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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Some of you might find this interesting:

Cultural Capital

@cream I don't think it is, in general. There are a handful of top top private schools - St Paul's, say, not Eton (at least, not historically, don't know about right now) - which do perform majestically well in maths. Look at the school profile of the people who get to the final rounds of the Olympiads, for example. But even allowing for that there have always been many stonkingly good mathmos coming from state schools. Not least because sometimes the really top mathmos don't fit the profile the posh schools are looking for.

I have a well-thumbed copy of La Distinction in my bookcase right behind me, creamteas. If you think that Bourdieu's ideas provide useful insights for how to manage further education, I invite you to look closely at the French education system.

""Bonsoir but when the goalposts are designed that only part of the population could ever pass, that is discrimination...*

No, it is not discrimination to allow competition and have winners."

It is discrimination to have a competition that only a small %of the competitors have any possibility of winning........

"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 seems bizarre - surely then Oxford needs to ensure its course starts where A level maths stops? It's not difficult to do that, surely, Otherwise of course state school pupils are going to lose out and Oxford is going to lose students with the greatest academic potential in favour of pupils whose parents can afford for them to be hothoused.

Mordion are these successful private school the same ones who have maths based selections tests and offer scholarships relating to maths abilities....

If they have selected for maths, it is not surprising that they do better...

Not sure what your point is Bonsoir, the book describes the problems of the French education system, and as far as I know, no one has ever tried to rectify it!

The best UK universities, in order to remain the best, have to teach at a level whereby they will produce graduates of equivalent skill and ability to those of the top universities in the world.

I repeat: an undergraduate first year is not "the year that follow A-levels in the programme".

ubik you are missing the point :)

The parents who can afford to hothouse their kids want to preserve Oxford just for them.......

creamteas - no, the book, which was published over three decades ago, has informed reforms in French education of the past decades and there has been an inexorable dumbing down as a result.

The best UK universities, in order to remain the best, have to teach at a level whereby they will produce graduates of equivalent skill and ability to those of the top universities in the world

Something we agree on :) But I believe that you can produce top graduates from different starting places, providing they have the ability to learn.

This is an interesting thread. We have recently taken dd1 out of a private girls school into state because I didn't like the ethos of the school, the attitiude of the other parents and the 'preciousness'. However, I know its not the same at all independent schools and I know there can be some huge benefits. I want my dc's to be able to be part of a community and to meet people from a diverse range of social backgrounds as indeed my family are made up from! However, someone asked me recently why that mattered in terms of getting on in life and it probably doesn't but it makes for a better rounded and more balanced human being in my opinion so thats one reasonwe are doing state but I wouldnt rule out private later on, it just depends on the child /the school and how you see them developing in my opinion

have skimmed thread and know it has moved on somewhat, but I do have a further sub-question.

if the only state options you had were the lower end of good but mostly poor or if the local state school was not giving YOUR child what they needed to achieve their potential would your ideology come before the needs of your child?

@seeker there is nothing wrong with discriminating on brains which is what Cambridge (and Oxford I suppose) has always done. It is completely correct to say that only a small % of the population have a chance of getting a place at Cambridge to read maths. But that % is not determined by class, wealth, cultural capital or type of school attended. If you're really really good at maths you've got a chance of getting in. You might, of course, not apply. But that's not Cambridge's fault. If you do apply, as I did, it doesn't matter if you live in a council flat, as I did. All that matters is if you can do the maths. Cambridge and Oxford do a massive amount of outreach to state schools. The problem doesn't lie with them. It lies with those schools which don't encourage their pupils to aim high.

I realise that that sounds flaming... I don't mean it to, I am just in a position where my desires for my child to go to the local school is detrimental to the child. ARRGGHHH

Bonsoir so if you have removed the class barriers in education how to you explain the differences between les grandes écoles and other French universities....

I know I keep banging on about maths but apart from the fact that obviously I have first hand knowledge of the Cambridge admission process for that, and not for anything else - it just seems bizarre to me that maths has been chosen as the battleground for this thread when actually, I'd say maths is far more accessible to all, despite the eviscerated GCSE and A level syllabi, than some other subjects which do require lashings of cultura capital to access in the appropriate way and at the necessary depth.......

If you're really really good at maths you've got a chance of getting in

Everyone who is interviewed to read Maths at Oxbridge is really good, your chance of getting an offer depends on how well they think you 'fit' with what they are looking for, which is not not solely about your Maths ability.....

@cream yes they are, and that's why. But as I said - there are a tiny number of these. And they still have requirements relating to eg ability to get decent marks across the range of GCSEs which can be a problem for some (I know a young man who went to St Paul's and was off the scale for maths but only scraped in because his written English was, not to put too fine a point on it, poor. By most standards, not just st Paul's standards). There is nothing intrinsically surprising about the fact that there are a very small number of posh schools that a shit hot at maths. To extrapolate that across the entire population of posh schools and then conclude that this means all posh schools are good at maths demonstrates a lack of understanding of, appropriately, maths.

Ubik - why should universities lower their standards because state schools have? That's the problem the Cambridge professor was talking about. It's not fair to tell top unis to just waste the first term getting pupils to a level they would have arrived at 20 years ago.

A lot of people pay not for buying privilage sake, but for buying what they think of as a better education, it's not right that we aren't giving all state pupils the best possible education from the state. OK, the state will never be able to compete on sports and music equipment, but on academic subjects with students of similar intellegence level, state schools should be turning out pupils at the same grades with the same level of knowledge.

Most small private day schools would go to the wall if faced with that.

creamteas - there are many fewer barriers to entry to grandes écoles than in the past, due to admissions sur titres. However, that sadly fails to compensate for the dramatic decline in the standards of schooling in France. Pupils who make it to grandes écoles will almost universally have had their education "topped up" by their parents (either directly or by paying) to an extent that a British parent can barely contemplate. Why? Because "cultural capital" has been deemed the enemy in pre-18 education and anything that smacks of a "cultural capital" advantage banished from the curriculum. Did you know, for example, that the study of literature in primary school is not allowed? It could discriminate against pupils from non-reading homes...

@cream that's just not true. As far as cambridge goes. It might I suppose be true for Oxford and this might explain why that Uni is consistently less good than not just Cambridge but also imperial, Warwick etc for maths. Have you ever been interviewed for a place to read maths at cambridge? And got in? I have. And I did. And I described the process above. I wouldn't go so far as to say every single mathmo was an oddball but most of us were. The idea of any of us 'fitting in' anywhere is quite funny, to be honest.

I agree, Mordion. Maths is a slightly odd one to battle over. Classics, on the other hand...

I know it will never happen, but I would love to run a trial on Oxbridge places. So one half recruits normally and the other half has to take the best pupils in proportion to school type (eg private/state grammar/comp) to measure outomes

(Dons a hard hat and waits for the screams of unfairness, from those who think places should be reserved for the privileged clever rather than just the clever)

Places should be reserved for the most developed individuals - not for the clever, nor for the privileged (both of which are advantages of birth, not work).