Regrets? Private vs state

[themonkeysarewatching]

DD currently in year 5 in good local state primary. She's been very happy there and it's been a good choice. We're now currently considering secondary school options. State options are quite limited as religious schools and an academy chain which we're not keen on dominate and only leave one viable option. This school has a good reputation but it's the other side of town and difficult to get to. We do have the option of sending DD to a private girls' school fairly locally, if we tighten our belts a bit. DD is bright, sociable and fairly independent and I think would thrive in most circumstances so we're erring on the state option, but she does like a challenge and we're just wondering whether private would offer her more of that.

Has anyone had regrets about sending their DC private when state probably would have been just as good (if not better) particularly when the financial sacrifices are factored in? Or vice versa?

Interesting @Lakeylady. I guess I'm coming at it from the opposite point of view, having gone to a state comprehensive but having done rather well. I have a lot of friends who went to "top private schools", and I have never once felt that I missed out or that I was disadvantaged in any way. I had two educated, interested and supportive parents, and that was hugely important for me. School was also important, but I believe that you're every bit as likely to encounter fabulous teachers in state schools as you are in private schools, and that's what really matters... all the rest is just window dressing as far as I'm concerned.

But what I have found from my friends' teenage DC @Cherryy is that often those 8's and 9's can come with a heavy sprinkle of mental health issues. Which is not what we wanted for our DC. I would rather a set of good results and a happy child than really excellent with added problems due to pressure and over tiredness. I had an eating disorder at my boarding school. It was the classic case of I pushed myself anyway and then when I also had external pushing I fell apart. We wanted to avoid that at all costs and have been very happy so far with our decision.

I don’t think it’s a given that private school will automatically be so pushy that students will leave in Year 11 with their mental health in tatters. I’m not claiming that never happens, but I do think it’s important to be objective about things.

The single biggest contributor to MH problems is poverty. Education helps alleviate poverty.

I don't know any bright kids who came out of my dd's very average state comprehensive with a only handful of 5s and 6s and a couple of 7s! It's a pity to hear that you as a teacher have such low expectations. Coming out with mostly 7s and 8s is hardly unusual for the kids in the higher sets, and those would be regarded as pretty disappointing results for the brighter ones.

That’s the point though isn’t it: there are state schools and state school. We don’t have many 7s or 8s, but go to the school on the other side of town and there will be a plethora of them. But that doesn’t mean it is accurate to say that bright children will do well ‘anywhere’ as they patently don’t. That’s not anti state schools or pro private, it’s an observation.

I’ll ignore the snark since it isn’t what the thread is about.

Gonfor state and save the money you would have spending on fees, you can top up the state offer with extracurricular clubs amd activities and still have so much left over. If your kids don't get on in state you can always opt for private later down the line.

@Cherryy You are right that some private schools aren't pressured but I think the only way I could justify paying fees instead of decent state would be for an very good private school, and those ones have to get good results to remain known as a top school - a circle of pressure on staff (I have friends in this situation) and on children.

Most private schools, even the rather dire ones, expect a level of homework that I didn't want for my children as I wanted them to focus on childhood. Plenty of time for working for hours and hours in the evenings when they have jobs!

Our way works for us, that is as far as I will go! It is as individual as all aspects of parenting and you have to find your own way. We like the state 'plus' model.
I breastfed my children because I could, and I liked it. But I am not going to stand here and say that your child will only be bright and healthy if they were breastfed, it patently isn't true. Likewise with those (few) posters who think that the only way to get on in life is by going to private school. That would be a very sorry state of affairs indeed as only 7% of children go to private school, what a mess we would be in!

Sp - a very good, not an!

In a nutshell our story is that DS was very prem and born end Aug rather than October. He was wearing age 2 clothes at 5. Private school offered the flexibility of deferring a year without having to make a case. Honestly, despite the School having some family links through my Godson, it was unsatisfactory from the start. We stuck with it until Yr 4 and then gathered a set of documents together managing to transfer to local primary ('Good' Ofsted). We never looked back - everything was better except some of the facilities. Before he was a brighter than average child with minor disability in a school where sporty, compliant and robust were the only characteristics that counted for anything. In the state school there were many more kids with personalities and a greater focus on learning. The same has been true of his secondary school experience.

