Do private schools have better teachers?

[hercules1]

Read this on a different thread and it has peed me off a bit. I know lots of really good teachers who don't and won't teach in private schools. I've also known some teachers leave the state system to go to the private as they could no longer cope within the state.

Private doesn't equate with better teachers Of course it means lots of other things and I am sure there are lots of excellent teachers in the private system but no more so than the state.

but market forces don't ALWAYS produce the best results, there are people who are attracted to the benefits of private teaching, but are good at the interview bit, not the teaching bit. all the teachers i know who ere moving from state to private ed were doing so because they couldn't handle the children - they were great at the academic side of the job, but knew almost zilch about how to work with people. i know good private teacher end up doing even onger hours - private schools often expect more in the way of extra curricular, particularly if boarding schools. and there are, of course, great teachers in both, but i would not assume that all private teachers are better - qualificatons & interview skills are not the same as being good at the job!

Shimmy21 there is a parallel between your experience of A level biology and my own.
Your private school had a crap biology teacher.
We didn't have one at all.
As for it "not getting so far" in a state school, most of my chemistry was from a drawing teacher supervising us copying out of books.

It may come as no surprise that DCs both are in private schools due to my experience.

Actually, that's a common patter. I accept that some private schools are basically for the sporty dim kids of people that inherited wealth through no effort of their own.
Certainly our school ain't like that. The majority seem to be people that went to state schools, inherited little wealth but made something of themselves.
However given the coihce they prefer an academic private school.
We picked Forest because we didn't want DS to be too much smarter than the rest of the class. That's uncomfortable, and in many state schools very dangerous.

absolutely DominiConnor. Yes there are some rubbish private schools where people think if they're paying, it must automatically be 'better'. But many other independent schools AREN'T stuffed full of wealthy people, the parents are from the full range of backgrounds. The school where DH teaches actually has a lot of teachers children attending - the staff get a big discount on fees. Kickingeasterangel - you mention all the teachers you know who move from state to private do so because they can't cope with state. I accept this is true of some, but there are actually many others, my DH included, who just decide that they want to work in a pleasant environment with better perks. In DHs school, a lot of staff worked for many years in state before moving across. It's not about not coping at all - it's simply that sometimes even teachers (particularly those with their own children) want quality of life. It's been said before, there are good and bad teachers in both sectors, just as there are good and bad employees in any job.

My ex husband actually is particularly good at managing children in class and he didn't leave the state sector because he couldn't control his class. It's just that "being a policeman" as he put it was not why he went into teaching. He went into teaching because he loved to teach and in a private school he can teach. It was not so easy to do in the state system and he's not left wing so he had no moral issues over switching sectors.

I think some people think all private schools are for very posh rich people which in fact has never been my experience. May be some boarding schools are like that but most normal private schools like those my children are at, Newcastle Royal Grammar where my brother went etc those are not really posh in a class sense at all, not snobby sort of places at all. They're just places where parents often struggling with fees send fairly clever children to get a good education. In fact I could have loved the children to get a better accent at school! but could live with the lack of that because I'd rather they were educated in the mixed but feel paying enivornment with clever children than in a very posh school with less clever children from a narrower range of backgrounds.

Well I don't come from working class background. I come from an agrarian background and money was always talked about. My father had a rare opportunity in 1930s Ireland, he had a childless aunt (shop owner) who paid for him to go to secondary school. Most Irish children did not go to secondary school back then. It was a boarding school and he lasted 2 years there. Academically he was very bright but he loved his food and he was starved (his words) and homesick.

As he grew up he realised that all his old classmates had become doctors, lawyers, chemists and best of all priests and I think he really regretted leaving. A result of this was immense pressure on us to perform (3 out of 5 did). The saddest thing was that his youngest brother was so academic his primary school teacher told him not ot come to school any more as there was nothing more she could teach him. Two of his sons are now professors in the UK. I guess the aunt was once bitten twice shy.

I just think it is sooooo sad when education and money are linked.

But they even are in the UK state system because in some areas if you can afford a posh expensive house you're in the area where the good state schools are and because schools whoever pays need funding by us, the tax payers so I can't see how you remove any financial linkage at all. You could bus children from council estates to leafy suburbs as I think is planned in some places so the schools have a 50% well off/poor social mix which could help. I think London is a bit different too because of the areas where so many children can't speak English very well which has an impact on classroom debate etc. although some learn very quickly once they move to the UK and do tremendously well.

The "bussinng" nonsense won't work, you will just trash some good schools. Only someone who has never read anything other than the Guardian could ever believe it could.
The reason for crap schools is that they are badly run, badly staffed, and under funded. This is often on race/social grounds. Local councils of all political persuasion underfund schools that have too many coloured or poor kids at them.
The way you fix crap schools, is that you fix crap schools. You improve the number and quality of teachers, by incentives, training and sacking and come done down brutally on parents who threaten teachers.
Disruptive kids are a big factor, and anyone who's done even the dumbed down GCSE "science" should be able to understand how diluting them a little bit won't help at all.
You deal with more needy kids with more resources, not diluting.
A few, a very few kids can't be coped with in standard schools, but mass bussing is the sort of crap that justifies my use of "arts graduaate" as a term of abuse when these fools get involved in social policy.

