Would you pay for private education when there is a very good state alternative?

[alfiesbabe]

I know this is a contentious issue, but am really interested to hear other people's views. Our situation: have just moved DS (Yr 9)from private to local state school. (His choice). He had been on a scholarship as a chorister, and finished in the choir, but money wasn't an issue as DH teaches in the private school so we paid peanuts for fees. DS is really happy and likes the wider range of students. He is in top sets for most subjects and reports back that the work is more challenging and behaviour better than was the case in his previous class. He gets less homework, but to my mind what he does get is more relevant (eg in maths he might get set 5 questions to test that he has understood a teaching point, whereas at the private school he'd be set several pages of the same type of question). Results wise, the private school had 85% 5 A-C passes, the state school had 72%. Bearing in mind the state school has the full ability range, whereas the private school is selective, this smacks to me of better teaching in the state school. It seems like a very small difference considering parents are paying about 12K a year for the private school. A-level results are similar - statistically the private school is a little better, but not by much. The private school offers more in the way of music and sport; but DS has gone as far as he wants with music for the moment and isnt bothered about sport. I'm not looking for validation of our choice - we know we've made the right decision - but I'm left with this feeling of 'What were we actually paying school fees for?' The experience as a chorister was valuable, but I can't get my head round parents who pay the full whack, specially if their child isnt musical or sporty. I'm aware that our local state school is outstanding and we're very lucky in this respect. So.... why WOULD anyone pay for private in this situation?

I am curious, though, Xenia - where do you think would discriminate against my husband, say, on grounds of accent? He has the same type of voice as Eddie Mair, say (different parts of the country, but same very clear attractive way of speaking).

I don't relate to the idea of everyone earning as much money as possible at all. There are people who earn a decent wage doing jobs they love and they are very happy.
Surely that is more important than greed?

You're right that at heart what matters in a life is emotional and physical health and ability to form close loving relationship and at heart there isn't that much difference between people but may be people from private schools go after the better paid jobs even if they have equal or worse exam results than someone from a poorer background. Certainly the main thing I want for my children is that they choose work they love and the most significant thing about our family will be nothing to do with money but the bad experiences we all suffered at the hands of their father until we divorced. But that is irrelevant to the question of private schools or not.

I doubt anyone can dispute the thread - if you have two schools and one is bad and one good that you'd pick the good one even if it were a state school.

Habbibu - excellent points. I often find Xenia's views interesting, but the inconsistencies grate with me as well. I've always found it a bit strange that she values education so highly, yet seems very dismissive of anyone who isnt earning a huge income. As you say, Xenia, good job some of us are talented enough to be able to teach and are prepared to have a career where we're not earning shitloads of money .Habbibu, I also agree that there is loads more to life than the size of your pay packet. Being short of money is miserable, but once you have enough to live on, does it really make a huge difference how many more tens of thousands you've got? Life is about loving, learning, laughing and many other things which money can't buy.

I think I'd find it a bit harder to choose the good private school over the bad state school, for the reasons I've loosely outlined earlier - I want my daughter to know that her achievements are on her merits, and not simply because of the school she went to. But I am outing myself as a hypocrite here - I went to a private school for 6th form and yes, had a fab time. But it wasn't much flasher than the comp I'd been to, and the lots of the boys there had been to my state primary, had very similar background to me, etc. I loved it because I found the all-girl environment stifling, and because yes, expectations were higher. But that still felt more to do with the fact that it was a boys school, and they just expected boys to, say, be good at science, and bundled us girls in with the same expectations. The best school of all, however, was that same state primary - just a wonderful, joyful place to be where they really encouraged and stretched us.

As for the future, let's face it, dd has two highly educated middle class parents - she's going to do fine! Xenia, I am sorry that your family had a tough time - that must be very hard. You do sound like a pretty happy family now.

Im actually quite sad that because we live in the south east my sons dont have /wont have a distinctive regional accent like me.

I can honestly say that my (lovely ) has absolutely no negative effect on my career.

And neither actually has my lack of a private education. I am doing the job I always wanted to do - and I very much doubt that it would have changed by going to a different school. And im at a relatively senior role where Im at a higher level than many people who were educated privately.

