Are we ambitious enough? Will we regret it?

[Hoopa]

I am questioning myself. We have 3 DC and live in a lovely rural area. They have all gone to our local village primary school and generally thrived - the odd issue but when I look back I just see happy, thriving children who loved the experience and had lovely friends and a relaxed childhood. We decided to send them to the local comp and they are again, for the most, absolutely thriving. They have lovely groups of friends, are achieving academically, enjoy sports and do out of school activities that they have happily stuck with. All good right? But sometimes I question myself when I am around other people who have children at private schools or grammar schools. Am I missing something? Should we have pushed for more? We felt the school was good enough and happy and the older children we know there have gone on to good universities, but is there something I haven't realised and should have pushed for? Both DH and I went to private schools and it was ok, but we didn't feel that it was a perfect experience and we aren't massively high achieving although we have interesting careers, so we didn't feel a need to replicate what we had. But now I wonder if I will regret it one day and there is something I haven't realised! When I am with friends whose children go to private school or grammar school, all our DC seem the same, but maybe they aren't to other people! Am I letting my children down by being too relaxed?
We could rejig our finances and pay for private school (although then we couldn't give them a house deposit as we are getting near to be being mortgage free so I imagined we would do this one day.) Or we could try and move them to a grammar ( they are all in top sets so I think they would get in if there was room of course) but that would be a long commute.
Should I stick with my gut which is that a happy local school is good enough, or should I up my ambition levels?

Lots of people have help from grandparents. I think people just keep it quiet. Not sure why, nothing to be ashamed of!

DH and I can't afford private, but it has been a discussion we've had when making other big decisions.
Our feeling was that if local schools were decent, and by decent I mean a run of the mill good school (because as a teacher I'm not swayed by marketing talk and ofsted outstanding ratings), then we can spend the private school money on activities and opportunities to enrich DC's lives.

I know some people who have benefited from private education, but on reflection they benefited from having very affluent, well-connected parents in elite professions. Equally, I know people who had private education and they're no more academically talented or rounded than friends who went to state schools.

A lot depends on what else you'd do if you had tens of thousands spare income a year.

No help from grandparents for us. From the parents you get to know, you do end up knowing what ‘jobs’ they do, their background and enough about them to know if grandparents are paying. If dc are in Made in Chelsea and parents are in the Times Rich List you tend to know they have money. DD1 had good friends at Harrow and some of them had grandparents making a contribution. It lessens their estate for inheritance tax and we would do the same.

I think people tend to keep grandparental help quiet. I've had a few friends who've let slip.

Op your rural schools sound better than ours and if this is the case why not use them for free? You'd be crazy to pay.
We started at our village primary. Teachers and children were v nice and our children made local friends. However the school was so small there were no after school clubs or sports teams, choir etc. And some of these activities are hard to find in our area. We got to year 3 and the children were bored and not progressing. Lots of wheel spinning.
So we have gone to a local prep school. Work is much more differentiated for different children. Expectations are much higher. All sports, choir etc are included in a longer school day.
Someone I know has sent 2 children to the local public school for 6th form and said how amazing it was.. 3rd child didn't want to go and has gone to local 6th form college. She said the 6th form college is dire.
I know what we will be spending our money on. But it really depends what your options are and what the state schools are like near you.

Hi OP

I find your ambition question interesting. I am very ambitious as a person - both for myself and for my kids who are still very small! However I am not entirely sure ambitious parenting = degree of money spent (for eg private schooling). For us as an example - DS goes to reception of a lovely local state school. As someone who’s ambitious about him I wouldn’t equate this with paying for him to go to a private school. For me the ambition means we prioritise him doing all the sports he loves, all the books we can get him, spending as much time with him doing science experiments, number games, reading adventure books - really investing time to develop his curiosity about the world, encouraging him to find numbers fun and intriguing, creating conditions where he wants to turn pages on a kids story book, exploring science together, playing sports - you see what I mean. All of that is also ambition, and also translates into the Material markers of grades and tests and scores and all else.

By all means be ambitious but ambition does not equal to a specific sum of money at a specific kind of school. It needs more nuance than that.

Thank you for the thread OP.
My DCs are at state school but DH was at private school and I do worry sometimes that we haven’t done the ‘best’ for them. I guess we have prioritised happiness over academic achievement (I work part-time which is good for the DCs as I get to spend time with them but I would definitely have to work full time if we were paying for private school). Also DH had a long commute to his private school, which he hated and he said it was hard not having any local friends. So he was quite keen for the DCs not to have a long journey to school.

However I agree with others that a lot it also depends on individual ambition, and family backgrounds. I went to a comp and got better grades than DH at his private school - but career wise he has done better than me and now earns a good salary, which I would put down to ambition - his family had higher expectations of him, whereas my family are not at all academic, my parents didn’t go to university, so didn’t push me at all.

