Are private schools worth the £££?

[JamdaniSari]

Hi all :)

We were discussing this at work yesterday and now that I am a mother it really got me thinking.

Are private schools worth the £££?

What if you couldn't afford to send your kids there and they attended an 'average' local state school. How would you go about ensuring they achieved their potential, were well rounded and had the confidence etc which their peers at private school would be expected to possess?

Thanks

I think if you can afford private school fee easily without stretch yourself, changing your current life style, then it worth it. If you have to really stretch yourself, go for smaller house, less holiday and other enjoyment, then it is not worth it. Of course, this is based on the state school option is not very bad.

We belong to the group that have to stay with a smaller house to send DS to private school, that's probably why I have been trying to compare him with his primary school friends who went to state school( a ofsted good one). I don't think they have received a very different education. After school clubs options are more, but DS only did 2 anyway. GCSE results are similar for similar ability students. The real benefit might be his friendship group. DS had a group of friends who are all hardworking and bright, majority of them have gone to Oxbridge and other good university. If he had been to the local state school, the portion of these similar students will be smaller, he might not be able to make so many friends. It did save my effort though, I didn't involved that much in his study etc, knowing everything is planned well in the school.

I also believed that a child would do well with educated, supportive family regardless of school.

But in practice it's harder and it would be a lot of effort to offset it. If low expectation in school, then it'd be many hours of extra tuition to undo it. I'd rather time was spent on things like sport and music, than catch up what school should have done.

My DS is too laidback to be motivated to do more and he isn't teacher-pleaser-showoff (like I was as kid :))), he always delivers bare minimum unless something grabs his interest. He'd do more if school raised standards.

We've seen teacher sackings in our children's 4 schools and the private schools their father has worked/works in and their father's view is certainly that it is easier to sack teachers in the private sector. Anyway it's not a competition and those parents able to pay or able to live near a good comp or grammar school tend to have choices. If some are happy with private schools and others not that's all fine. Each to their own.

Barry how did your daughters private education lead to her good marriage?

DH had an excellent education - but he still married me🤪

crazy maybe it depends where you live.
Because where I am it’s so hard to find teachers that it would be VERY unusual for a teacher to be sacked in state school. And a lot if them are ... hmm... not very good. Plus they end up spending their time doing crowd management rather than teaching.
The scarcity means that they have many supply teachers. Some of them stays a month or two and are they replaced by new supply teachers. There is no continuity at all. And the teachers don’t care as they know well they won’t be evaluated (which is the reason why they often choose to be supply - I know a few of those, incl some who have taught my own dcs and have said so themselves)

On the other side, private schools might have Ofsted by they WILL be evaluated just because of their results. Our school has some end of year exams, taken by the whole year so children are evaluated against that. And teachers will be too (so if two classes who are supposed to be working at the same level are getting very different set of results at the end of year exam, it WILL show up).
Add to that the fact that a lot of those schools are selective and I think the quality of the teaching doesn’t matter as much anyway (it’s much harder to bring average or lower pupils to do well than to support already good and above average children to do very well).

Just yes! Have moved both children last year from a lovely little local authority school to Dollar academy, a large private school in central Scotland, we are all more than happy. Our motivation was our bright but lazy, easily led, son. Our daughter is very able (and her needs were not being met) but was very happy moving into p6. After the open day she decided that she wanted to move and our son was cajoled buy the promise of a mobile phone. 1.5 years on both our children are happy and settled and more than filling their potential. Dollar offers a fully rounded education without the constraints of local authority funding and the (sorry to say) distraction of pupils who are just not interested.It is the best thing we have done for our children!

Depends on the schools where you live. Since we were children the quality of state schools in London has improved massively. None of my privately educated husband's school friends have chosen to privately educate their children in London.
We live outside of the home counties and the state school education is well below London standard and we have a top private school near us do the decision is easy.