If you can afford private education but remain in the state sector...

[TheseJeansHaveShrunk]

It's going to be hard to avoid this becoming another state v private thread, but what I'm interested in is a slightly different take on that debate. It's not "which is better?" but "if you think state school is better even though you could afford private education, then why is that?"

The question is based on the assumptions that the DC in question is/are reasonably bright (so might benefit academically from academically selective education), that the state school is non-selective (as most people don't have access to grammar schools), and that you hope for your DC to go to a good university (to make the £££££ fees worthwhile!)

I've been mulling this over ever since I heard some maths professor from Cambridge talking on the radio about the age-old private v state inequality of Oxbridge admissions. He was all for improving access for state school applicants but said that the simple fact was that for maths, even the best state schools generally teach only to the A-level syllabus, whereas the best private schools take their maths/further maths A-level candidates well beyond the syllabus and so the state school applicants are at a huge disadvantage - they simply don't have the starting level of knowledge required for the course.

This made me wonder: with this sort of unequal playing field, if you have the choice of private education, what reasons might you have not to take it?

Would be interested to hear from those who've made this choice - how it's working out, or if your DC have finished school now, how did it work out? Did they go to good universities/get good jobs, etc? On the other side of things, if you paid for private schooling but now regret it, why?

My DC go to a state school by the way.

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There is a big problem with the example you give isn't there - the professor was only talking about his subject, maths, which is always an outlier because students taking it have highly specific abstract reasoning skills which they tend to develop early and lose quickly without reinforcement. For similar reasons many universities discourage maths applicants from taking gap years.

Still I have to say the example you give surprises me. My DH came joint top first in maths from Cambridge about 15 years ago and we are friends with many other wranglers from his year and they are all state educated. I am sure there were some privately educated ones, but they were not obviously over-represented. Sounds like things have changed a lot.

I'm a law academic at a RG uni and my experience is the opposite of the Cambridge maths professor's. Our state educated students consistently out-perform the privately educated students despite having the same grades at admission to an astonishing extent. On average a student entering with AAA at our law school from a private education behind them can expect to leave with a degree that is a whole class lower than a student with equivalent grades from the state sector. Obvious why, state sector students trying to attain AAA grades have to demonstrate more aptitude for independent study, problem solving, and taking responsibility for their own learning than their privately educated peers and these are all skills which undergrad law rewards.

Which suggests to me that a lot will depend on the subject your DC plans to study at uni. A maths genius may well benefit from private ed (depending on the school of course) whilst someone planning to do a social science which A Level study cannot really prepare them for would be better off at a decent FE college. But since you cannot know at 5, 8, 11, 13 or possibly even 16 which choice your child will make it is a poor basis on which to make a decision. Much better to look at what will make your child happy now.

This debate never fails to get to me. I chose state for many reasons. High up there is a social conscience.
Ds is doing very well in his 'satisfactory' local comp. One that other mumsnetters have described as very rough- but of course that is from their perspective of having opted out of the state system without ever really giving it a chance. In his year (11) there are children who have tragically ended up in the criminal justice system, children who sadly were already very troubled in primary school. However, there are also children like ds who are lucky enough to be doing very well and many in between. Ds is not scared and never has been- he has friends and sees that there are kids who unfortunately have not had the opportunities that he has had. Kids not monsters. That's real life, we live in London and I want no part of widening the segregation that is so divisive here.

We have four private secondary schools locally, quite good ones, two good comp state, one state grammar, and a few mediocre state schools. In terms of GCSE and A level results the two good state schools have results very similar to the private schools, I don't know the results for the other state schools (apart from the grammar) but I think they are very average. The state SG wipes the floor with all of them with results far ahead of all of them all, even at GCSE level that pupils take a year early. It is very hard to get into though and takes only the top 4% of puplis. All of the people I know with children at the private school would have sent them to the SG if they could have passed the entrance exam.

So the best school local to me is a state school, and they managed to send two children to the Olympics! They do start from a very high base though and it is very pressured I hear.

Mine are all in early primary.

I was a community governor in a primary school. I found it hugely frustrating. My responsibility was finance and the deceit and incompetence which seemed to be custom and practice by the local authority would have driven a saint to drink.

Does specialist teaching in all subjects really matter at primary?

IMO the important thing at primary is not to destroy enthusiasm. Some subjects benefit from specialist teaching - MFL & sports spring to mind where there is a specific skill. However do primary school pupils need science, geography etc to be taught to a standard beyond that an enthusiastic primary teacher can achieve?

Penelope - it doesn't suprise me in the least that state schooled students outperform private schooled students - they tend to be far less anbitious in where they attend and thus the lower tier RG unis have some very very capable students who could have aimed much higher. The converse is true of priavte schooled students.

