WHY the general assumption that private schools are better?

[tootsietoo]

I know this is similar to other recent threads, but slightly different!

I know very little about education - never worked in the sector, don't have many friends working in it, never been interested til children arrived! However, in my limited experience (DDs 6&7 at local primary school) the level of professionalism of the teachers is impressive! There seems to be such a comprehensive structure for planning progression and for assessing children's attainment, whilst the teachers seem to have the freedom to work with the children to inspire them in that they choose topics which interest them and can tailor classes and working groups to match children's abilities.

Yet within my group of friends there seems to be this inbuilt assumption that if you ever can pull enough cash in then off to private school your children will go. I also frequently read on here that the existence of private schools is unfair because it means only a few children will have the best opportunities. Which seems to assume that all private schools offer the best opportunities.

Is this a hangover from the 70s and 80s when we all grew up? Were state schools much worse then? Why is it just assumed that private schools offer the best education? I know private schools have more money therefore usually have the glitzy facilities, but surely it is down to the person standing in front of the children day in day out who is the really important part? I recall that at my small private girls day school I experienced the most inept teaching methods imaginable and I am told that at private schools today there is no requirement for teachers to be qualified! I do appreciate that my children are at a good school (that is, classified by ofsted as "good"), but are they all that unusual?

I think rabbitstew/Word have good points about there being too much subject choice/lack of guidance for the educationally naive. I went to a girls' grammar school in the 1980s but only about a quarter/a third of the girls in the year group went to uni - it's now a super selective and the majority go on to Russell Group unis. As well as academic A levels the school offered a business studies/secretarial course and many of the girls chose this plus 2 A levels. Although the brightest girls gained comparable results to those with 3 A levels they had obviously narrowed their options - unsurprisingly the secretarial girls all came from non-academic backgrounds.

Background also ties in with the "bright child will do well anywhere" mantra so often chanted on these threads. They always seem to start with, "When I got in to Oxford/Cambridge..." or ,"I won a scholarship but my private school was rubbish....". Obviously very clever parents will generally have very clever children - support them at home and send them to school with enough like-minded children - they will generally do very well. However, a bright child from an educationally naive family (and I don't mean a poor family at all) - send them to an ordinary school and I don't think they will do as well.

I'm afraid I don't know enough about the Scottish system to comment on the tables you linked to. But if it's anything like the English league tables you need to know a lot more about the schools before you can make any sort of judgement- what the intake's like, how low, middle and high attainers do................

"However, a bright child from an educationally naive family (and I don't mean a poor family at all) - send them to an ordinary school and I don't think they will do as well."

The chances of such a child getting into any sort of school except an "ordinary (whatever that means) one is very slim indeed.

And the evidence does suggest that bright children do indeed do well anywhere. If you compare the results of a wholly selective LEA with a similar LEA with fully comprehensive education they are broadly similar. If bright children needed to be segregated to do well, the selective LEAs would show much better results- but they don't.

Some bright kids will do well anywhere. Some won't. Plenty of bright kids are let down by posh schools, just as, undeniably, bright kids can be let down by state schools. But if a bright kid does well at a state school it's just plain rude, as well as ignorant, to trot out the 'bright kids will do well anywhere' line. The bright kid in question did well at the school they were at. It's not unreasonable to suggest that the school was probably a relevant factor in that 'doing well', failing any additional information about other possible factors.

martorana some of them do (Sutton and reading for example). There's selection and selection. The Kent model is clearly ineffective in every respect.

I guess I was using the word "ordinary" as a substitute for "anywhere". I'm thinking of the bright girls who chose the business studies/secretarial course rather than the third A level or most likely today, media studies/food tech/sociology instead of physics, geography and French. Herc got to Cambridge from her comp but what was her family background?

