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

[happygardening]

Thought I repost the OP although the debate has moved on a little .
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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Tas I'm not sure what experience you have in universities, but I would be horrified if one of my PhD students thought that they could walk into a school and teach.

Most PhD students are involved in teaching in HE, but few plan the curriculum or assessments. My university is unusual in that they insist that all PhD students do a basic course in how to teach, but many have no teacher training at all. Knowing your subject is not the same as knowing how to teach it.

Teaching adults who have chosen to study a subject they are good at is completely different to teaching children and young people who may not (in whatever school they are in) be interested or talented in the area.

Tasmamia, do you believe state high school teachers don't have the relevant subject specific degrees? They do, they are a requirement of the pgce courses.

Teachers without a degree are vanishingly rare and are left overs from a much earlier time pre pgce.

The state system often has very rigorous performance management. I have an overview of this system at a local school and see no correlation between degree clarification and performance. Two of our teachers have phds in addition to pgces and neither is outstanding though both good.

Damn predictive text...that would be 'degree classification'

Tasmania is right about the shocking skills levels of some modern languages teachers in the UK.

It's such an arrogant assumption, isn't it? That anyone can teach?

I am old enough to have actually taught in a prep school for a while when I was 19. Completely unqualified. I know that probably wouldn't happen nowadays, but it's only very recently that private schools have been so very hot on qualifications.

creamteas - the PhDs I mentioned were part of a programme whereby you got funded for one year longer than usual if you agreed to take on more teaching responsibilities. They did get some sort of teacher's training as part f that. And yes, they may not be ideal for 11-year-olds, but for Sixth Form students, who already elected the subject as their A-level anyway, it may be a good taste of what is to come (at uni).

Butterycrumble - Hopefully, with the PGCE, this will improve. If that language teacher I mentioned actually did a degree in that language, I'd give up. The "rigorous performance management" certainly failed there. Basically, the teacher started mixing up tenses, misspelling words... when the kids were meant to learn from her... sad, because the kids were actually motivated!

It's such an arrogant assumption, isn't it? That anyone can teach? absolutely

Sorry to punctuate your current discussion but I?d like to go back a little up thread.

Wrong again yellowtip, what I said was DS was the only KS (out of about 14 King's Scholars* each year who leave Eton) who opted to read Medicine. The irony is that, of his dozen or so peers - the KS?s - around half of them have at least one parent (in one or two cases both parents) who are high-flying medics!

But you?re right on one count; Eton do have a large cohort leaving each year - around 260?ish including the 14 KS?s. I?d guess around 15 to 20 all told, would proceed to read Medicine each year. Traditionally, Etonians aren?t keen to follow a science degree. Their dominance in all other fields is legendary. But times are a changing.

In the latest OEA Review the Head Master writes:

?Despite the shifting sands of university admissions, boys continue to be successful in applications to the most competitive universities. Eighty-tree boys were offered places at Oxford and Cambridge. It is also the case that boys are increasingly looking at a wider range of university courses, both at home and in America. Boys are cannier at assessing the quality of what they will receive on a particular course, and that is a heartening development.?

*Eton admits 14 King?s Scholars each year through ridiculously hard (for 13-year-olds) but very competitive exams. Boys from all over the world do come to compete. There are 14 KS?s in each of the 5 year groups making a total of 70 King?s Scholars at any one time at Eton - a tradition that dates back to its foundation in 1440. They all live in a house called College and have special privileges e.g. amongst other things the meals they eat each day is said to be comparable to that from a 4/5-Star hotel!

? Traditionally, Etonians aren?t keen to follow a science degree. Their dominance in all other fields is legendary. But times are a changing.?

In the same OEA review mentioned above, the Old Etonian Medical Society writes:

?The OEMS continues to flourish, having seen tremendous growth in recent years. With almost 300 members and an ever-increasing number of applicants from medical students and junior doctors, it is clear that a career in Medicine remains as popular as ever amongst OEs.?

Leading the charge is Michael Haseltine eh . . . , I mean, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gurdon
Sir John Gurdon]] who won the latest Nobel Prize for Medicine. So watch out, all you great doctors of the world, the Etonians are coming!

What's the logic behind being given special food and privileges?

They deserve it, rabbit, because they are so ver' ver' clever.

It's the same logic as asking why shop at Harrods when you can shop at Poundland, I suppose.

