At what point is going private NOT worth it?

[lexlees]

I was chatting to a friend recently and we got chatting about schools. Their only daughter goes to a top private school and it is a real financial strain on them. They reckon they spend 40% of their net family income on school fees and extras. All her wages go towards the school fees and even then only covers 2/3 of it - the remaining third comes from her husband's salary.

From my perspective I don't see how it is worth it. She maintained that it is not unusual. They just want their child to have 'every advantage' because both she and her husband went private.

Their girl is bright but didn't qualify for any bursary or scholarship and failed to get into the selective state school (they did try all three). Although the girl was top of her class in her state primary, she now feels so much pressure because she hasn't gotten an 'A' in anything yet. She is now no longer the bright one and it took two terms to make friends. I'd love to say she is a lovely girl, but honestly, she is an ungrateful and mean brat (she used to beat up/be cruel to my ds every time they were alone - then lie about it - hence I don't bring my ds anymore to their house).

They are putting minimal money into pensions and have only 'one term's worth' of savings. They haven't had a holiday for two to three years, never eat out and hardly buy stuff (except for stuff for their daughter - so she doesn't feel 'left out' at school) as they have a mortgage as well. They also don't have parental financial support or expect much of any inheritance either. I feel like my friend has changed into some penny pinching miser, always working out how to save pennies and she is just worn out from a low paid job!

It got me wondering if other people are just making ends meet to send a child or children private. Is she correct that it is normal? At what point does it become NOT worth it.

Greenleave if you doubt what I am saying feel free do a search on "music grade" on these forums.

www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/forum/11plus/index.php

Grade 8 is not the norm. nor did I say it was. However, grade 4 or 5 is not uncommon.

A good few hundred local children sit the music aptitude test in my area. 300 or so go through to audition (my DC being one of them :-)). My DS has been doing a 30 minute lesson once a week for just under two years. He practices for 15 minutes three times a week.

To be honest, I'm surprised it took you a year and a half to realise they were not making any progress. Did you not ask about gradings or listen to them play?

She was having fun at the group lesson hence I hesitated to pull her out until came to the point that I didnt want her to carry on wasting play time at school any more without much progress. She is a "good" pupil in a sense that she thinks only her school music teacher was correct no matter what I tried to correct her then when she started with the private tutor then she agreed that mommy was right, she has been progress really really well since. There are other music lesson at school too and my daughter also doing piano grade however with a private tutor from 4 years old, she played in school concert and any chance she has at school as apparently all children who is doing lesson from school havent even done grade 1 yet so she is better than all her friends in piano at the moment. My daughter's piano tutor now also is a tutor of few other children in my daughter class as other parents had to pull them out too because slow progress. She although always enjoy the lessons at school though as she said it was fun

Dont even make me start on the foreign language at school:))!!

Greenleave my daughter also doing piano grade however with a private tutor from 4 years old

I can honestly say that I don't know any children who started learning the piano at the age of 4. I know a couple who started the violin then though.

I know a couple that started piano in yr2 but the majority start in yr3.

We started very mind mixing between singing and playing for fun and she loved it(we always have a private tutor comes to us though) the only started doing grade from 5 yrs old.

The case of grade 8 boy at year 5 and only taking 20mins school lesson to me who has learnt music is phenomenon whatever instrument it was and it must come with alot and alot of practise at home

One of my friends is currently the girls' games mistress at a £22k per year prep school. Before that she was the sports teacher at the state primary school two catchment areas down the road from me. She doesn't duddently lose or gain skills when she switches between the state and private sectors.

Grade 8 by end of year 5 age 10 or so is certainly unusual but some children are just particularly musical. My had grade 8 singing and trumpet at aged 12, grade 5 theory and was working on grade 7 piano. he did grade 8 drums too although that was later. That is pretty unusual too. He is quite musical as is the family and he was the best for that age of the 5 children.

