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.

.

Social networking is important as is having worked for a particular employer. I know of accountancy firms mainly but when you are over 25 where you worked is more important than the school. Most of the top accountancy firms are very involved in local schools to try and get potential employees from more deprived areas. Your old school tie will not get you in but get all As and fail your druges test and you are out if the running. These firms all have a network. I meet colleagues all the time who say he is ex-Deloitte, ex-PWC. The same thing happens in the actuarial profession and the same school tie is not as apparent in those organisations but a commercial view and good networking skills is very important for these organisations. I go to network events regularly to keep up with contacts, whether buying or selling, the better you network, the better you get on.

I come from a family of good networkers. My parents, sisters, cousins. All high up in their careers. Not one privately-educated and therefore convinced showing by example how to network for dcs is just as good as private school fees.

"Not one privately-educated and therefore convinced showing by example how to network for dcs is just as good as private school fees."
Some people are just naturally good at social networking. Secondly losing the sort of parents with £33 000 pa to spend on Eton fees don't need the school to provide the "right" social networks. Maybe at less well known schools (especially day schools) some parents might be hoping their DC's will get into the "right" social network.

Increasingly the sort of parents who are paying £33,000 a year for Eton are doing so precisely because they think it is the only way they will ever get anywhere near the 'right' social networks. However as my OE chairman is very fond of saying, money can't buy you class.

I don't anyone would deny Eton is a good school.

The universities for years have given extra credit to the all As student from the worst comprehensives and it does not matter as everyone has always felt that quite fair. It was the suggestion more recently that there be firmer rules giving lots of credit to candidates etc whose parents had not been to university (even though parents got there from very difficult backgrounds) which could be less sensible a way to proceed.

I avoid just about all networking as I don't like it and I'd rather draw blood than attend an after work event compared with time here. There are plenty of ways to skin cats but it certainly works to generate work for many and lots of people enjoy it anyway (goodness knows why).

The universities for years have given extra credit to the all As student from the worst comprehensives and it does not matter as everyone has always felt that quite fair

Actually lots and lots of people complain at the idea that universities treating applicants differently.

mordion your being naive if you think its got anything to do with class as in hereditary peers and royalty. Also if your putting 2 or often 3 children through schools like Eton you're not a aspirational middle class couple desperate to rub shoulders with a few Lords with big 15 bedroomed piles and land as far the eye can see and say to your other MC friends over a latte that your friends with the Fotherington Smyths.

@happy I think it's you who is being naive. The people who can afford theses schools, and the people who actually become part of the social networks of the Cameron ilk are not isomorphic sets. All the money -and all the old ties - in the world can't buy you entrance if you haven't got 'it'. And if you have got 'it' then it doesn't matter if you are poor. But 'it' isn't an old school tie, nor is it brains, nor is it shared cultural capital (in the usually accepted sense of the phrase, anyway). And 'it' isn't a static concept.

I never said "It" was a static concept in fact I was trying obviously unsuccessfully to say it wasn't! IMO most people sending there DCs to Eton are already in the "right social network" because the money you possess to enable you to pay that volume of school fees already means that your mixing and knowing (if you want too) the "right people".

"It" is the rules of the club.

As discussed so frequently on other mumsnet threads. Knowing what a dinner jacket is, and how to eat asparagus.

And if you don't know thosebthings,nit doesn't matter how much money you have.

Read either Evelyn Waugh or Jilly Cooper. Both cover this subject very well indeed!

Or if you don't want to read them watch sitcoms like Only Fools and Horses or Keeping Up Appearances. Lots of comedies are based on the idea that people can't pass as middle-class regardless of the money or possessions they have.

Evelyn Waugh is also very good on how people from major public schools dispise the people from minor ones, who all dispise the guy from grammar school in his shiny suit and brown shoes.

@happy I'm sorry to shatter your illusions but money doesn't buy you access to the 'right people'.

There is often a bit of shifting ground over these things.
Certainly the person I met recently who told me his son is at Eton was pretty... well I suppose I would except for income call him working class but I'm sure most people who are polite of all classes seek to treat everyone well.

People change class too. Catherine Middleton's mother's family probably worked down the same mine as my great grandfather. Although mind you she was just an air hostess, "doors to manual"... Anyway all just a bit of fun, isn't it? Doesn't really matter. Everyone has the same issues however they speak and most employers want a range of people who are very good who will interact well with those whom they serve.

@seeker I don't have to read Waugh (although of course I have). I work in this sort of lunatic atmosphere. Luckily, not all the time.

Ah, but have you read Jilly Cooper?

"Who are you, and what have you done with Xenia?"

I think youll find things have moved on in the last twenty years we are no longer living in the world of Bridehead Revisited its all about money. The majority of plutocrats and billionaires in the world today are self made men. There's an excellent and rather worrying book about how much power and influence these people have hardly a Duke amongst them.
Obviously like most on MN my experience isn't your experience but the poshest family we know ex family home makes Brideshead look like a semi automatic invite to royal weddings etc live in a three bed terrace in London and struggle to pay the day fees for their daughter. The richest families we know or who my husband works for; ST rich list etc some are the sons and daughter of heridary peers but most are either celebrities or self made Arabs, Indian steel magnates owners of Russion gas fields investment bankers hedge fund manages etc their children may go to Eton and others and in a few cases depending on their age and nationality they themselves did but their parents are often not from this kind of schooling/background.

Nah. Her books are neither literary fiction nor chock full of SPACE or dragons therefore they do not register on my radar.

I agree with you Happy and who really aspires to having their children mix with throwbacks to a bygone age?

I am sure the beckham boys will be considered the new posh!

But they won't be running things. Neither, in the main, do dukes.

Brideshead is less the book to read than his other works. Also his letters to Nancy Mitford. Evelyn Waugh was a chippy and abject snob. Perhaps mellowing a bit with time, but not overly so.

I agree with Xenia: decent people of all classes seek to treat everyone well.

I know an absolutely lovely Eton family well who are second generation 'self-made', have millions and millions accrued through brains and accounting, bought into every trapping of the upper classes that they possibly could (to an extreme degree), but are still not quite there. Yet their second home is only a few hundred metres away from an old money Etonian home (titled) (the first family's first home is in Knightsbridge). This lot are dimmer by far (that's a very big far), also less charming by far - but are till 'accepted' in a way that the first family are not.

That's England for you. still.

still not till and Still not still.