The thing I don't understand is that in Ireland you got really poor kids in class alongside really rich kids (in my day anyway- Ireland is a lot richer now) and all were expected to do well. The poorest often were the highest performers. The society was different then and I think people, even kids, saw that education was the only way out of poverty. It's different here and I don't know why. Was education ever seen as an escape here?

dros, it is seen as that by all the immigrants in my very mixed area which is why so many buy places at private schools. Education when you move countries is given hugely more importance than families who have always been here seem to place on it. I am sure however you also get very poor people who see their children doing well at school as a way for them to do better than their parents too. Surely most parents want that, not all but most.

That is a very good point drosphila - I think that may have been the case in England too, long ago, but not any more.

What Xenia says about immigrants (here and elsewhere) is true. It always amazes me at the lengths my foreign friends go to to get their children a good education because it is seen as the route to success.

I was reading about a South Korean - his parents gave their life savings to him their only child to get in the UK some to be honest fairly low grade degree, from an ex poly. He was stabbed, all their hopes for the future to be lived out through him destroyed.

But surely we're the same. It's why mumsnet and school playgrounds are full of parents agoninsing over school choices because they're just like those and any other parents - want the child to get the best education possible to improve their life chances.

Thanks for that, Xenia

haven't read the thread sorry, but just a general point that education is the route to success - the only sucess being making a good partnership and seeing your offsping to make their own good partnerships..and on ad infinitum

MT - i see it that way too. but i think it is more up hill for an immigrant esp. a newly arrived one and i really admire their dedictaion and devotion to decent schooling.

Isn't is such a shame that the government gives them such crap schools then ?

also a shame us parents give them such a wide range of children, clever, difficult, dyslexic, adhd, noisy, rude, quiet, lazy, hardworking,etc

DC lots of immigrants in DS's school. In fact DS is considered to be the highest achiever in his year (hope it lasts but he is only 7) and next to him is the son of a Somalian refugee. They compete with each other and are friends too. Interesting the Somalian boy's father does not allow him to have friendships with non academic kids. Little does he know that my ds is a real monkey who loves power rangers (if I would allow it).

ANyway point is the school is pretty good and there are lots of immigrants.

There is really no such thing as a typical independent school any more than there is such a thing as a typical state school. The state sector varies from state boarding (with fees to be paid), grammar schools, those comprehensives in expensive catchment areas with good results, right through to schools which may only be taking the weakest pupils. The independent sector varies from schools with less academic selection than many of the higher performing schools in the state sector, through to schools that are grammar schools in all but name but not in the state sector, through to the original nine Clarendon Schools, like Eton.

And the job of teaching is very different in those schools. I know someone who had a top first from one of the best universities in the UK. She first taught in a school under special measures. It was well run and well organised, hard work but without substantial parental pressure. Many of the staff had well honed strategies for teaching but the teacher's academic ability was not very important in daily life. The teacher (although commended as a teacher by the school) found this intellectually dissatisfying. She then got a job in one of the very very top independent schools in the country. It was very different. In a different way, at least equally demanding. The pupils were astonishingly able and the school very demanding of results and of academic rigour. Although more intellectually interesting (at least to her), the school was very demanding with no real limit on the effort they expect and with very long hours and no real union protection. The teachers were referred to as academics and expected to engage in scholarship outside of the classroom. It was really a special needs school but with the highest calibre of pupils who had already demonstrated outstanding performance in their previous schools. She commented that working in two such schools really amounted to two different jobs, as different as a financial accountant is from a solicitor. Most teachers in the lower performing schools in the state sector couldn't do the very academic role involved in the top independent school, and most teachers in the independent school couldn't cope with the interventionist pastoral systems of the poorly performing schools. But in between, say between a good comprehensive or grammar school and a middle order independent schools, teachers are very similar and could and do move from one to the other with relative ease.

ZOMBIE THREAD ALERT

Looked at this thread and found that I had contributed to it 4 1/2 years ago! why has it been resurrected?

Private schoolswill have smaller classes. And (perhaps) better behaved children.

I have worked as a specialist teacher and assessor for dyslexia in both sectors and can tell you that you get good and not so good teachers in both. It is a fallacy to say that in the private sector you do not have to be qualified, you do.

The main difference is that you may have smaller classes,expectations are greater as both teacher and pupil are expected to perform and achieve. Pupils are generally much better behaved and therefore discipline is more condusive to better learning.

Plumbrandy,

The downside of the 'better behaved children' aspect is that less good teachers in private schools can get away with teaching less engaging lessons.

I compared lesson planning, resources and assessment with a friend of mine who teaches the same year group but in a private school. I entirely believe that she is a good teacher, and she commented that when she taught in a state school her lessson plans were much like mine. However, her lessons in private school covering the same subjects were significantly more 'passive' and involved significantly more 'worksheet-type' activities than mine do, and also involved very little differentiation for different learning styles and abilities. Where she had, perhaps, a core, an easier and an extension worksheet for e.g. a maths lesson, I had for the same subject some hands-on practical activities for a lower ability group, an ICT activity for a lower middle group who I know favour computers over writing, a 'core' activity with an element of choice and self-direction and an open-ended exploration activity for the higher ability. That doesn't make one of us a better teacher than the other - it just means that the nature of different classes in different schools will mean that different teaching and learning styles predominate.

I think the main difference aside from external factors such as facilities is that they are probably working with a different curriculum