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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I said possibly, seeker.

On discrimination at interview to Oxford - it's been found that privately educated students are disadvantaged when taking prior academic attainment into account and even more so when taking cultural capital into account as well. The private applicants are on average better qualified and more culturally aware than the state ones which is why their apparent success rate is slightly (barely statistically significantly) higher, but there is a bias towards state applicants in the selection process. This can be justified in that state applicants tend to achieve a little better with the same prior attainment at Oxford (though not at Cambridge).

@circular Through the format of the interview (this only applies to maths obv ). They make you do maths you haven't covered before to see if your brain can work the way they want you to. So it doesn't matter if you were diligent or on the lash at school - your school results get you to the interview but its what you do in the interview that gets you an offer.

They make you work by pushing you hard. I guess the top top minds still don't have to work hard even then but most do.

Mordion, it's a bit of a tome, but this thesis (on the social mechanisms in student selection and attainment at the University of Oxford), suggests that selectors are sometimes wary of those who look as though they may be wastrels (or good JCR types even).

@gelo I really don't know anything about Oxford. Personal experience at Cambridge indicates that while they might not actively want wastrels (quelle surprise) they'd rather a wastrel than a plodder. That might just be maths but I did know two definite former wastrels while there, and rather more than two active wastrels .

The thing about maths is its probably the subject which a very able pupil could teach themselves. I know this as thats precisely what dh did. He went to a poor inner city school had a succession of supply teachers. Fed up of this he skipped the lessons and taught himself A level maths, further maths, satistics and physics. He gained A grades in all of them in one sitting in 1987. Never thought about applying for Oxbridge as his school or parents had any experience of doing this.

A private education doesn't guarantee anything. My relatives and siblings who went to a comprehensive are the ones with PhDs, are lawyers, psychologists etc. The ones who went private are working in shops or unemployed. When such a stark contrast is on your own doorstep it does hit home a bit that private schooling isn't a guarantee of success.

I still do think a private education can be beneficial though but university education is more important to me than private schooling. I'd much rather spend the money on getting my dcs though uni.

To answer the OP (been away, been ill, can't quite face the rest of the thread):

We could just about afford private education, and were both privately educated ourselves, but choose state education for our children. We also fit your assumptions (though I would qualify the 'university' one to say 'we hope that our children will access high quality training or further education for the career / life destination they choose' - as e.g. more accountancy firms trial a 'degree equivalent apprenticeship' route, and as DD is notably strong in a non-academic area that she may choose as a career, a "generally regarded as good" university may not actually provide the best possible training)

In our case, the main driver is an informed judgement about the local schools open to our children (boarding is not an option). We happen to live in a town where the state options (even the 'comprehensive / secondary modern' ones) are better that the private options within reasonable distance except for 1 girls' secondary - and our oldest child is a DS.

Subsidiary drivers include the value (temperamentally, to us) of financial security (which we would lose, as private school fees would be a very significant stretch for us), and also the fact that we have great 'out of school' access to extremely good instruction in sport, music, dance etc etc by virtue of where we live, and this negates some of the perceived value (to us) of what a private school might deliver over and above a state school.

@mordion, quite a few wastrels at Oxford - they're obviously not that good at selecting them out. That's why I was rather surprised when I read the report & they were describing some candidates as 'risky'. I'd always assumed they didn't care, but in fact they do. (It may have only been the 'maybes' that this applied to rather than the definite accepts).

NeverKnowinglyUnderstood We also had that dilemna. State schools in our previous area were not good so we put our DCs in private school as both were academic and we felt they needed more than the state could give. When we moved here we asked for information from all the schools, the private ones responded quickly, the state ones did not, despite repeated requests.

Both came out with good results and went on to good universities but I suspect the major thing independent school gave them was a bit more confidence and "polish" than some of their friends at state school.

I don't think Oxford and Cambridge attract more wastrels than any other UK university...

WARNING TO OP

Threads like this always attract people who know two groups of people, the first group of people all went to a mediocre state school and have come out at the other end to be hugely successful, whilst the second group went to expensive private schools and are now loafers, bin men, stacking shelves at the local supermarket, 30 and still sponging of parents .... basically your worst nightmare about how you want your child to end up.

Personally anonnona makes a lot of sense. what makes a child a successful adult depends on a lot of factors - personality, education, peer group, parenting, environment etc

Good luck with your decision.

Thanks iyatoda. Actually it's not really a decision for me. I went to private school myself and would pay for it if I could for my DCs, but realistically I could only afford to pay for one of them, not both, and I don't think that would be fair.

Even if I was prepared to do it, I would be stuck which one to choose: the extremely bright younger DC who is totally self-motivated, on the gifted and talented register for everything, and bored witless at our "Outstanding" state primary, or the older "bright but idle" child who can achieve well above the rest of the class but only with constant cajoling.

So, would the younger one benefit more from the more academic environment of a selective independent school? Or would that child end up with brilliant results anywhere? Likewise with the older one, would being in an environment where the peer group achieves more overal be likely to get him to pull his socks up, or is he essentially a bit uninterested so there's no point paying for private education for him?

