Objective input please! Private or state??

[aparadoxofeducationaloutlook]

Name changed for political objectivity!

DH and I are on opposite sides of this one for our DC (3). Considerations:

• good possibility of DC eventually getting into good secondary.

• primary schools in area very variable in quality and 'good schools' significantly oversubscribed.

• DC has no statements etc. that would prioritise their application.

• financially able to afford private, but tightens finances so that many luxuries will have to be cut back, such as holidays.

• concerns about the general direction of state education due to governmental input

• one of us a teacher in state school

• grandparents likely to offer to contribute to costs of private education

• social concerns about child becoming entitled in private environment.

Other than visiting schools themselves, what do we need to consider when making this rather tricky decision?

All (respectful) opinions gratefully received! Thanks!

Don't be blown away by facilities at the independent schools, Olympic rowing lakes are great (if you like watersports) but if the ethos doesn't suit you or your DD then neither of you will be happy however good the theatre, art studio and library are. I always advise people to visit independent schools a couple of times, I personally don't like open days, polished smiling children telling you how wonderful their school is, immaculate grounds, (my DH's school used to hire goldfish and plants for their annual open day and send them back when it was over), smiling teachers. Try and go on a normal day and if possible watch and talk to pupils when they're just going about their everyday lives also watch how staff interact with pupils. Do you personally like what you see and the feel the place has.

Our school spent the money on plants - and they were permanent!!! Even more arrived before ISI turned up! The girls said the Head had a Chanel suit for such occasions.

My DD hosted loads of parents on tours. Yes, she was enthusiastic but also honest and knew the school inside out. Nearly every tour we have done has been positive in terms of getting helpful information. Always given by pupils. Going back to look at one school again, we were hosted by a parent. Now that was a gushing advertisement with no handle on reality. Definitely observe a working day but your host may be very biased and handpicked.

Mmmm parents hosting prospective parents that is interesting. If I did it I would hope to give an honest opinion. On our forth look at DS2's school we ate lunch with the boys, (we had a choice as to who we sat with, all different age group ) the ones I sat with were very honest, warts and all.
In my experience of some other schools I find that they're wheel out their most enthusiastic buffed and polished children who take their responsibilities very seriously and often worry they'll say the wrong thing and answer any questions rather predictably.
One school we looked at years ago the pupils looked terrified and seemed unable to hold any conversation or answer even the simplest question. I work with children and have a reputation for encouraging even the most monosyllabic teenager to become positively loquacious but even I gave up in the end.

I think if you have only one child you will be able to afford private schooling.However if your child is sociable she will probably always want friends round.That's a lot easier if the friends are local and they all attend the local school.It's also much easier to do local after school activities such as Ballet and swimming.State schools are good at developing well rounded individuals and teaching coping strategies.
Unless you have a very local private school your dd's friends will be much harder to play with and activities would probably be at the school.
I 've transferred my children over to independent school mainly at secondary stage ( one in year 5).They have all mostly been put in top sets ( minus one - he is pretty Dyslexic).State primary has taught them adequately ( some good/some bad).The biggest difference I've noticed between the Two is better behaviour in the Prep,much better music and very good peripatetic teachers,better sports coaching ( if you are interested in a prospective sports scholarship).Finally proper and earlier languages and Sciences.If any of those are massively important to you - go the independent route.

Watching with interest as we are facing the same dilemma for our youngest.

Lots of people are saying that kids at private school still get to interact with a wide range of people and develop an awareness that not everyone is so fortunate etc. I have to say that, having moved from a very rough primary to a naice primary when we moved house, my youngest kids pretty much live in a bubble, even in the state sector. I imagine that would be massively amplified by sending them private, people who claim otherwise are living in cloud cuckoo land.

However, lots of people breeze through life with very little understanding of how some people live, so it would not necessarily be a dealbreaker for us.

As you say tinkling many breeze through life meeting no one on either end of the spectrum super rich or grindingly poor. We live In a traditional wealthy rural community, most people are white MC, over the years at his independent boarding schools my DS has lived alng side a wide variety of nationalities.

My dd has gained a little bit of entitlement but she was a bit like this to begin with tbh.
She has caught posh though, it's quite funny, she talks with her same broad Lancy accent but a posh voice if you can imagine such a thing
I think you can keep them down to earth with a swift slap though just kidding.
If you don't let them become entitled and pull them up on any unacceptable behaviour or attitudes, it won't happen.

Whoops sorry, meant to add we are wc low income family, and at dd school there are dc from all walks of life.
Multi millionaire to sink estate. A very different type of school but shows that a lot of people make stuff up about private education.

tinkly it's the job of parents to raise our DC to be aware of societal differences whatever school they attend.

Some parents will do this, some won't. There are always threads on MN where parents do not wish their DC to mix with the poorer classmates in state schools, or seek to avoid the schools in poorer areas altogether.

The picture of happy tolerant diversity is overplayed IME.