"However do primary school pupils need science, geography etc to be taught to a standard beyond that an enthusiastic primary teacher can achieve?"

I am absolutely sure that specialist teachers do impart more skills than generalists. Enthusiasm for history or science is lovely, but most primary teachers won't have more than a GCSE history or science. Unless they are devoted amateurs, their knowledge will be pretty sketchy.

Wordfactory without wanting to give away where I work it definitely could not be described as lower-tier! I think if you look for law schools requiring students to have A*AA grades you'll find we're a pretty select group.

And our findings are consistent with those found at various Oxbridge colleges too. When I worked at King's College Cambridge we had similar findings although the statistical disparity was more marked.

As I say this is for one subject. It absolutely should not guide your choice of school for your child. But nor should your choice of school be prejudiced by the assumption that they will leave university with a better degree.

Naming- I believe that maths past 7 or 8 should not be taught by someone with no aptitude for it whatsoever and teachers do only need a C. Some older tachers won't have any qualifications in science. I also believe art, drama, sport, MFL, Latin all benefit from someone who knows and loves their subject. Asking one person to do everythuing is just daft. We accept this at 11 of course.

A frightening anecdote that demonstrates that mere enthusiasm does not equate to knowledge: the headmistress of my DD's French-English bilingual school recently gave a talk to the parents of the children in the year above my DD. The talk was about this year's school trip, a week in England, which all 125 children in that year go on, with their English teachers (and the teachers in their vast majority are British and they use English teaching materials). The headmistress is French and has spent her entire career at the school, where 75% of the pupils are plurilingual/cultural. The school trip to England in Y5 is an annual event that has been taking place for many years.

Nevertheless, in her speech, the headmistress told parents that they should equip their children with pocket money of 30 shillings for their trip to England (an embarrassed English teacher quickly corrected her to pounds, but not before the huge clanger had been heard by every parent!).

Hi TheseJeans,
If your child is talented or getting things faster than the others than she will do well both in state or private school.

There are still reasons to send your child to a local state school:
There is a lot more of them, so you can find a good one,
Closer distance, half an hours extra sleep in the morning can make a difference,
Some private schools have (even) more school holidays so you get less tuition at the end,
NEITHER the state schools NOR the private schools are fully selective (or grammars and secondary grammars) so there will always be pupils that are keeping the others back,
State initiatives to favor state schools students at university places,
Having extras while at school. ( At primary schools you can apply for 1 to 1 music instrument tuition. These lessons take place at any not used room while the rest of the class has Maths, English... Your child won't be behind if he doesn't attend all the Maths lessons at state schools...)

Penelope - you are right about Oxbridge. I teach there part time and it is very obvious that the state school students have virtually all come from a handful of GS schools and top comps. They really are super brigght and motivated. There seems to be this urban myth that only the genius need apply. Far too many state schoolers talk themselves out of it. I also teach at a much less well regarded university and many of the students there have seriously undersold themselves imvho.

rabbitstew I am not sure how much you know about teaching but just because a pupil is bright or has an aptitude for a subject does not make them 'easy' to teach. Actually they are more of a challenge in many ways.

I agree with others who feel that primary teachers are asked to teach too broad a curriculum and that no-one can teach so many subjects properly. Many primary teachers feel this themselves. Although I know that many primary schools are very good, prep school pupils come to us with a better work ethic and far more in depth knowledge of subjects because they have been taught by specialists. You can be an enthusiastic specialist - they are not mutually exclusive!

A similar pattern in my area to that others have noted - good primary provision but state secondaries rather lacking which is why many parents go private where we currently live.

We might be able to afford private school by the skin of our teeth, but there isn't one close by.

Our elementary school is very good, but I don't think the middle high/school is. I come into contact with a lot of teens and I'm astounded at the gaps in their knowledge.

Dh and I are discussing sending ds to one of the more nearby Catholic schools when he starts full time school next year, but I doubt we will.

"Seeker, your generalised rant against the rich and/or privileged is not correct.'
It wasn't. It was a rant against the system, not the rich and/or privileged.

happygardening You are right. However, DD passed the entrance exam at the age of 10 (summer birthday) for a highly regarded private school, without any tutoring. I let her do a few verbal reasoning and non verbal reasoning papers as practice for exam technique, but she also had to do maths and English papers for which she had had no tutoring or practice.

This was managed from an excellent state primary school. DD isn't gifted, she is naturally bright, but she did have the benefit of an excellent, rounded education at a state primary school.