The older my dcs get the more I think bright children with the right attitude good work ethic, determined, resilient to knock backs, prepared to read around and research a subject will probably do alright in most schools. Their paths will be considerably easier and more enjoyable if they attend a school where there are enthusiatic teachers who are specialists in their subjects, little classroom disruption and are in a cohort of pupils who are equally bright and share the same aspirations. DH went to a school which had none of these but succeeded to gaining 3As at Alevel because he largely taught himself. We pay for ds1 to be educated in a carefully selected independent school because we wanted him to have the best chance of achieving his potential and enjoying his schooling. We did not see any state secondary schools in our area which could offer what we wanted.

The one element that predicts whether children are likely to achieve their potential, is interested and engaged parents.

I cannot comment on private schools in the UK, but there are a lot of private schools here in Mexico City and I worked at a couple of them as a supply teacher.
First teachers in the private sector here don't need the same qualifications as teachers in the state sector and secondly the school I worked in seemed to give all the pupils very high marks, which I reckon to be a marketing trick as people take their children out of a school where they are getting bad marks.

Of course a prestigious school can afford to be honest in its marking, but most people can't afford the really prestigious schools.

I went to a private secondary all girls school, my siblings went to the local comp. There was a marked difference in standards of teaching, facilities, opportunities etc., the comp being very poor in comparison. My parents would have somehow managed to send my sibs private if either of them had shown any inclination or been able to pass the entrance exam but neither of them did.

My best friend from state junior also went to the same state comp so I had a direct comparison of the two systems - at the time it was still GCEs and CSEs - I did one GCE early (Maths) and then 9 at the right time; she did one GCE full stop and about 6 CSEs. Opportunities were fewer for people with CSEs.
When we revised for our O levels together, her French (the main e.g. that sticks with me all these years later) was at the same level that I had been doing in 2nd year. Reduced standards in education. Obviously these have been mostly ironed out with the GCSE.
Sporting facilities - we had far more than they did, including our own swimming pool, so wider opportunities in sport choices.

Class size though - no difference. My class had 29 pupils in it. I know this, because our language lab (they didn't have one of those at the comp either then) had 28 desks, and I had to be plugged into the teacher's console (last in the alphabet) until they added another pair of desks.

Now I live in Australia. We thought about sending DS1 to the local private primary, because DH's mum knows the Principal and he said there would definitely be a place for him - but actually the state primary performs far better. And DS1's class has 19 students in it (smallish country town in NSW). The private schools in Aus are all, as far as I can tell, church-run - this private primary is Catholic (as is DH in name) but educationally it is beaten on all fronts by the state primary. We may send DS1 private for secondary, but mostly because the local high school is currently pretty bad in terms of bullying, poor behavioural control in classes etc. - but the current principal is trying to turn it around and we have 5 years before we need to worry, so we'll see. Private is comparatively cheaper in Aus than the UK anyway.

I don't care about the social side of it at all - I went to primary school with the council kids across the road, they were my friends - but the education and opportunity side, yes, it matters to me and DS1 (and 2 when he's old enough of course!) will go where they can get the best opportunities we can provide.

I know it's a cliche but as a bright kid with not well educated wc parents I probably needed private school to put me on a more level playing field with mc kids of professional parents at good state schools.

I'm not sure that our own educational experiences are particularly relevant to this debate- things are very different now.

grennie you'd think parental involvment would be key to academic success but actually that's not borne out by the evidence. In fact the first indicator of academic success is the educational attainment of the child's mother. Second is cold hard cash. Third is geography.

In France there is a great deal of research into the drivers of DCs' academic success. The most successful DC have a mother who is a teacher (WOHM - teachers' hours are very short in France - or SAHM) and a father who is a senior executive or business owner.

So - cash, knowledge of the school system, education and parental availability. It's the winning combination.

Family poverty has always been one of the main indicators for academic under achievement.

But it's important to remember that having money being a driver of academic success does not necessarily mean money spent on school fees. Children of affluent families do better in whatever sector.

Oh I'm not saying parenta

Indeed, Martorana. In France it is impossible to spend a lot of money on school fees (my DD's school costs around EUR 8,000 per annum and that is a very expensive school by French standards - most private schools cost 1/3 of that) and yet the correlation between parental affluence and academic success is extremely high in France.