All hypothetical as they'll both be going to the local comp anyway. But I do wonder what would be best if I had a real choice to make.

Such threads also attract a lot of people who have no first hand experience of whichever sector is under discussion. Many obviously who do, obviously, before people show me their credentials!

Don't stand for bright children being bored at school- sit on the Head's doorstep til something happens!

Agree with seeker.

Both my children are bright. DS was slightly luckier in his teachers than DD through primary school, and when DD complained of being bored, I did not assume 'oh, it's because it is a state school and she's bright' because I knew that the school had dealt brilliantly with DS (marginally the brighter of the two, though with a 'spikier' profile).

So I contacted the head, and things were sorted quickly (that teacher has now left the school).

State schools can deal very, very well with exceptionally bright children - not all do, and even the best school may lapse with respect to a particular child - so don't accept it, and get something done.

I've been in and out of school re my younger child for years. She is now in year 4 and works with the year 6s for most subjects. The school says that is all it can do to meet her need for additional challenge. They can only be expected to teach to the KS2 curriculum not beyond etc etc.

I pay for her to have extra tuition in the subjects she is most able in. Her maths tutor has her doing year 8/9 stuff.

I don't think the school isn't meeting her needs because it's a state school. I just think their view is that they will do as much as they can within what they are already doing anyway (albeit for the older kids) but they won't put themselves out further than that. So as DD gets into year 5 and 6, if she's bored now she'll be practically asleep by then. She always gets top marks in everything, without even trying. I worry what will happen when she eventually encounters something she can't do standing on her head, and I think the school should be preparing her for that. There's only so much you can do with extra-curricular tuition.

"I just think their view is that they will do as much as they can within what they are already doing anyway (albeit for the older kids) but they won't put themselves out further than that."

Which is a c* view, and one that is inexcusable from any school, state or private.

Last year, I had a child in my class who was working at c. Year 6 level in Maths (in early Year 3). My school does not go up to Year 6 - and it is (rightly) expected that that child should make at least as much progress as anyone else in the class (note PROGRESS, not reaching the same absolute level), in fact more because he was so able (his target was to make a full NC level of progress in Maths during the year). So I taught him the Year 6 / Level 5 curriculum, while equally ensuring that the child working at year 1 level made good progress. That's what the job of the teacher is.

Any other schools available locally? You may find, in fact, that schools used to dealing with very varied intakes may be better (even if their Ofsted 'headline' level is lower), because they are so used to differentiating work at the individual child level.

If you are a stay at home mum like seeker or a teacher like teacherwith2kids then by all means camp outside your head teachers door until they cave in and model school to your liking, otherwise you either do it yourself, employ a tutor, move to a better state school or dig deep and pay for a private school.

I know a fair few folk who could afford independent education but don't use it, but when I say afford, they certainly don't have the cash swishing IYSWIM.

So private ed would have to be very very valuable to them, for the trade off.

The rich folk I know, virtually all send their DC private. It's not a massive thing to them, so as long as they're getting someghting for their money, they're not too worried.

I am far too mean and far too demanding. I pay school fees but I require a fuck of a lot for my wonga!!!! Both my DC attend schools that provide an educational experience I could not even vaguely aproximate however many tutors I threw at it, or however many hours I sat with my DC.

I am neither a SAHM or a teacher. I can't do it myself as no time (work full time), same reason with employing a tutor - no time to fit them in, better state school is bursting (34 in class - Y3). I can dig deep and I did.

No regrets and no apologises whatsoever.

iyatoda,

Just a query - why is it that you feel that I am in a better position to camp outside the HT office than any other parent who works full time?

As I assume more FT working parents do, I leave the house at c. 7.15 am, and return home between 5.30 and 7, depending on the evening (I appreciate that many working parents get home later than I do - I chooose to do my next couple of hours at home rather than stay at school until 9) - certainly much later than the HT is prepared to meet me. I did the conversation by e-mail and telephone, both tools that I believe that other working parents have available.

Seeker -since the discussion is private or state I think that the only way we could be populated by people with no experience of what is under discussion would be homeschoolers. Or the home schooled. And as far as I'm aware there is only one of those in this thread.

Well teacher, you are a state school teacher so you understand the ins and out of how the system runs/should run and most teachers don't have a long commute . I really don't believe that all primary school teachers leave at 5pm to 7pm. In my experience by 4pm car park is almost empty and by 4:30pm only car left is that of caretaker and nursery staffs.

I did try to get extra work for my DS1 when he was at his state school but after 1 week it was sort of forgotten.

wordfactory - one of my uncles (who certainly does have cash swishing around lucky beggar) sent his elder son to a (day) grammar school, and his three subsequent children to private boarding school (two sons to a second tier co-ed, daughter to a top tier single sex). His elder son could easily have got into a top tier private school but wanted to go to the grammar (after private prep). State school was an active preference for the most academic child in that family.

That was in Kent, however.