The most damning things were truly damning - Yrs 3-4 focus on sport at the expense of Maths, the tiny state primary was miles ahead in Maths. Awful SEN coverage. Big bullying problem related to the whole area of suppression of self. Own marking criteria landing a bright child in a 'less able' grouping/set.

Of course, not everywhere is like that but do remember paying doesn't get you a say in anything. Being a selective school means they select your child and can reject your child, again paying doesn't mean security. We know a boy who ended up at a very rubbish state 6th form because the private system offered not chance of staying on when his results at GCSE were not what he expected.

Schools who win prizes are those that enter competitions they can win so it can be less useful than Ofsted. Some private school at secondary won't offer the full experience in terms of subjects - food tech, DT, business studies these sort of subjects often not on offer.

@mastertomsmum
At our boarding schools when we were growing up they promised our parents to turn out an 'xxx child' (insert 'sporty all rounder' for mine and 'very academic boy' for DH's.)
At my DC's state school they seem to say 'whoever you are, you are welcome here.'
We have loved this attitude, as have they.
This is only our experience and I am sure there will be people who come along and say they have found the opposite to us. Everyone's experience varies so much.

Yeah, maybe there are certain areas where even the brighter children come out with very average grades. I have lived in several different regions of the UK and haven't ever come across that, but I accept that it might happen. The county where we live at the moment is supposedly one of the worst performing in the country when local results are compared to national statistics, and yet there are plenty of kids who do very well in all of the local schools - yes, even the comprehensive in special measures on the other side of town. Some kids seem to excel regardless of the environment that they're in, but perhaps there are specific circumstances in which this doesn't happen, but that sounds more like a specific local issue than a problem with state schools per se.

The problem is that isn’t backed by the stats. Individuals may do well, but 7+ (so high grades) are only obtained by less than 30% of state school pupils. Their private counterparts manage to more than double that.

Isn't that a lot to do with intake though?

At the Comprehensive my DC would be at if we hadn’t gone Private anyone achieving 6’s or above would be unusual .
I imagine most people saying State is just as good have a decent State school available to them rather than one where the Deputy Head advised me not to send DD

@Cherryy but check out the mental health status of those private state counterparts. It isn’t better teaching - it is smaller classes and MUCH more pressure that achieves those grades.

I know it isn’t the teaching. I haven’t claimed it is.

I don’t know what the stats are pertaining to private school students and mental health problems but as I’ve said above, the single biggest contributor to poor mental health is poverty. That’s not something likely to impact many privately schooled pupils.

Sure, but the cohorts are not remotely comparable. Where is the data that demonstrates that kids from comparable socioeconomic backgrounds with comparable levels of parental education and comparable levels of innate ability do better in the private sector than in state?

A large number of kids in this country are living in poverty and face immense disadvantage on multiple levels. Their parents may be just about managing to keep their heads above water, working all hours to make ends meet. Of course those kids are not statistically likely to do as well as the kids from comfortable middle class homes with ambitious, highly educated parents who have the time and headspace to support their kids and the finances to provide all manner of extracurricular opportunities and educational resources for their children. It's absurd to suggest that the difference in achievement is simply down to the difference between the state and the private sector.

The reality is, the wealthy middle class kids with supportive parents will be fine in the state sector and will have every expectation of leaving school with a string of 8s and 9s at GCSE regardless of which school they go to. The kids who are educated in the private sector are, by and large, the ones who are actually likely to benefit the least from what private schools have to offer. The ones who would probably benefit from a private school are the ones who are least likely to ever step foot in one.

But that's precisely the point, isn't it? Private school pupils are highly unlikely to be experiencing issues like poverty, so comparing the results of a tiny privileged sub section of the population against a much broader group is meaningless.

Only if you think poor children are just not as bright as rich ones, which I don’t.

I agree that it’s just not true that ‘bright kids do well anywhere’. And this isn’t just about independent vs state.