I've always taken the view that my DC will be massively privileged wherever they go to school. Theyre fully aware of this of course.

How they have come to be so is something regularly discussed here in Casa GetAHaircut. Sometimes their view on this is more right wing or more left wing than my own of DH's. But that's as it should be with teenagers finding their own voices.

Having been educated all my school life in schools where the majority were Indians I firmly believe that educating children alongside different nationalities is the best way to promotes tolerance and understanding.
I do think it's harder to genuinely raise awareness of social differences (I'm not talking about the occasional visit to homeless shelters) because whether we like it or not humans seem to have a tendency to be attracted to those who we perceive share the same values as ourselves. At a recent work study day where no one knew anyone else and although we're all professionals we come from a wide social background it's interesting to watch how when we had to choose partners we all automatically drifted to the people we indentified as being from the same social background.

When I speak to friends and colleagues from developing countries or those who work extensively in those places, they are far more vocal about how all people in the UK should understand their relative privilege.

Mine are state (as to be honest we couldn't afford private but not entirely sure we would if we could. Not sure)

My sister has privately educated all her 3 girls and I have friends who have been privately educated themselves and their Dc are. I had a great education in a good well rounded comp. All my peers went onto university. My sister girls are great. Two are at university, the youngest still at school. They are very rounded, down to earth children. However, I really feel, this is because of their family and the way they have been brought up - just as I was brought up to respect education and work hard at my comp. It all came from my family.

I got chatting walking the dog a few weeks ago with some fab women who'd known each other years. Some had educated privately and one of the others chose a highly sought after State school. Both said they had misgivings. One laughed that her son wanted to be an actor and she worried she'd wasted her money (she was joking a bit). The other at the highly sought after state said a lot of the parents were very 'entitled' and had lots of pretentions that made her uncomfortable.

I know this is all anecdotes. It means nothing to you. What I'm basically saying is, look around both state and private. The right school will present themselves to you and will feel right for your dd. However, the most important part of what kind of attitude your dd will develop will come from you and your attitude.

Good luck.

Having been educated all my school life in schools where the majority were Indians I firmly believe that educating children alongside different nationalities is the best way to promotes tolerance and understanding.

I think this misses the point. A privileged Indian's experience is not really that dissimilar from a privileged Brit's experience. Class is a far greater chasm.

What you can afford. What you choose to afford.

Apple I didn't say I was educated with privileged Indians, you're making assumption that may not be correct.
Secondly I wasn't talking about social inequalities when I said I was educated with Indians, I was thinking about racism something I feel very passionately about. So to rephrase what I said above I genuinely believe that my tolerance and understanding of different nationalities and my abhorrence of racism is because I as educated in schools where the majority were Indians privileged or not.

Get. There are limits to what parents can teach or show their children though. My son and his girlfriend are both about to graduate in a subject where, if they make good choices, they can be comfortable for the rest of their lives.

My son's girlfriend was privately educated, very sheltered middle class upbringing. She is of the opinion that you do not need money to be happy and it should not be a factor in your choices. My son thinks this is slightly crazy. He went to an averagely rough comp, was friends with, and sometimes stayed over with, kids who were pretty deprived and lived in fairly horrid conditions. He says he absolutely does not want to be poor if he can help it.

Whatever she may have learned or been taught, DS's girlfriend has not actually seen poverty first hand. It is not real to her.

As Joey Bada$$ would say 'money don't matter when you got it' .

But tinkly I don't think you can draw conclusions for one example. Particularly as so many children of wealthy parents renter the most well paid industries.

My DC are very well aware how much things cost and how much you need to live well. We have never hidden it from them and do not have the sensibility that talk of money is crass.

My ( utterly unscientific) observation is that this concept: that money doesn't matter is prevalent amongst middle class women.

Mumsnet is full of posters who are economically incontinent and queue up to advise other posters to do 'what makes you happy'. The same posters are often very disparaging of anyone who enjoys the trappings of wealth.

My conclusion? These ideas come from home not school sector.

I would consider whether any of those luxuries you would have to cut back are of potential educational value.

What if your dc starts showing signs of some particular talent: would the private school be able to cater for that within the fees you are paying/affordable extra charges? (for instance, if dc turns out to be outstanding on a particular instrument and need very high standard coaching)

What is the potential educational value of family activities you might otherwise undertake? (I think I learnt more from travelling in southern Europe with my parents than I could have done on any school trip)

Would there still be money for hobbies and interests your children might develop outside of what the school offers?

Just read posts above. Can I just point out that wanting to "do what makes you happy" does not necessarily equate with being economically incontinent.

Dh and I have both chosen slightly odd and not very financially rewarding careers in order to be able to work with something we feel passionately about. The only reason we have been able to manage this and keep the whole thing afloat is because we are actually very good with money. We have at times been poor, but never in debt, never unable to meet our obligations. We know how to make sacrifices. I don't call that being economically incontinent.

