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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Happy,

I think that I agree with you about the super-bright - hence my comment about the need for 'special education' institutions for such children, who (like their counterparts at the other end of the ability spectrum) cannot efficiently or effectively be educated in mainstream comprehensives. The point is that these children are a very small percentage of the total population. I think I suggested on another thread that designating a 'special school' for such children per so many hundred thousand of the population, with entry being via the full battery of tests by professionals used to create a 'statement of SEN' in the same way as for children at the other end of the spectrum, with all other schools being comprehensive, might be an effective way of identifying and educating such children.

www.education.gov.uk/schools/toolsandinitiatives/tripsresearchdigests/a0013256/themes-pupil-grouping-and-organisation-of-classes

Effective classroom organisation in primary schools concludes that there is no evidence that lower Key Stage 2 pupils learn more effectively in sets for mathematics at any level. In fact, the study tentatively suggests that children of all levels of attainment do better when taught in mixed ability classes. The author also recommends mixed ability teaching because of its social and equitable benefits, and suggests that setting is usually adopted in order to make the teacher?s job of whole class teaching more manageable.

In secondary schools, Students' experiences of ability grouping similarly suggests that setting in mathematics has a negative effect on both attainment and motivation, with the exception of slightly improved attainment for top set pupils. The authors conclude that setting promotes a more inflexible style of teaching than mixed ability classes, and creates unreasonably low or high expectations for the pupils in the lower and top sets. Looking at pupil attainment, the study found that students with the same Key Stage 3 scores could have their GCSE grade raised or lowered by up to half a grade as a result of being placed in a higher or lower set. The greatest value added was in the school which retained mixed ability teaching in mathematics up to Year 10 and subsequently continued to use a wide range of teaching methods, including within-class grouping.

(Or, thinking about it, allowing such a statement of SEN to name certain elite private institutions which already educate the super-bright effectively - probably cheaper, in the long run, because such children are rare, but difficult because of the boarding aspect)

Namingofparts, on a thread last year, somebody (thankfully I can't remember who) actually said that their bright child would be disadvantaged by sharing a canteen queue with less bright children. I kid you not.

But again, looking at the top 1 or 2% of kids in the country in terms of ability and how to best cater for them may be interesting but it's irrelevant in terms of the educational experience of the majority of kids in this country and in terms of social mobility.

The nature of super bright kids as with super athletes is always going to be that they'll outgrow an individual school anyway and this also is a good thing. A gifted athlete would start competing on a regional and then a national basis. I would not think of my local schools as failures if my kids had to join the local swimming club to be stretched and make progress, neither would I see my local school as a failure if my child was gifted in maths and needed to attend summer schools and look online to get extra challenge in maths.

Good grief seeker!

Fivecandles, I agree. But sometimes on MN the needs of the superbright (or those who are belived to be superbright) are used as a reason not to give the remainder of the population the means and opportunity to maximise their potential.

But would you really want your child, however gifted, to be educated in a hothouse of similarly bright kids which might be a long way from where you live (and therefore involve boarding or at least a lot of travelling)? I certainly wouldn't. And I'm sure there are lots of studies that indicate kids who are hothoused in such a way often end up doing very averagely in later life and having psychological problems.

I think there's room for more to be done at a local and national level in terms of harnessing the web to provide more individualised learning but within a single school.

But I do believe it should be possible for a single school to provide a good comprehensive education.

X posted, teacher.

Yes, I think there are all sorts of convoluted arguments Mnetters use to justify entrenched advantages and class systems which avoid them having to worry about people at the bottom of the pile.

Hence, why I'm reminded of Scrooge and his learning of the importance of a social conscience.

I expect most of you saw these statistics, which were released 12 months ago and show that Surrey sends more students to Oxbridge than 47 'poorer' local authorities combined - no students at all made it to Oxbridge from 11 local authority areas.

Surely it cannot be that those 11 areas do not have a single pupil bright enough to access Oxbridge, so it must be about their schools and families having low aspirations.

Ambling back in the direction of the OP.

When we lived abroad my employer would have paid for us to send our DCs to private school either in our country of residence or back in Britain as boarders.

We chose not to. We chose to send our children to the local school in the local language. We did this because we wanted our DCs to be integrated in the community and not be outsiders. We wanted to be integrated in the community. Being abroad helped us to clarify these thoughts and make the decision we did.

We have never regretted that decision.

I really do not 'get' the desire for ones children to only mix with certain 'types'. Life does not reflect that and while I am at it at the age of 47 I can say with 100% certainty that what university/degree/career/ they chose there is no relation between the happiness and success as a person relating to those things. You are no more or less likely to be unhappy and have depression etc as life goes on. Happiness and peace are not the proviso of those educated in a certain way.Why then is it seen as the be all and end all? My oldest and best friend went from a nursery nurse course to an admin course and is now film producer of great renown no qualifications at all. She has real issues though in her personal life. My ex flat mate oxford educated amazing financial position straight from university (worked in finance) nervous breakdown by 35 and hasn't worked since. We put too much emphasis on this stuff really.

It's much more complicated than that.

I'm always spouting there is a powerful link between social class and wealth and academic attainment. This link is proven BEFORE children hit school age and then compounded during the school years.

By the time kids are thinking about the future after school it is much more likely that the middle class kids with supportive, educated parents will have got A*s at GCSE and be in a position to apply for Oxbridge than the kids who have grown up in poverty with illiterate parents.

