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?

@duchesse which one is that? Clyst vale?

exotix - Xenia reminds me of a tv prog I once watched about a shop/s (?) in posh bit of Cheshire - set in a dept store, they showed a woman buying a dress. "That's £90, please", said the shop assistant. "only £90!" exclaimed the customer. "Well, in that case, I don't want it. I thought it was £900."

ie she wants something because she thinks it's exclusive not because she actually cares about whether it is worth that or not. If everyone could have the lovely dress/education for little/free, to people like that it is less desirable. They want othersto admire them for their wealth and flatter themselves that a high price tag means a etter product, even when that is blatantly not the case as in the example.

Why pay more when you can get the same for less?!

At a comprehensive some DCs will want to a more vocational route and some won't want triple science. They are all different. There are also all the parents with high flying careers themselves who want the same for their DCs-and generally get it.

meta, yep. At least that was the situation 7 years when we were hunting for a secondary school for DS, and 4 years ago when we were looking for DD2. Not impressed.

exotic, that's not the point- some (many) parents do, and it simply wasn't available there. And the school ended up streaming many able children into Leisure and Tourism because they couldn't motivate them. There are only so many dead-end jobs in seasonal occupations available in this area, which is basically all Leisure and Tourism will kit you out for. I am constantly amazed at how many young people around here, even relatively able ones, leave school at 16 even though the job situation is dire.

Norham: 'erudite, learned and academic'? Just because they've attended a RG? The whole of MN now seems to have regressed into the 40s or 50s, not just Xenia and jabed. Can we please stop being so quaint!

I think it must be to do with areas, duchess, it is not my experience.

Just because you pay doesn't mean something is better. We chose academic school - North London Collegiate. I really don't think even the best state school in the country by A level results is as good. Also I wanted single sex selective education and I like fields and lakes so the experience of going to the building is nice too. Basically the £1m or whatever I will have spent on school fees over 25 years is money well spent. I cannot think of anything else I would rather have spent it on.

However had I made foolish career choices or not been very bright and thus unabl to afford school fees I imagine we could have found a reasonable education in the state sector.

Well, North London Collegiate was somewhat below my DD1's state school in last years official A level tables. I know you prefer the FT 'fiddle to put the posh schools at the top' tables but I'm happy to accept the official ones.

One thing you ignore is that, due to your age, you experienced the last knockings of the gold generation. You benefited from cheap house prices and then massive house price inflation. You benefitted from low mortgage rates. You had free university education. Your pension will be worth something, rather than two rubber bands and a paper clip. All these things make a difference.

Xenia you've described your own education a number of times. It was solid enough. Not up to NCLS though, nor Oxford or Cambridge. You've nevertheless done exceedingly well. What were the driving factors in that? Your energy seems exceptional as well as your capacity for hard work, but aren't those a greater factor in your material success than your secondary and tertiary education?

We have lots of fields too. No lake though, I'll give you that. But we do have sea views which can be nice.

I thought the river had flooded? So there might have been a few lakes around! ;)

There is definitely an argument for schools in (proper not vanity) cities though. I was at a thing last night that a friend of mine was doing, at the RAH. About film and TV music composition. This is part of the GCSE music syllabus. Now, DD1 knows him too (obviously) so she didn't need to go but the other kids in her class could very much have benefitted from attending. But it's a bit far from where we are to the RAH for an event that didn't finish till nearly 10 (and it was one of a series, that's been running for a while). In fact though there weren't any young people in the audience as far as I could see (which is a shame but there you go - it was a school night). I do worry about the access to that sort of cultural input that kids in our area get on a regular basis. If you can't afford to all trot off to London regularly to see stuff you are definitely disadvantaged. But this applies to the private school kids as much as the state school kids.

It is fair to say that there is much less access to cultural events & opportunities anywhere outside of London or outside a big city (although London would offer more anyway).

We have access (1 hours' drive) to major northern cities (Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, York, Wakefield) but there are things that only happen in London or come "up North" once in a blue moon. Like Metabilis says, this is not just a problem with private vs state, as ultimately they have access to the same/similar pool of events & opportunities.

I think that's right.
The UK is becoming far more (too?) London-centric.

This is part of the reason we have decided to split our time come September. Now the DC are (almost) teens, we want them to experience the culture of London. But we don't want to live there full time .

Which is why outer London suburbs are best then.... laughing as I type and why parents who move to the depths of the countryside for selfish reasons rarely benefit teenagers nor their job prospects or expectations.