Well, it isn't, really - they are already shopping at Harrods by going to Eton, aren't they?

I'm sure the non-King's scholars would be shocked to be described as shopping at Poundland.

"It's the same logic as asking why shop at Harrods when you can shop at Poundland, I suppose."
It really isn't, you know. But I'd be a bit over excited if my son was a King's Scholar too, so hey ho......

Are they called Oppidans? Perhaps they should be renamed "Poundlanders."

Whats a kings Scholar?

Getting privileges for doing well is what real life is like. So if private schools do so then that is one reason they so very much out perform state school and why mothers who made wise career choices which enable them to pay fees tend to choose them.

On the very first or second post on the thread on debating it reminded me of something one of my three who has now graduated said - in her tutorials the state school pupils didn't seem to have views or want to argue things. That is what was mentioned on the second post on this thread too about the state school.

Xenia - your children clearly hadn't met the state educated me... I never have a problem with the idea of arguing things through.

Mind you, maybe it is a good thing that the King's Scholars get more while paying less... although that doesn't make a good analogy with Harrods.

Larger classes make practicing debate a lot more difficult. In French schools the children do very little debating - classes are 30-35 right through secondary school. The only opportunity for debate is if schools create a debating club extra-curricular activity.

Yes, they all shop at Harrods. But even in Harrods, you have 'expensive' items, 'very expensive' items, 'b*dy expensive' items and 'insanely stupidly expensive' items etc.

But if you think the King's Scholars shop at the top end, you'll be surprised it's the other way round. The Oppidans are the loaded ones!

Been reading this on and off as it has rumbled on :)

State school teachers are required to have a degree in the subject they teach and then a pgce for the age range they teach. For example, I have a computing degree and an ICT 11-18 pgce. There is no such requirement in the independent sector. However, once in a school you can be asked to teach outside your specialism. So a French teacher may be asked to teach Y7 German to fill up the timetable for example, which isn't ideal.

A true comprehensive would have pupils from any and all backgrounds of any and all ability. As such, it would never get 100% A* as if everyone of all ability could get those grades, they would be rendered meaningless as a measure of ability. It is easy to say St Custards gets 100% A-C and Bash St High gets 45% therefore the difference is in the quality of the teaching and the facilities. Ignoring the selective intake, the parents' investment, the school's ability to get rid of underperforming pupils etc. etc.

We could in theory afford to pay for ds' education. Personally I have issues with faith schools, free schools and some academies so I await to see what schools we have available to us before I make a decision in the future.

It is all very middle class isn't it? I have always identified as working class (who have had a long culture of educating themselves after long shifts doing hard manual work btw) but I'm beginning to wonder about myself...

?Whats a kings Scholar??

Here?s the answer.

There is never much point in debating it. 50% of parents in the UK would pay if they could afford it, I believe. 8% do pay and most of them are pretty happy with what they get. Plenty of those who use state schools are happy with them. So we can just be happy with the variety which is there.

As I drove home this morning I saw two groups of children going to local state primaries and was struck by the huge difference - they are about 5 - 7 minutes apart. One group were 100% white (I think it's a C of E school) and the clothes were a very high quality. The other were coming off our local council estate of all kinds, a good few veiled etc. Now you don't get that in the local private schools which are much more religious and racially mixed than those state schools. It certainly surprised me to see it.

We've also had threads posting lists of the teachers and their qualifications at different types of schools. In essence if you like your children's school there is no problem and it does not matter if there is a different kind of school out there where other parents are very happy too even if it is different.

state school pupils didn't seem to have views or want to argue things

I really wish someone would explain this to my DS. I thought that sending him to state school would be a good way to ensure that he lacked his own opinions and wouldn't want to argue about things, but he has turned out to be highly argumentative and debates with me all the time! And his other young friends from state school are just as annoying.

Seriously, not being trained to debate doesn't mean not having views FFS. Every year I see brash first years who talk so much in tutorials including a lot of rubbish that they risk drowning their tute partners out. And I see the quieter people who are afraid to risk saying something for fear it might be wrong. On paper their work usually doesn't look that different. And by the end of the year it usually evens out, so that the big talkers talk less and listen more, and the reticent ones talk more and take more risks verbally. It's an issue of confidence, not of intelligence (and in fact, wanting to talk all the time or contest every little point can also be a sign of underlying insecurity).