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.

.

Why feel the need to identify with "working class" or "middle class"? Those terms are value judgements in England, and not very helpful when trying to prepare your DC for a globalised world.

peteneras - glad you agree with me, then, that the analogy with Harrods is not great, given that King's Scholars pay less for more, which is more of a John Lewis thing than a Harrods thing, I would have thought.

Xenia - I'd have to agree with your daughter, but it is solely the result of big class sizes which fails students in the state system in this respect.

And John Lewis has an extremely successful business model, too. I just love the "click and collect." I'm happy to shop with the King's Scholar of the shopping world.

Most of our children will work in the UK. Very few people from any nation work abroad so class does come into it. There is a class system in France too surely based on this like university went to. India is riven by its castes. The US has its own form of class system too. Knowing your way around it certainly helps people.

Debating is also a personality issue. One of my children's teacher said he might well be very good at the subject but as he had never spoken in class he might as well have been doing the course by correspondence course (which was very funny and rather true). I am not suggesting the 92% of children in state schools don't like to debate points about the subjects and most teachers want a mixed class with a few talkers and some who are silent (and none who are totally disruptive to everyone else).

Also it may just have been my daughter's tutor group. It was just anecdotal.

Obviously it is sensible to ensure children have an ability to talk to people, learn how to shake hands,look people in the eye and all the stuff which is essential at work. You can learn that at home and at school.

Marfisa... Xenia does have a point. As a lot of people seem to point out (pro state school), exams are not everything. And yet, if it is pointed out that private school students are good in debating for example, it gets pointed out that, actually, that doesn't matter because in the end their state counterparts perform better on paper.

In German grammar schools, "participation in class" (i.e. talking) accounts for a lot of your final grade. I was very shy around the age of 12/13 - and I am still annoyed by the fact that in one particular subject, I continuously delivered A grades in exams, but never got an "A" in my actual school report for lack of talking (they used to give me a B-)! The reasoning behind this was that the German grammar school was meant to educate the elite who may one day be in leading positions, and thus, such a skill was seen as necessary.

Before people complain about the "elitism" of German education... once you actually went to a grammar school, you had the right (by law!) to attend university, regardless of your final grades. Getting a uni place is almost as easy as just "signing up" (fairly automated system, with universities not really the ones choosing the students).

^^ i.e. of course you had to finish grammar school successfully first, to obtain that right...

But you're the one who said, "they are already shopping at Harrods by going to Eton", rabbit.

The other thing to remember is, not all King's Scholars pay a reduced fee. Some volunteered to pay the whole whack even though there is an automatic discount of 10%. I personally know of one who lives (literally) a stone's throw from, yes, Harrods!

And yet, some pay absolute zilch! That's the beauty of Eton - the paupers rubbing shoulders with the princes!

Exams are not everything and skills that are not formally assessed (and get confusingly - and erroneously - passed off as "middle class" or "upper middle class" characteristics) are very often the deciding factor when there is competition for university or professional openings.

Bonsoir why does me identifying with working class values have any bearing on how well my dc will do in 20 years time when he enters the workforce? I have no idea what the world or the economy will look like in 20 years time and I have no idea what ds will enjoy doing or be good at yet. Based on his current abilities he might like to drive as he likes pushing things with wheels or perhaps he will build towers.

I think this almost panic about preparing kids for a globalised workforce is a bit much really. There are huge numbers of dc in this world that don't get anything like a decent uk state education and if in the future they do and there is more competition for the top as more people have access to the top then so be it. If ds is good enough, determined enough and wants to reach the top then I'm sure he will and we will support him every step of the way. But it is early days yet. Perhaps globalisation could result in a meritocracy? Or will it be a global elite based on the top top old boys and their equivalents? If it is the latter then it is irrelevant to 99.9% of us anyway.

Globalisation means that people are consistently ever more exposed to different cultures, practices and values - and certain ways of thinking "win out" and will be successful and they are different to the ones that won and were successful previously.

