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?

Of course, state schooling involves more work on the parents behalf but, I fail to see that as a bad thing.

maybe not a bad thing but a very hard thing when you have lots of children and you work etc

i take it you don't work then?

@rantinghousewife

rantinghousewife - perhaps, but if your children are intelligent/academic, you don't care whether the school caters for the less academic - you just want your children to be able to work to the best of their abilities in subjects that will help them move forward in life.

And if that seems callous - that's perhaps true, but as a parent our primary, overriding duty is towards our own children.

I used to be a working (full time and commute to london) single parent (for 10 years). The fact that I don't work now has nothing to do with it

well i'm sure you won't be waiting long for your "uber parent" gold medal

But Anna8888, my child oldest child is academic.

I'd be interested in my childs education even if we had to do no homework to be honest, its the ensuring they read to you every day and the homework and the times tables and the spelling practice for 2 children + irritating toddler that makes me send off for prospectuses

And I would far rather my child attend a school that cares for all of it's children, rather than just the gifted ones. Lest my next child not be so gifted.

Actually bossykate, can you make that medal encrusted with diamonds, think I deserve it

god state school is a slog if your child is NOT academic (where ARE all those children/parents???)

Ha ha, I wouldn't pay for private education if we had a rubbish state alternative. We live in Hackney right now - some schools are ok, some not so.

IMO the importance of going to school is to do with social skills, and meeting and mixing with a variety of different people - all the academic, love of learning stuff REALLY comes from the parents. If you're bright, you're bright.

School is so not that big a deal, you know .

Arf at state primary = 'battery farm'!

Dd2's primary school is boho central -- no uniform, all staff are known by first names, and all the parents have sufficiently flexible, creative jobs to give them lots of time to hang out in the playground looking artily scruffy, but sufficiently lucrative to enable them to have large houses in a leafy enclave of North London.

And there are quite a few schools just like it in London.

Oh enid - don't order any more prospectuses - I'm not sure it's true. I certainly have the reading every day, homework, times table shenanigans here.

Strangely the private school mine are at is much more culturally and ethnically mixed than the state school we liked which was full - which was very white and middle-class, whereas people travel to get to ours. But that just reflects the local population here I think.

I have a friend who wouldn't dream in a million years of sending hers private, and her dd attends an inner city London primary. She says her two friends in the class are the other white, middle-class girls. Not what she intended at all!

I agree about school being about the social skills and having a good time, and doing some learning too. A lot of private school parents are very complacent and relaxed about the academic side of things actually, I find, weirdly. Not pushy necessarily AT ALL, it's all 'Oh Finbar doesn't want to do maths Mrs Y this week. Tra li la li la.'

Seeker, that is exactly my point and my experience.

My DSIL is at Harvard doing post-doctoral research. She went to a comp with my DH that this year has a 33% past rate. Harvard is the top university in the world and she got there through her own hard work.

People seem to think that schools are all about passing exams and getting a certain past rate. Someone said earlier that a pass rate of 65% was not good enough? Why not? When you take into account the broad capability level, the fact that not everyone is academically inclined or interested or motivated, I actually think that is brilliant. Sometimes we need to remember the journey and not just focus on the final destination.

Comps have to work with a wide range of abilities, problems, interferences and many actually do a good job with the raw material. Instead of just looking at the final output, people need to look at the starting materials. If children leave school without being equipped with the skills to function in society, who is really to blame when you consider that schools only have the children for 5 or 6 hours a day for about 38 weeks a year)?

Thats why comparing a highly selective school with a socially diverse comprehensive is meaningless and idiotic.

