State school v independent

[Socci]

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Yep, worked out it would be 70k a year for my two. Have started saving, but still couldn't manage them both at the moment

Anna's in a state school of 35, FFS

Haven't experienced private but your worries about state primaries are unfounded in my personal experience. My own state schools taught me to read just fine. Legally there should be no more than 30 in a primary class these days. My boys are in classes of around 20 in a local state primary school and seem to be enjoying themselves, although one of them thinks there's "too much learnin'" now he's in year 1. Why don't you go and look round a few of your local schools and see what you think?

If the teacher cannot read with the children and this is your main concern could you spend 1/2 hour each night doing it yourself and save heaps of money?

I owould suggest going and looking, and speaking to the head teacher, with a number of schools local to yourselves, both private and state. See what you think.

School fees will differ from school to school and area to area. The prep we have DD's name down for (although she may now not go there - hoping to move to good catchment instead) is around £1800 a term (approx £5500 a year). This includes a breakfast club and after school care, all activities, including French, Ballet and Swimming, music tuition, SN or G&T assistance, all food and snacks, etc. Obviously there are other extras such as the uniforms ( summer and winter, coats and hats, ballet kit, PE kit, etc.) and school trips. But luckily astill nothing like te £70K Carla is looking at. This is in Sheffield, and it is one of the more expensive preps round here. Class sizes are very small.

However, class sizes at one of the other prep schools here, class sizes are large - up to 25/26 in a class, which did suprise me for a prep school.

Regarding the reading - this is likely that the teacher may not ehar every child read daily. However, there are normally parent helps and classroom assistants who help with tthis, and is some schools the older children also do paired reading with the younger ones.

Agree with Hulababy - prices vary enourmously. There are two private schools in our area (DS's go to the cheaper one) which costs about £1500 a term all in per child (sounds like a package holiday deal) I must say that "for our money" we do expect them to read to a teacher every day. The funny thing is the class sizes are smaller at our school (14 children per class) than they are at the more expensive school (19)

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