First post: what is wrong with considering private schools?

[dietcokeisgreat]

Dear all,

I just starting looking at mumsnet last week and joined today. Some of my work colleagues talk about it and i am thinking about options for education for my son, who is just 3 and thought i would take a look. Well, i just starting the thinking, so it is early days.
We could pay for school, or maybe not, we don't know yet. He is our first child, we are having problems getting pregnant again, so unsure if there will be more yet.

I was surprised at some really negative comments on lots of threads towards people posting for advice/ whatever about private schools. Why are they doing that? What is wrong with people thinking about different options? Or asking about a school they know that is private? Twice i read something 'well i can't pay for school' as a response. For me, its no different to whether or not people have cash for other stuff. I can't afford to live in the smarter part of town, or pay for a boarding school but that doesn't mean no one should be allowed too!

Just wondering...don't want to post something that will enrage others or be and be upset by responses ....

Thank you.

Value added in education is incredibly hard to measure with any semblance of accuracy at a macro level. However, I do think that the concept of value added for your own child is a very useful one when assessing and choosing between schools and when making choices about subjects and extracurricular activities.

I think VA when looked at in conjunction with the outcomes for low, middle and high attainers is very useful.

Obviously, they are all only tiny bits of data, but you can certainly draw some tentative conclusions. For example, a school where high and low attainers didn't make expected progrss but middle attainers did would be a cause for concern. Or vice versa.

Nancy re your earlier comment about the work around SATS - surely this isn't absent from the private sector either, even if your DCs are at an all-through 3-18 school?

Judging by posts here, children in the private sector may spend chunks of years 5, 6, 7 and 8 preparing variously for 11+, individual schools' 11+ entrance exams/interviews and (if applicable) common entrance. That would seem to be a much more drawn out process of "teaching to the test"?

NancyJones By obsessively teaching to the test they manage to get some natural L3s to scrape a L4 and some natural L4s to scrape a L5. Is this significantly different to the way preps. prepare children for 11 plus and CE exams? Genuine question BTW as I have no experience of CE.

*Hakluyt - that would be true if measures of VA were accurate. But they aren't!

The VA measures are crude, obviously. But broadly accurate. Certainly if used comparatively- this cohort/school has better VA than that cohort/school.

Bonsoir my understanding is, that like most statistical measures, there's a confidence interval - so it's less absolute than say exam pass rates, and should not be relied upon where a cohort is small - eg in a 1-form primary school - and this is something that's been acknowledged above. I don't think anyone is suggesting that it should be the only factor for assessment of schools.

Headline exam pass rates can appear more "accurate" - but as recent tweaks to how performance data is compiled shows - these can be manipulated too.

No I imagine it's very like preps prepping for 11+. That's one of the reasons I chose 4-18. I'll admit that there is continuous assessment but only what you'd expect at the end of each half term and used to inform planning as is good practice. They are selective at 4 and some parents of Y5 children are told their child will struggle to pass the senior school entry test but this is rare. Children in the junior school do not need to sit the same exam as most of it is teacher assessment for their entry. Children from state schools and other preps join the school at 11. I have no doubt they make sure their junior kids are suitably prepared but they most definitely do not spend months prepping for a test or doing any past papers.

I think there is an overemphasis on private schools to be honest when there needs to be more emphasis on how universities and work places choose to perceive people from different backgrounds.

I went to a good secondary school in London in the 90s. I now work in journalism, a profession significantly dominated by privately educated people. When I did my diploma the intake of the diploma was about 90% privately educated. That is of course in part to people from wealthier backgrounds being more attracted to journalism as a career. But then when I got into the work place it was dominated with tbh 'posh' privatley educated individuals who swore blind they were super lefty but hired other privately educated people, promoted other privately educated people and tended to form closer friendships with other privately educated people.

The same goes in other professions, medicine, finance, law according to some friends in it. Of course this is hugely annecdotal and there is very little research into this.

There are areas where friends of mine from comprehensives excel where privately educated friends have, so far (we are late 20s) seem to fear to tread. Charity-sector being one example and in setting up their own businesses.

But overall I think the dominance of privately educated individuals in the top earning sectors is down to more than the actual ability of many of them. I do feel in this country there are underlying class issues that go beyond private education, but of course, private education is a pretty good way to establish yourself in the upper echelons.

I feel too few privately educated people really do understand the level of priviledge that they have and once they are esconsed in positions where they are controlling who gets into the upper echelons either socially or financially in the work place or in admission panels at university, they fail to honestly reward talent as well as they reward their own kind.

Isn't it a good thing though that many kids from deprived areas don't have Oxbridge on their radar.

Er, no. No, it isn't.

Do you mean isn't it a good thing that kids who aren't bright enough for Oxbridge are encouraged to aim their sights more realistically? If so then I think that's a valid argument, but your lazy equation of 'kids from deprived areas' with 'kids who aren't bright enough for Oxbridge' is very telling.

ethel I think it's partly to do with having more confidence and feeling financially secured enough to go into careers such as journalism. You see a lot of privately educated kids going into acting/theatre work too. For a lot of them it would not be a financial disaster if it didn't work out. They often don't have 30k of student debt and nowhere to live. They can afford to give it a go. A lot of state school kids don't have that confidence or that back up.

It ties in with my comments earlier about wanting my dc2, who is academically gifted, to be able to study what she wants and encouraged into subjects such as textiles as much as maths. DH and I both top set both given narrow choices and told if science Alevels to aim for medicine, engineering maths then pgce or if arts based Alevels then law or teaching. Nobody said 'but if you'd rather by a dressmaker, here's how. Of if you want to be a singer/songwriter this is a good start.' Kids at private schools often have other avenues laid in front of them as possible. Follow your dreams kind if thing. We've already told our children to chose the path they want even if it's not lucrative. We will help support them if they have a passion. We are fortunate to be able to do that though.

