State schools and an easy life or independent?

[TremoloGreen]

We’re doing a bit of financial planning at the moment – our 5/10 year plan – and the issue of schooling has come up. We’ve been leaning towards state education for the following reasons.

A private education is very, very expensive these days and I’m not sure what you get over a good state school is worth the money. A not very scientific survey of people we know (I’d say roughly half are state-educated) suggests to me that the key to being happy and successful in life is a stable, loving family and a can-do attitude/’drive’. These things seem to have more bearing than whether one is state or independently educated.

We could, at a push, afford independent, with a bit of help from our parents. However, it would mean watching the pennies and no fancy holidays. It would also mean that we would both have to work very hard, full-time. At the moment, I only work part-time and DH works full-time but with a good work-life balance. Also, we’d be more dependent on inheritance to fund a comfortable lifestyle in retirement, and I guess there are no cast-iron guarantees with that. In the likelihood that we do get the inheritances we’re expecting, we’d have more cash to help our children with buying homes etc.

We’re in the process of moving house and the area we are moving to has a choice of very highly regarded single sex state schools (non-selective though) or a good, mixed independent school. All the primaries we would have a chance of getting into are ‘outstanding’. There are plenty of extra-curricular activities on offer in the local area. We’re deliberately not buying a particularly flashy house, so we have the choice of what to do with our money. Tying it up in one property/ having a massive mortgage scares me!

The reason we’re wavering is that state education is an unknown to both of us. No-one in either of our families has been to a state school so we don’t know the reality of it. The class sizes concern me, I don’t understand how each child can get enough input – will I really have enough time to do all the extra needed at home? People seem surprised that we would consider state if we can afford independent – do they know something we don’t?

happy
How many schools use the PreU?
How many Universities list it on their admission requirements?
How many employment adverts in the local paper mention PreU or IB rather than A levels?

What WinCol does says more about its reputation than about the exams they take.

I said which exams are being pissed around with. GCSE / AS / A2
The others are just tumbleweed to the state school pupils who the changes are aimed at.

As someone whose been perusing university websites quite quite a lot recently all I've looked at including UCL Edinburgh Bristol IC Cambridge Kings et al clearly list it on their university requirements, ditto the IB and if you're interested the German abitur. We live in a globalised world talkin universities are now recruiting from all over the world, gone are the days when the A level is the only recognised qualification.
Obviously if it doesn't apply to you your not looking for it but if it does you can easily find it.

Happy
I've just been trying to find out the overall results for the PreU at the June 2014 session.
Cambridge do not appear to publish them.
According to this newsletter,
www.cie.org.uk/images/181020-cambridge-pre-u-newsletter-issue-26-november-2014.pdf
just over 100 schools use it.
It is therefore an utter irrelevance in the big scheme of things.
Especially as they do not make it easy to check the exam data.

How many students, which subjects, which grades : basic professional transparency

And I just looked up DDs preferred Oxbridge course - no mention of Pre U other than in the "other qualifications" section.

BUT
This is utterly irrelevant to the OP as chances are she cannot afford WinCol

Nope, can't afford Winchester, have a girl and wouldn't consider boarding anyway. Still, it's both interesting and daunting to hear how education has moved on in the 15 years since I left school! Never heard of Pre-U for example. Also, I have never heard anyone refer to local day schools as St Elsewhere/St Cakes, although I have heard plenty of joshing about the "minor" public schools. Some social commentary to be gleaned from that probably ;-)

Just because it's mentioned in "other qualifications" doesn't mean they they don't list it as an admission requirement in fact the complete opposite. Any way as you've said it's of no relevance to this thread. OP for you information the Pre U is an alternative to A levels it's a linear course you don't do AS's and is more rigorous the equivalent grades to A levels carry more UCAS points. I'm told it's a more joined up syllabus.

I agree, happy. In fact all the universities I regularly come across when helping French bac candidates with UCAS (top 10 big names) have very detailed knowledge of the French bac and standard offers in French bac terms. As for EB and other major applicant groups.

Never say never Tremelo, by the time it is relevant Winchester may take girls and your DD may be asking you to board. PreUs (basically old style A levels) might also have become the standard sixth form exam. In that future TP might even have started expressing her views on education in a less categorical manner .

You want brutal honesty?

Aim for an absolutely tippety top school (that mostly means boarding now but may not in a decade) or move next door to the posh comp.

I can confidently predict there will be a yawning chasm between the best and the rest by the time it matters to your chiId.

In order to keep costs - fees -down St Elsewhere will be forced to move to cheaper premises and cut out everything that can't be translated into exam results. So they will have to drop off the rugby circuit because they won't have enough pitches or a brand new sports hall. They won't be able to invite "top" schools to debates because they'll have no dedicated space to accommodate them. They won't be editorially featured in Tatler - (the HM will have to raid the fête kitty to place a tiny advert at the back) so there'll be no obvious benefit to famous speakers in turning up to chat ...

Meanwhile the major public school a couple of towns down the road will be forging ever closer partnerships with the buzzy, thriving comp you drive past every day ...

If MPs are going to be restricted to their parliamentary salaries of £67k pa, might they not vote for the abolition of charitable status for the private schools they might previously have been keen to send their DCs to but could no longer afford?

As I have said on other threads, it's once the opinion formers (politicians, journalists, university professors, civil servants in the Charity Commission etc) can no longer afford their fees that the private schools will be doomed. This is starting to happen right now but the schools are continuing to write their suicide notes with their inflation busting fee increases.

No independent school is safe.

I see it like this...