Rigid adherence to the British class system, values, status symbols (or inverted snobberies) of yesteryear is focusing on the past. We need to focus on the future. The French voted for François Hollande because they are frightened of change and globalisation and wanted someone to wave a magic wand and return them to the less frightening France of the 1970s. Ha ha ha.

I think the uk is fairly multicultural and is famous for its historical ability to assimilate different cultures into its own.

I'm not convinced taking on wholesale the working practices of BRIC (for example) would be of positive impact to the average European worker.

"That's the beauty of Eton - the paupers rubbing shoulders with the princes!"

As I said, having a King's Scholar for a son would make one a bit over excited!

I guess some parents will bring their DCs up to be global players (languages, trips abroad), and some won't. That doesn't mean the latter's kids will not make it there - it will just be a harder thing to accomplish.

Some countries also place a much higher importance on "international experience" than others. A lot of the people I went to school with also spent a year at a high school in another country (predom. the U.S.) when they were around 16/17 (the dream of most kids when I was young. I heard that these days, the same thing can be done in China...

The UK is multicultural. But it is also fairly insular (it's an island after all). The way you are sometimes led to believe that anything outside of the UK has no relevance to you almost reminds me of redneck attitudes across the pond. It will cancel out a lot of opportunities, if not looked into. While at uni, I did internships in my holidays. One of them was in the U.S. - not because my parents told me to. I just applied for it on my own. Helped me get my first proper job, because it made my CV stand out.

I agree very strongly, Tasmania. Insular and parochial attitudes will have increasingly less currency in the world.

So out of these fourteen well fed KSs, do all go to Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton or MIT or do any ever get refused?

Because the food elsewhere might obviously be a bit of a problem :)

?As I said, having a King's Scholar for a son would make one a bit over excited!?

It?s certainly more exciting that the 4000 or so run of the mill state schools up and down the country, I assure you. But of course, you?ll never know.

"So out of these fourteen well fed KSs, do all go to Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton or MIT or do any ever get refused?"

You obviously did not read or understand what the Head Master said in the OEA Review that I posted earlier. For your benefit, I?ll reiterate it here:

?Despite the shifting sands of university admissions, boys continue to be successful in applications to the most competitive universities. . . Boys are cannier at assessing the quality of what they will receive on a particular course, and that is a heartening development.?

As you see, modern Etonians have moved on. Most have left Oxbridge for those to study Old Norse and some antique languages so that they can compete in the modern global world, or to become vicars or professional story tellers.

By the way, plenty of DH's colleagues who come from abroad get their kids' school fees funded by the company. It's a little of a weird situation in that none of the British employees get it paid for, meaning the "package" their international counterparts get for what is essentially the same job is a lot more (factor in if someone has three DCs).

Reasoning being kids shouldn't suffer educational disadvantages from moving to another country - but if families remain "static" for a decade or so, the "disadvantage" is minimal...

Maybe being internationally mobile has its advantages!

^^ So many of the British employees end up sending their kids to the state sector, and their international counterparts (same job title/role) send theirs private. Seems not one Brit has ever complained.

Tasmania - don't underestimate the complications in sending "international" children to local state schools, even if they are in a family language. My sister and her family are in the unhappy position of having their expat benefits (including school fees) removed because they are in a country with a time limit on such packages. The local state schools would be totally inappropriate for her children in so many ways.

I know it's difficult... though I am assuming it's a lot more difficult for someone from the continent moving to, say, China or Saudi Arabia than the UK. It's just that sometimes, you can see that people hunt for the "package" rather than the job (i.e. they would have moved here anyway, and if they had moved here before acquiring the job, they would not have gotten the package).

One of my friends and her sister got her Swiss boarding school funded by her dad's company, as well as her uni in the UK, and her Masters at an Ivy League... set them up for life.

Now off to look for such a job... wink

Bonsoir - where is your sister based?