I'm not saying parental involvemnet is unhelpful or has no impact.

Indeed, I suspect what many parents call involved, Bonsoir and I would call negelctful ...

I can also see how it would have more impact in France, where attainment at a high level requires parental involvement, let alone benefits from it.

And I can also see how in France parents would be able to help their DC as the NC is clear and followed very strictly in all schools. Also, the curriculum in later years education has been far more consistent than here in the UK.

I think things in the UK have become dreadfuly polarised in education, with wealth playing an ever more greater part. With all the will, and all the eductaion in the world, it's very difficult for parents to bridge all the gaps that wealth offers.

I think as parents this is often a bitter pill to swallow.

Interestingly, a new DC has just joined my DCs class (junior school) as a DC left just before Easter to go to a private prep. On seeing the mother of the new DC I realised I recognised her and it happened that her DC had done a toddler class with mine.

I got chatting to her yesterday and asked which school her DC was in previously. She told me he had started in a state primary. Then moved him to a private prep. making it clear to the school that they were doing so for the 11 plus preparation. The school reassured her that this was something they had a high success rate in and that a large number of children were attending for that reason.

The mother has now moved her DC back to a state school. The reason she gave was that the school continually avoided the issue of measuring performance and were far from clear as to what progress was being made etc. As my DH pointed out, there could well have been other issues which the mother is not prepared to discuss, such as change of income etc.

I would not say that this suggests for one minute that State schools are better than private preps. but could demonstrate that standards differ amongst private schools as much as they do state schools.

From my own personal experience, I have a relative who had a private education in London. They left quite some years ago and are still struggling to decide what to do with their life. They seem completely amazed that I had, in their eyes, a more inferior education, yet managed to have a good job, a loving family and become completely financially independent (they are still living at home).

The impression I get is that some (unfair to say all as this is just one example) private schools direct children in their education to such a degree that they blindly follow the advice they are given without ensuring that their own preferences are mapped onto that advice. An example of this is where Private schools highlight which GCSE's should be taken to lead up to which A Levels they will need to get into XYZ University (admittedly some super selective state schools do the same). The end game is very much directed to the University channelling, hence the higher numbers of privately educated children gaining access to University.

I compare this to my experience where the careers advisor looked at my performance at school, asked about my preferences and then showed me a selection of channels I could take. There was little emphasis on University but there was a lot of discussion about what types of jobs I would be interested in.

Could this be a result of days gone by, where state school provided a means to getting a job and become independent as soon as possible whereas private schools were for the privileged who had the financial backing to allow them to take their time in deciding what they wanted to do and as a fall back would gain employment with the family or through family connections?

It would be interesting to see how many CEOs of the top 500 businesses in the UK had a private education vs those with a state education.

Another point to consider is that comparisons between state and private performance is difficult as private schools are not obliged to report the same level of details (if any at all) in the public domain as state schools, making any direct comparison almost impossible.

You might need wealth to bridge the educational gaps but if you only have wealth without education it can be hard to know what to purchase. Buying educational opportunity for your DC is not an easy market for the uninitiated.

Something which always puzzles me on threads like this, and the other threads about selective education and education in general, is the assumption that the system should be whichever suits the highest ability cohort. Is that because we all have above average children?

I don't think that assumption exists, Martorana. I think people want all DC to get the opportunity to fulf their potential.

Martorana, I don't know, do you? (joking)

I think, rather than everyone thinking that their child is above average, they want them to achieve their best. Admittedly how their best can be achieved is not easily answered so the assumption can often be drawn that a high performing school may be best placed to enable this.

That never quite comes through, though, to be fair Bonsoir.

What we tend to get is an emphasis on how cruel it would be to make clever children associate with others, how bad any sort of mixing is and how fatal to all great enterprise.... and then a vague suggestion that, once you've taken all the bright children out of it (which is always a minority) and push them and stretch them, you make the schools that are left 'just as good' in some unspecified way at 'vocational' subjects.