I was asked about why I did well? Luck, genes, I never get ill, I picked work I enjoy.

I don't see it as a gold generation at all.That's a myth by the takers, not givers consumeristic current generation. My parents nad rationing and war. I was born without central heating. We bought our children's clothes all second hand. The nanny cost more than one of our salaries. It was not a gold generation. It wa a generation who could tolerate privation in a way people can't today because they have been spoiled and expect too much.

Don't agree about house prices either. A house where I live today is the same ratio to my daughter's current earnings as mine was in 1984. We paid interest rates of up to 12%. Basic rate tax was 33% oplus NI on top of it. It was not a gold generation. Before that the 70s were dreadful, incluation went up 60% in 3 years, people were out of work, we had the 3 day week and strikes. People always like to think those in earlier times had an easier time but it wasn't so. We only just had the 1970 equal pay act. Women only just had the right to equal pay.

My university education - well only 15% of people went and only one third got a 2/1. Now 50% go and 2/3rds get 2/1s so we have to fund that. As a nation we have decided to load debt which is never repayable unless they earn over £20k on people. We didnt' have to take that choice. We could have stuck with about 10 - 15% going to university.

I don't have a pention to speak of. I work for myself. I'll work until I die. When I had babies I had no maternity rights as I had not worked for 2 years at one employer. I don't see this gold gneration at all. I just see as ever people who work hard doing well with luck and others not. Plus ca change.

Oh xenia I can't abide the burbs.

We're going to split our time between central London and the country. Best of both worlds.

@xenia Your ability to think beyond your own parochial parameters is apparently limited! Since moving to Devon 16 years ago I have officially worked in London, New York and Brussels. Would I have even looked at the NY job had I been still living in London? Unlikely. Because I'd have thought London was sufficient. I seriously doubt my career would have taken the stratospheric trajectory it did, once I moved to Devon, had I not made that move. I'd also have to spend far more time in Brussels which is a hole made out of the proverbial article if I lived closer to St Pancras. As it is I can limit my trips there somewhat (hooray) while not having to limit my trips to e.g. NY (because the marginal price and time cost of going to NY from Devon rather than London isn't that great, whereas the marginal time cost in particular of going from Devon to Brussels rather than London is significant). Win win, really. And since I have the job and the connections that I do my kids certainly aren't culturally impoverished, whereas we know kids at the very good private schools here who have never seen a West End show or a Prom or an RSC production.

Clearly though Croydon is the best place in the world to live since our sample of 2 indicates that if you grow up in Croydon you go to either Oxford or Cambridge. Surely that's sound in terms of stat sampling theory?

Croydon???!!!??? Faints.

My mother went to NLCS and then stayed at home with us until we were both at (state) school. What a moron, eh?

Well, if you don't want your kids to go to Oxbridge then by all means consider NLCS.

I'm actually with Xenia on this. Like the London suburbs too - nice if dull place to bring up kids, but access to all the cultural delights that London has to offfer. Enjoying the fact that as my dcs get older, they can enjoy all that.

But I'm a Londoner through and through. Feel a bit of a fish out of water anywhere else.

Xenia's simply wrong re house prices, though. Massive difference. My older db bought his house in Wimbledon (not poshest bit) in 1984 for 60K, when both he and his dw were on v low salries. Would hardly be possible for couple on equivalent job to do now - same house = c 350K now. They wouldn't be able to afford to get on the property ladder at all, in London anyway, these days. (They both had low level admin jobs, salary would be maybe 20K now?) He moved in 1989 to a much bigger house in posher bit of Wimbledon for 180k - now worth approx 1.3 million. No way salaries have multiplied by over 6 in the last 20 years or so. Sadly.

And AFAIK, house price rises in N London are similar. Or greater - friends' 2 bed flat in Primrose Hill for 80K in 1995 ish now worth at least 8 times that.

So unless your dd i living somewhere v unusual, salaries have not kept pace with house prices.

By the way, Xenia, earning little need not actually be the result of either 'foolish' career choices or lack of academic ability. Believe it or not, there are people who are not terribly motivated by money.

In retrospect, I can see the advantage of being married to someone who is motivated by money. But for me, that would have the fairly major disadvantage that I'd have nothing in common with them.

Obviously, it would be quite nice if a money tree grew in my garden. But I don't crave money so much that I'm prepared to do any one of a large number of things that would earn me large amounts of money.

I agree with the point about house prices being a huge problem nowadays for young people in a way it wasn't even only 10-15 years ago, due to huge inflaction not matched by equivalent salary hikes.