Even though two children may have the same aptitude at birth by the age of 4 there is a proven difference in their 'school readiness'.

Looking at the 11 local authority areas I think that there might also be other factors impacting application to Oxford or Cambridge. One factor which immediately springs to mind is proximity to other universities which while not necessarily as prestigious are certainly RG.

All of which makes the whole Oxbridge thing seem even more irrelevant. It's not even tweaking at the edges it's just looking at swapping a couple of kids who are already doing alright academically and probably have relatively supportive parents for a couple of kids who have had every privilege but maybe aren't that inherently clever.

What matters much, much more is the much bigger numbers of kids who are leaving school with no or few qualifications or who aren't going to be in a position to go to any university because of a huge number of social factors regardless of how bright they were at birth.

The problem is social and not academic. YOu cannot separate school from the rest of society.

Well, yes, Naming. But, linked to that and separate from it, is the well documented and growing rift between affluence in the north and south.

Surrey is surely one of the most wealthy areas in the country so it's hardly a matter of surprise. Wealth and academic success is self perpetuating.

I've not looked at your research lately but I don't need to to know that the LEAs that send the fewest kids to Oxbrdige are going to be the poorest/ northern.

mrz contrary to what the research you quote found IME experience the needs of the super bright mathematicians are not meet in state primary (Im now talking IQ of 155+) . When you DS is better and quicker at maths than the teachers let alone the rest of his class boredom disillusionment with the process of education and often disruption arises.

It makes me really frustrated and sad that there's so much beating of breasts and eyebrow raising and blaming of individual schools, teachers and areas at things like numbers going to Oxbridge. Why do we, collectively, lack the nouse to look at the bigger picture and the social structures which are preventing academic achievement amongst the disadvantages and social mobility??

The previous Labour government was at least aware of the issues hence all the money put into Surestart and free nursery places but it seems this had limited success.

It has to start from birth and preferably before that. By the age of 16 the inequalities are entrenched.

I was identified as superbright at school as was DH. We were both at comprehensives and we were givenenrichment activities over and above the standard curriculum to stretch us. The school's assessment of our potential was correct - we both did very well academically subsequently. But the view that our 'giftedness' was an issue that needed to be addressed was a mistake. Our parents never raised any concerns, all the efforts were made by the schools themselves. But in DH's case he was generally smart and supremely gifted at maths. No doubt in an independent school he'd have sat his exams early but there wouldn't have been any point since you cannot go to Cambridge until you are 18 (and there is no point going to university before you are of legal drinking age!).

In my case I was very literate and good at languages but I came from a well off family and my parents were very involved in my life so I had trips to the theatre, opportunities to learn languages outside school, holidays abroad etc.

I have nothing against enrichment, but I suspect the money spent on me could have been much better diverted to enrich the education of children in far greater need.

What did enrich my education massively was the fact that my school had an onsite SEN unit for children with moderate and severe learning disabilites, which was fairly unusual in the late 80's/early 90's. I was very involved in helping younger pupils with literacy, supporting students with learning disabilities participating in mainstream classes and setting up a buddying scheme to prevent bullying. The lessons I learnt from that have stayed with me my entire life and profoundly influenced every career choice I have ever made.

So not-so-brightness can seep through the walls of a school and create all sorts of value other than that narrowly defined by Bonsoir. Some of the young people in that unit may not have created BonsoirValue, but I am still in touch with them, they lead rich interesting lives that are more independent now than they could have been without the educational opportunities they and I enjoyed. And I lead a richer more interesting life because of those friendships too.

This, by the way, is not a pro-state anti-independent argument. I think some independents have excellent inclusive values, and many state schools don't. I just thought the miserable idea of an education engineered to create BonsoirValue was so ludicrously naive it needed to be challenged.

But happy the needs of a a potential olympic gymnast or chess player or horse rider or virtuoso piano player are also not going to be met in your average primary school, state or primary. The nature of being in the top couple of percent in the country in any field is that you are going to be better than most of the people around you.

If I had a child like this I wouldn't expect my local school to be able to challenge my child, I would be looking further afield. Which is not to say that there shouldn't be national networks in place that would make personalised learning easier within individual schools.

State or independent school that should say. You would expect your gifted footballer to join a local team and that way. You'd be a very strange sort of parent to expect your local primary to be the only and best way to improve his skills and that would be the case even the school was a specialist football academy.

"If I had a child like this I wouldn't expect my local school to be able to challenge my child, I would be looking further afield."

But you can only look further afield if the system provides for selective education for the gifted (be that funded privately or by the public purse). Which is the happy situation in the UK. What do you think French parents with superbright children do, fivecandles?*

*Answer: spend a fortune on shrinks who hold those children's hands through the pain of sitting through years of unchallenging school. And hope they don't end up in the children's unit of their local MH hospital.

Back to the OP. At the moment DH and I prefer to have a decent work/life balance (work 30hours each per week not 50) and send our bright (top 10% but not top 1-2%) dcs to the local good but not outstanding primary.

I have thought about increasing my hours and sending them to the local prep (8-6 days) I think this would not be better for them or the family's wellbeing. It would be much better for my career though.

"I would be looking further afield"
I have done and found the right place for him but at a cost; financially, the location is okish and we were and of course are prepared to entertain the idea of full boarding this was all doable for us but not necessarily others! Ok its a very small minority but what the hell happens to those not so lucky (that is at the end of the day ail it is).