Is private school worth it?

[sunisbetterthanrain]

Interested to hear thoughts on whether private school is worth it for primary school years? Neither me nor my partner went but are considering it for our daughter. Local schools round here are pretty good, is it just a waste of money that could be better spent on experiences or saving for her future?

Oh and I should have added, DS went to in 1993 and left in 2013.

I think this depends on what you want out of the school.

I live in an Outstanding school area with 5 outstanding primaries within 2-3 miles. The reason why I went for private for both my kids are:

1. DD1 has autism and the private junior school not offered to immediately buy in support for her, they used parent contacts to find some excellent early interventions for her.
2. In my local area class sizes are big. 30-34. Private school is 10-15. I KNOW my children won’t get lost in the system. Class sizes are so small teachers don’t need to write reports - we get weekly (sometimes daily) touchpoints. Parents Evenings are reserved for good stuff - eg performances / exhibitions etc.
3. They learn French from Kindergarten and by year 6 are supported to achieve a ‘working fluency’ that is built upon if they get into attached private secondary school to make them fluent in French by year 9. This isn’t generally available to the kids that go to that secondary school from State as they rarely achieve that level of fluency in the first place.
4. They learn music from reception, every child who is learning an instrument through the school, is expected to perform at all functions. At the local State schools they only learn the instrument - the performance part doesn’t happen unless parents pursue it privately.
5. At the private primary they must play sport everyday and all students represent the school in all sports. Swimming is in-house and so they have longer lessons more frequently (in the summer they’re often swimming every other day).
6. We never went private entirely for the relative ease of passing 11+ though that was a consideration in case they proved to be academically gifted (which dd did end up being). It was because I want my children to have a ‘rounded’ education that would help them excel in State or private education.

There are points to note however that aren’t as ‘positive’:

1. Some parents use private school as a way to network for the benefit of themselves or their businesses and it’s usually the stay at home partner being used to do this. At my local private primary this means events to parties, events, play dates etc have a political element. I chose to step outside this by always issuing whole class invites to parties & play dates for a really long time & was lucky in that parents reciprocated.
2. If you don’t join their PTA you might not be ‘visible’ enough to support your child when / if things go wrong.
3. As many schools require a blazer the cost of the uniform will be slightly higher than State School. But not hugely. It costs £500 for a full State School Uniform at our local schools & £580 at ours including the blazer.
4. Year 4 tends to be when pressure for 11+ kicks in as kids go off into prep mode. You must be hyper-organised to ensure they get the full academic and non-academic benefit of the school. You need to be very involved and vocal during this time.

@wenfy I recognise none of that. Ours went to the best indies we could find within spitting distance. Zero pressure from Y4 because they were already "in" and thriving.

I don't recall any parental networking. DH nodded once or twice to other parents at events because they had come across each other professionally.

Correction: 2003 to 2013.

@PerSeer I can see that being true.

True, 60/12 = 5.

In reality, kids in that classroom won’t be getting five minutes or even two minutes on 1-1 teacher time, because classroom teachers spend most of their time teaching to the whole class. And any bits of snatched 1-1 attention that your child does get from the teacher will be poor in quality, because the teacher is simultaneously trying to listen out for the rest of the class, keeping an ear out for any kids who are having problems, whispering, getting off-task and so on. Yes, even in a private school classroom where the most difficult kids have been selected out!

I’ve taught in tiny classes of hand-picked kids with no special needs or behavioral problems, and I still didn’t have time for focused, multiple-minute-long one-on-one tutorials with kids on lesson-related contents in the middle of the lesson.

Paying for a private school for the reason of “I want my child to get individual teaching for maths and English etc.” makes not a lot of sense; it would be a lot more effective (and about ten times cheaper) to just use your state school, work out what specific areas your child would benefit from individual support on, and pay for some tutoring in those areas. Bear in mind that a child in school, by definition, spends a lot of time in classes you might not care about (PE and music, in our case), in classes where they already excel and need no individual attention anyway (art and language arts, in our case), in form time and in break time and so on. Yet with a private school you are paying for those expensive staff:child ratios round the clock, for all of their lessons, whether it makes a difference to them or not.

FWIW, we use a private secondary school, but for other reasons, not small class sizes. If our reasons and circumstances had been different, a state school would have been fine.

Yes - worth it if you can easily afford it. Not worth it if you have to sacrifice too much.

My kids did French in 2 different prep schools. Absoltely no advantage what so ever. The rest of the class had caught up by the middle of year 7. The one hour a week was total lip service and quite frankly a total waste of time. I’ve never seen any private school get the kids anywhere close to more than the odd basic sentence at prep level

I think this varies a lot. Like all schools, some schools put more emphasis on certain non-core elements of the curriculum. So the two big private schools near us do everything. However, one is much better at languages (multiple sessions every week including music and PE being taught in French) while the other is much better at music (multiple sessions every week with the entire school obliged to participate in the strings and wind scheme where they learn a major instrument for a couple of years and do multiple lessons a week included in the fees).

You can't make generalisations.

@Travelationjubilation interesting to read, I also felt the same with my DD, with her French, that she's not making progress as much as I would have hoped. It just didn't seem like she is coming up on a practical level, she just seems to keep forgetting what she learnt. I just assumed she wasn't too much into it but never really looked further into whether other children is making much better progress.

That’s why I chose the school I did.

Yes. French is taught everyday from Kindergarten at my DC private school. And they are not allowed to speak any English during that time. 1 hour everyday. I hour everyday dedicated to music. Maths and even English is applied within those non-core elements.

It sounds like your school isn't in the UK ("kindergarten"). At our private secondary everyone starts practically from zero with French in Y7, even those children who were taught it in the prep.

Nope it’s in the UK. You can’t generalise private education based on a single experience. It’s the point I was trying to make. The private Secondary attached to my DC’s school have 2 French sets - regular and advanced. The advanced set does their GCSE french by year 7/8. Then the rest of the time is A Level or other exams in conjunction with a bilingual French/English school.

I know some head teachers of state school paying for their children to go private.

I also know senior NHS executives use private health providers (some do get private insurance).

In both sectors even senior people don't get paid megabucks.

It's all about priorities.