Funnily enough ethel, I work in a finance profession which despite being well paid isn't dominated by the privately educated - quite possibly because it involves having to pass some rather nasty professional exams which require self directed study and dull and dogged hard work. They are without exception the hardest I've ever had to do and led to a resolution I was never taking another frigging exam in my life

The exams are paid for by your employer - provided you pass. So the intake is much more diverse than you might think, and several people in my training cohort who had been to private school/Oxbridge had a lot of difficulty passing.

Contrast with the law - or at least the solicitors - there you get hired after you've passed the exams, so snobbery about educational background still really taints the hiring process.

ethelb

I am in one of those sectors you mention, and I guess I have to agree. There ARE a lot of people from state schools here, but as you go further up the grease pole, there are less and less. More interestingly, we recruit the majority from state schools. People brag about that . But by the time you get to my position, it's 50/50. Next level up, it swings towards private schools. It's like there's a glass ceiling.

But I have to say that's not a UK phenomenon at my company. Virtually all my "equivalents" in the US (that I have met) came from private schools costing $20k+ per year (Gossip Girl type schools).

elltee Have you looked at the people above you though? There are less and less people from state schools at higher levels in my company. The ones that are came from the old grammar schools...

@keeperofsouls I agree with your example of a glass ceiling. I feel that it is little acknowledged. And that does make me cross. There woudl be little problem with the existance of private schools in themselves if this did not exist.

Nancy do you think the styate or private schools gave narrow career options?

elltee I assume you're an actuary !

State schools. That was both DH and my experience and I've seen it more recently at work.

ethelb I share your view that we need greater diversity in the industries that have so much sway and power over all our lives.

And I say that even though I have kids in private school.

I think it's important for fairness, but also for the most self serving of reasons; we need the brightest sand the best wherever they come from. We've seen what happens when industries speak with one voice and it aint a pretty sight.

This is one of the reasons I'm so (over) involved with the widening access scheme. I do think that many employers worry less about which school someone attended and more about which university someone attended and what they studied.

So getting more diversity into the most selective universities is, for me, a priority.

However, for that to take place, there must be a certain amount of responsibility for change within the state education sector. Schools and universities must meet half way I think.

Ha! We have a very good friend who's an actuary. He found out about it by chance when he went to an open day at Herriot watt university. He went back and spoke to his school careers officer who had never heard of actuarial science and had to look it up!

And my sympathies with the exams as we've seen how his took longer and we're far more difficult than all the others in dh's group of uni friends who did law like him or accountancy instead.
It's a profession which is vastly over represented by men though, is it not? Very few women seem to choose it as a career even though more and more women choose engineering or accountancy these days.

Wordpress I agree. The other problem that I am aware exists is that a lot of state educated teachers end up teaching in the state sector and a lot of private educated teachers end up teaching in the private sector.

I have a friend (again I apologise that this is so anecdotal) who is a state/RG university educated teacher who has taught at private schools where she says she was the only state educated teacher there.

She spent a lot of her time their agog at how little change there could be in the system when all the private educated, oxbridge educated teachers just went straight back to private school to inspire the next generation of private educated students to apply for Oxbridge. They had the vision and the knowhow to encourage lots of people to apply in a way that she, as a non-oxbridge grad simply did not. There is very little awareness among private educated friends I had who went to Oxbridge that this is an advantage. I was once even told that private school priviledge didn't apply to one of my friends as she didn't "ask for any help from school" with her application.

I am aware that Oxbridge are not the be all and end all of priviledge, but there is a significant skills gap in state schools re application to elite universities that isn't being easily filled by govenrment schemes like TeachFirst. And I feel in light of this there does need to be action within industry and from employers to tackle, or at least acknowledge the glass ceiling that exists in a lot of industries.

I agree wholeheartedly with widening access - my own level naivety about university was amazing ( I am the first person in my family to have gone to university and was the second one to do A levels). When I was in my early teens I was watching Grange Hill and they mentioned Oxbridge. So I asked my Mum "Where's Oxbridge?"

However, we need a more educated population in general. We are competing in a global economy and the old low skill work has gone. I think there is a very real danger of some young people becoming disengaged with society if they can't see any opportunities and/or don't have the skills to take what opportunities are there.

Sorry, had to do school run (or rather crawl with chatty but walking very slowly DD2)

I'm not an actuary (actually quite complimented by that as am not that clever!) but a chartered accountant specialising in financial sector tax
gives up all hope of ever seriously impressing anyone on MN

In the company I work in it becomes more male and whiter further up the corporate tree. Education's not so obvious - in the main, what we do requires quite a lot of skill sets so there are certain people in really senior roles who I am pretty sure didn't go to university let alone private school.

As a more general point, I do agree that better access to higher education is a key factor.

Pupils who attend private schools and grammar schools are twice as likely to choose maths as an A level subject as those who go to comprehensive schools. In fact most grammar school entrance exams have historically been very maths centric as an ability at maths is usually seen as a greater indicator of intelligence.

"I agree wholeheartedly with widening access"

In a competitive system where money buys results, encouraging state educated children to consider the best universities and supporting their applications will simply drive those with large amounts of money to spend to go even more and to go to even greater lengths to push their children ahead of the pack.

This is what's happened in relation to grammar school entrance in some areas - particularly the super selectives, whose tests have spawned the most astonishing growth in the tutoring industry in all areas in which they exist.