.

Lets get away from the specifics of one person shall we?

It does seemto represent a bigger trend.

That said. You say in your experience you are happy with the state schools and they provide good educational experiences. My experience is that state schools are not fit for purpose. Maybe we just have different standards?

We don't necessarily have different standards, just different experiences upon which to base our opinions. Is that not the way most things work?

Jabed,

I will say it one more time.

Where I live, state schools are better than the private schools. They get better results - even the 'secondary modern' which has the top few percent creamed off by superselective grammars gets better results than the nationally known private schools.

Could you explain to me why they are not fit for purpose, since they educate children better than their private counterparts?

(I realise that your opinion is coloured a) by the fact that you were denied the grammar education you feel you should have had and b) state schools would not employ you as a maths teacher when you left university teaching (perhaps because of your lack of recent experience, which IME is quite a big mark against a candidate as life moves fast in state education and most schools are looking for teachers who are well up on new initiatives, latest methods etc. And i realise that you live in a very different part of the country from me. Believe me, if you lived where I do, you would send a child to a state school rather than a private one)

Sorry, missed a bracket out in the middle of that diatribe!

We all have different experiences. If I lived in Xenia's North London, with her social circle, and her personal circumstances, then I might have some of her opinions. If I had had jabed's personal experiences at school, and his experience of job-hunting after another career, I might have some of his opinions. My view that state education can be excellent comes rom the fact that, locally, it IS excellent.

By the way:

If Xenia said 'I sent my children private because I felt it was the best option for them', or if jabed said 'I teach in a private school partly because that was where I got a job when I needed one, and partly because I feel it is best suited to my particular background and skills', i would have no problem whatever.

As the child of a family where one of us went private for secondary, one was fully state educated and one was half and half (based on each child's needs at particular ages) I know that there are schools which are a better fit for one child or another. Ihave no problem with parents making their own decisions for their own children. Equally, if a teacher decides to work in a particular secotor because it is a good fit for their skills, I don't have a problem.

It is the sweeping assertions that 'all private schools are better' or 'all state schools are not fit for purpose' or 'mothers who do not earn money for private school fees are failing their children' which accompany the statement of these personal choices that I take issue with.

T2K - I completely agree with you. Xenia constant assertion that "clever" women "choose" a career which allows them to pay school fees is highly . Likewise, Jabed and his insistence that state schools are all, without fail, failing children.

ET - I would be the first to admit that there are some state schools which are not great (perhaps, though, they are not always the ones which 'appear' not to be great in MN world ... IME the grimmest ones often have some of the better results and Ofsted reports). I would also say that some private schools are very good, even when you strip away factors such as selection, parental income etc and focus purely on teaching and learning.

All I am looking for is for an acknowledgement from others in return that not all private schools are great, and that some state schools, even when you strip away factors such as non-selection, lack of parental income etc are very good.

T2K- agreed. Not sure you'll get that from certain posters though.

Xenia - you said that

"It's all pretty simple. Most women aren't bright enough or don't pick careers which are well paid enough to buy their children a good education so they make do with state schools. Women who can afford to pay fees tend to be pretty happy with the schools they choose.

If you can't afford it there is not much point in worrying about how much better many private schools are although you could look at what you might do to earn enough to pay fees, set up a business etc etc. "

Ignoring the obvious point that most women are not, unlike yourself single parents, and so whether they pick well-paying careers or choose to be SAHMs or go for low-paying but meaningful jobs etc etc, is either irrelevant or at best only a part of the picture re their financial situation, you seem to be hard of understanding today as you seem to have problems grasping the fact that were these same women as rich as Croesus, they would have no interest in sending their children to private schools.

I can honestly say, Xenia, that no amount of money you could pay me would persuade me to send my dcs private - and the idea that I would actually choose to pay myself for the 'privilege' is laughable.

For me, education encompasses moral and spiritual education as well as academic - whilst on academic grounds I agree a top private school can match a top grammar school (though I see no evidence it can do more than that), when it comes to the values I would like my children to learn, sending them private would work against all the moral lessons I wish them to learn. I don't want my dcs to learn that money gives one an entitlement to everything - much like the bankers etc now - and to believe that everything meaningful in life has a price put upon it.

Whilst I am sure that lots of people get a private education and thanks to a strong home environment, do end up as decent, morally upstanding individuals, I think it no accident that our current load of idiots in govt were all privately educated.

It is no accident that all my grammar-educated friends are left wing (one just selected for a safe Labour seat last week, actually!) - this reflects the values of meritocracy and equality of opportunity that run through the system and are central to it.

I am sure that you would hate those values, Xenia, much as I dislike yours, so it is indeed a good thing that there are schools for all sorts.

I would agree with breadandbutterfly. I don't want my DCs to end up with values like Xenia's where money and power is all important. Money doesn't get you any of the things that really matter. I have friends who teach in private schools and am fairly horrified by some of the stories.
I also can't follow the argument that state schools are failing DCs when I have friends DCs who are graduating this year from top universities with good degrees - all from comprehensives.

@jabed it's not her experience. She knows nothing about the quality of music teaching in state schools. It's her opinion - in fact, it's her prejudice. Her testimony would be considered unreliable because she is so clearly biased to the point of being prepared to look ridiculous on the Internet. My opinion is formed as a result of (a) the fact that overwhelmingly it's the same people doing the teaching on both state and private schools, (b) consulting the several people I know who teach music at conservatories either full time or as guest master class people (as a result of being successful musicians composers or conductors) (c) observing (and talking to the parents of) the young people who are part of dd1s conservatoire scheme and the national ensemble in which she plays.

If I bought the quality of music teaching in state schools wasn't as good as in private schools I'd be making a stink about it, I wouldn't be showing some kind of misguided loyalty. I think the level of funding is woeful and I regularly complain to my MP about it. I think the restrictions on access are disgraceful and I complain about that too. But the quality of teaching? It's great.

Just had a look at the academic results of TD's school. A number of state schools in the area do better. In some cases much better.

Xenia you really do fall short in failing to answer legitimate questions. It's quite striking really, almost your leitmotif.

my Latin teacher was very old - well she seemed old back then, she is even older now

Ah, Xenia. I am easily bright enough (better academics than you) and well paid enough to pay for private education. But even if I thought that was a Good Idea - which I don't - it would be foolish when DD1's state school gets significantly better results than all the private schools in the area (and most of the private schools in the country).

My DSs comprehensive beat all the local private schools in a debating contest - that tells you quite a lot.

Metabilis - snap!

There are no public schools in Plymouth. There are a couple of private schools. Neither is much good but Plymouth College which gets very so so academic results is known to be fabulous for sport and has great facilities. If you are a brain box in Plymouth you go to one of the grammars. Tom Daly got very good GCSEs which might indicate he should have gone to the grammar - maybe his parents didn't want him to.

Disclaimer - when you live where I do (which is obviously not Plymouth) you learn an awful lot about TD through cultural osmosis. I also know a lot about Liam Tancock, for roughly the same reason. He went to state schools.

I don't have a lot of knowledge but I thought that Plymouth was an area with a lot of social deprivation and that people who work there live and send their DCs to schools elsewhere.