I am afraid that I have come to this thread very late, but have come on pass on my experience. My DPs could have afforded private education, but chose not to. My father had been through prep school/ public school (Fettes College) and loathed it, swore he would never send his children away. He was also very well travelled and believed that private education generally produced a certain type of person, who he didn't particularly like. We went to the French Lycée (my mum had been for A levels, on a place reserved for English students. We went at a time where non-Francophone students could go if they had a connection to the school and paid nominal fees as we were not French tax payers). For secondary school we went to Pimlico School, a v big comprehensive. All of my siblings and I (there are 4 of us) got A levels, and three of us did degrees, masters' degrees and I also have a PhD. The fourth child chose not to go to university, although would have been perfectly capable. From the point of view of social awareness and tolerance and understanding of all people, I have always said that my education was the best you could get in London at the time, regardless of cost.

We can afford private school but sent DC's to local comp. We had lived overseas so had previously privately educated our DC's. We liked the local comp because
it is 5 mins walk from our house. (bloody brilliant!)
It is where most of the towns DC's go
It is not pompous, pretentious and elitist
It is large and offers lots of subjects
It doesn't 'spoon feed' our DC's who have learnt they have to sort things out themselves
They have all sorts of friends inc one who is care and ones who are very wealthy.

It includes DC with SEN / disabilities
It is FREE. It will give us a lot of pleasure to give them the money we have 'saved' on their education.

My eldest DC is at Uni studying medicine, middle DC has offers from top Uni's (for maths) and youngest DC is doing well too.

I suspect their grades would have been a bit better at a private school and I would have happily sent them to one if the local school wasn't nice or if one of my DC's had a particular problem.

TBH. I don't have strong feelings one way or another about the whole private school versus state school debate. I think people should just choose what works for them and their family but my main reasons for NOT sending my DC to private school is that it wasn't what was best for my DC and I can't stand the private schools that promote elitism, Snobbery and pompousness.

anitasmall just to point out to you that although indies have longer holidays we do much longer days. We start at 8.15am and formal teaching does nor finish until 4pm after which pupils are engaged in extra-curricular activites. I think you will find that the amount of tuition is much the same.

Also the school I teach at is fully selective and no pupil would ever be allowed to 'hold back' another.

As for the state initiatives to favour state school pupils - these are a nonsense as everyone knows.

Specialist teaching from an early age is channelling children's energies into the current thinking, knowledge and structures of the day. I can't help wondering whether it is the way Darwin or Einstein were educated or thought about things - in discrete disciplines? Were they that channelled and directed from the very beginning of their lives?

One of the biggest change my DS experienced when moving from a quaint middle class village primary to a prep was the way science was taught. 7 yr old using Vincent burners mixing up chemicals making explosions dissecting eyes kidney etc. Its possible the health and safety mob have stopped this now but it was an enourmous contract from growing cress in a polystyrene box! The tab geography teacher regularly took them out of school beaches to look at erosion farms to look at sustainable development shopping centres to analyse shopping patterns and thus people moving and housing/local industry/transport to look at unemployment and it's effect on the population. In contrast the class teacher at his primary couldn't even do basic maths and certainly couldn't answer the questions in a special extended maths text book he was given to do at home, she knew literally nothing about art, one of my DS passions, unlike his art teacher at his prep and his knowledge and passion for 20 th century abstract art. It's often at a young age when we've simply got more time and are not following exam curriculums that these interests can be developed but many children are not getting the chance.

countrykitten - I am perfectly well aware that high intelligence does not equate to easy-to-teach. However, you are the one who keeps commenting on how eager and bright all your students are in the private school in which you teach, so you clearly feel the benefits of intelligent, bright eyed enthusiasm and relatively compliant behaviour... or are you just conveniently not mentioning all the surly students who aggressively question everything you say and how you teach on a daily basis?

I had a teacher who brought in bulls eyes for everyone to dissect in primary school... I also remember doing woodwork with pretty dangerous tools at primary school when I was 9. (It would have been most dangerous for my low-tone, hypermobile, dyspraxic ds1!). I made a little wooden owl. Those were the days of state schools pre-the national curriculum, though, when there was absolutely no predicting what one might be taught.

I love private schools.

My son (an indie teacher) donates me all the end-of-term wine bottles from pupils ..............

Avuncular-I think that's just being a teacher.........!

This is a endless arguement on MN and endless evidence is given by both sides to support their beliefs. Surely the quality of state education needs addressing because if it was really as good as some claim then most middle class parents wouldn't pay for education. The super rich stumping up £33 000 + a year per child will always do this and they will always live in 15 bedroomed houses and have granite swimming pools etc etc but leave them too it and schools like Eton will always be there for these super rich and also offer funding to a small minority who wouldnt normally be able to afford to go but it is a very small minority Forget them its the concerns of your average middle class parents looking for edcellent education in a day setting that need addressing because if they were surely most would cheerfully return to the state sector. I have no idea how this can be done a whole scale change in ethos from teachers would help and just as importantly where the money to do this will come from but until it is many will carry on paying.