If you’ve got really bright kids, they should be getting 8s and 9s and A/A* at A Level. But lots of schools see those kids getting mostly 7s with the odd 6 and perhaps the odd 8. Yes those kids have still done really well compared to the national average, but not compared to what they were capable of. And I agree that state schools can be the ones that get them the top grades. Not always, but often those are the leafy Comps and State Grammars.

And Independents vary significantly too of course. So if you lived in Glos and have access to some fab state schools, both Comp and Grammar, you might well feel your fees would be wasted if you weren’t looking at the very top independent but any of the others. That relies on you getting into one of those State schools of course. In many other areas, the state provision can’t match the Glos offering for bright kids and you might feel your fees really are worth it.

I’ve said it on multiple threads like this, but the true ‘cost’ is individual and depends on the state and independents available where YOU live and the sacrifice the fees mean for YOU and your family. For those dripping in cash, the cost in terms of what is sacrificed for the fees is little and it’s usually ‘worth it’ but if choosing independent means you live on beans and can’t replace your car when it dies, and the family do t have a holiday for 10 years, it’s prob all not worth it and very expensive in terms of sacrifice…..and even moreso if there was a great state option.

What many parents feel and hope they are paying for, is the experience or journey as well as the results. That’s a luxury, and oerhaos something those who can afford it without too much sacrifice choose. When the sacrifice means beans in toast or less holidays or a smaller house, lots of people decide the good state option is good enough and they can go without the nice facilities and wider range of clubs, and even will sacrifice the 0.5 grade per subject some researchers suggest is the grade impact.

The thing is, you need to have great knowledge about both the state snd independent options available to you make a properly informed choice. And that’s not fully possible as information is often a bit opaque and might not apply exactly to your child who is a unique individual. But I’m still surprised how many make the choice one way or the other without at least attempting to gather a serious amount of information.

For us, we did state until 8 and then independent Prep and selective senior school. We had bright kids and were interested and involved so no doubt they would have done ‘well’ in the local schools, none of which are bad and one of which is highly regarded and gets very good results for a mixed Comp and has a very good extra curricular offering, although still friends with kids there report disruption and kids disturbing classes for 15 mins on average each lesson. I suspect my reasonably bright but not genius kids could have got 7s from that school and been perfectly happy. Where they went had a culture of expectation and even the rather lazy kids wanted to do well at the end and pushed themselves and getting a 7 was certainly the low end of achievement. Of course it was selective but the top quarter would get almost all 9s with an odd 8 at the lower end of that group, and well over half the year group got all 9s and 8s, with the lower half still averaging about 6 8/9 grades along with their 7s and an odd 6. They weren’t brighter than the top set kids at the Comp, but just pushed and drilled a bit more for exams and in a culture where most people wanted to get 8/9 and 6/7 wasn’t seen as an achievement and still something positive for the stats.

It wouldn’t have been worth it though if we never had a holiday or worried the boiler would break down.

Most middle class families who send their kids to State find a good option and are happy with it. Most are happy with the outcomes and their choice. A few are bitter and disappointed and wish they’d opted to pay and feel the state school let their child down. Equally a few wish they hadn’t bothered to pay and that their kid didn’t. Turn out to be a top performer and it was the school’s fault and fees wasted.

There’s no point having regrets. You make your choices and accept that your parental input into your kids is the key thing and so have to take responsibility for that, as well as accepting all kids are individuals. Often people who are disappointed with their young adults either didn’t put the parenting effort in and have always looked to external organisations like schools to take the full responsibility, or actually don’t really accept who their child is. So often the disappointment might be focused at the school, but really belongs somewhere else.

If you look at the numbers in state schools getting all 8/9 at GCSE, many schools have surprisingly low numbers. The numbers are far lower than the number of middle class kids in them. So I’d say it’s not true that the bright middle class kid can expect a string of 8/9 regardless of where they go. It might be a string of 7s, but lots of schools don’t deliver that many of the very top grades in reality. And likewise, many don’t deliver more than the odd A* at A Level. It’s at this very top end where you see the differences between schools in terms of attainment.