Dd is hoping to embark on a similar career. (Not pressured by us, we would have been equally happy whatever path she had chosen.) But at least I hope we have taught her the requisite economical skills.

Get. Hmm maybe it does come from home. But we have become more wealthy, moved area and school etc. I'm pretty sure my younger kids have less grasp of poverty than my older ones. And I wouldn't realistically know how to educate them.

Telling them is not the same as them actually hanging out in a home that's cold and decrepit and the Mum is mortified because she has nothing in the cupboards to feed you.

cory of course they are not necessarily connected.

And indeed some of us are lucky enough to do what makes us happy and earn loads of money from it.

I'm simply observing a certain type of poster commonly found on MN, often advising others to to what makes them happy, whilst cheerfully ignoring economic reality or even deriding it.

The thing is, GetAHaircut, that economic reality means different things to different people. My economic reality may not be your economic reality. Anyone posting an OP on MN will have to decide which part of the advice fits in with their reality and with their personality.

My FIL was very unhappy about dh' career choice and desperately tried to get him to change his mind, to the point of even encouraging him to go into the army. Now anyone who knows dh would know that he wouldn't last 5 minutes in the army: if he had followed that advice, it would have ruined his life. Otoh a career choice that involved living in rented rooms until he was well over 30, cooking lentil dishes in shared kitchens and hardly ever going out, did him no harm whatsoever.

FIL gave sensible advice from his pov. Dh made a sensible decision from his pov. He had known relative austerity in childhood and knew he could cope.

Tinkly your DS's girl friends views are not just due to her attending an independent school it's about her social background; being MC. It wouldn't matter where my DS's went to school, the vast majority of our friend are affluent middle class, we are affluent middle class, we lead an affluent middle class life, living in an affluent middle class area.
I agree you can tell you're children all day about people living in grinding poverty and the disastrous effects this will have on their lives but unless they actually experience it, see it, mix with people who know what it feels like to not have sufficient food, clothing, heating and a decent roof over their heads they never really understand it.
I do agree with cory how important are those "luxuries" you'll have to cut back on? More important than the educational value of theses luxuries is the importance of them as family activities than you do together and enjoy activities that bind you together as families. Of course you don't need money to enjoy all family activities but let's be realistic some do even if it's a spontaneous meal out, a weekend away, a day trip to a theme park (whince).
My DS's were talking only the other day about a holiday in the IoW we went on years ago, the sun shone for 9 days, we played on the beach, my husband put on his wet suit and looked like Pingu the penguin much to everyone amusement, going sea kayaking, an organised tree climbing day, (I'd definitely recommend it although not cheap), or our trip to Venice even longer ago, the excitement in the plane as it banks over Venice even the other passengers were infected with their excitement, when we got a water taxi (that cost an arm and a leg) and saw Venice for the first time it looked just like it did in all the photos, we stayed in this amazing hotel on the grand canal and ate breakfast on the balcony and all my very small DS's wanted to do was watch the water dustcart, the water ambulance and the plumber going to work in his boat, and chase pigeons in St Marks square. These things are as important as any educational jollys. It's our shared memories that bind us together and enable families to stay strong in times of adversity.

It's true that seeing poverty first-hand can make children very clear that they don't want to experience it themselves - whereas more sheltered children don't even consider it as a possible outcome of their choices.

But from what I've seen I'm not actually convinced it helps them make better choices!

I think children need really explicit guidance throughout childhood from both parents and teachers to learn:

1. how the world works from a financial and employment point of view.

- safe vs risky careers - how much easier it is to enter any career in whatever the 'standard' way is for that career (along with the knowledge that you can do it a different way) - what it means to work - what employers are looking for - what it means to run your own business (the good, the bad, and the hard work involved)

1. The concept of investing/delaying reward, not just financially but in your education, career etc.
2. Judging whether something is a good investment or not (again, I don't mean a stock market investment)
3. what both poverty and wealth mean. I think children find it very difficult to imagine a standard of living different to their own.

- They don't really understand that once they start working it will be up to them and not their parents to maintain it. - They also need to understand the opportunites and choices that wealth could bring them, since otherwise they are missing part of the picture when making career decisions .

I think as a society we let our children down quite badly with this. Partly because we don't realise how big the knowledge gap is, and that children really need better information. Partly because we have a strong cultural assumption that 'money doesn't buy happiness' and that we should pursue happiness over (instead of) money.

I don't see a big difference between state and private sectors tbh. I'm hoping that parental input can offset it!

Sorry, bit of a derail!

Oh, and I don't see a big difference based on class background either.

I think Get may be right that 'money doesn't matter is more common in the MC.

But I've seen WC teenagers with a very immediate understanding of poverty (and desire to avoid it) make different mistakes:

• eg wanting to go into a high risk career like acting, but not even seeing that it's high risk, and needs hard work and determination (and having no backup plan)
• eg not being willing to go to Uni (motivated by starting earning) despite saying himself that 'only graduates get the career progression'