Anyway it is not really a private/state difference as plenty of private and state school pupils have one to one music lessons out of school time. I pay about £600 a year per music subject for the children at school for a lesson a week in term time.

I know a couple of children who started piano whilst one of them was a toddler in nappies.
He used to push his older sibling (aged 4) off the piano for his turn
It happens sometimes, but agree it's not the norm.

I'm often amused at the grade 8 requirements for scholarships and bursaries even though less can be stated the competition is stiff and I hear that quite often the 8 is what you need.
Whereas the real musicians who parents and teachers don't expect them to collect grades can gain a free/ very low fee specialist music education, with very little in terms of passed grades.

To all parents who have children doing foreign language at primary school pls can you let me know how they are doing? My daughter is at state school doing Italian and can only count(yr3), she has been doing after school club for French but I had to drop and hire a tutor as she could only say bonjour. As foreigners, learning another language to us is important, I find my daughter stays no chance at foreign language from her school to be able to do basic communicate not mentioning any reading or writting

I don't know how things work now that there is lottery funding, but 30 years ago in some sports (rowing, lacrosse, netball) some private schools paid competitive salaries to coaches and sports people who played and coached at an international level. some private schools also still have very good facilities.

Some private schools provide as little sport as they can get away with.

The key here is some. State schools have to meet a range of criteria and serve all pupils. Private schools vary greatly and can specialise in whatever they please.

My dd did Italian but was H.ed so it's different.
She did the ks2 language topics from year 4 but added French and German too.
Does your dd practice during the week, or use any websites.
If it's very important to you I'd recommend a tutor tbh.
Your dd is lucky tbh, many state schools don't do these clubs at all, when dd was at primary (until y4) it was unheard of in our area.
My friend has a business supplying teachers to schools and had no schools round here

My point was to an average child only learning 20mins term time lesson at a state school the best I could hope for was grade 2(from my daughters' school), that was the reason why so many people having children at state school have to take private lessons from somewhere else either at home or come to the tutor's house(and this comes with a cost, its normally £25/30 mins if coming to tutor's house in london so you easily pay £1000 or more a year for 3mins lesson a week and it doesnt go with concert etc where you have to pay extra. For me I have to pay more for tutor to come to us because we cant arrange child care and we want our child have a totally free weekend and with a nanny cost on top of it as on that day we need someone picking her and staying at home with her

NB, going to a school with a talented netball teacher does not help much if you just aren't that good at netball.

There are absolutely no grade 8 requirements for any of the schools at which my children have won music scholarships, no way. They do indicate the standard you should have reached but you don';t need to have passed a particular exam. My children just like the notching up on the belt of certificates - we're that kind of family and it certainly is not a doddle to pass a grade 6 - 8 never mind grade 5 theory.

Green my twins' school did French from age 4. My boys gave it up after GCSE last year aged 16 - their least favourite subject and only B for one of them. So much for starting at 5. I think starting at 11 makes very little difference. I am afraid the UK is not very good at languages and you really need to do A level to be quite good. I did A level german at school and it's still pretty good today. I can understand French (did O level) and speak it a bit but it's not great. I wouldn't want a well educated 15/16 year old in an English school to have no foreign language GCSE however. I see that as a minimum for a good education.

Sorry my typo I meant 30mins lesson in my previous post regarding to the £1000 fees

Deo

I'm sorry but it's a few pieces and scales.
I know people who have grade 8 and when you ask them to play something. They can't. All they did was play 27 pieces and know their scales.
Grade 5 theory is only a level 2 qualification and a distinction equiv to a GCSE A -C.

I do know what you are saying about the grade 8 requirement, but as I said competition for scholarships and bursaries pushes the standard requirements.
They won't advertise this so not to put potential applicants off and I think this is a good thing. Of course some will/have received bursaries with less, but it makes sense the bar will be set at the highest when competition is stiff.

