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.

.

Networking doesn't just happen in professional circles though. Even at the local tesco, you are more likely to get a part time shelf stacker job if someone who already works there can put in a good word for you.
Years ago I got a relatively well paid Saturday job when in 6th form, the reason? Because my friends mum worked there, told us both when to apply, and put in the obligatory good word.

Of course, networks can happen at every level. But if you only know people who work at Tescos it is not much help to get a training place in a law firm....

So if those in privileged networks only recruit others in the network it is a barrier to social mobility.

This is one of the reasons that most universities don't take much notice of work experience on UCAS applications (excluding medicine and vet studies, but that is another story). We know that the place is not a representation of ability, but dependent on an applicant's parents.

in his deleted post, Yellowtip!

Not getting that job in Tescos would be a real bummer if you're long term unemployed, low skilled and need a break, though.

True rabbit, which is why it shouldn't be dependent on networks at any level.

But even getting a decent reference generally requires some kind of socially acceptable social network! I also sometimes wonder (I should get out more) what someone would do if they had been out of the job market for years, weren't friendly with anyone who worked in a job considered reputable and responsible by the Passport Office, and wanted to get a passport for the first time! Or wanted to get a passport for their children and the Head Teacher/class teacher of their child had a policy of not doing these for parents... who exactly could they ask, without contacts???

There is, I believe, a correlation between remaining long term unemployed and having no social network....

And those without jobs, are unlikely to have the money to pay for a passport let alone a holiday

This is one of the reasons that most universities don't take much notice of work experience on UCAS applications. We know that the place is not a representation of ability, but dependent on an applicant's parents.

Not true - got mine all by myself! That's incredibly patronizing if that's true.

Tasmania- you must believe that you are not typical. It is very unusual for 17 year olds to find work experience or go through the university application process without any help, advice or input from parents, school, college or some other more experienced person. Private schools and grammar schools are very good at giving this support. That is one of the reasons their pupils are so successful- and one of the reasons why pupils from more "ordinary" schools aren't. That is what I mean by the process is not fair. Some kids have access to loads of support and help. Others, generally the more disadvantaged group don't. This is not an acceptable situation.
Your self determination is admirable, but it would be a mistake to extrapolate from your personal experience to the generality.

I suspect law is not the best career to pick if you allege networks/connections given the standard recruitment procedures and paid holiday vacation schemes. Journalism is a better example.

However I agree that if parents can offer advice so much the better. I have had children who have not wanted any and spurned any offer I might make actually... laughing as I type.. not that I can help them much anyway.

I think it is more horizons... if everyone you know never works or the only successful person you know is the local drug dealer it is hard to envisage for yourself as as teenage girl a career as an actuary say. If your parents are actuaries then you might well look in that direction.

Passports - people ask doctors. I always do my cleaner's passports. I suppose in that sense I am in her network.

?I distracted myself by counting the number of houses inhabited by OEs and current Etonians beyond those to which I've already referred. They're like a rash around here?

Funnily, I?ve just posted an article on inflation on the Further Education arm of MN just to pop in here to discover there?s even more inflation flying about!

I mean, first there?s an OE in the neighbourhood and then no, two. And now, ?counting the number of houses inhabited by OEs? er. . . sorry, ?inhabited by OEs and current Etonians.

What you?re asking us to believe is, you know every householder, tenant, squatter etc. in your village and which school they attended (all Eton, of course!) and it seems to me you don?t have a rash there but a swamp of present and past Etonians.

Tell that to your grandmother, she might believe you but I happen to have this publication and over the past few months I struggled to find 3 or more members (other than obvious relatives with same surnames) living in the same locality (postcode). But of course, the (phantom) Etonians in your village happen to have been missed by the publisher?s radar, as usual.