My DC seem happy at the comp and I know bright children can do well there (the 6th form has 6 students with Oxbridge offers this year) - but one of the downsides I think is the peer group, DD is bright but a bit lazy, and I think would do better if she had more ‘peer pressure’ to study / get good grades. She also gets fed up with some lessons where other children are behaving badly. But overall she is happy and I am sure there would be downsides to a more pressured environment.

Sometimes on the MN education boards it feels like everyone is off to grammar or private schools, and nobody could possibly go to their local school, so it was refreshing to read this post!

@NavigationCentral
You sound like a fabulous Mum and I think that one-to-one attention and focus on a child's learning by a parent can never be replicated by any school.
Have you discovered the MEL science packs - we have been loving doing those recently, they get sent each month and my youngest is obsessed with science and is fascinated in the experiments. We went for the slightly older age group than she is and there are great online lessons that go along with the packs (although my DH gets really involved in teaching DC as he loves science.)
Agree with the books bit too - our house is a bloody library, my DH complains all the time about me smuggling more books in .
There are many ways to be ambitious and interested and involved for your children.

@Wandamakesporridge
You sound so like us! I work part time and we really value me being around after school for taxi driving to clubs but also for support and conversation and leaning on, especially as the DC get older and have more complicated personal lives.
I think the peer group is an issue in any school, I went from one private school to another as a teen and fell in with a naughty crowd who were totally uninterested in learning of any kind apart from about the naughty things in life! I went from being a scholarship child to a teen who was constantly in trouble. But even that was a life lesson as now I can spot the naughty people a mile off and know how to rein myself in (mostly!)

Not many people can earn a house deposit on their own.

I'm afraid I don't agree with the 'teach a man to fish' argument at all, as it's just not borne out in real life.

My siblings and I all went to private school. But our parents sacrificed so much to achieve that, so we had unreliable cars, never went abroad, hand-me-down clothes that we got teased for...We also missed out on family time and parental engagement as they worked all the hours to make the money. None of us could learn to drive or have first cars or had any help at all with house buying etc as the fees took up all of their available funds.

We have all said many times how we would have preferred to have been given house deposits or supported to not get uni debt for example, over and above going to schools where we aways felt out of place and looked down on.

It is not true in my experience that those who are most successful in adult life have had private education, but I do think those who have had significant financial support in their uni years and with setting up homes etc are hugely ahead now as we hit our 40s.

I personally wouldn't pay for private at all but I do intend and plan to ensure my DC start adult life with significant financial backing and debt free.

I have no desire for my DC to travel far from home on a daily basis and I am really keen for them to go to their local school and have local friends at every opportunity. We are also seen as lacking drive and ambition but I'm playing the long game and am v happy with our choices.

@CroydianSlip
'Playing the long game' - I love that concept.
I often say that we aren't putting all of our financial eggs in a basket whilst the children are young as I know that there are so many things I will want to help with post 18, if I possibly can.

It's an interesting dilemma. I was state educated and would like to send my children private if I can afford it. My DP was private educated and says it did nothing for him.

I work with probably 60- 80% privately educated people. I went to a local comp and loved it. Got the grades, went to a good uni. All now comfortable and earning the same as those from private schools.
My kids are all at local schools.. I’m saving for their uni fees and a house deposit..

On my road there is a mix of people who went to private and state and we all send our kids to the local very good state. We’ve all ended up on the same road with similar lifestyles 🤷‍♀️

@Lemonlemon88
I think there is an element of curiosity to what we don’t know - I really wanted my DC to go to a local school as I felt very rootless and not part of a community growing up as my private school was a long commute and then I boarded . And it had been wonderful watching them grow up so rooted and secure with so many friends and endless sleepovers. But maybe they will want to send their own DC to a private school as they won’t have experienced it.
I love the expression ‘the grass is greener where you water it’ which is how I try to live - volunteering my time and expertise to the local schools.

My DDs did go to local state primary but found they were largely ignored and friendships were determined by parents. Such terrible factions were evident in the parent body and if you didn’t fit in, your child was pretty much excluded. Party invites not forthcoming and no sleepovers. No warm friendly community for us. DD1 wanted friends and boarding at 11 helped this situation immensely. The idea of staying local wasn’t remotely appealing. At 28, the girls she met at senior school are her lifelong friends. She’s not in touch with anyone from state primary.

@PresentingPercy gosh what a strange sounding set up, we have found quite the reverse, such a shame for your DD’s and so lovely they then found proper friends at secondary. I have no real friends from my senior school, all from my prep and university, funny how life goes differently for us all.