Lots of people won’t be bothered by it. They think the string if 7s with the odd 8 is fab, and some As at A Level is wonderful. And of course it is really good….but if 9s could have been achieved and A*S could have been possible, well in my view it is a bit disappointing. But not everyone thinks like this, and that’s probably a good thing!

A bright, confident, self motivated child will probably do equally well wherever they go

I am going to disagree there.

dc1 is bright (the type of have been label as gifted etc...).
He struggled like hell in state secondary due to bullying. In his onw words, 'it's just as well that I am very competitive because otherwise I would have given up. All the attention was directed towards the badly behaved children and teachers were doig crowd control'
Moved to private school for his GCSE and still in contact with some of his friends (who were doing verry well too!). All 3 of them have seen their grades go down. The lack of support and interest in the children who are doing well did have an impact.

This was in a school deemed to be 'outstanding' and considered one of the best ones in the area.

Dc2 was the quiet child that was never disturbing, results were middle of the range etc...
When he left, his maths teacher actually apogised saying he had let him down because he should have had muhc better resukts than that (Ofsted has just been....).
Cue 3 years later and he ended up with 8s and 9 in most subjects. Basically, he was forgotten because he was so quiet and again, this showed in his results.

My take on that is its not just the child that makes the difference but the school is too. Even if you compare one state school to the next (even leaving out grammar schools). I susoect the area you live in is also an essential component.

@WombatChocolate I agree with your analysis.

dc1 friends were all good students with great capabilities. They ended up with mostly 7, well below what they could have acheived. They are all doing their A levels now and their predicted grades are way down too.

And a state comp in a leafy suburb isn't the same than your outstanding school in a poor area.

For us the choice wasn't about results as such. It was about aspirations and being happy.
dc1 was bullied and started to hate school, dreaming of the day he could leave that school (and he still had 3 years to do at that point!!). Moving to private meant dc1 regained his MH and acheive much better results. He regained some (but not all :() enthusiasm for learning. By that point, he had lost his aspirations though.
dc2 (just a year lower) was supported in a way state woud never have done. He has come out his shell, started to ake friends (when he had none) and blossomed. And yes his marks went up too. He has gained in confidence enough to aspire to do well and go for what he wants rather than vaguely been taken places iyswim. Again who he developed as a person has been more important for me.

Of course I don't think that. As I said earlier in the thread, parental support and socioeconomic background make a huge difference. If a child's parents are struggling to make ends meet on a day to day basis, they are not likely to have the time, the headspace or the resources to support their child as much as they might like. Many of them may have also missed out on educational opportunities for themselves, putting them at further disadvantage when it comes to helping their kids. Of course poverty will impact enormously on educational attainment, and that's a travesty in this day and age that needs to be addressed, but that wasn't really what this thread was about.

This thread was about parents who have had the opportunity to make choices between sending their child to a private school or to a state school, and whether they have had any regrets either way. That implies that we are talking about children from relatively privileged backgrounds with parents who are interested in and supportive of education. Perhaps I should have spelt out what I thought was obvious, and said that, in the context of this thread, bright kids from the kind of background where there is a genuine choice between private and state will do well anywhere. Obviously, bright kids who don't know where their next meal is coming from are going to face different challenges altogether, but that comparison is neither meaningful or relevant to this thread.

In my view, it isn't the schools that are driving the results up in private schools, it's the cohort. That same cohort performs similarly well in the state sector. Equally, it isn't the schools that are dragging results down in the state sector - it's the significant challenges beyond school that many of the kids and their families are facing.

My DSS now 18 went to a state comprehensive and it was absolutely awful.

He started in year 7 and got earmarked as having higher learning potential. He is really smart top of his class in year 6.

This all fell by the wayside.

Barely ever given any homework, there was constant disruption in lessons (more crowd control than teaching going on) and regular reportsof fights occuring.

It wasn't cool to be clever/ sporty/musical and if you were you were basically picked on for being a 'dick'.
Finishing at 2:50 leads to of lot of time for being idle when you are not given homework.

It was a race to the bottom.

Not all state schools are like this but I can guarantee that if he had been at the local private school he would have got better grades than what he did.