Re dodging your question, you haven?t addressed one of my long awaited answers either and I?ll ask again: so which mega-super grammar school your DC attend(ed) where they dish out A*s like confetti?

rabbit and HG, that's the greatness in the Great Britain that we happen to live in, isn't it? We have free choice to choose private or state education, single sex or co-ed, boarding or non-boarding and even free choice to determine my gender!

Wow!

Not quite sure what the OE issues are on this thread which seems a bit off the point. I had an email from one over night and spoke to another one last week and met someone with a son there the week before, although I cannot claim I can see their houses from there. Is there some argument about Eton on the thread? It's a good school.

peteneras - of course we have free choice on your gender if you choose not to clarify it! I could, of course, envisage you as an amorphous lump, but I don't see how that would be preferable. You clearly, after all, want to establish some kind of personality on here.

Xenia - the only argument about Eton is whether there is anywhere in England where more than 3 Etonians are living within the same postcode .
Personally, I think looking at a webpage advertising nubile young girls looking for men is not the best place to assess where all old Etonians live!

peteneras, however, clearly thinks this webpage is very enlightening! Is peteneras actually trying to make Eton look bad?...

Still, at least at the top of the page, it looks very respectable - OEA September 2012.... and then come the ads below.

Can't decide which bit I like best- the gloriously egalitarian real estate picture, or the ads below. I wonder if The Man With the Chest is an Old Etonian.....?

"At school you are engaged not so much in acquiring knowledge as in making mental efforts under criticism. A certain amount of knowledge you can indeed with average faculties acquire so as to retain; nor need you regret the hours you spent on much that is forgotten, for the shadow of lost knowledge at least protects you from many illusions. But you go to a great school not so much for knowledge as for arts and habits; for the habit of attention, for the art of expression, for the art of assuming at a moment's notice a new intellectual position, for the art of entering quickly into another person's thoughts, for the habit of submitting to censure and refutation, for the art of indicating assent or dissent in graduated terms, for the habit of regarding minute points of accuracy, for the art of working out what is possible in a given time, for taste, for discrimination, for mental courage, and for mental soberness."

It's a good school Xenia sure, very good, but it doesn't merit these silly hushed tones. I probably have a smaller garden than yours. My bedroom looks directly onto the house of one OE (well he has two houses together actually, but I didn't count him twice). His three sons went to Eton and his four BIL too (one of whom still lives here but I didn't count him either). And from my garden I can see the house where two sons went to Eton (their mum is a good friend of mine) And up on the hill, looking down on us all, is another OE (who went to the same university at the same time as me) who has two sons there now. Another OE moved out from a house round the corner not too long ago too. In your line of business you're going to come across them all of the time. The point is it's not a big deal. Just to leaven it a bit, from my bathroom window I can also see the vicarage where a Habs teacher lives [envy. Lovely house] whose two sons went to Habs too.

Doesn't everyone know everyone in a village? It would be very odd not to, surely?

grovel not sure if I missed something but where does this quote come from as it clearly is in quotation marks? Or are you saying it?

Xenia, as far as I know there wasn't an argument about Eton on the thread; peteneras just turned up and started proclaiming that Eton was great. I then became puzzled as he put forward some rather contradictory views about Eton and Oxbridge. For instance, it is apparently a wonderful thing that Eton admits pupils from poor families in their quest for the best and brightest, but it is a bad thing that Oxford and Cambridge use contextual data in order to admit state school pupils in their quest for the best and brightest. This view is perhaps all the weirder given that King's College, Cambridge (which has close historical links to Eton) has been making an effort to recruit state school students long before UCAS started putting contextual flags on applications.

Anyway, this is first time I have seen peteneras on a thread during my MN lurkdom. I recognise celebrities such as yourself, Xenia, and you, seeker (waves). But I gather from other posters' comments that peteneras may already have form for this sort of thing.

happy, it was written by an Eton master in Victorian times.

@marfisa Peterenas seems to be a bit of a Louis Trevelyan. It would be funny if it wasn't a bit sad.

Also, scary.