The fact that I'll never earn a six figure salary is down to the fact that the industry I work in doesnt pay that kind of money. But I wouldnt want to work anywhere else.

I'd like (love ) an extra ten grand so that I could spend in comfort but it really wouldnt make any difference to my real quality of life.

I feel like I'm beating my head against a brick wall in these debates. The plain fact is that out of every hundred children in this country, 93 are educated in the state system. That means that the vast majority of doctors, lawyers,architects and so on were educated in the state system. Which means that it is entirely possible to do well, even by Xenia's somewhat biassed lights without going to independent school!

Sorry seeker, but ime experience of one of the professions you cite, most people were from independent school backgrounds. Both myself and my dp were state school educated and the harsh reality is that it was far tougher to get into this field than it would've been had we attended private schools.

Are you equating doing well to your income Xenia?

If so I dont agree with you at all.

seeker I do not know what the statistics are - Xenia probably does - but the 7% of children who go to private schools are MASSIVELY over-represented in the professions and earn significantly more over the course of their lifetimes.

Unpalatable but true.

Quattrocentro, you are absolutely correct. Of course, when you are starting out on your new career, writing lots of job applications, little do you know of the social, school and family connections that exist within these worlds. Walk past any doctors pratice, solicitors office, barristers chambers and see how many people share the same last name. As well as this, I know many, many people who got highly competetive jobs who simply happen to be the best friend of the senior partner's son or head of chambers' daughter. Xenia and others like her (no offence Xenia) know this, and that is part of the reason why they hold these strong views. I don't like it at all, especially having been at the sharp end of it, but this is how it is.

I've not read all the middle pages of this, just the first and last few, so this may have already been covered: but I feel our (intelligent, middle class) children should go to the local schools even if they aren't as good as a private alternative - because if the schools are bad, that is at least partially the fault of all the intelligent and/or educated and/or supportive parents who can afford the private option buggering off to the gated compound and leaving the rest to their own devices. Don't we have a community responsibility to all muck in to make the schools better, not just moan from on high that if nicer people went there we'd send our kids there but as it is...?! A rather circular argument. Imho.

Actual figures anyone?

In my own particular circle of colleagues I can think there were about three of us who were state-educated. The rest were privately educated (including boarding school) with a few grammer school pupils (which is like private education anyway). This, I assure you, was the norm.

They did a study of journalists - where you tend to get in by the back door/connections rather than some professions which nowadays want the best people and therefore recruit more widely and found it was very very hard for a working class graduate to get in on the ground floor in journalism, those first jobs without pay, that holiday work experience someone you know fixed up. It's not so hard in some other professions however. And in fact it's only bad companies these days which rely on nepotism. Some ask if you have connections because the answer then means you aren't considered if you have! So it's a very interesting issue and one that me, having 3 children in higher education, they are dealing with all the time and their friends in moving from university to getting a real job.

The 7% as Q says do tremendously well for all kinds of reasons. It's why nearly half parents in the UK would pay if they had the money. They all know how much advantage and benefit you buy with that investment in school fees.

CC, it's a complex process but not beyond working class children without connections. What is important is they know the timing - the need to get work experience at which stages, when you need to apply for the jobs otherwise you're too late. They probably need to do a lot more research than someone from a family who knows all that already. There's even a company in London which for £5000 will get your child work experience at places that might count.
(As for southern accents - ugh.. they can be just as bad -worse, than Scottish)

Funnily enough I've just googled a few of the BBC's 'top' journalists and all of them went to private schools.
I know that a working class women with no connections (and a northern accent) can do it, but it is tough. People did help me along the way and lots of professions now do more than they ever did to help the...unconnected. However, why is it that I still hear of children of, friends of the family and so forth landing plum training positions?

seeker - I'm afraid your calculations just don't ring true.

Most of my profession (legal) appear to have been privately educated, in fact I struggle to think on a single lawyer or doctor I know who didn't either go to a private school or a grammar school (the latter being the minority.

Quattrocentro - I don't think its the fault of the children that attend these schools or the schools themselves. I spent two years at a sink comprehensive before transferring to the best local private school.