1. No, of course other people don't know something you don't - you sound like you think things through more than most people, not the other way around...
2. Your personality is made clear in your opening post: you are neither a big risk taker nor career obsessed (don't want a big mortgage, don't want to risk poverty in old age, would rather like a work-life balance if possible). This indicates working hard, full time, whilst trying to bring up a family, and risking needing an inheritance to have a reasonable retirement, would be a big sacrifice for you, not an easy or happy one.
3. You can't have seen your private education as the be all and end all if you are thinking this way in the first place - if you thought it had been that incredible that it was worth making big sacrifices for, you would be acting accordingly however uncomfortable, but clearly it was sufficiently underwhelming that you can imagine alternatives.
4. You are scared of the unknown, despite the fact you must know lots of state educated people one way or another who have turned out fine. So clearly your fear relates to the fact it is outside your experience, not any kind of reality that state education is taking some huge risk with your children's future.
5. Going back to 2. and not being a risk-taker: don't tie all your money up in long-term, inaccessible investments on the assumption that you will never use private education, as you just don't know, yet... knowing you could jump ship if you really wanted to is often enough to encourage you to stay put, anyway, and money saved but earning less interest but having it more available if necessary is still one HELL of a lot more money than money spent on school fees...
6. In conclusion, the least risky approach, it seems to me, is to start out in the state sector and see what happens. Why fix something at great expense before it's even broken?

Your opinion formers won't be opinion formers in ten years time ...

The politicians will be in the pockets of the banks; the journalists will be moonlighting as tutors to the offspring of the seriously rich, university professors will be professing their love of huge salaries in brand new cities in the middle / far east / Africa. Civil servants in the Charity Commission? Hah! Who's going to pay them?

Opinions will be formed by people with money ...

ps being able to help your children to find somewhere nice and safe to live, able to help ensure they don't end up with too many/any debts after university, being able to help support them while they try to establish themselves in careers that are difficult to break into, not being a financial burden to them in your old age - these would be absolutely colossal benefits to your children...

"this is starting to happen now with schools continuing to write their own suicide notes with inflation busting fee increases"
I accept many struggle to fill all their vacancies but the likes of Eton, Win Coll et al are more over subscribed than ever before. Frankly I don't think Tory MP's have any appetite for scraping the charitable status of independent schools, firstly many have other incomes as well as their MP's one and secondly many of their top donators clearly can afford the fees and don't wish for the boat to be to be rocked.
granola you are deluding yourself if you really think "no independent school is safe".
Summer as Winchester is very over subscribed I frankly can't see it switching to coed any more than Eton will, and it goes against the it's deep rooted and long standing ethos; that of educating boys, the current infra structure is set up for boys boarding and I think they and a few other; Radley Harrow SPS genuinely believe in single sex education they all have enough parents who feel the same.

HappyG I agree Winchester and the like are unlikely to change but I think making definite plans for a very young DC's future education based on present assumptions of what is best is as futile as birth plans for first time mothers.

Rabbitstew, how very astute you are! No, I'm not a big risk taker. I like to have a Plan A, a Plan B and a Plan C!

You can't have seen your private education as the be all and end all if you are thinking this way in the first place - if you thought it had been that incredible that it was worth making big sacrifices for, you would be acting accordingly however uncomfortable, but clearly it was sufficiently underwhelming that you can imagine alternatives.

Don't get me wrong, I was very, very lucky. One PP said something along the lines of an 'Enid Blyton' childhood. Well it was. Albeit with slightly more evidence of eating disorders and drug abuse However, to give my children something like that now, would cost in excess of £35,000 per year. Plus £££ at prep age to realistically prepare them for such a school. So lovely as it was, do I think it was worth that kind of money? Not really. When I look at my friends from across the range of mediocre state, excellent state, local day school to highly selective household name public school, the type of school really doesn't correlate with either success or happiness in adult life.

Furthermore, there's no way I could afford boarding at an HMC school. We'd be looking at local day schools for about £15,000 per year. Now I can't deny that these schools have advantages over the (very good) state schools we're considering. But £15,000 per year worth? I'm sceptical.

I think I'll end up taking the very course of action you suggest.

Also, influencing my decision, I'm a very logical person. So unlike my parents and my in-laws, I'm never going to do something just because 'that's the way we do things'.

Tremelo I don't disagree with that pragmatic approach for the early years but I think it is as much a mistake making assumptions on your DC's best future education based on your generation's experience of private versus status as it is a mistake not remaining flexible for considering what school might work best later on.

Tremolo - I was state educated and do not believe I could have had a more idyllic childhood, nor be any happier than I already am in adult life. I wholeheartedly agree that the most important ingredient is a stable, loving family; not necessarily for worldly success, as damaged, unhappy people can still achieve wealth and/or fame, but for the more important sense of self-worth.

The class sizes thing isn't necessarily true, either. My DC have attended two very different London primary schools (one inner city, one leafy suburb) and they've never had fewer than three adults in the class (teacher, TA, trainee teacher, plus learning support specialists) in either. Whereas my friend sends her DC to a vair posh prep school (uniform bill was over a grand in reception!) where they sit in classes of 26 with one teacher.

A stable, loving family may, of course, choose to opt for a private education at some point! I know my family would have done that for me if they had felt it necessary, but in their particular circumstances, my older siblings, who started out in the private sector, were the unhappy ones who had to be moved, so you never can't always tell what will work out for the best first off, whichever way you do it!

Never can't... Hmm...

You never can't find someone who's offended on a baby names thread.

You never can't smell cigarettes in the house of a smoker.

You never can't be pedantic if you're a born pedant.

You never can't smile at a cute kitten picture.

You never can't stop wondering if the age gap between you and Eddie Redmayne is really impossibly large.

HTH.

Noooo -

You never can't not wonder if ....

talkin the IB is very much on the radar of universities. I did the IB in the 1983 and we all got university offers at Oxbridge, RG universities etc.

Zero. I wonder if ER (royalty of the film rather than other kind) is lacking in selfworth.