The vast majority of kids do not go to private school. If your children are happy and doing well I do not see the problem- and why would you consider it after seeing your friend? Surely she reaffirms 100% that you are doing the right thing.
I don't believe in pushing kids. Support and encouragement, that what they need.
The fact is kids will be what they will be. You can not waste your time second guessing your choices. My mother always said she regretted not having the money to send us to private school. One sister is a doctor and I was successful in my field- what more could we have achieved if we had gone private?

@Livingintheclouds you are so right - I waste time worrying. Feel much better after this thread, so many successful, thoughtful and lovely posters.

I feel we had strong reasons to go private but wouldn’t necessarily have done so in different circumstances as DD1 passed very highly for the local girls grammar school.

You cannot really make DCs be friendly with your child. At primary, it was so clear friendships were determined early on by parents. We didn’t fit in for various reasons. However dc who are happy, doing well and have friends are blessed and so are you. We found our DD thought she had friends at school but was then repeatedly shunned when it came to socialising. I was eventually invited round to coffee by several mums who wanted to know why DD was going to a boarding school! This was in Y6.

@PresentingPercy
Clearly not the right tribe for you! So glad it worked out well afterwards.

PresentingPercy's experience is a school specific one, and not a sector one though. My niece had exactly the same problem in a private primary school -she was one of only 7 girls in the class and the other 6 girls formed a tight friendship group entirely leaving her out. The school's response was that they couldn't force the girls to be friends (which I think was facile - for example, the children always had free choice of which groups they worked in, so of course they always chose their friends, whereas the teacher could have had a more proactive role in defining groupings). Niece ended up making friends with the boys, which was of course fine but I think I'd have been tempted to change her school in that circumstance - whereas her parents felt they were paying money for a "better" school so the fact her daughter had no female friends was not an issue.
(Interestingly niece is still at age 16 predominantly friends with boys - so this has arguably had a long lasting impact on her).

@UserAtRandom
I am absolutely not saying this was a state school issue. Absolutely not. We did get DD out eventually, and no damage done, but she hadn’t wanted to go to a very good prep in y4 when we became concerned about her friendship issues.

DD2 did move for y4. I think DD1 actually enjoyed school but friendships were just not there outside school.

I completely agree, and I think I said earlier, that parents will justify paying even when it’s not great. I’ve seen that too. They are not evaluating what they are getting for their money and don’t compare to other schools. I felt friendships were critical and when DD1 started at boarding school she made close friends immediately. No one was judging us as parents.

I accept that schools find it difficult to intervene but DD was aware, by y5, that she was left out. She would have moved to the grammar with all these girls and would still have been excluded by them so why, when we could afford an alternative, would we not try and improve things? I would do exactly the same had I needed to move DC from a prep. Often boys go off and do boy things and are not as mature as the girls. Both my DDs found some boys very annoying at primary!

Op only skim read, it all depends on what you want to achieve for your dc and what you can personally offer and then, what's affordable and so on.

Many many schools around me growing up were failing dc left right and center including my older siblings so dm moved heaven and earth to get me to a privately school.

It didn't meet all my educational needs however because I'd lost so much time already at a state primary.

It's hard to quantify what it offered because unless you've been in a comprehensive situation it's hard to compare.
I could say my dd comp has poor pastoral care and another poster will say theirs is amazing.

A smaller school may offer a more personal experience, a more bespoke experience and in usually more quirky nicer settings.
I'm extremely sensitive to my environment and I deeply appreciated the older buildings, and beautiful grounds as well as the smaller classes and feeling more safe in a smaller more homely school.

My dd is now at the local comp and it's good.
The teachers are good, I was impressed at pe, and she's doing OK but I'm moving her.
The reasons are the schools response to lock down and how she was abandoned for months which has damaged her views on education.
Other niggling issues which would be outing to mention, and over all it just being good.. The place I'm moving her too is exceptional, it seems more invested, more caring already and she's not even started.
I already know more about her future, what's going on, smaller details than her current school I even know the pastoral team.

It's a grammar and it's got a reputation for being hot on pastoral issues and being caring because the ethos is, a happy child is a successful child. Her current school fails those with sen and has no interest in feedback or bonding etc or wanting to know where it falls down.
Maybe she's going to get the same good grades in both places, but I want her day to day experience to be more han just a number and somewhere where she is a person with needs.

Also the idea she would be better off making local friends never sat well with me, infact it made me feel suffocated.

I enjoyed visiting different places to meet friends, and when I was socialising properly I had different friend groups in different places which I loved.

I thrive on variety..
I don't like the samey approach to comp education and the factory line side to it, with zero accountability.

We don't have a good income but if we did I would assess all the possible options and find the best one for each dd, that may be state or comp or private or grammar.. Each child may need different things and I would try and keep an open mind with no political or pre conceived ideas.