Private schools - what do I need to know?

[Random63638]

I went to a terrible comprehensive and had a crap education, currently doing a science based PhD at 40 as I've gradually found my feet and I'm not as daft as it seemed back then. To try and avoid the same disadvantage I'm really thinking of private ed for my only DD (currently age 3). We should have a family income of around £85k once I get a grad job, and maybe £100k after a few years (I have a reasonably in demand profession to fall back on if necessary). Local private school is circa £15k in fees per year, with no bursary with our family income. I think it's affordable, but I don't know what else I might need to budget for, and the ultimate question - is it worth it? Socially is there a snobbishness against kids without very wealthy families? We're not talking Eton here, so hoping we could 'fit in' but am I kidding myself?

As I have no knowledge of the private system at all, can someone school me please?

nagrama

I absolutely agree hence why I can't be anti form of education. If I am anti private for example, then I'd have to be Anti any form of selection be it academic,religion or house prices which we all know is nigh on impossible in practice.

With regards to the state of state education, it's not a universal thing but it is fairly accurate in quite a lot of areas.

We've got a large bursary for my son so are alot less well off than the vast majority of parents at his private school. We've not had any problems so far. My ds is very confident so that has probably helped him settle in well. But apart from that most of the kids have similar interests to those who were at his previous state school. Maybe going forward as they get older they will notice more differences in wealth but i think it mostly depends on your own attitude. We don't "identify" with being poor if you get me.. we focus on what we've got rather than what we dont have and i think that way the kids dont feel they are lacking in some way.

I've always argued, Oneweekleft, that any family capable of securing a large bursary at a public school must be rich in so many things: optimism, determination, confidence, organisation, knowledge of the independent school system ... And all of these qualities would be benefitting their children all through their childhood - even if they were not successful in getting the bursary. That's the opposite of being 'poor'!

HRTWT. We have 2 in their second prep school, and they started in the state system. We can comfortably afford the fees. I’d say you need to be very comfortable mixing with insanely wealthy people. We have a nice house in a nice area, but not a mansion in Chelsea, we have at least 3 holidays a year, but one is always U.K. based and the abroad one is usually to see ILs. We don’t go to the Maldives every half term. We have a 4x4 SUV, but it isn’t a Merc or a Q7.
Is it worth it? I think it depends on why you are sending them and how much of a sacrifice you are making. I went to private school. Not one of my classmates could afford to send their own kids privately on a single salary. So if you are sending your child because you want them to do lots of sport and music, then it’s probably worth it. If you are sending them because you think it will give them an advantage in their earning potential in later life, you’d be far better putting the money into a second property and giving it to them when they are 25. It costs about £250k to put a child through 14 years of pre university education, and if they are going have a sub 50k salary at the end of it I just can’t justify the money; and I’m sure if you asked the 25 year old them as a nurse, teacher, police officer, social worker they would rather have a house or deposit (depending where you live).

Are there any Londoners (im in outer London), what would or did you do?

@Robbinghood - that depends where you are. If you are on the outskirts towards Kent or Sutton you might want to investigate the grammar schools. If your child is very bright and you are near enough to Kingston, they could try for Tiffin. London has so many private schools, from the famously high-pressured to the gentle and cosy. What are you looking for and what area are you in?

thanks @cowbells, i might have to start a new thread on that.
in SE London. London is very polarised i feel.
i'm not sure about grammars, they all seem very high pressured

Thank you very much for all of your advice.

We do live London. I feel this decision is very very hard. It seems people are from all over the city whether they send their child to state school or private school.
The London state school she got into is really cramped. It’s throwing us off. A parent also told me the school wasn’t great with remote learning.
My daughter has become a bit sluggish since school closures. She lost her drive and I don’t want her to fall back even more if she’s in a larger class size. She also has become quite moody, not sure if this is just the age. But the state school is closer and does get good results.
The private school also gets good results but is 20 min farther by public transport.

I find that many parents on Mumsnet who are pro privates make their decision based on th experience they had many moons ago not realising times have changed
This is me. My state primary school was nice but I was ahead so they regularly stuck me in a corner with a book till the others caught up, or asked me to teach others. Secondary was just dreadful because of the amount of bullying that was never addressed and disruptive problematic kids who were never removed no matter what they did. Extra curricular activities were non existent. I just feel it was a wasted opportunity and I could have accomplished so much more. I’m not convinced this has changed in the state sector.

Now I’ve grown up and watched people being handed £100k directorships that I’d never be promoted to, simply because they’re friends with the company owner. I’ve seen small start ups being awarded jobs and contracts by wealthy friends. I’m aware that you need contacts to get ahead and my parents had absolutely zero which has hampered me. Yes it may be that parents connections are more important than school connections, but if your parents have no connections then school connections are better than nothing. So, much like OP, I want to get my child into private school in the hope of making contacts that I can’t personally provide. And I want them to have access to extra curricular opportunities that I never had. I feel it’s worth stretching to make the investment in the hope of bumping my DC up into a higher social level.

