It's wise to learn not only "a bit more", but much, much more about all the schools that you are considering for your child(ren), jellycat1. Good to know you've watched the Sunningdale film. On watching it again just now, it brought back floods of memories of my son's time at Papplewick coming from a state school some 15 or so years ago. Time flies ever so quickly that it seems like only last month when all this happened. Thanks to the prep and senior schools that he attended, he's now a junior doctor working in a very large hospital doing fantastically well and is now "fully registered with the GMC with a licence to practise"! This is not to suggest state schools cannot achieve similar.
The question(s) of state vs private have been discussed to death on these forums. DS actually gave up two grammar school places to go private, one of these was/is at my backyard just one bus ride away almost from door to door and is reckoned to be the very top (as in the apex of the pyramid) state school in the nation. Its league table position puts the likes of Eton, Winchester, Harrow, etc in the shade every year. It sends around 30'ish to Oxbridge anually and produces hordes of doctors including (now) my own personal GP, a family friend who as a young kid, I used to school-run for the family.
But it's more than academic results that I'm looking for in an education. Absolutely no doubts in my mind DS would achieve similarly at this grammar school what he has already achieved now academically. The difference is the £40K (presently) vs nil school fees per annum. It's the all-round education; the education of the complete person that I'm buying in a private school.
I only saw and realised the fruits of these long years of investment, inconvenience, hardship, etc quite by accident last year during DS's graduation. Unbeknown to him, and at a distance, my attention was drawn to a small crowd of a dozen or so newly qualified medics formed in a circle (amongst the few hundred similar graduands present on this day) all listening intently to a person in the centre as if in awe and at times all burst out laughing. The guy giving the talk in the centre was none other than dear old DS! And everywhere he moved he had the crowd following him, some left and new ones joining in, etc. Clearly, this was an image of a leader having a following and it soon drawn on me that this is what it's all about. And to think that the "followers" were no ordinary folks - they were all similarly newly qualified doctors (ffs) - gives me an immense satisfaction.