"sufficiently flexible, creative jobs to give them lots of time to hang out in the playground looking artily scruffy, but sufficiently lucrative to enable them to have large houses in a leafy enclave of North London"

What are these, then?
Most "creative" jobs I know are on shit money. People can't even get mortgages on them, let alone in London!

seeker and spokette - really good points. As I think I said earlier, dh and I were both state educated. My school in particular wasnt great, but we've both done fine - dh got a first class degree and I have a higher degree, so academically we weren't disadvantaged. And I do think the broader range of pupils in a comprehensive is an advantage as far as developing other skills is concerned. The fact is, academic ability is just one element of what you need to get on in life. The ability to negotiate, empathise etc are also really important in both family life and in many careers.
Having had the experience of sending ds to a private school (and dh working in one) I'd say there are many reasons why people choose private. In the school ds attended I dont think snobbery was a major factor. There were some parents who wouldnt have considered state (usually because they were privately educated themselves and I think lacked the confidence to try anything else) but tbh these were in a minority. Interestingly, as far as ability is concerned, dh says that although overall the private school kids tend to be generally more able (because the school is selective) the brightest of the bright kids he's taught have always been in state schools. I find that fascinating - you get the full range of ability, but the top end still tends to outstrip the private school pupils. DS also reckons that in his (top) sets at the state school there are kids who are brighter than the ones in his previous class.

We found we had to do more with children at primary level in the private sector than when our oldest 3 were teenagers. I have never looked at never mind helped with piece of GCSE course work for example, thank goodness. At private primary schools children read one to one every single day and also then read with the parent at night and the parent signs to show that (in most of them anyway that we've been involved with). But it is also a relief that you aren't expected to be in the classroom helping yourself - parents work and in fact parents aren't teachers and I don't think it's a good thing to have them inside the school too much. It gets in the way of the teacher.

As for results - yes clever children do okay everywhere but I bet if you took the cleverest chidlren in each state primary school and charted them either at the local comp or if instead they went to an academic private school the ones at the private school would do even better and be less likely to go off the rails in their teens than those in the state schools. If all your peers are going to good universities youare likely to but if 80% of the class will be lucky if they get there and some will leave at 16 and go on the dole etc then you may well decide to follow their lead. In other words I suppose I buy a set of influences on my children which I hope will rub off on them when combined with the influence of home too and their own genes but I have no expectations or forceful desire to make them into what they aren't. I just want to increase the chance they get a good education by paying.

The interseting issue is whether if the mother worked rather than was a housewife and therefore the children went ot better schools is that better for the children long term given the huge leg up the private schools give you including at secondary level than if she stayed at home baking cakes for them. Inm other words to benefit their children ought women to be working rather than pretending state schools are as good as private?

Xenia - read an article very recently that said the two factors that had the highest influence on children's academic success were:

1. the level of studies of the mother
2. presence of the mother at home when children returned from school

Well that sounds like very very sexist propaganda. I also think your success is 50% in your genes nothing to do with environment - hence big differences between adopted and genetic children sometimes.

I was never there when the older ones got home from school and they've done very well indeed academically. It also helps in private schools that often there are homework clubs for supervised homework, late rooms and for some of our more sportier children they might have been doing sport 2 or 3 nights a week and got home regularly at 6 from school when we were getting in which also worked well at one stage of our lives.

Agree that it sounds like a very dubious study! Without knowing exactly how it was carried out, it's difficult to comment, but it certainly sounds dodgy!
Anecdotally, as a teacher, I would say that as a generalisation the kids I teach who are the brightest, high achieving ones, have parents who both work, usually in professional or high status jobs. The lower achievers have more frequently got mums in low earning, low status jobs (often evening or shift work - so they tend to be at home when the kids get in) or even both parents at home when they get in as they're unemployed.

UQD -- she only started last term, so I don't the parents well enough to ask. But it sounds good to me, too. I think there's a fair old bit of meeja, and quite a few women with artily creative jobs whose husbands are boring but lucrative lawyers.

Not quite sure how you can get better than spokettes examples though Xenia. Taking a very bright child and expecting them to do better than a doctorate and Harvard would take them where exactly?

All three of us went to inner london comps one of us has a first and a masters, one of us went to oxford and has a phd and the other has a 2.1 I am not sure any of us would have wanted anything else.