Private education

[GlobalTechIndustries]

Following on from the private school thread, if you can afford it why would you not want a good standard of education for your children ?

"I'd be quite surprised if all private schools in an area offered only a state school with a bill attached."

So would I.

The reality is that state education is being starved of funding.

To incorrectly paraphrase a poster on another thread said, there is no way to properly educate a child on the sums proposed no matter how great the SLT, or how supportive the parent body.

Coupled with the teacher shortage and the new badly thought out qualifucations, there is simply no way state schools will be able to offer anything but a truly basic education.

Why anyare me would choose that for a child is beyond me.

We chose a state primary because it is on our doorstep and is rated outstanding with an excellent reputation.

DS will go to a state grammar in September as it is a better suited to him than the local non selective private school and many of his current school friends will also be going there.

DD on the other hand will probably go to the private school as she is not academic at all and really struggles to keep up in large classes. The private school has 14 to a class and a great drama department which will suit her down to the ground. I would be very happy for her to go to the local secondary school if I thought it would suit her but I don't think she will be happy there as it's quite pushy on the academic side of things.

I'd rather not have to go private for DD but I'm very grateful to have the choice.

I think we can work on the basis that the parents who are interested enough to post on this forum do want a good education for their children. They may have a different definitions of good education, have different school options available, different financial pressures but they are probably all trying to acheive a similar outcome.
As someone who can afford private school and whose state options are not better than the private ones available, it is an easy decision.
However, I do feel extremely concerned about the funding pressures on state schools right now. It is a bad thing for society as a whole if the state sector is degraded through lack of funds. Every child deserves a good standard of education not just the offspring of those of us who can afford to buy the education we want.

For us a good standard of education was the private route. Our local primary was absolutely enormous and our shy DD would have been completely lost there.

Now we are embarking on senior school and she will stay in private. Our catchment state school is very poor with an inadequate rating from Ofsted, so there is no decision for us to make. However everyone is different and what we, as parents, consider unacceptable for whatever reason (our DD, by choice, is taking a highly academic route, as opposed to sporting or artistic), is considered absolutely fine by others. I know of some appalling schools, both state and private, as well as excellent ones in both sectors. Each to their own.

My DD's state school was highly praised in a report into the tragic death of a former pupil. Apparently her mentor at the school was the only "official" person who had ever managed to establish a positive relationship with the child. At the same time, if you were to put it into a league table with the Bucks grammars as to progress made by High achieving pupils it would come fourth out of 15 schools. And DD is a child transformed since primary.

Why would I, and the many other people who have children in great comprehensive schools, want them anywhere else? Of course people can go private if they want to but the thread title does seem to suggest that private is automatically better. It isn't.

I "bought" my kids a better education by moving into the catchment area of excellent state primary/secondary.

I went to a public school and have excellent qualifications and have no doubt that my kids' schools will help them achieve the same. (Plus I can't afford boarding school for 3 kids)

DS is bright as a button with a severe speech disorder. By the end of reception year in his private school he knew 7 sounds and could not write his name. They thought he was just a 'slow talker' and not academically able. He used to lay I. Bed at night saying to himself ' I'm not a silly boy, in not a baby. Luckily, we knew we had made a mistake early on. A term and a half into his time in a speech and language unit in a big standard infant school on a big council estate he is a changed boy. He knows all his sounds, he can read and write, his speech has improved immeasurably and he believes in hinself, because his teachers have the knowledge, confidence to know that they can help him to succeed. And it's not costing us a penny. While all children look cute in those little felt hats and braided Blazers, private school is not for everyone. I could hug his teachers everyday.

If I didn't live in a Grammar School area and could afford it, I wouldn't hesitate to pay for private school.

If I didn't live in a Grammar School area and could afford it, I wouldn't hesitate to pay for private school

The grammar school threads are full of people saying how great secondary moderns are (for other people's kids of course). I suspect this is the more honest view.

I said the same thing on the other thread as super rainbows.

However, i also pointed out that they are some 'excellent' schools that despite being designated as 'secondary moderns' .

P.S i would much rather my DDs went to a Buckinghamshire ' modern' school than to a typical Comprehensive in Wigan for instance !

This is never mentioned by posters when castigating the 11+ system , that many schools in areas that abandoned the grammar system years ago are 'crap'.

Boogie

I'm really pleased for your ds, it must be a huge weight lifted from you all It's lovely to see such an improvement and I bet he surprises you every day.
We too can't fault the SENCO and comp ed at dd school, but an equivalent state school exists near enough to us, if it doesn't work out. I would rather use this school than any other in the area even though the results are in the lowest in the country.

HPFA
There are no 'Secondary Modern' schools in the area I live in. We have Grammar and good Comprehensives. Not every child takes 11+, so there isn't a two tier system as in previous generations. The option is there for the taking and many do. However, lots of my dcs friends opted for comprehensives and have done very well.

We can afford it.
But my DDs are getting a good education from our good state schools.

I think that the extra that our local private schools add is not worth the £££ that it would cost, and that in our case the money would be better spent providing for DD's future in other ways such as housing when adult, or even putting money into trust and providing an extra income.