The children at the comprehensive were streamed into 11 (yes 11!) classes of 30 in each year. The poverty and underachievement in the lowest classes was quite outstanding.

The expectations of the top stream were much lower than that of the private school I later attended but it also taught us to believe anything is possible and that we important, high achievers even if we weren't.

Overall the children there were less considerate, more arrogant and it wasn't a place where you could be happy without inventing some sort of 'attitude'. I think it is this confidence and arrogance which helps the 7% of privately educated children to occupy the top 10% of high earning professions - But I doubt they become the 'nicest' and most caring of adults...

I think if you go to the Sutton Trust website it gives all the professions and percentage of independent, grammar and state people at the top of those professions. I can't do a link at the moment, but google sutton trust and their research is all laid out on their home page.

From the independent in 2006

'Private school stranglehold on top jobs
Just 7 per cent of children go to private schools. But a new study reveals the old school tie is tightening its grip on the most influential jobs in the country
By Richard Garner and Ben Russell
Published: 15 June 2006
The private school system still has an extraordinary stranglehold on top jobs in the UK and their grip on the most influential jobs has increased rather than diminished over the past 20 years, a series of reports shows.

The latest research, published today, reveals that the percentage of top positions in the British media going to former private school pupils has risen by more than 10 per cent since 1986. The report on the media follows reports on the legal profession and on MPs which reached similar conclusions.

The research, published by the Sutton Trust education charity, shows that of the leading 100 media opinion-formers, 54 per cent came from private schools, compared with 49 per cent 20 years ago. Thirty-three per cent of the remainder came from selective grammar schools and only 14 per cent were from comprehensive schools, which cater for 90 per cent of all pupils.

The report on the legal profession shows that almost 70 per cent of barristers from leading chambers were educated at private schools. And in the House of Commons, 42 per cent of those holding government office or shadowing ministers are former pupils of private schools. Just 7per cent of all pupils are educated in the private sector.

The findings are a blow for Tony Blair who has made social mobility and the opening up of choice to families from more deprived backgrounds a key theme of his Government.

What is most alarming for Mr Blair is the feeling among leading professionals that the trend towards more privately educated people getting top jobs is likely to grow. This was especially evident in the media, where senior journalists and broadcasters warned that people from poorer homes were unlikely to be able to survive the low pay and job insecurity at the start of a career in the media.

Among barristers, the researchers found that younger partners in the so-called magic circle of top chambers were now more likely than their equivalents of 20 years ago to be privately educated.

The evidence goes further than the surveys of leading professions. The findings of researchers at the London School of Economics show that children born into wealthy families are now more likely to hold on to their wealth, while those from deprived backgrounds find it just as difficult to escape poverty.

The percentage of people born into a wealthy environment who maintained their lifestyle into their mid-thirties rose from 35 per cent among those born in 1958 to 42 per cent for 1970.

Sir Peter Lampl, the millionaire philanthropist who chairs the Sutton Trust - which is dedicated to campaigning for equality of opportunity, said of today's report: "This is another example of the predominance of those who are privately educated being in influential positions in society." The report shows that only 14 per cent of the leading 100 journalists attended comprehensive schools, 33 per cent were grammar school pupils and 45 per cent had been to Oxford or Cambridge. Oxford predominated, with 37 per cent.

It lists five reasons: the privileged can survive the low pay and high insecurity of the early years in the profession; they are more able to afford to live in London in the early stages of their careers; they can afford the fees for postgraduate journalism course; are more likely to have personal and family connections in the trade; and exude more confidence and networking skills. There were similar findings from surveys of barristers and judges.

Sir Peter added: "My fear is that in another 20 years the chances of those from non-affluent homes to reach the very highest strata of society - including the top of the media - will have declined still further."

quattrocento i assume your earliest posting should be followed by 'in my area'
my dcs go to fantastic state schools - grammar schools

the majority of those who fail to get into these schools almost invariably go private

if there were a very good alternative i just cant understand why one would

these threads always draw me in and rile me grrrr.....

grr is at self btw!

If you are so happy with your state school, you should be having a laugh at us idiots who squander our money on education, rather than getting angry.