@Ariannah
I fear you are 10 years too late. there are stringent rules about this now in companies. My DB is a partner at a very well known worldwide consultancy and they are very serious about their levelling up and it is considered an offence to employ based on contacts. Universities are also now restricting the amount of children they take from fee paying schools. Sadly you might well have been better off going with the state system as you have actually misinterpreted what that poster was saying, which was that people who were state educated 30 years ago don't realise how good some state schools are now.
I think increasingly going to a fee paying school is putting DC in to a tiny minority and they might find that they are going to be excluded from certain things because of belonging to that minority group and sometimes even discriminated against.

However, as long as they are at one of the better fee paying schools, they should get a breadth of education and experience which will create happy adults. The other stuff I am afraid you can't rely on anymore.

@Ariannah
This is what the man who many believe will be the next prime minister has to say about the current Conservative strategy towards fee paying schools...

*Michael Gove today revealed that he wanted to make it an “eccentric choice” for parents to send their children to private schools.

In an interview with the Evening Standard, he said the state sector should be improved until most do not even consider going private.

“I would have hoped we would have been able to make sending your children to a private school, as it is in Europe, an increasingly eccentric choice,” said the Environment Secretary, who led a series of controversial reforms while Education Secretary.

Asked if he wanted to end the independent sector by stealth, Mr Gove said: “Well, yes.”*

Yes, I've read that from Gove as well, and I do actually believe he believes it. But at the moment I don't think the political or taxpayer will is there to invest the kind of money that would be necessary to bring state education as a whole up to the standard of good private education. I work in the state sector, and the funding and staffing challenges are massive. The school I'm in at the moment is actually really, really good, but there are others locally that are much more challenged. In England as a whole there are some great state schools and some crap private schools, but I still think there is a gulf between an average state school and a good private school, and until that gulf is substantially reduced, many people (us included) will continue to make the choice to go private. I absolutely applaud Gove's ambition, and I think that levelling up is the only plausible way to tackle the educational divide (rather than 'banning' private schools or whatever), but I think it will take a long time and a huge amount of money, that I just don't see on the horizon at the moment.

Agreed about state funding. But believe me when I say that I know fee paying schools have been crucified by COVID and loss of boarding fees and are terrified of the coming economic crash - see below these last two articles from this week which only illuminate the crisis going on in all fee paying schools apart from those with deepest coffers. Don't forget many of the top ones have just suffered a dose of reputational damage too after being hung out to dry by the press over sexual harassment and racism actuations, and will be spending top dollar on some crisis management and positive PR so that prospective parents aren't scared off.
So if we notice what is going on behind closed doors at fee paying schools - cutting back teachers and TA's (and getting rid of Pension schemes which are attractive to the good teachers), cutting of subject choice, renting out of facilities, it mirrors exactly what is happening at state schools.

www.tes.com/news/gcses-covid-recession%3Dprivate-schools-fears-private-school-minority-subject-cuts
www.tes.com/news/exclusive-private-schools-cash-remote-lessons-online-learning-covid

DH works in the independent sector so I know that from the inside a bit too. They're doing pretty well financially, numbers are high (incl boarding), TPS maintained, no subject cuts planned. But I know that's not universally true. I suspect what might happen is a bit of a recalibration of the sector - some of the smaller boarding schools and the weaker day schools might go under, other stronger schools will thrive. And a recession cuts both ways - when there's less public funding for the state sector, those who can still afford fees might be even more likely to choose to pay. Personally, I think the reputational issues around racism and sexism will be short lived. I think enough people will be sufficiently aware that this is a much wider problem that it won't change their education plans. And other people will continue to feel (misguidely) that paying fees protects their children from these issues. The press will lose interest and move on.

I'm not saying that there won't be some changes in the sector, but frankly if the big name boarding schools or the likes of the London day schools find themselves struggling for numbers next year, I'll eat my hat.

@salviohexia
No need for eating hat, agree it won't be the big names, but the smaller ones are already suffering from losing foreign students, less UK parents picking boarding due to COVID, and general worry about economic down turn and paying fees.
Fee paying schools, like most businesses, are the masters of reinvention so the innovative ones will find a new 'niche' - like the ones in the article upthread who are going to sell remote lessons - but this slightly takes away from their core focus - the children on their campus. I am already amazed at how many teachers from fee paying schools find time to tutor pupils from the state sector in the late afternoon/early evening - surely this is marking and lesson planning time!
I just think that it is wrong to talk of state sector funding issues without people being really aware of the big funding issues that exist in the fee paying sector too.
But, as ever, this is dependent on individual schools, and there are flourishing schools in both sectors.

Agree.
The remote lesson thing is interesting. I think it's a tricky balance for the independent sector, to do remote education well enough to keep parents happy, but not so happy that they start questioning the superiority of learning on campus. I think they need a swift and permanent return to normality on the extra-curricular side, which they generally do so well, and to be pretty bullish about requiring bums to be physically on seats, to avoid a slide into long term semi-remote education (unless of course that's a route a school actively wants to pursue).