I personally have no problem with private education, I was privately educated myself. But for my children, in our area, it is not worth it in my opinion.

"There are no 'Secondary Modern' schools in the area I live in. We have Grammar and good Comprehensives"

Interesting. What % go to grammar schools?

We are struggling with this decision at the moment. We can afford private secondary as long as we don't spend on anything else like house updates, holidays etc.
Reasons against private for us are relatively small intake, limited social pool, being the 'poor' one when in fact we're very well off. Paying for private secondary would mean we couldn't save anything for university.
We don't have grammar schools anywhere near here.

Flying

So would the children in Wigan, however, the school I posted about with the brilliant SENCO is a state school in Wigan, it doesn't get good results for the usual reasons.
Some don't take exams, some try really hard and manage a few and others leave to be supported by ss.
However, they get a really good Ofstead inspection and are either outstanding or good over the years.
Other schools deemed to be better are often failing / special measures and changed to academies.

Bert
You are so wrong, the state sector or private sector would provide a suitable education for my dd. She chose her school because they were all like minded.
There are plenty on the music threads that on paper are far more talented than her, have a look. No way would she gain a music scholarship/ bursary for a private school btw, as they are judged by exams passed.
We couldn't afford the fees, so I agree when you say a private school wouldn't meet needs, but state would be fine.
It was her choice.

Purple

I was sent to private school by loving parents who believed education was the best thing they could give us and sacrificed a lot.

I ended up feeling guilty about their sacrifice.and when I got a bad report they used it as a stick to beat me with which I felt was unfair given it wasn't my choice.

I hated being the poorest.

I'd say, if the local school is good, go for it and tutor any deficiencies. You are in my view right to be concerned about social deficiencies. Given the way that private school fees are going and uncertainty in the economy, don't put yourselves under unnecessary stress. And , it can be easier to transfer to a private school later than to a good state school, if you want to make that choice. And HE is widening participation.

We did ultimately send our DC private, so you may think this is hypocritical if me. But he started off in what was supposed to be a good state primary. They couldn't cope with his learning needs, his rare medical condition and they did nothing about him being bullied as a result of those issues. He applied to the local state schools but the nearest was at that time the LA's sink school and we didn't think he'd survive. But neighbours who managed to work the system got their children in to the excellent other local state schools (catchment area changes) where they have done superbly.

Given a different child or a different local school or the same one but as it is now, I'd have no hesitation.

Thanks for your view Orlanda, interesting points. We're just so torn, there are pros and cons for both and we're not very decisive at the best of times!

Purple The Progress 8 measure is actually quite helpful in that you can now actually access the different progress made by high, middle and low achievers, although you have to get quite far into the data to find it. It certainly had some surprises for me in terms of which schools in the county were doing best.

Superrainbows I agree its perfectly possible to have superselectives and comprehensives in the same area. I would disagree that in the fully selective counties you have genuinely comprehensive schools. I think there would be very few children who could pass the 11+ but go to a non-selective instead. So the non-selectives are defined by the fact that children are there because they haven't got into the grammar. Doesn't mean they're all terrible schools, I just think its wrong to have schools that are defined by the fact that pupils have failed an exam. This is different to say Tiffin Girls and Coombe Girls where according to Mumsnet (the experts!) girls who might have got into Tiffin have chosen Coombe instead.

HPFA, I've googled progress 8 for our local state school. My DD obviously hasn't done yr 6 sats yet but is a high achiever generally, so the score for high achievers is 0.14. Is that good or bad?!

Sorry, that's the progress 8 score, the attainment 8 score is 66. Still baffled.

Just interested in the comments about being the poorest pupils at a private school. I don't deny at all that independent schools attract people with varying degrees of income, but IME of two indie schools, there has been a very broad range - from the ridiculously wealthy (drive cars more expensive than my house type), to those, like us, that choose to spend on our DC's education rather than holidays abroad, doing up the house etc. Some schools, obviously, have a huge cohort of the fabulously rich, but many do not, and have normal parents working unglamorous jobs to pay for everything.

HPFA. Are you saying there is a threshold of GCSE % or number of high ability low ability pupils it could not reasonably be described as being a modern despite technicalities !

This i would agree with, there is no way Waddesdon Wellington or even Coombe girls schools are remotely Modern schools or more accurately what people think one is.

Gilly. I can absolutely understand the social and economic issues contributing greatly to the massive educational underachievement in areas of Wigan ETC.

I also know that all of Bucks 'Upper' schools bear no recognized correlation to the my Kent modern school of the 1980s (sister blissfully unaware at Dartford Grammar ) The school has recently been in the news , because the parents are more interested in proving a point than ensuring their kids are dressed correctly.

This perhaps proves the point, that you can lead a horse to water but can't make it drink.

There are high number of pupils and parents that 'don't want no education'. This was the same 30 years ago and will never change.

Hence the reason why we hear certain posters expressing 'nasty' but unfortunately true comments about pupils/parents from some schools.