I do find it strange when people seem to forget that they are paying fees for their private school children and seem somehow surprised when state schools can't offer the same "extras"!

We havent planned for secondary yet, I just came to learn about 11+ recently but to me learning foreign languages when we are young(learning in term of being able to communicate while travelling) is important. We go to France at least couple of times a year and I wasnt particularly happy after 2 years doing French after school club she cant speak any at all, I asked other mom in the class and they said the other children cant really speak any either. To be honest I cant understand why its so bad as I asked her what did you do and she said having fun, singing, I was trying to ask her to sing for us but she cant sing any song at all so I had to drop and hired a tutor come to us instead and the progress is phenomenal, it comes with extra cost though. Now Italian is an official language and my daughter class started learning it from yr1, she can only count now.

I must add apart from the extra curr activities then she is doing really well(free readers at young age, lo es reading so much that read the 7 Harry Porter books and even remember all spells, read them again at end of year 2 as she loves the Harry Porters books and she is very good at maths as we help her with maths- this might come from us as we both did maths and work in Quant/Finance fields dealing with all aspect of maths daily)

merrymouse my local state secondaries (part of a consortium) play against the local private secondaries regularly for Crticket, Rugby and athletics and to a lesser degree basketball and football.

I should highlight that one of the state secondaries has an 11 plus sports aptitude test.

A fair amount of people in my area apply to both private and state with entrance exam results being the deciding factor. Certainly the state selectives are very much sought after and often children who fail to get in then opt for private.

3 of my children won music scholarships at 12+ so I know a fair bit about it.

Anyone who thinks getting a grade 8 is easy is very very wrong. If it's so easy and if grade 5 is so easy go off and pass it.

I passed 4 grade 8s including almost full marks in grade 8 theory. The idea that that means I just learned a few pieces for one exam is just ludicrous. The whole of my life i've played and sung and all that is founded on the music I learned as a child. The exams are just part of that but were an important part. You can be brilliant at music and play pieces of grade 6 or 7 level and take music scholarship exams. I know the people who do the auditions for them. They can hear perfectly well who is good and who isn't and whether you have the exam or not doesn't matter but whetehr you are at the standard required is usually obvious pretty quickly.

Greenleave My point was to an average child only learning 20mins term time lesson at a state school the best I could hope for was grade 2 you do realise that very few children would learn an instrument at a decent grade level within a couple of years if all they did was a 20 minute lesson a week. The practice they do at home is what makes the difference.

Bertrand

I think on the whole there are some good state schools who offer a wide variety of extracurricular activities and do a good job.
Of course this isn't in the same league as you can find in most private schools.
We never expected anything from dd primary and when we found the state couldn't offer what she wanted we decided to H.ed.
Then dd asked to audition for her current school. No way would we expect a state school to provide this.

I must admit that since being on here though I have become aware of such a difference of quality of provision in all aspects of education from one state school to another and different areas too.

Sorry @mum: if the amount of so much more practise at home to compensate for low quality (paid) tutor at school then its not worth it. I'd like my daughter has a lot of time to play too so I had to pay for someone good so saving her time and effort for her progress.

I know how hard is it in progressing in music and everyone has to spend time to be able to improve. But I also know that if you have a very good teacher of your choice then with the same level of practise the progress is way better, we cant be naive about it

@Newlife, home edu will never an option for us and I can imagine it must have been very very hard

DeoGratias They can hear perfectly well who is good and who isn't and whether you have the exam or not doesn't matter but whetehr you are at the standard required is usually obvious pretty quickly

When my DS did his music audition they didn't ask what grade he was. What's more, as everyone sits the music aptitude test first there is no guarantee of an audition no matter what grade you are.

Greenleave No matter how good your DCs teacher is, they are not going to get your DC to a good level on just 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes or even an hour once a week.

Believe me I know a lot of children who are doing very well in music. Not a single one of them will expect to progress by relying on just that one lesson a week with their teacher.