@salviohexia
Think you might have misread the article - they are going to sell packages of remote lessons to children who aren’t enrolled as pupils.
It’s an in interesting one and will definitely be welcomed by parents who go down the state+ route (state school plus outside tutoring and extra curricular.) if you have a state school on your CV it is attractive to universities and employers for levelling up purposes BUT they don’t know you have been having remote lessons from top school. Clever!

Haven't read the article yet - busted!! I will though, it sounds really interesting. Mine was more a general observation about what's happening on the ground in the schools I know. From what you describe, I can't imagine a school like ours offering anything that might be seen to undermine or conflict with their core offer, but remote lessons as an extension of the external summer school / charitable work they already do in person, I can see being quite attractive.

A factor for us with primary was being in the community. It has been lovely going to the local primary as we have got to know many like minded families and our kids therefore benefit from that too. Driving off and keeping your family in splendid isolation for a negligible academic upside at primary level doesn’t seem worth it.

But depends on your area. Dh and friends who went to schools a long way out of area remember quite lonely childhoods. Dh adamant he didn’t want that for ours.

This started as a thread on likely costs of private schools, so going back to that - what it is also worth considering is additional tuition costs ( for reasons other than SEN ) tutors are much more common than many appreciate in selective private schools ( although it’s not something people talk about ) if there is a subject (or two) that is a bit of a struggle, getting extra tutoring is an alternative to finding yourself managed out. This can really add up over time - a couple of sessions a week is not uncommon at all. Make sure there is plenty more in the kitty as you approach the start of gcse or A level courses, even very bright kids can have mandatory subjects which Are challenging, and for those who pushed themselves hard to get in its even more likely.

This started as a thread on likely costs of private schools
OP asked “is it worth it?”. For most families it’s a choice between giving their kids a private education or a £250k house. I tend to think private school is worth the cost because if they have the right connections they can earn the £250k house and more. The fact is, most state schools aren’t great and that’s why parents sacrifice to pay for private school. As a pp said, there’s no way the government will invest to raise state schools to the standard of private schools.

@Ariannah

“As a pp said, there’s no way the government will invest to raise state schools to the standard of private schools.“

Do you think this is the same for London state schools? Assuming MPs who send their children to state donate quite a bit. Or maybe there is more fundraising?

There might be individual schools that raise loads of money, but there would have to be consistent and sustainable investment across the country in order to give a whole generation of parents who would otherwise have gone private, the confidence to choose state. I work in school admin/finance, and donations are great, but you can't rely on them for long term planning, and you can't use them for certain things, like staffing, which is typically about 85%+ of a school's budget. Lots of donations might help you to beef up your facilities and extra curricular provision, but it would take a lot more than that to solve problems of staffing, oversized classes and lack of provision for special needs.

Also, when you have lots of wealthy parents in a state school, there can be problems of almost ghettoisation within and between local schools. For example, a school near us runs their Year 5 and 6 residential trips overseas each year (and I'm not talking a cheap PGL equivalent in Brittany). This means that less wealthy parents in the school end up feeling quite excluded and alienated, to the extent that some less MC parents avoid choosing this school, even though it has exceptional results and they could get in, because it's perceived as stuffy. This kind of effect is something that never really seems to be considered when people talk about the positives of diverting wealthy and influential parents away from private and into state.

None of those problems are unique to state schools. Our local fee paying school has so many children that need SENCO support now that none of them are getting adequate help so they are starting to charge parents. They have classes almost as big as the state schools (and, arguably, teachers who are less used to dealing with them and less qualified, but that is a debate for a whole other thread.) Many families can't afford the ski trips/hockey trip to South Africa and there is definitely segregation according to whether you have a house in Rock / ski in Meribel or Verbier -or not. More so amongst the parents than the children but that is always the case. There are a fair few disgruntled parents who feel they are paying fees and not getting their fees worth. "Not sure what I am paying for apart from more sports" is what one friend said recently. And more sports can come a lot cheaper (and definitely better) from the local top class clubs IF you are not working late and can ferry children around.
But yes agreed there needs to be much funding of state education of course, certainly before the government achieve their target of slowly phasing out fee paying education as it exists now - and you will see from the articles above that fee paying schools are well aware that they need to hang on to their bursary provision at all odds, even when their finances are close to failure, otherwise they are rendered not fit for purpose as charitable institutions. Next stop is VAT on fees which is about three years away.

All good points. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the utopian idea that if you knock the private sector on the head, you automatically improve the state sector across the board, is I fear misguided. In the short term at least, I suspect that the impact of migration away from private schools will actually increase inequality within the state sector. Look at the grammar counties already - intake from prep schools way above the national average, often tiny numbers of children on FSM, and anecdotal evidence about families avoiding the schools because they're not for the likes of us. But it happens at non-grammars too - schools deliberately giving out vibes that they suit a certain type of family more than another, with their ski trips and their 'recommendation' that pupils should have a laptop etc. Around here in the primary sector, the intake at the 'leafier' schools would immediately start to squeeze out the less well off families if all the parents who lived in catchment stopped sending their kids to prep schools. I think you will need very radical educational reform to stop the two tier problem just moving from private/state to state/state.